From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations

Arguing against both what he casts as Francis Fukuyama's liberal triumphalism and Samuel Huntington's""clash of civilizations"" pessimism, communitarian Etzioni sees the world edging toward a""chemical fusion"" of Western individualism and Eastern social authoritarianism. This movement duly demands a transformation of an American""semi-empire"" based on military coercion into a world community based on a""new global architecture"" of transnational institutions that rely less on force and more on shared interests and values. Etzioni's turgid disquisitions on such topics as""monofunctional transnational government networks"" remain somewhat vague about what the new global regime actually entails. It would definitely not look like the invasion of Iraq, a""Vietnamesque"" disaster that he feels has aroused intense worldwide opposition and squandered America's credibility. But it might look something like the international police and intelligence effort against terrorism and nuclear proliferation, a de facto Global Safety Authority that could be a model for other Authorities governing other world issues like environmental degradation, poverty, sex trafficking and""cybercrime."" True to his communitarian instincts, Etzioni insists that the transnational community requires informal but""thick"" bonds of shared values and mores; moderate religion will play a leading role, especially a nascent""soft"" Islam, which will drive out hard fundamentalist Islam and foster the growth of civil society in the Muslim world. Unfortunately, apart from perfunctory talk of international""moral dialogues,"" he is vague about how the""global normative synthesis"" is to come about. Etzioni's communitarian formula--not too hawkish, not too dovish, with not too much individualism, not too much social coercion and lots of moral consensus--seems even more nebulous and pat when translated from domestic politics to international relations.