Robert L. Beisner

This outstanding collection of essays is the product of a symposium on peacemaking and peacekeeping, sponsored by the National Committee for the Bicentennial of the Treaty of Paris. The original papers included in this volume were written by leading scholars from the United States, Great Britain, and Canada to assess themes related to the prerequisites and consequences of peace. The emphasis is on peaceful outcomes and the preservation of peace, rather than the causes of war, and the writings reflect a penetrating awareness of the many facets of peacemaking and peacekeeping. Included are thought-provoking discussions on the impact of war and promise of peace on women, the American perception of peace as an opportunity for profit and as a private political issue, the avoidance of war, and the possible obsolescence of war in our own era.

Historians have long argued about the nature of the changes that occurred in American foreign policy at the turn of the century, and whether those changes represented an abrupt break from the past or the culmination of long-term trends. Beisner addresses these issues by recasting the questions involved, and synthesizes the most useful contributions of both traditional and revisionist historians. From the Old Diplomacy to the New reinterprets the entire period as one in which American foreign policy underwent a fundamental paradigm shift that affected the goals and methods of diplomacy. A commitment to systematic policy and a determination to promote American interests in a dangerous world characterized the "new diplomacy."