With Or Against The World?

The events of 9/11, followed by the Bush administration's actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, have fueled a new debate about America's foreign and defense policies in the post-Cold War world. The debate has produced a torrent of books. This book argues that current policy making and reactions to terrorism cannot be understood properly without going back to the roots of America's civil-religious nationalism as well as to the Muslim roots of radical Islamism. After setting that stage in Chapters One and Two, the book goes on in the next three chapters to uncover the political and religious roots of the modern state, a western invention now dominant throughout the world. Chapters Six through Eight focus on the United States—at its founding, in the era of Woodrow Wilson and World War I, and today, post-9/11. The aim here, at the core of the book, is to show how a modest, constitutionally limited state became the carrier of a grandiose, civil-religious, nationalism (city on a hill; redeemer nation; American exceptionalism) that accounts for much of the ambivalence of America's approach to international relations to the present day. Chapter Nine focuses on contemporary questioning of just war doctrine, and Chapter Ten argues for a new priority of international institution building in America's approach to world affairs.

This is a collection of essays that starts with the premise that the United States inhabits a world it understands far too little and is insufficiently prepared to lead. The author, James W. Skillen, argues that world religions and cultural patterns are forces onto themselves and do not and will not change or adapt at American bidding. In short, this post-cold war era calls for a self-critical reexamination of nationalism, state sovereignty, and the demands of international justice. Published in cooperation with The Center for Public Justice.

James W. Skillen (Ph.D., Duke, Political Science) is president of the Center for Public Justice, an Annapolis, Maryland-based independent civic education and policy research organization that grounds its research, publications, training, and advocacy in a comprehensive Christian political perspective.