Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776

McDougal, Walter A. Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. 286pp. $26

Walter A. McDougal's Promised Land, Crusader State is a necessity for those with an interest in foreign policy and America's future. A Pulitzer Prizewinning author and editor of Orbis: A Journal of World Affairs, McDougal here provides a survey based on his extensive historical studies of American diplomatic history. More importantly, he presents an original view of America as first a promised land and then a crusader state.

Rejecting the "sterile debate" over foreign policy doctrines following the post-Cold War era, and annoyed by the "flip" use of such terms as Wilsonianism and isolationism, McDougal develops an alternative analytical structure built around a biblical analogy. Just as the Bible has an Old Testament and a New Testament, so too does American foreign policy, each covering about a century and divided into four "books" that are focused on a foreign policy tradition. In the foreign policy "old testament," these books...