Introduction: thinking about America in the world over the longer run – James Dunkerley
1 The strange career of nation-building as a concept in US foreign policy – Jeremi Suri
2 Race, utopia, perpetual peace: Andrew Carnegie’s dreamworld – Duncan Bell
3 Carl Schmitt and the American century – Jean-François Drolet
4 Realist exceptionalism: philosophy, politics, and foreign policy in America’s ‘second modernity’ – Vibeke Schou Tjalve and Michael C. Williams
5 The social and political construction of the Cold War – Tracy B. Strong
6 Chaotic epic: Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order revisited – James Dunkerley
7 Paul Wolfowitz and the promise of American power, 1969–2001 – David Milne
Index

Jean-Francois Drolet and James Dunkerley have consigned the simplistic 'Realist or Idealist' dichotomy to history. In this brilliant collection, an unrivalled cast of scholars reveal the real role of complex ideologies of race and nation in the making of American power.’
Marc Stears, Professor and Director, Sydney Policy Lab, University of Sydney

'This original and distinctive book subverts many common assumptions about the origins and character of the ideas that have shaped America's role in the world, addressing such central themes as Americans’ conception of nation-building and the origins of the Cold War.'
John Thompson, Emeritus Reader in American History, University of Cambridge

This book brings together international relations scholars, political theorists, and historians to reflect on the intellectual history of American foreign policy since the late nineteenth century. It offers a nuanced and multifaceted collection of essays covering a wide range of concerns, concepts, presidential doctrines, and rationalities of government thought to have marked America’s engagement with the world during this period: nation-building, exceptionalism, isolationism, modernisation, race, utopia, technology, war, values, the ‘clash of civilisations’ and many more.

The collection is organised chronologically and looks at the work of intellectuals who have written both in support and critically about US foreign policy in various geographical and historical contexts. It considers Andrew Carnegie, Carl Schmitt, Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, Samuel Huntington, Paul Wolfowitz and many other thinkers and practitioners who have contributed in shaping the ways in which we have come to think of US foreign policy over the years.

The contributors to this volume are notable not only for their prestige in the field, but also because they come from North America as well as the UK, reflecting distinct academic traditions, political perspectives, and expressive styles. Recent events in America and Europe have highlighted the need for pluralist consideration of the intellectual sources of and influences on US foreign policy, both as it is made from within and understood from without.