Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy is a hardheaded critique of American foreign policy under President Bush and a prescription for new direction that is both realistic and moral. Amitai Etzioni analyzes the recent failures of nation building (chiefly in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also in Haiti and Kosovo) by the United States and the assumptions that drove those policies. No doubt with an eye to the 2008 Presidential election, he then outlines a policy that emphasizes the protection of life—not democratization—as the as the essential idea of a foreign policy that is “effective and right, pragmatic and principled.”

Etzioni directs the thrust of his critique against neoconservative intellectuals who believe that Middle Eastern autocracies can be forcibly democratized, regardless of culture, tradition, or history. As Etzioni writes, liberal democracy is not a normal, unremarkable phenomenon, but “a delicate plant that grows only under favorable conditions; it needs to be cultivated carefully by those who aim to live under it rather than by those who wish it for them.”

A central theme of Security First, and one greatly at odds with American foreign policy orthodoxy, is that only a minority of the world’s population want to live under democracy as most Americans understand it. An overwhelming majority of the world’s people fall under a category the author calls “illiberal moderates,” persons for whom tradition and faith trump liberty, but who also reject violence and coercion. The author argues the United States must appeal to, rather than alienate through quixotic ventures, this central demographic of world population.

Etzioni also formulates a foreign policy that places security (both American and global) and “primacy of life” at the center strategic thinking. Such a policy would be both muscular and nuanced. For example, Etzioni writes that public censures by American officials about Russia’s return to authoritarian government are not only counterproductive, but even dangerous, because they make the Kremlin less willing cooperate with America in securing the country’s nuclear weapons and other materials. On the other hand, the primacy of life side of Etzioni’s policy would call for military intervention in places like Rwanda and Darfur, when a regime is clearly bent on mass murder. Etzioni argues convincingly that if the United States were consistent in such a policy, massacres and genocides would over time become less likely as each military intervention added great deterrence to the ambitions of some of the world’s most evil rulers.

Security First is an important booked written by a distinguished scholar. The one criticism I would make is that the author does not take into account the possibility that the United States does have a duty to stand morally with people who cherish our ideals, even when we can offer little practical assistance. I am thinking of the courageous Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered for her reporting on Chechnya and Russia. Does America have a moral responsibility to stand with defenders of law and freedom like Politkovskaya, or does security sometimes mean ignoring dissidents in order to pursue strategic goals like nuclear containment. This is the principal moral dilemma I find missing in Dr. Etzioni’s otherwise outstanding book.

(Published in Catholic Library World, March 2008) ( )