Meeting the Enemy: American Exceptionalism and International Law (Critical America, 65)

Since its founding, the United States has defined itself as the supreme protector of freedom throughout the world, pointing to its Constitution as the model of law to ensure democracy at home and to protect human rights internationally. Although the United States has consistently emphasized the importance of the international legal system, it has simultaneously distanced itself from many established principles of international law and the institutions that implement them. In fact, the American government has attempted to unilaterally reshape certain doctrines of international law while disregarding others, such as provisions of the Geneva Conventions and the prohibition on torture. America' s selective self-exemption, Natsu Taylor Saito argues, undermines not only specific legal institutions and norms, but leads to a decreased effectiveness of the global rule of law. Meeting the Enemy is a pointed look at why the United States' frequent - if selective - disregard of international law and institutions is met with such high levels of approval, or at least complacency, by the American public.-- Provided by Publisher "A distinctly American internationalism" Saving civilization : the war on terror Civilizing the other : colonial origins of international law "A city on a hill" : America as exception Establishing the republic : first principles and American identity A manifest destiny : colonizing the continent American imperial expansion making the world safe for democracy The new world order and American hegemony Confronting American exceptionalism. Saito has produced a synthesis that is thought-provoking and challenging, and it provides a welcome attempt to place the contemporary moment in the "war on terror" into a much longer historical frame. Most of all, like all good critical scholarship, scholars and students can look to this book as a way to interrogate one's commitments about the American Project