Tracing American Diplomacy: A Survey of Diplomatic Theory from Before and After the Cold War

This thesis examines different writings on diplomatic theory to see how philosophical and pragmatic attitudes of diplomacy changed from before and after the Cold War. The scope of this research includes contributions from the following authors: Hans J. Morgenthau, Hedley Bull, Alexander Wendt, Henry Kissinger, Cecil Crabb, Joseph Nye, Etan Gilboa, Hussein Agha, and Paul Sharp. Morgenthau and Bull represent the American attitudes on diplomacy coming out of the second World War with close ties to traditional international relations theories. Wendt, Kissinger, and Crabb’s work all come from the height of tensions in the Cold War, and the rest of the authors surveyed represent the post-Cold War era of American diplomacy. This thesis finds a clear trend in how diplomatic theory changed pragmatically and philosophically from before and after the cold war, with peaks in philosophy before and after and a peak in pragmatism during the Cold War.