Jer123
July 6, 2008
Ted Widmer's book, Ark of the Liberties, was reviewed in the Washington Post.
"The United States stand at this moment at the summit of the world," Winston Churchill said in 1945. "I rejoice that this should be so. Let them act up to the level of their power and their responsibility, not for themselves but for others, for all men in all lands, and then a brighter day may dawn upon human history."
It's been a long time since American foreign policy has elicited that kind of hosanna from abroad, and a long time since Americans could comfortably affirm such an idealistic view of themselves. Ted Widmer wants to restore idealism's good name. In the spirit of an old-fashioned jeremiad, he summons his countrymen to return to their own highest standards and properly play their anointed role in the world.
Widmer takes his place alongside other recent writers who have lit the lantern of history to illuminate an increasingly menacing future. They all share a sense that America's regnant foreign policy doctrines are approaching a moment of highly consequential reckoning. Walter Russell Mead's Special Providence (2001) hails the principles of prudence, realism, and restraint that have defined America's "remarkably successful history in international relations." Dangerous Nation (2006), the first installment of Robert Kagan's projected two-volume history, salutes a singularly belligerent foreign-policy tradition and unapologetically champions its perpetuation.