Since the late-1990s, diplomatic historians have emphasized the importance of international and transnational processes, flows, and events to the history of the United States in the world. Rethinking U.S. World Power provides an alternative to these scholarly frameworks by assembling a diverse group of historians to explore the impact of the United States and its domestic history on U.S. foreign relations and world affairs. In so doing, the collection underlines that, even in a global age, domestic politics and phenomena were crucial to the history of U.S. foreign policy and international relations more broadly.

Daniel Bessner is the Annett H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Associate Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, USA.