The Divided West

Make no mistake, the normative authority of the United States of
America lies in ruins. Such is the judgment of the most influential
thinker in Europe today reflecting on the political repercussions
of the war in Iraq. The decision to go to war in Iraq, without the
explicit backing of a Security Council Resolution, opened up a deep
fissure in the West which continues to divide erstwhile allies and
to hinder the attempt to develop a coordinated response to the new
threats posed by international terrorism.

In this timely and important volume, Jürgen Habermas
responds to the dramatic political events of the period since
September 11, 2001, and maps out a way to move the political agenda
forward, beyond the acrimonious debates that have pitched opponents
of the war against the Bush Administration and its coalition of the
willing. What is fundamentally at stake, argues Habermas, is the
Kantian project of overcoming the state of nature between states
through the constitutionalization of international law.

Habermas develops a detailed multidimensional model of
transnational and supranational governance inspired by Kantian
cosmopolitanism, situates it in the context of the evolution of
international law toward a cosmopolitan constitutional order during
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and defends it against the
new challenge posed by the hegemonic liberal vision underlying the
aggressive unilateralism of the current US administration.

The Divided West is a major intervention by one of the
most highly regarded political thinkers of our time. It will be
essential reading for students of sociology, politics,
international relations, and international law, and it will be of
great interest to anyone concerned with the current and future
course of European and international politics.