Whatever its other effects, the Soviet-American Cold War helped launch and sustain an era of feverish intellectual activity in the linked fields of international relations theory and foreign policy analysis. One sign of the importance of more recent phenomena with all their resonant impacts may be the continuing ferment in theorizing about international relations, foreign policy and public international law years after the war’s conclusion, a ferment which the 9/11/01 terrorist attack on the United States and its aftermath have intensified. (...) Comprehending the scholarly inquiries and debates in these fields should be important to intellectuals regardless of their professional interests, not only because those inquiries and debates concern profound epistemological and ontological issues, but primarily because they have influenced and continue to influence the trajectory of United States foreign policy. (shrink)