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Zusatztext “A serious rethinking of how we study and write modern history—and of how the West pursues its relationship with the Rest.” — The Washington Post Book World “Clever! malevolent and with spare time on his hands! Osama bin Laden is supposed to read a lot. If the CIA wants to demoralize and to distract him! it might make sure he gets a copy of Walter Russell Mead's new book.” — The Economist “Elegantly written and erudite.” — The Baltimore Sun “A thrilling read.” — The Irish Times “Mead is a scintillating writer who greatly adds to the gaiety of the often monotonous debate on U.S. foreign policy.” — Financial Times Informationen zum Autor Walter Russell Mead Klappentext A stunningly insightful account of the global political and economic system, sustained first by Britain and now by America, that has created the modern world. The key to the two countries' predominance, Mead argues, lies in the individualistic ideology inherent in the Anglo-American religion. Over the years Britain and America's liberal democratic system has been repeatedly challeged—by Catholic Spain and Louis XIV, the Nazis, communists, and Al Qaeda—and for the most part, it has prevailed. But the current conflicts in the Middle East threaten to change that record unless we foster a deeper understanding of the conflicts between the liberal world system and its foes. Chapter One: With God on Our Side On September 17, 1656, Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, addressed the English Parliament to lay out his foreign policy, and he began by asking the most basic political questions: Who are our enemies, and why do they hate us?There was, he then asserted, an axis of evil abroad in the world. England's enemies, he said, "are all the wicked men of the world, whether abroad or at home . . ."[1]And, in the language of the seventeenth century, he said that they hate us because they hate God and all that is good. They hate us "from that very enmity that is in them against whatsoever should serve the glory of God and the interest of his people; which they see to be more eminently, yea most eminently patronized and professed in this nation—we will speak it not with vanity—above all the nations in the world."[2]Cromwell went on to spell out for the Roundheads, as the partisans of Parliament had been known in the English Civil War, that the axis of evil had a leader: a great power which had put itself in the service of evil."Truly," said Cromwell, "your great enemy is the Spaniard . . . through that enmity that is in him against all that is of God that is in you." That enmity came from the origin of the Catholic religion in the primordial revolt against God, embodied by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. "I will put an enmity between thy seed and her seed," Cromwell said, citing God's curse on the serpent and the enmity He would fix between the Children of Darkness and the Children of Light.[3]Cromwell's approach to world politics would resonate more than three hundred years later and three thousand miles away, when on March 8, 1983, U.S. president Ronald Reagan addressed the annual convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida. The Soviet Union, he said, is "the focus of evil in the modern world."[4] And America was engaged in a test of faith against an adversary that had set itself against God. Citing Whittaker Chambers, the Communist-turned-informer, Reagan asserted that Marxism-Leninism is "the second oldest religious faith," first proclaimed by the serpent in the Garden of Eden when he tempted Adam and Eve to disobey God.[5] And like Cromwell, Reagan saw history as a struggle between spiritual forces. "I've always maintained," the president told the preachers, "that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might."[6]Since the enmity between the Free World...
