US Foreign Policy and Democracy Promotion: From Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama

The promotion of democracy by the United States became highly controversial during the presidency of George W. Bush. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were widely perceived as failed attempts at enforced democratization, sufficient that Barack Obama has felt compelled to downplay the rhetoric of democracy and freedom in his foreign-policy.

This collection seeks to establish whether a democracy promotion tradition exists, or ever existed, in US foreign policy, and how far Obama and his predec...