Between two worlds : realism, idealism, and American foreign policy after the cold war / David Callahan.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [313]-379) and index.

1. Becoming Number One -- 2. Realism, Idealism, and America's Rise to Primacy -- 3. Primacy Reaffirmed: Staying Number One After the Cold War -- 4. Realism vs. Idealism in Post-Cold War Foreign Policy -- 5. Armed for Primacy -- 6. A Safer World: International Relations After the Cold War -- 7. Reconsidering American Primacy -- 8. An Idealist Foreign Policy.

With Between Two Worlds, David Callahan, author of Dangerous Capabilities: Paul Nitze and the Cold War, has written a provocative analysis of one of the most critical issues facing our nation: what course America's foreign policy should take in the post-Cold War era.

The fall of the Soviet Union and an upsurge in global violence have left American foreign policy adrift in recent years. Exhaustively researched and elegantly written, Between Two Worlds unravels a muddled debate to argue that the United States now faces a basic choice between the foreign-policy strategies of realism and idealism.

Realists, still dominant in Washington even with the Cold War's end, are preoccupied with safeguarding global order by keeping U.S. forces deployed in Europe and Asia and by preparing to fight new enemies in the Third World. They insist that America must continue the production of weapons begun during the 1980s and maintain defense budgets at near-Cold War levels.

Idealists, Callahan among them, bring a more hopeful view to reinventing foreign policy. Callahan mounts a sweeping critique of realism to show how policymakers may be exaggerating the threats confronting the United States. Updating the idealist tradition pioneered by Woodrow Wilson, Between Two Worlds argues that U.S. actions abroad can and should be guided by the values that Americans treasure at home.

Callahan's bold strategy for overhauling America's foreign policy would use some funds now spent on defense for new efforts to help fledgling democracies, strengthen international institutions, and promote sustainable development in the Third World. A controversial look at current U.S. foreign policy and a blueprint for more effective American leadership into the twenty-first century, Between Two Worlds is a valuable contribution to one of the most urgent tasks facing us.