ABSTRACT
Personal preferences regarding these alternative views help shape our day-to-day opinions about complex issues arising in the complex world of public affairs. Traditionally, realism has represented the prevailing outlook, both abroad and in the United States. Idealism has proven resilient, however, and has gained the ascendancy for short periods. The devastation of major wars often encourages pacifistic responses congenial to idealism. In the United States, twentieth-century idealism first flourished under President Woodrow Wilson and into the 1920s following World War I. The most authoritative modern proponent of realism, Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, contends in his massive tome, Diplomacy , that America needs less idealism and more realpolitik. Equally optimistic was Wilson’s belief in an evolving international body of law, whereby states would come to accept universal rules of the game as desirable.
