Analysis Of The Causes And Changes Of The U.S. Foreign Military Aids At The Post Cold War Era

This paper mainly discusses the changes and the causes of the post-Cold War U.S. foreign military assistance, and tries to examine the changes thoroughly in terms of time and space during the Cold War and the post Cold War era. It reveals the causes of the changes, especially the relationship between these changes and the US’ geo-strategic adjustments, thus contributing to a better understanding of the future U.S. foreign military aids and diplomatic strategy. The article is divided into five parts.The first part focuses on the concept of foreign military assistance, as well as its origin and the current situation.The second part studies the evolution of U.S. foreign military aids during the Cold War. This part mainly discusses the geopolitical expansion of foreign military assistances and the time-changing content of U.S. military aids against the background of bipolarity. The US foreign military aids begins at the1950s in Europe, develops in Asia and the Middle East during next20years, and descends at1980s all around the world. Military assistances at he post cold war era prefers the military loans and favorable arm sales, in stead of directly sending arms, troops, and advanced military technologies assistances.The third part focuses on the changes of U.S. foreign military aids at the post-Cold War. The changes mainly reflect in four areas:(1) the total budgets of foreign military assistances were upward changing. During1990s, U.S. foreign military aids continued to decline as with the same characteristics of the1980s, and bottomed out in1998. It rebounds from1999to2002. The second stage experienced an upward growth during2003to2006. Since2006, U.S. foreign military assistances have grown rapidly in a large quantity, and recorded the highest in history.(2) The three geopolitical fronts of US military aids are NATO’s eastward expansion Front, the anti-terrorism circle front in Central Asia, and chain front formed by the East Asia allies. The formation of the three fronts, confirmed United States advancing to the center of the Eurasia continent. Because the three geopolitical fronts performed regular successions in terms of time and geography, we call it the East-wards Strategy.(3) Political conditions of foreign military aids changed from the assistances of human rights, to democracy assistances, then to soft power assistances;(4) U.S. foreign military aids management mechanism changed at following aspects:more and more governmental and neo-governmental organizations are joining in the process, the role of the Department of Defense is prominent, and the militarization of the whole government is deepening.The fourth part tries to explore the causes of these changes at two levels, externally and internally. There are three external factors, evolving from bipolarity to multi-polarity, the international and domestic environment that focuses on economy, and "9·11" terrorist attack. Internal factors including the changes of strategical thinking and the elements that takes effects on decision-making process, especially the influence of interest groups. This paper concludes that in a short period, the United States will not cut down budgets of the overall foreign military assistances. Among the three geo-fronts of US foreign military assistance that mentioned above, the NATO’s eastward expansion front is the most stable one, the anti-terrorism circle in Central Asia is the most vulneralble one, and the East Asian allies chain front is the most likely to cause disputes and conflicts.