Roland S. Homet Jr. (–2013)

Reading this for the first time, 20 years after it was published, it impresses me as having held up relatively well. The ideas that hubris is counterproductive to effective international relations, and inconsistent with most religious traditions, is spot on. The warnings against the vanity of attempting to export American democracy has subsequently been well-demonstrated by the failed American interventions in Afghanistan, and Iraq. Although the author was skeptical about the ability to rapidly force an American-style government on countries that had entirely different political cultures, I don't get the impression that he felt that Democracy was anything but a positive for the countries able to maintain it, and I have to believe that the author, who died in 2013, would be disappointed to see the state of Liberal Democracy today in the USA and in multiple other countries that were moving in a very different direction in 2002. Although the book was intended to inform foreign policy decision, perhaps in a time when America is increasingly experiencing multiple internal political cultures, the most important wisdom of this book needs to be applied domestically: "the spirit of tolerance, humility, responsibility and reconciliation within all the Abrahamic traditions" is not characteristic of the political movement in American that politically identifies itself with Christianity.… (altro)