First Published in 2017. Now thoroughly updated, this respected text provides a clear, concise, and affordable narrative and analytical history of American foreign policy from the revolutionary period to the present. This is Volume II and is from 1895. The historiographical essays at the end of each chapter have been revised to reflect the most recent scholarship. The History of American Foreign Policy chronicles events and policies with emphasis on the international setting and constraints within which American policy-makers had to operate; the domestic pressures on those policy-makers; and the ideologies, preferences, and personal idiosyncrasies of the leaders themselves.

Makes sense of Japan's seemingly incomprehensible decision to go to war against the United States.

This book moves beyond the focus on economic considerations that was central to the work of New Left historians, examining the many other forces--domestic politics, bureaucratic inertia, quirks of personality, and perceptions of Soviet intentions--that influenced key decision makers in Washington.

Why has the United States assumed so extensive and costly a role in world affairs over the last hundred years? The two most common answers to this question are "because it could" and "because it had to." Neither answer will do, according to this challenging re-assessment of the way that America came to assume its global role. The country's vast economic resources gave it the capacity to exercise great influence abroad, but Americans were long reluctant to meet the costs of wielding that power. Neither the country's safety from foreign attack nor its economic well-being required the achievement of ambitious foreign policy objectives.In A Sense of Power, John A. Thompson takes a long view of America's dramatic rise as a world power, from the late nineteenth century into the post–World War II era. How, and more importantly why, has America come to play such a dominant role in world affairs? There is, he argues, no simple answer. Thompson challenges conventional explanations of America's involvement in World War I and World War II, seeing neither the requirements of national security nor economic interests as determining. He shows how American leaders from Wilson to Truman developed an ever more capacious understanding of the national interest, and why by the 1940s most Americans came to support the price tag, in blood and treasure, attached to strenuous efforts to shape the world. The beliefs and emotions that led them to do so reflected distinctive aspects of U.S. culture, not least the strength of ties to Europe. Consciousness of the nation’s unique power fostered feelings of responsibility, entitlement, and aspiration among the people and leaders of the United States.This original analysis challenges some widely held beliefs about the determinants of United States foreign policy and will bring new insight to contemporary debates about whether the nation should—or must—play so active a part in world politics.

"Dealing with the military phase of Hitler's expansion, Rich tells an absorbing story of Germany's relentless drive in every direction and provides a vivid account of the relations between Hitler and his newly acquired subjects and satellites." --Hans W. Gatzke, Political Science Quarterly