The teaching of international politics within the United States has been buffeted about a great deal in the past decade, reflecting shifting trends in social science analysis, reflecting also some major rethinkings and “moments of truth” about America's role in the world.The end of World War II had seen a widespread acceptance of Realpolitik analysis, as exemplified in the writings of Hans Morgenthau, generally responding to the unprecedented degree of United States participation in world affairs in the resistance to Hitler's Germany. This new realistic interpretation contrasted itself with an original, more idealistic, liberal position attributed to Americans in general for the earlier and more naive times before 1939, an idealism attributed in an extreme form to Woodrow Wilson in his approach to the outcome of World War I.
