International relations and the first great debate / edited by Brian C. Schmidt.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 152-163) and index.

Introduction / Brian Schmidt -- The myth of the first great debate / Peter Wilson -- Rereading early twentieth-century IR theory / Andreas Osiander -- Did the realist-idealist great debate really happen? / Luke Ashworth -- C.A.W. Manning and the first great debate / David Long -- The American national interest great debate / Brian Schmidt -- Myth, half-truth, reality or strategy? / Cameron Thies -- Where are we now in the debate about the first great debate? / Peter Wilson.

This book provides an authoritative account of the controversy about the first great debate in the field of International Relations. Of all the self-images of International Relations, none is as pervasive and enduring as the notion that a great debate pitting idealists against realists took place in the 1940s.