ABSTRACT
The three approaches nationalist, realist, and internationalist became the United State's standard foreign policy traditions. Under the influence of nationalism, the United States hunkers down to protect its borders and hemisphere, as it did before World Wars I and II, after Vietnam, and as it is doing again today after Iraq and Afghanistan. Conservative internationalism combines critical parts of the other traditions, and fills a large gap in the traditional debate. Liberals, by contrast, favor activist central government and are more optimistic about human society. Arming diplomacy involves the use of a little force early during negotiations to avoid the use of more force later, after negotiations fail. NATO deployed Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) missiles in 1983 to have something to trade off against Soviet SS-20s. The real knock against George W. Bush is not that he used force too much but that he did not follow it up with diplomacy, as his father did after first Persian Gulf War.
