Select Bibliography

The purpose of this Select Bibliography is to provide examples of foundational literature and recent scholarship relating to International Relations and IR Theory. Spurred by the catastrophe of World War I, the Interwar Period showed a rapid growth of thought on War and Peace, International Organization, International Relations and Diplomacy. During the post WWII Cold War era, particularly with NSC-68, the US military-industrial complex supported a shift toward a so-called “Realism” and the militarization of diplomacy. The Nietzschean ethos of this zero-sum “Realism” spread into the International Relations discipline and into US Foreign Policy. This bibliography is intended to assist a return to and revival of foundational thought on International Relations. Moral values such as equity and justice and the sense of the ancient Greek concept of “dike’ have their proper place in theory and praxis.

[under construction so please check back]

International Relations and Theory

Virginia School

Quincy Wright, A Study of War, 2 vols. (1942) [bio]

[See collection of Quincy Wright articles and books online at Internet Archive]

Quincy Wright, The Study of International Relations (New York: Appleton-Crofts, 1955)

David C. Jordan, World Politics ()

David C. Jordan, Drug Politics Dirty Money and Democracies (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999)

Inis Claude, Power and International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962)

Inis Claude, Swords Into Plowshares, 3rd. (New York: Random House, 1964)

Inis Claude, States and the Global System Politics, Law and Organization (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988)

Lowell S. Gustafson, ed., Thucydides’ Theory on International Relations A Lasting Possession (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2000). Essential.

Christoph Frei, Hans J. Morgenthau An Intellectual Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2001) Trenchant critique of Morgenthau and his Nietzschean “Realism” which is alien to the American tradition.

Clifford A. Kiracofe, Dark Crusade Christian Zionism and US Foreign Policy (London: IB Tauris, 2009)

Clifford A Kiracofe Jr, “Selective Engagement” Chapter 2 in James J. Hentz, The Obligation of Empire United States Grand Strategy for a New Century (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2004) pp.33-52.

American

Frank M. Russell, Theories of International Relations (New York: D. Appleton, 1936) online

English School

Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, eds. Diplomatic Investigations (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966)

Herbert Butterfield, The Statecraft of Machiavelli (London: Bell, 1955)

Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1977)

Martin Wight, Power Politics, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 1986)

Martin Wight [bio]

Adam Watson, Diplomacy (Philadelphia: ISHI Publications, 1986) UK ambassador.

Carsten Holbraad, The Concert of Europe (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1970) Analysis of theory of Concert.

European

Goettingen School wiki

A.H.L. Heeren, A Manual of the History of the Political System of Europe and Its Colonies (London: Bohn, 1846). Concept of the “states-system”. Influences 19th century United States. A number of Americans studied at Goettingen, including George Bancroft who would translate Heeren into English. Influences the 20th century English School.

A.H.L. Heeren, Ancient Greece, trans. George Bancroft (London: Bohn, 1866). Heeren 1760-1842. Bancroft was a noted U.S. historian.

Diplomacy

Adam Watson, Diplomacy (Philadelphia: ISHI Publications, 1986)

Sir Frank Adcock and D.J. Moseley, Diplomacy in Ancient Greece (New York: St Martins, 1975)

Donald E. Queller, The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967)

Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955)

Diplomatic History - General

Rene Albrecht-Carrie, A Diplomatic History of Europe Since the Congress of Vienna (New York: Harper, 1958)

Derek McKay & H.M. Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers 1648-1815 (London: Longmans, 1983)

John B. Wolf, The Emergence of the Great Powers 1685-1715 (New York: Harper, 1951)

Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987)

Edward Vose Gulick, Europe’s Classical Balance of Power (New York: Norton, 1967). Detailed with excellent bibliography.

William L. Langer, European Alliances and Alignments 1871-1890 (New York: Knopf, 1962)

William L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism 1890-1902, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1960)

George F. Kennan, The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)

Ancient Greece

Jaqueline de Romilly, The Rise and Fall of States According to Greek Authors (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977)

Jacqueline de Romilly, The Mind of Thucydides (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012)

Jacqueline de Romilly, Alcibiade (Paris: Editions de Fallois, 1995)

Edith Foster, Thucydides, Pericles, and Periclean Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Sir Earnest Barker, Greek Political Theory (London: Metheun, 1961, reprint 1918 ed)

Renaissance

Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini Politics and History in Sixteenth Century Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965)

Roberto Ridolfi, trans. Cecil Grayson, The Life of Francesco Guicciardini, (New York: Knopf, 1967)

Vincent Luciani, Francesco Guicciardini and his European Reputation (New York: Karl Otto, 1936)

Mark Phillips, Francesco Guicciardini The Historians Craft (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977)

Donald J. Wilcox, The Development of Florentine Humanist Historiography in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969)

Myron P. Gilmore, The World of Humanism 1453-1517 (New York: Harper, 1952)

Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanist Strains (New York: Harper, 1955)

Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince, ed. Lisa Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)

International Organization

Conferences

League of Nations

United Nations

Collective Security wiki [webpage]

Inis Claude, Chapter 12 “Collective Security as an Approach to Peace” in Inis Claude, Swords into Plowshares The Problems and Progress of International Organization, 3rd ed (New York: Random House, 1964)

Development

Peaceful Change

Arbitration

Mediation

Investigation

Diplomatic History - US

George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796 [TEXT]

John Bassett Moore, American Diplomacy Its Spirit and Accomplishments (New York: Harper, 1905)

Samuel Flagg Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States (New York: Henry Holt, 1945)

Samuel Flagg Bemis, The United States as a World Power A Diplomatic History 1900-1950 (New York: Holt, 1950)

Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution (New York: Appleton, 1935)

Norman A Graebner, Cold War Diplomacy 1945-1960 (New York: Van Nostrand, 1962)

US Foreign Policy

United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States [website]

United States Department of State, Office of the Historian, A History of the Foreign Relations of the United States Series (Washington DC: USDS, 2015)

United States Department of State, Peace and War United States Foreign Policy 1931-1941. Road to World War 2 begins in 1931 with Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (New York: Knopf, 1945)

Randolph Greenfield Adams, A History of the Foreign Policy of the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1928)

John Holladay Latane, A History of American Foreign Policy (New York: Doubleday, 1927)

John Halladay Latane, From Isolations to Leadership (New York: Doubleday, 1920)

Julius W. Pratt, A History of United States Foreign Policy (Buffalo: University of Buffalo, 1955)

Eichard W. Van Alstyne, American Diplomacy in Action (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1944)

US as World Power:

Archibald Cary Coolidge, The United States as a World Power (New York: Macmillan, 1918)

Robert E. Hannigan, The New World Power American Foreign Policy 1898-1917 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002)

Wilsonism and WWI:

Jennings C. Wise, Woodrow Wilson Disciple of Revolution (New York: Paisley Press, 1938) online

Frederick S. Calhoun, Uses of Force and Wilsonian Foreign Policy (Kent OH: Kent State University Press, 1993)

James Brown Scott, A Survey of the International Relations Between the United States and Germany 1914-1917 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1917)

Charles Callan Tansill, America Goes to War (Boston: Little Brown, 1938)

Interwar Period:

Charles A. Beard, Open Door at Home A Trial Philosophy of National Interest (New York: Macmillan, 1935)

Charles A. Beard, American Foreign Policy in the Making 1932-1940 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946)

Charles Callan Tansill, Back Door to War The Roosevelt Foreign Policy 1933-1941 (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952)

George Morgenstern, Pearl Harbor The Story of the Secret War (New York: Devin Adair, 1947)

Neoconservatives:

Stefan Halper & Jonathan Clarke, America Alone The Neoconservatives and Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)

Jacob Heilbrunn, They Knew They Were Right The Rise of the Neocons (New York: Doubleday, 2008). Revealing by a former Neocon.

John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2007)

George W. Ball and Douglas B. Ball, The Passionate Attachment America’s Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present (New York: Norton, 1992)

Militarism

Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism (New York, 1937)

Alfred Vagts, Defense and Diplomacy The Soldier and the Conduct of Foreign Relations (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1956)

Samuel P. Huntington, The Solder and the State The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (New York: Vintage, 1964, reprint of 1957 ed)

Imperialism:

Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006)

Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperative (New York: Basic Books, 1997) Important for its influence on US foreign policy.

G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathon The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011) Perspective of Liberal Imperialism.

David R. Calleo, Follies of Power America’s Unipolar Fantasy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)

Chalmers Johnson, Blowback The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 2000)

Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic (New York: Henry Holt, 2004)

Louis Fisher, Presidential War Power (Lawrence KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004). Critique of Executive encroachment on war making power reserved to Congress.

Arthur M. Schlseinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973)

Kenneth P. Vogel, Big Money (New York: Public Affairs, 2014). American plutocracy.

Textbooks:

Howard Jones, Crucible of Power A History of American Foreign Relations to 1913, (Wilmington: SR Books, 2002)

Howard Jones, Crucible of Power A History of Americn Foreign Relations from 1897 (Wilmington: SR books, 2001)

US and China

Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China (New York: Grove Press, 1961). First published 1938. Essential background reading.

Carolle J. Carter, Mission to Yenan American Liaison with Chinese Communists 1944-1947 (Lexington KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1997)

Dorothy Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1933-1938 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1964)

A. Whitney Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (New Haven : Yale, 1962)

John Patton Davies, China Hand An Autobiography (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012)

John Patton Davies, Dragon By the Tail (New York: Norton, 1972)

Stanley D. Backrack, The Committee of One Million “China Lobby” Politics 1953-1971 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971). Cold War anti-communist lobby.

Kenneth Scott Latourette, The History of Early Relations Between the United States and China 1784-1844 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917)

Te-kong Tong, United States Diplomacy in China 1844-60 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964)

Tien-yi Li, Woodrow Wilson’s China Policy 1913-1917 (New York: Twayne, 1952)

US and Russia

US and India

US and Japan

US and Palestine

Clifford A. Kiracofe, Dark Crusade Christian Zionism and US Foreign Policy (London: IB Tauris, 2009)

Jimmy Carter, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid (New York: Simon and Shuster, 2006)

Kathleen Christison, Perceptions of Palestine Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999)

Henry Cattan, Jerusalem (New York: St Martins, 1981)

Evan M. Wilson, Jerusalem Key to Peace (Washington DC: Middle East Institute, 1970)

HRH Crown Prince Hassan bin Talal, A Study on Jerusalem (London: Longmans, 1079)

US and Syria

Stephans Gowans, Washington’s Long War on Syria (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2017)

Philip K. Hitti, History of Syria (New York: Macmillan, 1950)

US and Iraq

Majid Khadduri and Edmund Gharib, War in the Gulf 1990-1991 The Iraq-Kuwait Conflict and its Implications (New York: Oxford, 1997)

Bob Woodward, State of Denial Bush at War Part III (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006)

James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Penguin, 2004)

Clifford A. Kiracofe, Dark Crusade Christian Zionism and US Foreign Policy (London: IB Tauris, 2009)

George Packer, The Assassin’s Gate America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2005)

Scott Ritter, Iraq Confidential (New York: Nation Books, 2005)

Stephen C. Pelletiere, Israel in the Second Gulf War the Influence of Likud (Santa Barbara: ADCCLIO, 2010)

Christine Moss Helms, Iraq Eastern Flank of the Arab World (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1984)

James A Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report The Way Forward (New York: Vintage, 2006)

US and Iran

Mehdi Heravi, Iranian-American Diplomacy (New York: Theo Gaus, 1970)

Stephen Kinzer, All The Shah’s Men (Hoboken NJ: Wiley, 2003)

Trita Parsi, Treacherous Alliance The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the USA (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007)

William Shawcross, The Shah’s Last Ride (London: Chatto & Windus, 1989)

Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival (New York: Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival (New York: Norton, 2006)

Rouhollah Ramazani, The Persian Gulf Iran’s Role (Charlottesville VA: University Press of Virginia, 1972)

John D Stempel, Inside the Iranian Revolution (Bloomington: University of Indiana, 1981)

W. Morgan Shuster, The Strangling of Persia (Washington DC: Mage, 1987)

A, H. Hamzavi, Persia and the Powers (London: Hutchinson, n.d.)

Nasrollah Saifpour Fatemi, Diplomatic History of Persia 1917-1923 (New York: Russel F Moore Co, 1952)

US and Afghanistan

John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (London: Pluto Press, 1999)

Peter Marsden, The Taliban (London: Oxford/Zed, 1998)

Ahmed Rashid, Taliban (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000)

Watson Institute Brown University, “US Costs to date for the War in Afghanistan in $ Billions FY2001-FY2022” website

Global Media and Western Propaganda

Textbooks - International Communication

Daya Kishan Thussu, International Communication Continuity and Change (London: Bloomsbury, 2019)

Robert S. Fortner, International Communication History, Conflict, and Control of the Global Metropolis (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1993). See Particuolarly Chapters 5, 6 on Propaganda

Theory of Propaganda

Propaganda wiki [webpage]

Perception Management wiki [webpage]

Cognitive Warfare [webpage]
There is a growing literature on Cognitive Warfare. For example,

B. Clavel etal, “Cognitive Warfare: The Future of Cognitive Dominance”, NATO meeting 21 June 2021

Edward Bernays [bio]

Edward Bernays, Propaganda wiki [webpage]

Practice of Propaganda

Committee on Public Information (Creel Committee) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Public_Information

Operation MOCKINGBIRD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird