American Foreign Relations: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #609

by Andrew Preston

For better or worse--be it militarily, politically, economically, technologically, or culturally--Americans have had a profound role in shaping the wider world beyond them. The United States has been a savior to some, a curse to others, but either way such views are often based on a caricature of American actions and intentions. American Foreign Relations, then, is a subject of immense global importance that provokes strong emotions and much debate, but often based on deep misunderstanding.

This Very Short Introduction analyzes the key episodes, themes, and individuals in the history of American foreign relations. While discussing diplomacy and the periods of war that have shaped national and international history, it also addresses such topics as industrialization, globalization, imperialism, and immigration. Covering the Revolution through the War on Terror, it examines the connections between domestic politics and foreign affairs, as well as the importance of ideals and values. Sharply written and highly readable, American Foreign Relations offers a clear-eyed narrative of America's role in the world and how it has evolved over time.

ABOUT THE The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, International Relations, American, The United States Of America

168 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2019

Reviews

[Dovide · Rating 2 out of 5]

Andrew Preston’s “American Foreign Relations” is a profoundly disappointing work. What begins with promise quickly devolves into an abysmal analysis riddled with errors and glaring omissions, particularly in its modern historical sections.

Preston begins fairly strong, outlining the historical and economic forces that shaped early American foreign policy. His discussion of the Confederation as an act of foreign policy—a proxy war between France and Britain—was compelling, as was his argument that American settlers were pushed to revolt in large part due to British policy limiting westward expansion to preserve relations with Native American groups. His analysis of the need to federalize and increase central powers to gain legitimacy on the world stage and defend itself from European empires and threats like the Barbary pirates was valuable.

Particularly promising was his proposed framework of “seven lenses” to view this history: moral values; a belief in expansion and progress; racial and religious norms; the centrality of war; the influence of geography; the myth of “isolationism”; and domestic politics. In these early sections, the economics of expansion, unilateralism, and "free trade" all figure in his analysis. In retrospect, it is suspect that economics does not figure as one of his central lenses.

This vital economic thread does not persist. By the time he reaches the Cold War—the section which should have required the most analysis of politico-economic factors—this analysis vanishes. He instead contents himself with relaying a bland, traditional narrative of major events. Preston views the conflict in purely ideological and security terms, completely omitting its economic nature. He neglects how Third World anti-colonial resistance movements seeking national and economic sovereignty were crushed to preserve the interests of global capital, instead lamely retelling stories about Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam as earnest but misguided anti-communist interventions.

This omission is compounded by the glaring absence of any substantive discussion of the CIA and the national security state, the strong arms of American capital which used the Cold War as a cover for interventions to ensure the preservation of monopolies over emerging economies. This alone renders his recounting borderline useless.

The analysis is further undermined by litany of factual errors and dubious sources. I found literally dozens of misrepresentations in his post-WW2 portions. A few flagrant examples include:

• "Kennedy launched a sustained program of economic warfare against Cuba codenamed Operation Mongoose." This is blatantly false. As documented, Operation Mongoose was "an extensive campaign of terrorist attacks against civilians, and covert operations, carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency" ("Operation Mongoose"). This is literally the first sentence on the wikipedia page. You’d think a Cambridge historian could spare the time for a quick google search! To portray the devastation of Operation Mongoose as uniquely economic betrays a lack of research or willful misrepresentation.

• On the Six-Day War, Preston writes of Israel surviving "against enormous odds..." This is a fundamental misunderstanding. It was an aggressive war of expansion launched by Israel that even the Johnson administration knew was an assured victory. President Johnson himself, "armed with [CIA] analysis... told the Israeli foreign minister, ‘you will whip hell out of them’” (Fainaru).

• His analytical choices are baffling. He repeatedly uses Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington’s analysis as if they were respected, objective political scientists. Huntington’s racist and jingoistic "clash of civilizations" argument "first seeks to attribute the causes of violence ahistorically to cultural identities, and second, argues—with all the empirical pretenses of social science—for the normative superiority of the 'west'" (Khan). Preston applies this flawed thesis, for instance, by blaming Islamic fundamentalism on culture and nationalism while completely ignoring its Saudi-American roots, a relationship of political convenience between empire and reaction of great importance for an accurate understanding of the volatile politics of the Middle East (Kundnani).

• This uncritical tone also includes a laughable assessment of Ronald Reagan:
"Ronald Reagan... proved, in the end, to be one of the twentieth century’s greatest peacemakers." This ignores Reagan's rampant belligerence. His administration was responsible for the infamous Iran-Contra affair, funding death squads in Latin America, the invasion of Grenada, the bombing of Libya, and being a stalwart supporter of apartheid South Africa. Furthermore, he enabled the CIA to smuggle cocaine to support rebels, funded the Mujahideen (who became Al-Qaeda), and sold chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein ("Ronald Reagan: War Criminal"). To label such a figure a primary "peacemaker" is an astonishing failure of historical judgment.

I had to stop noting examples as they became too numerous, especially his failures in analyzing American unilateralism and the origins of terrorism. In the end, while the book's early sections on the republic are interesting, its analysis of the 20th and 21st centuries collapse under the weight of factual errors, ideological bias, and a refusal to engage with the economic and clandestine realities of American power.

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List of Citations

1. Fainaru, Steve. "Intelligence, Strategy, and the Israeli-Iranian War." War on the Rocks, 2 June 2025, warontherocks.com/2025/06/intelligenc....
2. Khan, Arsalan. "The Problem with Samuel Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations'." Contending Modernities, University of Notre Dame, contendingmodernities.nd.edu/theorizi....
3. Kundnani, Arun. "MCJihad: Empire and Islam Between the US and Saudi Arabia." Verso Books, www.versobooks.com/en-ca/blogs/news/3....
4. "Operation Mongoose." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mongoose.
5. "Ronald Reagan: War Criminal." The Mustang Newspaper, mustangnews.net/ronald-reagan-war-cri....

[Andrew Kakaley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got this book as a Christmas gift from a friend. I read it in a single sitting. As a person educated in a technical field but working in a job that requires understanding of history and geopolitics, this was an outstanding introduction to American foreign policy throughout the years and how it impacts the world that we have to live in today. Definitely not a definitive answer to all questions on the subject, but it does not claim to be. It did its job of piquing my interest to continue studying the subject and provides a quick reference for the relatively simple question regarding the topic.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for work because I had to whip up a unit of learning on the development of American Foreign Policy as a historical trend for a one off course for a student. This series never lets me down when I need to become a (high school level) expert overnight. This was no exception.

[Mazen · Rating 2 out of 5]

مُقدمة سطحية جدًا و مُخلِة تصلح لطلبة في الإعدادية.

[erin hodgson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not entirely sure what I expected from this book, but Preston might as well have titled it “A Basic History of America: Beginning in 1776.” He starts out with a clear direction of seven themes characterizing American foreign relations, and slowly drifts off that path to relaying the events of the last century with the onset of WWI. Maybe that’s just due to the nature of this topic— American foreign policy priorities were being pulled in a lot of different directions during the 20th century, obviously. Maybe I was expecting more policy rather than just a flat out historical recounting ?? Either way, this book is as it says, a very short introduction— very cut and dry and a lack of revelational content— then again, Preston is a historian, not a political scientist so I understand his lack of foreign policy analysis of each administration.

[حسين كاظم · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب جميل مختصر عن تاريخ العلاقات الخارجية للولايات المتحدة الأميركية، ولكنه اختصار مخل. وقد أشار المترجم نفسه، في مقدمته للكتاب، إلى مواطن ضعفه (ص٢١ وما بعدها). مع ذلك، فإن الكتاب ممتع ويستحق القراءة.

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

A solid entry in the VSI series, giving an excellent overview of the major themes and events of the history of American foreign relations.

[Alexis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Refreshing and light afternoon read.

[Carolyn Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comprehensive short history of the relationship between the United States and the wider world from the American Revolution to the mid-20th century. The book explores the complex relationship between the United States, Great Britain and France in the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution and it was interesting to read the American perspective on the War of 1812 (which is very different from the Canadian perspective). The book excelled at analyzing and critiquing Woodrow Wilson's philosophy in the aftermath of the First World War and the complexities of American attitudes toward the wider world between the First and Second World Wars. The very short introduction becomes all too short when discussing world events after the Vietnam War and the sections about the Middle East could have been much longer. The book ends before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[Tommy Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book would be better titled: American History with a Focus on Global Events. The book admirably describes the historical events and some of the larger forces that shaped American history and America's historical relationship with the world. Except in the chapters focusing on the post-Cold War era, the book is light on intellectual history, political theory, and decision making analysis that would make this a more compelling work of foreign relations.

[Djamel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very short yet a very good introduction to an important subject that matters to everyone whether American or not. Through a historical examination the author extractes the DNA of US Foreign Policy and thus offer some keys for a better understanding of the behavior of the most powerful country on earth not as righteous as it bragged about.

[Poland · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 Stars. Quite serviceable.

[Kevin Tower · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Fahim Iqbal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Preston’s summary of the history of American Foreign Relations is well written and I think is an easy for people who want to understand why America is in the position as a Superpower. One of the strong points of the book is connecting America’s history of independence and its beginning years as a state to how it affects how American Foreign Policy is conducted in the last few decades.

[Mauberley]

I discovered this on the 'New Arrivals' at my local library and because I know first-hand how good this series can be (the volume on the Reformation, for example), I picked it up and devoured it that evening. For those who don't live in America (and perhaps even for those who do), this is a wonderfully helpful book in understanding, among other situations, how America wound up so involved in central America and Asia. Preston is very good as well in explaining how 'national security' became critical in America's understanding of how it ought to act in the world. Moving into the 21st century, Preston shows how Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama each represent partial, yet important, strains in American thinking of foreign relations. Preston's praise for the willingness of the Reagan administration 'to take Gorbachev at face value and to negotiate with him as a partner for peace rather than as an enemy...' seems entirely apt and fitting regardless of how one might feel about that president's compulsive reduction of the place of government in dealing with domestic affairs.