The Divided West

Make no mistake, the normative authority of the United States ofAmerica lies in ruins. Such is the judgment of the most influentialthinker in Europe today reflecting on the political repercussionsof the war in Iraq. The decision to go to war in Iraq, without theexplicit backing of a Security Council Resolution, opened up a deepfissure in the West which continues to divide erstwhile allies andto hinder the attempt to develop a coordinated response to the newthreats posed by international terrorism. In this timely and important volume, Jürgen Habermasresponds to the dramatic political events of the period sinceSeptember 11, 2001, and maps out a way to move the political agendaforward, beyond the acrimonious debates that have pitched opponentsof the war against the Bush Administration and its coalition of thewilling. What is fundamentally at stake, argues Habermas, is theKantian project of overcoming the state of nature between statesthrough the constitutionalization of international law. Habermas develops a detailed multidimensional model oftransnational and supranational governance inspired by Kantiancosmopolitanism, situates it in the context of the evolution ofinternational law toward a cosmopolitan constitutional order duringthe nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and defends it against thenew challenge posed by the hegemonic liberal vision underlying theaggressive unilateralism of the current US administration.
The Divided West is a major intervention by one of themost highly regarded political thinkers of our time. It will beessential reading for students of sociology, politics, international relations, and international law, and it will be ofgreat interest to anyone concerned with the current and futurecourse of European and international politics.