Benjamin R. Barber

Fear's Empire

"Fear's Empire lays the foundation for a principled opposition based on America's truest and best values."—Senator Gary Hart

The author of Jihad vs. McWorld analyzes how American foreign policy has gone wrong—and how it could go right. In this hard-hitting but pragmatic new critique of the Bush administration's foreign policy, Benjamin R. Barber exposes in detail the folly of an agenda of preventive war, placing it in the context of two hundred years of American strategic doctrine (including the recent history of deterrence and containment). He shows how chosen "rogue states" have been made to stand in for terrorists too difficult to locate and destroy, and how the United States continues to support dictatorship in nations it regards as friends, while still believing we can impose democracy on vanquished enemies at the barrel of a gun.

Barber argues for an America that promotes cooperation, multilateralism, international law, and pooled sovereignty. For as law and citizenship alone secure liberty within nations, law and citizenship alone can secure liberty among them, freeing them from fear.

"Benjamin Barber has produced a lucid, informed, and compelling refutation of what has come to be known as the Bush Doctrine."—George Soros

"Fear's Empire is bracing for its clarity, humanity, large-mindedness, and common sense—and downright precious for its sound suggestions as to where we, as a nation, should be going."—Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon and Cruel and Unusual

"Barber once again proves that he is among the very top serious thinkers and writers about American politics and culture."—Leslie H. Gelb, President, The Council on Foreign Relations

"This is a wise, learned and justifiably angry book, and a breath of fresh air."—Stanley Hoffmann, Buttenwieser University Professor, Harvard University

"Well-documented and incisive...a must read at this critical time in world affairs."—Bob Kerrey, President, New School University