Excerpt from Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics: An American Approach to Foreign Policy Foreign policy. If this dialogue is maintained free of the un natural restraints or untimely restrictions that self-acknowl edged sources of authority or conformity seek to impose on every generation, the future of the Republic will be brighter and more hopeful. Each successive generation of observers and interpreters carries the heavy burden of appraising and, if necessary, correcting or enlarging the reach and grasp of those who have gone before. I see the contribution of the political realists in this light. I am confident that each of them would point to the unfinished tasks of broadening and deep ening the realist tradition. In the end, I conceive my study as a primer or introduction to the main currents of a single challenging approach to the perplexing issues of contemporary foreign policy. I could wish that younger scholars in par ticular might draw from the broad outlines and unsolved problems of this approach an agenda for vigorous reflection and research. My own hope and intent for the future would be to find a place among those who, in William James's well chosen phrase stubbornly attempt to think clearly, wherever the evidence may lead them. In this respect, political realism is an invitation to seek the truth and not a termination of free inquiry. It provides a framework and not a doctrine, a set of hypotheses rather than a list of answers. The pages that follow have been written in this spirit and I would profoundly hope might be read this way, however emphatic or outspoken I have been at certain points in explanation or analysis. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.