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This edited volume covers the development of the thought of the political realist Hans J. Morgenthau from the time of his arrival in America from Nazi-dominated Europe through to his emphatic denunciation of American policy in the Vietnam War. Critical to the development of thinking about American foreign policy in the post-war period, he laid out the idea of a national interest defined in terms of power, the precarious uncertainty of the international balance of power, the weakness of international morality, the decentralized character of international law, the deceptiveness of ideologies, and the requirements of a peace-preserving diplomacy. This volume is required reading for students of American foreign policy, and for anyone who wishes to understand the single most important source of the ideas underpinning American foreign policy since the end of the Second World War.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Morgenthau in Europe: Searching for the Political, Felix Rösch.- Chapter 2: Scientific Man and the New Science of Politics, Hartmut Behr and Hans-Jörg Sigwart.- Chapter 3: Politics Among Nations: A Book for America, Christoph Frei.- Chapter 4: The National Interest and the 'Great Debate', Cornelia Navari.- Chapter 5: The Purpose of American Politics, Richard Ned Lebow.- Chapter 6: Vietnam Writings and the National Security State, Douglas B. Klusmeyer.- Chapter 7: Morgenthau in America: The Legacy, Greg Russell.
About the author
Cornelia Navari, formerly of the University of Birmingham, is Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the University of Buckingham, UK. She has written Internationalism and the State in the 20th Century and Public Intellectuals and International Affairs and edited Theorising International Society, Ethical Reasoning in International Affairs and with Daniel Green, Guide to the English School of International Studies.
Summary
This edited volume covers the development of the thought of the political realist Hans J. Morgenthau from the time of his arrival in America from Nazi-dominated Europe through to his emphatic denunciation of American policy in the Vietnam War. Critical to the development of thinking about American foreign policy in the post-war period, he laid out the idea of a national interest defined in terms of power, the precarious uncertainty of the international balance of power, the weakness of international morality, the decentralized character of international law, the deceptiveness of ideologies, and the requirements of a peace-preserving diplomacy. This volume is required reading for students of American foreign policy, and for anyone who wishes to understand the single most important source of the ideas underpinning American foreign policy since the end of the Second World War.
