ABSTRACT

As is true of any volume, this book was designed to achieve a range of objectives associated with the formulation and implementation of US foreign policy in theory and practice. At its core, the book sought to examine the development and articulation of American national interests and construction and application of US foreign policies toward other actors—states as well as international organizations and non-state actors—on behalf of those interests from a range of perspectives in the academic disciplines of history and political science. The issues it addressed in conducting and presenting the results of that examination were not limited to a particular geographic area or historical time period, nor were they intended to address any one set of factors influencing American foreign policy-making, whether cultural, economic, military or political, at the expense of the others. Rather, the book purposely explored several sets of issues from historical and theoretical perspectives over the course of the history of the United States and did so with the benefit of contributions from scholars headquartered at several universities and whose careers have afforded them opportunities to view comparable approaches and events in both academic and policy application contexts.