Patrick J. Buchanan: A Republic, Not an Empire

Reclaiming America’s Destiny

Regnery, 2002 (1999)     Amazon.com

Back Cover with Quotes from the New Introduction:

“‘If we continue of this course of reflexive interventions, enemies will one day answer our power with the last weapon of the weak – terror, and eventually cataclysmic terrorism on U.S. soil.’ So I predicted in these pages in 1999.”

“On September 11, 2001, ‘cataclysmic terrorism’ struck America as three Boeing 767s crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, bringing down the towers and burning to death three thousand people.”

“Now let me repeat the warning: If this Prodigal Nation does not cease its mindless interventions in quarrels and wars that are not America’s concern, our lot will be endless acts of terror until, one day, a weapon of mass destruction is detonated on American soil. What is it about global empire that is worth taking this risk?”

Back Cover of the First Edition:

“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.”

“The day is coming when America’s global hegemony is going to be challenged, and our leaders will discover they lack the resources to make good on all the war guarantees they have handed out so frivolously; and the American people, awakened to what it is their statesmen have committed them to, will declare themselves unwilling to pay the price of empire.”

“A day of reckoning is approaching. It is my hope that the price in blood, treasure, and humiliation America will eventually be forced to pay for the hubris, arrogance, and folly of our reigning foreign policy elites is not, God forbid, war, defeat, and the diminution of this Republic – the fate of every other great nation or empire that set out on this same course.”

First Edition Flaps:

America is a great power now…will it be in the future, or will it collapse from imperial overstretch?

A Republic, Not an Empire is presidential candidate Pat Buchanan’s erudite and eloquent plea for a new American foreign policy. To avoid a future of endless war, he offers a new policy rooted in America’s greatest traditions.

This is the story of how American statesmen, through vision and courage, quadrupled the size of our Republic in a single century to create the most remarkable nation the world had ever seen. This is also the story of how twentieth-century presidents abandoned George Washington’s “great rule” – to avoid permanent alliances and stay out of foreign wars – and led this country into global conflagrations that changed America and the world forever, and not always for the better.

The United States has piled commitment upon commitment to nations and regions around the world – the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. Buchanan shows how America is reenacting the ancient folly of imperial overstretch that has led to the ruin of every other great power in history – and to the catastrophic world wars of this blood-soaked century.

He argues for a new foreign policy rooted in the wisdom of the Founding Fathers and giants fo American statesmanship – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson – as well as modern warrior herors like Dwight Eisenhower and Doublas MacArthur.

Surveying the sweep of our nation’s history, Buchanan demonstrates how America’s liberty is best protected when the United States pursues its own vital interests, and how our liberty is most endangered when we embark on international crusades that are divorced from those interests.