Trade as a strategic weapon: American and alliance export control policy in the early postwar period

The study of postwar American foreign economic policy recently has been informed by a dual conventional wisdom: that the American state is relatively weak domestically, yet powerful internationally. Domestic weakness refers to the ability of private actors to penetrate and influence the state; to the institutional fragmentation and decentralization of the state apparatus; and to the difficulties state officials encounter in extracting resources from domestic society and in achieving their policy preferences in the face of domestic opposition. International strength, on the other hand, refers to the high degree of resources controlled by the United States relative to other nation-states, and to the ability of state officials to translate those resources into influence over international outcomes. In the early postwar period, America's external strength more than compensated for its internal weakness, and enabled state officials to pursue effectively their primary foreign economic policy objective: the creation of a liberal international economic order, characterized by the free movement of goods and capital across borders and by stable exchange rates.