Description
Book SynopsisIn The Right to Rule: American Exceptionalism in a Multipolar World Order, Hugh De Santis explores the evolution of American exceptionalism and its effect on the nation’s relations with the external world. De Santis argues that the self-image of a superior, providential society is based on the myth that the United States is unique rather than a nation with political, economic, and religious values that are inherited from seventeenth-century England. American exceptionalism has underpinned the nation’s foreign policy since its inception, but De Santis shows that it has become an anachronism. In the emerging multipolar world order, America will be one of several powers that determine the structure and rules of international politics rather than its sole arbiter.
Trade ReviewThe Right to Rule is a rich and learned examination of American identity in all of its varied, evolving, and contradictory forms. Americans today are asking 'Who are we? How did we get here?' For answers, they would do well to start with Hugh De Santis's enthralling account.
-- Andrew J. Bacevich, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft; author of After the Apocalypse: America's Role in a World Transformed
Table of ContentsChapter 1: The Myth of American Exceptionalism
Chapter 2: A Righteous Republic
Chapter 3: Power and Prophecy
Chapter 4: Remaking the World, Part Two
Chapter 5: The Trustee of Freedom
Chapter 6: The Politics of Accommodation
Chapter 7: The Unilateralist Fantasy
Chapter 8: Beyond American Exceptionalism
