America's Relation to World Order: Two Indictments, Two Thought Experiments, and a Misquotation (August 2018)
Access full-text files
Date
2018
Authors
Bobbitt, Philip
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Texas National Security Review
Abstract
Department
Description
The State is undergoing a crisis of legitimacy owing to its
inability to cope with novel problems of weapons proliferation,
transnational threats including climate change, a fragile
global financial infrastructure, cultural influences carried by
electronic communications, and an undemocratic regime of
human rights law. These fatal inadequacies are summoning
forth a new constitutional order, the latest in a series of
century-spanning archetypal regimes that have arisen since
the Renaissance and the collapse of feudalism. A backlash
against the harbingers of this new order, however, is crippling
the development of those modes of action that are required
to deal with the underlying crisis. In the United States, this
crippling reaction has operated in tandem with a formidable
critique of America’s right to lead an international order that has
brought unprecedented prosperity and low levels of warfare to
the world. This backlash is as much a reaction to the critique
of the United States’ political and cultural heritage as it is
to the governing techniques that are harbingers of this new
constitutional order. Only a restoration of faith in America’s
constitutional and strategic heritage — its exceptional ethos
— will make possible the preservation of liberal traditions of
governing in the new world that is being born. To accomplish
this, we must answer the critiques by identifying what is the
animating American quality that entitles the United States to
compete for leadership.
LCSH Subject Headings
Citation
Bobbitt, P. (2018). America's Relation to World Order: Two Indictments, Two Thought Experiments, and a Misquotation. Texas National Security Review, 1(4). http://doi.org/10.15781/T2CC0VD8V