A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America's Destiny

A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America's Destiny
Author(s)	Patrick J. Buchanan
Country	United States
Subject(s)	Intervention (international law), United States--Foreign relations
Publisher	Regnery Publishing
Publication date	1999
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	437 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-89526-272-X
OCLC Number	237351752
Dewey Decimal	327.73/009 21
LC Classification	E183.7 B83 1999

A Republic, Not An Empire is a 1999 book written by American political figure Patrick J. Buchanan. Buchanan critiques foreign policy commitments by the United States. He likens America's overseas involvement to those of past empires--and predicts a similar decline without a change in course. Buchanan writes, "Present U.S. foreign policy, which commits America to go to war for scores of nations in regions where we have never fought before, is unsustainable. As we pile commitment upon commitment in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East,and the Persian Gulf, American power continues to contract--a sure formula for foreign policy disaster."

Contents

• Preface

The idea for A Republic, Not at Empire came out of my year-long campaign for the Republican Party nomination in 1996. From March 1995 thought the California primary, I sought to persuade my party that the course on which America had embarked was replicating, with alarming exactitude, the course that brought the British Empire to ruin. The free-trade-uber-alles policy of the (Clinton) Administration, and its compulsive interventionism, I argued, violated America's greatest traditions and followed a course that been repudiated and rejected by its greatest men. ...Repeatedly, I found that my arguments were not being refuted, but airily dismissed as "isolationism" or "protectionism." This suggested to me that millions of Americans are oblivious to their own country's history and heritage. The propagandists in the educational establishment have done their work well. For not only was the party of (Abraham) Lincoln, (William) McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, (William) Taft, and (Calvin) Coolidge born and bred in protectionism, it was defiantly and proudly protectionist. Moreover, the economic nationalism that carried Lincoln to the presidency was rooted in the ideas that (George) Washington, (Alexander) Hamilton, and (James) Madison had take to Philadelphia and written into the American Constitution, and that Henry Clay had refined to create "The American System" that was the marvel of mankind.

• Part One: America Reaches for Global Hegemony

1. How Empires Perish

2. Courting Conflict with Russia

3. America's Future Wars

4. The Myth of American Isolationism

• Part Two: 1789-1823: Independence and Expansion

5. Birth of an American Foreign Policy

6. "Mr. Madison's War"

7. How We Took Florida

• Part Three: 1845-1869: Manifest Destiny

8."Jimmy Polk's War"

9."One War at a Time"

• Part Four: 1898-1919: The Turning Point

10."Splendid Little War"

11.The New Imperialists

12."He Kept Us Out of War"

13."Wilson's War"

• Part Five: 1921-1941: Triumph of the Interventionists

14.Disarmament Decade

15.The Zeal of the Convert

16.Back Door to War

• Part Six: 1945-1989: Twilight Struggle

17. America's Longest War

• Part Seven: A Foreign Policy for America

18."Passionate Attachments" and Press Power

19.Claimants to Kennan's Legacy

20.A Republic, Not an Empire

External links

• An empire after all Review by Christopher Hitchens.
• Review by John J. Reilly
• Buchanan.org