Talk:U.S. foreign policy

Title

This seems like an awfully informal title for an encyl. -- shouldn't it be called United States foreign policy? Hayford Peirce 23:32, 24 May 2008 (CDT)

Is it informal?? it is accepted by the style guides (Chicago Manual of Style 15th ed p 568) and used by leading publishers in their book titles, such as Oxford University Press ( Encyclopedia of U.S. Foreign Relations (1997)) See For 300 examples of book titles by university presses on "U.S. Foreign Policy" By contrast there are only 25 books that use "United States Foreign Policy" in the title, and they all seem to be much older (none appeared in recent years).Richard Jensen 23:46, 24 May 2008 (CDT)

Geez, I am astonished! On the other hand, I left the friendly groves of Academe back in 1964. But I wonder what Crane Brinton or Sam Morison would think about this turn of events: the latter certainly didn't call his opus "The Oxford History of the U.S." Oh, well, back to the drawing board.... Hayford Peirce 23:58, 24 May 2008 (CDT)

OK you get my wife' Samuel Eliot Morison story, circa 1976. She was doing avant garde history of the Shakers, using statistics, demography and feminism. She sent her article to New England Quarterly and did not hear anything. She waited. waited. Finally she called and they were embarrassed. They had sent the article for blind review (with her name removed) to Morison, who had been on their editorial board for 50 years. It was on his desk when he died and his people assumed HE wrote it! (One can imagine the obituaries: "Although Morison was known for his crusty, old fashioned views, toward the end of his life he embraced quantification, the new social history and radical feminism, to the astonishment of his colleagues." Well the problem got fixed and the essay was published see copy online and still gets cited. A few years ago my daughter took a history course at Mt Holyoke and that article was the first one assigned. Richard Jensen 00:09, 25 May 2008 (CDT)

A nice story! He was a classmate of my uncle's and the godfather to his twins. I remember using "Morison and Commager" -- I hadn't realized until looking him up in WP that it was trashed for a number of years as being v. racist.... But some of that may be WP PC-stuff.... Hayford Peirce 01:08, 25 May 2008 (CDT)

In any case, isn't CZ policy to NOT use caps in the articles' titles, ie, U.S. foreign policy? Hayford Peirce 01:10, 25 May 2008 (CDT)

you're right on caps! I'll change it. Richard Jensen 01:17, 25 May 2008 (CDT)

I hardly know where to start...

At present, this article is not about what the average reader might think would be its topic: the foreign policy practiced by the United States. If one reverses the chronological order of the subheadings, one winds up with nothing on recent policy.

Would it make more sense to move some of these sections into subarticles about "history of U.S. foreign policy in (period)" and start afresh? A fresh start would have, as major sections, regional (e.g., East Asia, Middle East) and functional (arms control, human rights, etc.) — a preliminary outline might correspond to the Assistant Secretary level offices of the U.S. State Department. Howard C. Berkowitz 01:48, 6 August 2009 (UTC)