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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 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.

Asserts that even in an era of unprecedented nationalization in historiography, the study of American history is still deeply influenced by the legacies of nationalism and exceptionalism. Resiliency of the nation-centered historical tradition in the United States; Impact of exceptionalism on Frederick Jackson Turner; Paul Kennedy's `Rise and Fall of the Great Powers'; `The Liberal Tradition in America,' by Louis Hartz.