Even while responding to recent global and national events that seem unprecedented, the United States continues to confront the dilemmas running throughout its diplomatic history-national security versus individual liberties, unilateralism versus multilateralism, competing domestic constituencies, and conflicting visions of America’s role in the world. Newly declassified documents available from around the world provide us the opportunity to reassess conventional wisdom. In this intensive seminar, we work through primary sources across two centuries, examining the thinking, constraints, and goals of not only the formulators of foreign policy, but of those outside of official power.