The tragedy of U.S. foreign policy : how America's civil religion betrayed the national interest / Walter A. McDougall.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McDougall, Walter A., 1946- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civil religion.

History.

United States--Foreign relations.

United States.

International relations.

Civil religion--United States--History.

Physical Description:

x, 408 pages ; 25 cm

Other Title:

Tragedy of United States foreign policy

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, [2016]

Summary:

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Walter A. McDougall argues powerfully that a pervasive but radically changing faith that "God is on our side" has inspired U.S. foreign policy ever since 1776. The first comprehensive study of the role played by civil religion in U.S. foreign relations over the entire course of the country's history, McDougall's book explores the deeply infused religious rhetoric that has sustained and driven an otherwise secular republic through peace, war, and global interventions for more than two hundred years. From the Founding Fathers and the crusade for independence to the Monroe Doctrine, through World Wars I and II and the decades-long Cold War campaign against "godless Communism," this coruscating polemic reveals the unacknowledged but freely exercised dogmas of civil religion that bind together a "God blessed" America, sustaining the nation in its pursuit of an ever elusive global destiny.

Contents:

Introduction : 9/11 in Parallax Vision :

1. Why the Bush blunders?

2. Why the imperial overstretch?

3. Why the American heresies?

Washington's World : the Civil Church Expectatnt :

4. A divine-right republic in the family of nations

5. Washington's farewell address

6. Thomas Jefferson and the utopian temptation

7. John Quincy Adams and the problem of neighborhood of neighborhood

8. Manifest destiny

9. European revolutions and American civil war

10. The gilded age : last years of orthodoxy

Wilson's World : the Civil Church Militant :

11. ¡Cuba libre!

12. The progressive social gospel

13. Benevolent assimilation

14. Twentieth-century trends

15. Wilson's war

16. Wilson's peace

Roosevelt's World : the Civil Church Agonistes :

17. Modern explosions

18. The progressive Republican denouement

19. Roosevelt the isolationist

20. Roosevelt the interventionist

21. World War II : the great masquerade

22. Roosevelt the failed high priest

Kennedy's World : the Civil Church Triumphant

23. The cradles of cold war theology

24. High priestly prayers

25. Impossible dreams

26. Age of Aquarius

27. A purgatory in time

28. The power of words

Obams's world? : the Global Civil Religion Aborts

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-382) and index.

ISBN:

9780300211450 :

0300211457

OCLC:

946481852