National Role Conceptions and United States Foreign Policy: A Nigerian Perspective

This paper examines the theory and practice of American foreign policy and how Nigeria, from the lens of the author perceives it. The paper establishes that Nigeria’s perception of the US and its role conceptions in the world is a combination of awe, admiration and envy: there are similarities in the national character of the two nations; and the “African giant” aspires to become a global power in the future and considers the American standards as its benchmark for that. The experience and impressions of the author before, during and after a recent Fulbright Fellowship at the Walker Institute/Department of Political Science of the University of South Carolina are freely used to evaluate the real import of American actions in the global system. The paper submits that US behavior in the world is, because of certain carelessness on the part of the nation, understood to be altruistic, overbearing, and yet discriminatory. It thus recommends, among other things, that the American nation requires much soft landing after Iraq and image damage control for the country to regain the confidence of the world. The method of analysis is descriptive and analytical, and the data are largely drawn from participation-observation and some secondary literatur