Realism and Idealism in American foreign policy: From Clinton to Obama

This book is an attempt to analyze the American foreign policy by applying the realist and idealist theories. These two theories will be used as a tool to understand some key events in the US foreign policy. The study will first discuss the realist approach with the idealist school respectively, it covers various branches of the two theories. The research then will apply the two theories to the American foreign policy. In discussing these theories with regard to the United States Foreign Policy, we will take several case studies from the modern United States foreign policy. These will be the recent war of Iraq, the Kosovo's intervention, the United States relations with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. Lastly we will discuss the future of the United States foreign policy in accordance of the two theories. The aim of the study is to look at the following question; Are international relations theories reliable in helping us explain the foreign policy of the United States? The book mainly concludes that both realism and idealism are useful tools and will remain useful to understand the US foreign policy.