TY - CHAP
T1 - Disastrous Grand Strategy: U.S. Humanitarian Assistance and Global Natural Catastrophe
AU - Irwin, Julia
N1 - This chapter traces the evolution of the US government's international disaster assistance policy, beginning at the dawn of the nineteenth century and culminating with the landmark enactment of Public Law (P.L.) 94-161, the International Development and Food Assistance Act of 1975.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - This chapter traces the evolution of the US government’s international disaster assistance policy, beginning at the dawn of the nineteenth century and culminating with the landmark enactment of Public Law (P.L.) 94–161, the International Development and Food Assistance Act of 1975. Avowing the United States’ readiness to provide humanitarian relief in the wake of foreign catastrophes, it empowered the president (or his appointed delegates) to furnish relief and short-term rehabilitation assistance to any country affected by “natural or manmade disasters.” With this act, US international disaster assistance was officially codified as an instrument of US foreign policy. The chapter then analyzes the state's gradually expanding role in the humanitarian sphere in light of the shifting architecture of nineteenth- and twentieth-century US grand strategy. If a grand strategy framework can help make sense of US international disaster assistance, studying the history of catastrophes and disaster relief—and the history of humanitarian aid, more broadly—also stands to say something new about US grand strategy itself.
AB - This chapter traces the evolution of the US government’s international disaster assistance policy, beginning at the dawn of the nineteenth century and culminating with the landmark enactment of Public Law (P.L.) 94–161, the International Development and Food Assistance Act of 1975. Avowing the United States’ readiness to provide humanitarian relief in the wake of foreign catastrophes, it empowered the president (or his appointed delegates) to furnish relief and short-term rehabilitation assistance to any country affected by “natural or manmade disasters.” With this act, US international disaster assistance was officially codified as an instrument of US foreign policy. The chapter then analyzes the state's gradually expanding role in the humanitarian sphere in light of the shifting architecture of nineteenth- and twentieth-century US grand strategy. If a grand strategy framework can help make sense of US international disaster assistance, studying the history of catastrophes and disaster relief—and the history of humanitarian aid, more broadly—also stands to say something new about US grand strategy itself.
UR - https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190695668.001.0001/oso-9780190695668-chapter-19
U2 - 10.1093/oso/9780190695668.003.0019
DO - 10.1093/oso/9780190695668.003.0019
M3 - Chapter
BT - Rethinking American Grand Strategy
ER -