The Ignored Realists - And Their Common Sense

Richard K. Betts reviews the work of Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, and John Mearsheimer. He concludes:

The most significant similarity, and a dispiriting one, is that all three authors were out of step with the attitudes that have dominated U.S. foreign policy and made it overreach after the Cold War. ... The problem is that Davos-style liberalism and militant neoconservatism have both been more influential than the three more profound and sober visions of Fukuyama, Huntington, and Mearsheimer. If good sense is to shape U.S. foreign policy, there needs to be a fourth vision -- one that integrates the compatible elements of these three in a form that penetrates the American political mainstream.