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The article responds to a preceding essay by Thomas W. Zeiler on the state of U.S. diplomatic history as a field, and its re-entry into the mainstream of historical study through an increased focus on international history, or the study of the United States in the global context. The author takes issue with Zeiler's wish to retain the state and state power as topics of central relevance for the study of diplomatic history; she argues that power and the state have never been a focus only of diplomatic history, and that furthermore, foreign relations scholarship has explored important areas not shaped by state power.

The article responds to a preceding essay by Thomas W. Zeiler on the state of U.S. diplomatic history as a field, and its re-entry into the mainstream of historical study through an increased focus on international history, or the study of the United States in the global context. The author takes issue with Zeiler's focus on the centrality of the state and state power, and with the idea that diplomatic historians have led their own field back to the mainstream. She argues that in many ways they were pushed by other subdisciplines, such as ethnic, postcolonial, borderlands, transnational, and world history.

The article responds to a preceding essay by Thomas W. Zeiler on the state of U.S. diplomatic history as a field, and its re-entry into the mainstream of historical study through an increased focus on international history, or the study of the United States in the global context. The author finds Zeiler overly optimistic about these developments and discusses three potential risks that they raise: the return of a belief in American exceptionalism among U.S. diplomatic historians; methodological difficulties raised by trends in transnational research; and related difficulties in producing genuine historical syntheses.

The article responds to the preceding essay by Thomas W. Zeiler on the state of U.S. diplomatic history as a field, and its re-entry into the mainstream of historical study through an increased focus on international history, or the study of the United States in the global context. The author argues for not allowing the field to go out of balance in the opposite direction, through too much focus on international politics at the expense of U.S. domestic affairs. He argues for the importance of U.S. policy and politics, using the history of the Vietnam War as an example.