Contrary to accepted interpretations, the early years of the United States show a close investigation and creative use of a whole range of problems in international thought. The framers of the federal union in 1787 acutely experienced the problem of devising a system of cooperation among refractory states and sections, a problem that did not go away with the formation of the Constitution. The new system was projected as the antitype of the old European system and was intended to prevent the "Europeanization" of American politics, with their standing armies and perpetual wars. This context gave their "domestic" discourse a decidedly internationalist tenor, with doctrines of the balance of power, nonintervention, the equality of states, and defense against aggression featuring continually in their debates. In the conduct of diplomacy, the most important influence on American thought was the publicists who elaborated the law of nature and nations, especially Emer de Vattel. In their approach to European politics, American leaders sought a middle path between realpolitik and Revolution, objecting to the interventionist doctrines of the French Revolution and the confederacy of kings. Their thought is best situated in what Martin Wight called "the constitutional tradition in diplomacy."

The Internationalists, the much-praised study of Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, fails badly in its estimate of the Kellogg-Briand Pact (the Peace Pact of 1928) and its larger characterization of the “Old World Order” and the “New World Order.” The authors unfairly excoriate Grotius as having “made the world safe for war,” and they mischaracterize the law of neutrality and the status of jus in bello in traditional international law. They misread the significance of the Peace Pact and its relationship to the League of Nations. They also offer a distorted view of the New World Order, mistaking the lineaments of the 70 years that followed World War II. The publicists of the law of nations, whose work made a deep imprint on America’s founders, are condemned by the authors as bearers of iniquitous principles, but they still have much to teach us.

This essay offers a constitutional perspective on the American encounter with the problem of international order. Its point of departure is the American Founding, a subject often invisible in both the history of international thought and contemporary International Relations theory. Although usually considered as an incident within the domestic politics of the United States, the Founding displays many key ideas that have subsequently played a vital role in both international political thought and IR theory. The purpose of this essay is to explore these ideas and to take account of their passage through time, up to and including the present day. Those ideas shine a light not only on how we organize our scholarly enterprises but also on the contemporary direction of US foreign policy and the larger question of world order.

American foreign policy was built on the ruins of a world order that collapsed into two titanic world wars. The decisive moment of transition occurred in the 1940s, when the U.S. entered the war against Japan and Germany and then, in the war’s aftermath, girded for battle against the Soviet Union and communism. The conventional rendering of this epochal change in policy, so different in its essentials from what preceded it, emphasizes that American security requirements made the change mandatory; critical appraisals, spearheaded by the Open Door interpretation of William Appleman Williams and his followers, saw it arising from a perceived dependence of the American economy and its capitalist system on open access to the world’s markets and investment opportunities. According to John A. Thompson, however, neither of these interpretations pass muster. In A Sense of Power: The Roots of America’s Global Role, Thompson focuses instead on the growing power of the U.S. and the sense of responsibility for world affairs that it inculcated.

The bequest for the Church Peace Union—the predecessor of today's Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (and the publisher of this journal)—was given by Andrew Carnegie in February 1914. The Church Peace Union subsequently sponsored the first worldwide gathering of religious leaders, which was held in Constance, Germany, on August 2, 1914. Convened under the shadow of an impending war, not all delegates made it to the gathering. Six months previously, Carnegie had stipulated that the Church Peace Union devote its funds to the deserving poor “after the arbitration of international disputes is established and war abolished, as it certainly will be some day.” This could happen, he noted, “sooner than expected, probably by the Teutonic nations, Germany, Britain, and the United States first deciding to act in unison, the others joining later.” The outbreak of war was a catastrophic blow to such hopes, as the very nations expected to be at the core of this civilized project descended into an orgy of destruction the likes of which the world had never seen.

The US has been uniquely careless in its approach to energy policy. Three books on the Deepwater Horizon disaster illustrate the Devil's bargains being made to slake the world's thirst for energy.

Most overviews of American history depict an isolationist country finally dragged kicking and screaming onto the world stage by the attack on Pearl Harbor. David Hendrickson shows that Americans instead conducted often-raucous debates over international relations in the long epoch customarily seen as isolationist - debates that form the ideological origins of today's foreign policy arguments. "Union, Nation, or Empire" is a sequel to Hendrickson's acclaimed "Peace Pact", in which he identified a 'unionist paradigm' that defined America's political understanding in 1787. His new book examines how that paradigm was transformed under the impact of the great wars that followed. Skillfully drawn portraits of American statesmen, from Hamilton and Jefferson to Wilson and the two Roosevelts, Hendrickson reveals 'union, nation, and empire' as fundamental categories of political discourse that have shaped our engagement with the world since 1776. Hendrickson argues that the ongoing debate over union, nation, and empire in American history encompasses and illuminates the great questions of international relations - such as whether democracies are as prone to war as monarchies, whether trade promotes peace, or whether empire is compatible with free institutions. Setting these debates in the context of historical events, from the birth of our federal government to America's entry into World War II, he shows the significance of the federal union in our history and demonstrates that internationalism has deep roots in America's past. His assessment of the unionist tradition, in counterpoint to rival ideologies of nationalism and imperialism, includes new insights into the causes of the Civil War and shows how after that conflict the building blocks of the original paradigm were reconstructed to shape the internationalist persuasion in the twentieth century. Deftly combining intellectual, constitutional, and diplomatic history, this gracefully written work revives the compelling rhetoric of yesterday's statesmen to offer readers a lucid narrative of American international thought. It challenges accepted interpretations of our role in the world as it restores the federal union to its proper place in the understanding of American statecraft.