The Communitarian Approach

to International Relations and

the Future of World Order

RICHARD FALK
Princeton University
University of California–Santa Barbara

This article comments on Amitai Etzioni’s advocacy of “soft communitarianism” as the pre-
ferred approach to the establishment of a global governance architecture responsive to the
current range of world order challenges facing the world and the United States. The article
criticizes the effort to combine an insider discussion of American foreign policy with the pre-
sentation of a framework for ethical problem solving that has the potential for acceptance
throughout the world. A related criticism is the degree to which the foreign policy agenda is
discussed in the terms within which it has arisen in Washington, giving the communitarian
approach a discrediting nationalistic tilt.

Keywords: communitarianism; liberalism, neoconservatism; American foreign policy;

Americanism

I. GLOBAL COMMUNITARIANISM OR ETZIONI’S WORLDVIEW?

Amitai Etzioni’s (2004) From Empire to Community: A New Approach to

International Relations is the most comprehensive attempt to extend the com-
munitarian approach, recently influential in domestic politics, to the global set-
ting. As might be expected from his consistently valuable earlier work, this book
is a major contribution to the existing scholarly literature. It addresses the whole
problematique of global governance in the post-9/11 world, providing an
informed and imaginative perspective on what seems most useful to expect and
work toward at this stage of history. In my view, From Empire to Community
mingles a distinctively personal statement of Etzioni’s intelligent assessment of
global policy issues from inside the beltway with a more general program of
communitarian reorientation for the field of international relations.
Both of these undertakings are welcome, yet some confusion results from the
intermingling that cannot be entirely overcome by claiming that because Etzioni
is the leading communitarian thinker, whatever he says should be understood as

AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST, Vol. 48 No. 12, August 2005 1577-1590

DOI: 10.1177/0002764205278074
© 2005 Sage Publications

1577

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010

1578 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

an expression of evolving patterns of communitarian thought or alternatively,

that Etzioni’s (2004) ideas on foreign policy effectively illustrate communi-
tarianism in action, at least within the American context. On the former matter of
theoretical formulation, a communitarian position is not yet fully and coherently
enough evolved to give it much independent purchase in discussions of foreign
policy. Although on the latter discussion of foreign policy, Etzioni’s views are
too controversial, and even “individualistic,” thus, clouding the boundary sepa-
rating the communitarian approach from the terrain of current foreign policy
debates and preoccupations in the United States. In an important sense, I am
claiming that he has put two books together in a single binding and that it would
be better for both if they had been published separately. I will return to this issue
at the end, as I think this merging of the American policy debate with how to
think about global governance seriously compromises what Etzioni’s communi-
tarian approach has to offer citizens and commentators and calls for a further
effort on his part.
Why is this so? In my view, there is a difference between putting forward an
argument for a communitarian international relations and the rather controver-
sial entry into the American policy debate that Etzioni (2004) presented to us
here, and furthermore, the one does not seem to follow from the other. For
instance, I agree with and welcome almost all of the arguments favoring
communitarianism, whereas I dissent from the tone and substance of much of
the foreign policy discussion. For instance, Etzioni repeatedly distanced himself
from views he attributed (misleadingly) to “liberals” and adopted positions that
are more amenable to the role of coercion in the pursuit of foreign policy goals,
including unilateral war making. It is not surprising, therefore, that centrist and
liberal noncommunitarian establishment figures such as Joseph Nye, Jan Peter
Balenende (the Dutch prime minister), and Anne-Marie Slaughter enthusiasti-
cally endorsed his book in promotional material, whereas progressive voices are
nowhere to be found. Indeed, the book that I would rate as most similar in tone to
From Empire to Community is Zbigniew Brzezinski’s (2004) The Choice:
Global Domination or Global Leadership, an anti-Bush realist tract, whereas
that most similar in substance is Slaughter’s (2004) A New World Order, an
original and provocative restatement of liberal internationalism.
I doubt that many liberals of the sort mentioned above, or if the list were
extended to include such prominent liberals as Michael Walzer, Michael Doyle,
and Richard Gardner, would have any substantial disagreements with Etzioni’s
(2004) take on U.S. foreign policy, including his criticisms of the Iraq War. And
of course, the liberal hawks, several of whom were prominent advisors to the
recent Kerry campaign, seem closer to the neocon end of the political spectrum
on the crucial issue of affirming American discretion to engage in “wrs of
choice,” to invoke the terminology of that most liberal of journalists, Thomas
Friedman. My criticism of Etzioni’s classificatory scheme of liberal and conser-
vative (by which I think he generally means, yet rarely says, neoconservative) is
twofold: Liberalism is misleadingly used by Etzioni in an “L-word” spirit to

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010

 Falk / INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND WORLD ORDER 1579

distance himself from positions that are far more accurately associated with the
radical Left and pacifists; Etzioni’s positions on foreign policy are most accu-
rately understood as an expression of a mainstream liberal perspective rather
than as an alternative to it.
There are several noteworthy confusions arising from Etzioni’s (2004) effort
to find some middle ground. Etzioni falsely associated liberal thinking with a
kind of Wilsonian utopianism as in the following formulation: “Many liberals
seek to rely on the Wilsonian fantasy of democratizing the world to make it
peaceful” (p. 2).1 In a weak sense, such a phrasing of democratic peace was
endorsed after the cold war by the entire political center in the United States,
generally known as the theory of “democratic peace.” But what gave this per-
spective “legs,” so to speak, was its ardent and continuing endorsement by the
Bush II presidency, as any reader of President Bush’s Second Inaugural or of the
tract written by David Frum and Richard Perle (2003) would certainly realize.2
In other words, what is called liberal by Etzioni, and indeed started out that way,
has been appropriated by the neoconservatives (and mainly, not by conserva-
tives) and combined with a highly militarist and interventionary diplomacy. And
not only as a response to the 9/11 attacks but also in authoritative expressions of
neoconservative thinking that preceded the preoccupation with al Qaeda and
global terrorism.3 Liberal thinking throughout the cold war was always sensitive
to the need to balance its ideological preference for democratic governance
against the strategic search for allies in its central geopolitical encounter with the
Soviet bloc and consistently deprecated excessive faith in the United Nations
and in Wilsonian idealism.
This raises a further matter calling for ideological clarification. Etzioni
(2004) failed to distinguish between conservatives and neoconservatives, using
them interchangeably. I find this misleading. Conservatives have been tradition-
ally wary of overseas involvements and visionary thinking about drastic politi-
cal reforms, whether at home or abroad, preferring to go slowly, leaving societal
problem solving to self-reliance and voluntary initiative rather than to the gov-
ernment, as well as stressing fiscal discipline. In contrast, neoconservatives are
self-professed visionaries abroad as well as at home, although linking arms with
conservatives on issues relating to social values such as gay marriage, abortion,
and patriotism.4
Etzioni’s (2004) perspective contrasts with the sort of essentially anti-
imperial outlook adopted by Jim Garrison (2004) in his important America as
Empire: Global Leader or Rogue Power or by myself in The Declining World
Order: America Neo-Imperial Foreign Policy (Falk, 2004).5 In both of these
instances, there would be only trivial disagreements with Etzioni’s views on
communitarianism and global governance but a rather wide divergence with
respect to his approach toward American foreign policy, especially since 9/11.
The divergence is most notable, I suppose, with respect to how “leadership” on a
global scale is understood, as well as in relation to the degree of acceptance by

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010

1580 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

the American government of what I would describe as the discipline of interna-

tional law as the foundation of foreign policy in the context of war/peace issues.
In this regard, I find a tension between the communitarian ethos and Etzioni’s
participation in an open letter of American intellectuals endorsing a generalized
response of war to the 9/11 attacks as a species of “just war.”6 It is not a matter of
claiming that communitarians need to renounce the right of a sovereign state to
act in self-defense, as set forth in the UN Charter, but rather, that this generalized
support of “war” as the basis for addressing the challenge of jihadist terrorism
seems inconsistent with any kind of movement toward the sort of future world
that is depicted by the communitarian side of Etzioni’s (2004) presentation.7
True, Etzioni indicated his refusal to support the Iraq War on the basis of the ear-
lier text, suggesting limits on the application of a just-war rationale to American
antiterrorism; but this is not sufficient to achieve a reconciliation between the
renunciation of aggressive war and the conduct of foreign policy by a state that is
a central aspect of my understanding of communitarian values (Etzioni, 2004, p.
101). It is at such a point that I believe the social and geographical location of
Etzioni in Washington, and his evident desire to influence and be a party to
ongoing debates, interferes with a proper appreciation of his wider and longer
range program of thought and action.
Etzioni (2004) confronted this skeptical reaction autobiographically, at least
indirectly, by presenting himself in the following language:

Born in Europe, raised in Asia, an American citizen, a senior advisor to the Carter
White House, I am trying to give voice in this volume to a global perspective, one
that is concerned with what might serve people of different parts of the globe
rather than how one can lord over another. (p. 4)

Etzioni added, “To the extent that the deliberations here are guided by any over-
arching public philosophy, it is an international form of communitarianism
opposed to both conservative and liberal ways of thinking (p. 4).”8 Elsewhere,
Etzioni proceeded to justify the American focus in the book as a reflection of its
status as “currently the only superpower” in the world (p. 4). For reasons earlier
mentioned, I find this explanation only partially persuasive. It fails to take
account of Etzioni’s emotional and geographical proximity to the policy debate
on core security issues as it has been framed since 9/11 in Washington, and his
related substantial acceptance of prevailing views as to the correctness of priori-
ties dominating this policy agenda. I am not objecting to the emphasis on Amer-
ica that could indeed be integrated with a presentation of the communitarian
view, but to the failure to achieve the degree of critical distance from the main-
stream debate in the United States that is necessary to uphold the purported
adoption of a global perspective based on the claim of universally based values,
perceptions, and standards. I find Etzioni’s stance of purported objectivity
unpersuasive despite the internationalism of Etzioni’s life story and, thus, the

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010

 Falk / INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND WORLD ORDER 1581

discussion of foreign policy options to be an expression of a somewhat insular

American set of viewpoints.
But when Etzioni (2004) addressed governance issues in relation to global
reform and world order, he treaded more genuinely on firm communitarian turf.
Etzioni usefully set forth a conceptual program for what he aptly described as
“soft communitarianism,” that is, moving toward a communitarian world while
acknowledging limitations on what can be realistically expected with regard to
shared values, goals, and the renunciation of coercion. But when, as in this book,
Etzioni’s conceptualizing is fused with his policy outlook, it might just as easily
be labeled “soft imperialism,” bearing a kinship to some of the writing of
Michael Ignatieff (2003, p. 24; 2004), as well as to Brzezinski, Nye, and other
writers who are treated by the media as the poster boys for “empire lite” and
American “soft power” hegemony. There is an issue of language here as some of
these writers, including Etzioni and Brzezinski (2004), hide their qualified
embrace of imperialism by relying on the language of “leadership,” “global
governance,” and “global architecture.”
I believe that this matter of ideological affinity and normative clarity is
important and has implications for the future. If there is to be constructed a com-
munitarian international relations that engenders broad acceptance within activ-
ist civil societies and outside the United States, then it must be removed to the
extent possible from the mainstream foreign policy discourse currently going on
in the United States. For all of the strengths of Etzioni’s (2004) From Empire to
Community, the overall presentation fails to remove its outlook from this cur-
rently feverish national discourse. I regard this as unfortunate, especially as the
distinctive and enduring contribution of the book is to make the case for soft
communitarianism as a kind of third way to think about international relations.
If this third way is situated between conservatism and liberalism, especially as
these are presented by Etzioni, then its appeal is likely to be limited to elite cir-
cles in the United States, and even here the impact is likely to be confused and
diluted by the misleading representation of liberalism as suggested above. To
achieve a global perspective or to gain global influence, soft communitarianism
needs to add a “progressive” coordinate to the “left” of liberalism, or at least
associate the latter with liberal doves (the complement of liberal hawks). I
believe there are several reasons for this. The priorities for global policy are dif-
ferent in other parts of the world: Overgeneralizing somewhat, Europe is preoc-
cupied with enhancing cooperative approaches to common regional and global
problems; Africa, Asia, and Latin America are essentially concerned with sus-
tainable and equitable economic development and with achieving fairness in the
distribution of benefits arising from the growth of the world economy. Etzioni’s
stress on global security as understood by the American mainstream, that is, by
reference to nonproliferation of nuclear weaponry and antiterrorism, is not
widely shared abroad, and its embrace by the leader of communitarianism
seems likely to breed suspicion rather than adherence.

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010

1582 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

It is not useful to combine the communitarian perspective with measured crit-

icism of the Bush approach to world order. There are many others from the
American mainstream, including prominent realists and traditional conserva-
tives, who offer comprehensive criticisms of Bush’s foreign policy and
neoconservative viewpoints in a manner and spirit that is not significantly dis-
similar from Etzioni’s (2004). It is impossible to instruct American policy mak-
ers on how to think differently about foreign affairs in the same book as telling
students of international relations how to think about world order without nar-
rowing the truly responsive audience to a few square miles in the center of the
nation’s capital. I find this unfortunate, as the lasting value and originality of this
book is to chart some new intellectual territory that is neither realist nor liberal,
and certainly not Marxist, and can be aptly described as communitarian,
although much work remains to be done (as I argue below in section III). In the
remainder of this article, I concentrate on this latter agenda and resist the tempta-
tion to exhibit further my disagreements with respect to Etzioni’s effort to
embed his approach in a proffer of mildly critical advice to the prince. Any self-
respecting prince would expect far harsher words of criticism from an advisor if
a mess existed that resembles what the Bush presidency seems to have created in
Iraq and elsewhere.

II. WHAT IS THE SOFT COMMUNITARIAN APPROACH

TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS?

The essence of this communitarian analysis of the play of forces at work on a

global level is a mixture of critique and prescription. Etzioni (2004), from the
very opening sentence of the preface, was at pains to assure readers that he was
not succumbing to sentimentality: “After many centuries during which it has
been agreed that a world government was a pipe-dream, envisioned only by ide-
alists, we are discovering that swelling transnational problems cannot be han-
dled by nation-states nor by international organizations alone” (p. xi). Etzioni
argued that such a need for global governance underlies, and somewhat vali-
dates, the unfolding American project to establish a world government in the
form of an empire that is quite the reverse of this earlier line of utopian advocacy.
As might be expected, Etzioni (2004) found this American push toward
empire to be more dysfunctional than undesirable mainly because it seems
unsustainable in its present form. The American push is overly coercive and,
thus, certain to produce a dynamic of widespread and often violent resistance,
including the sort of backlash that manifested itself in the 9/11 attacks and in the
Iraqi insurgency. As a committed communitarian, Etzioni favors basing global
governance less on these militarist instruments of coercion and more on shared
values, converging interests, procedures of legitimacy, and a maximal reliance
on persuasion. It is intriguing that Etzioni was not critical of the empire project
or even of discretionary war making, as such, going out of his way to make the

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010

 Falk / INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND WORLD ORDER 1583

point that most scholars in the past have focused on “the decline and fall of vari-
ous empires, especially those of Rome and Great Britain. . . . I focus instead on
why they have lasted as long as they did” (p. 4). In this spirit, Etzioni posed the
issue of evaluation of a particular type of world order as initially one of
sustainability and evolutionary potential, including prospects for an adaptive
transformation: “Whether the American semi-empire will collapse under its
own weight or be converted into a lasting new global architecture—one less
hierarchical and more legitimate than any empire—is the question explored” (p.
96).9
This is the historical basis for arguing that American enlightened self-interest
should soon lead to a repudiation of the Iraq/Vietnam model of unilateral war
making without any reliance on normative arguments based on adherence to
international law or respect for international morality. Etzioni (2004) pragmati-
cally urged the substitution of a security policy that is more cooperative and
internationally supported and, hence, far more likely to be perceived as legiti-
mate by world public opinion and respected political actors throughout the
world. In Etzioni’s words,

The only question, as I see it, is whether the United States will change course on its
own or will be forced to do so when faced with multicontinental Vietnamesque
effects and the mounting costs of an empire that its citizens are unwilling to sup-
port. (p. 103)

The 2004 reelection of Bush in a presidential campaign in which even the oppo-
sition candidate refrained from criticism of the Iraq War throws considerable
doubt as to whether the citizenry, still predominantly viewing current American
foreign policy through the heavily clouded lens of antiterrorism, is likely to
withdraw its support in the near future. Constraints deriving from financial over-
reach and a military stretched too thin may induce a reelected Bush to overlook
his supposed “mandate” and move more cautiously and pragmatically (for an
argument along these lines, see Luttwak, 2004).
The book draws substantive support for its ideas about a gradualist and evo-
lutionary approach to global governance from three major sources: American
neofunctionalist writers such as Slaughter, Robert Keohane, and Nye, who have
stressed the trends toward multiple forms of transnational cooperation among
governments as supplying the building blocks of global governance; the emer-
gence of global civil society in the past few decades as generative of transna-
tional actors espousing agendas for global reform based on normative concerns
and shared values; and the experience of the European Union as demonstrative
of the movement within a regional context in the direction of a kind of evolution-
ary supranationalism that reconciles nationalist patterns of political loyalty and
societal attachments to nationalism and sovereign rights with regional frame-
works of authority and policy making.

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010

1584 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

Etzioni (2004, p. 14) is properly at pains to distinguish his advocacy of global

governance, and here convincingly, from that of such high profile Westernizers
as Bernard Lewis (2002; 2003), Samuel Huntington (1996), and Friedman
(1999). Etzioni even noted somewhat hyperbolically that “in a sense my whole
book . . . is a response to Huntington’s viewpoint” (p. 15).10 It is true that Hun-
tington read world history as reconstituting conflict along civilizational lines
rather than as moving toward a global synthesis, but unlike Lewis and Friedman,
Huntington did not propose a Westernization (thinly disguised by others under
the headings of modernization or globalization) of the world as the path to
global stability and prosperity. These writers see a benevolent world order as
brought about via the transforming and democratizing energies of modernity as
it has been experienced by the West, especially its market-based constitutional
democracies. In effect, when the rest of the world becomes Westernized, and
integrated into the global economy, then stability and prosperity will be
globalized, and not otherwise.
This insistence on the Western (read American) paradigm of market-based
development and self-determination is even more ardently promoted by Presi-
dent Bush, perhaps most concisely and authoritatively in the opening sentence
of his cover letter to the canonical policy document, National Security Strategy
of the United States of America (NSS): “The great struggles of the twentieth cen-
tury between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the
forces of freedom—and a single sustainable model for national success: Free-
dom, democracy, and free enterprise” (White House, 2002). The NSS prescrip-
tion is premised on the globalization of this model, made feasible by the United
States using its military dominance to provide the world with the most funda-
mental public good of all: security. There is little positive attention given by NSS
to the need for a new global architecture to address the myriad of transnational
problems (including drugs, migration, climate change, and global terrorism)
that seem beyond the capabilities of sovereign states.
An even more avowedly militarist version of this essentially statist perspec-
tive can be found in Thomas P. M. Barnett’s (2004) rather frightening book The
Pentagon’s New Map, which seems to be having a major impact on governmen-
tal thinking about world order within the U.S. government. In effect, Barnett
combined the American role as empire builder and security provider with the
alleged legitimizing rationale that being linked to the dynamics of economic
globalization, even if as a result of an interventionary war of the sort under way
in Iraq, is eventually beneficial for every society, as well as serving U.S. national
security interests. Barnett’s reasoning is rather bizarre, although it achieves
coherence. He argued that it is the absence of connectivity to the world eco-
nomic system that produces the sort of “rogue” behavior that threatens global
stability and poses threats to American security. In this sense it is a variation of
the Lewis/Friedman argument mentioned earlier (see Lewis 2002, 2003; Fried-
man, 1999), but without the stress on the promotion of democracy as key to the
achievement of modernity, the precondition for connectivity. Of course, the

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010

 Falk / INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND WORLD ORDER 1585

Barnett book attracts attention because he purported to be presenting not his

own private view of the future, which it is, but as conveying to readers the views
that prevail in the Pentagon among strategic planners. In many ways, the por-
trayal is almost silly; the map that conveys the argument locates such countries
as Malaysia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey as lacking in the requisite
connectivity as this is arbitrarily interpreted by Barnett. It is a worldview that is
completely unidirectional; either imitate the West—really, the American way—
or face the prospect of Western hostility, if not Etzioni (2004) intervention. In
effect, solutions are available, but only if made in Washington.
Etzioni (2004), in welcome contrast, emphasized the degree to which the
West can itself learn from the East, particularly with respect to balancing rights
and the values of autonomy against notions of social responsibility that are
stressed in non-Western societies. This approach provides a far richer menu of
values than does that of the NSS or Barnett (2004). Etzioni acknowledged that
the countries of Asia and Africa have a far more culturally grounded sense of
collective identity, and although such societies can themselves benefit from
allowing more autonomy to the individual and group in the Western mode,
including gaining freedom from traditions that inhibit moves toward modernity,
what would be most beneficial for East and West is what Etzioni referred to as a
“global synthesis” (pp. 211-214). It helps that Etzioni imported Benedict
Anderson’s (1983) seminal idea of “imagined community” into his sense of a
sustainable global community ethos that embodies a series of core values and
vital institutional arrangements.
Part of the attractiveness of the argument as set out by Etzioni (2004) is the
insistence that such a balance can be achieved either by a secularized or by a reli-
gious orientation of a governing authority, thereby acknowledging a diversity of
paths toward desirable global goals. These goals also involve a further balancing
of materialist concerns with raising living standards and cultural concerns with
the overall quality of life, including an appreciation of its spiritual dimensions.
Again, in contrast to the NSS vision or Barnett’s (2004) prescriptions, and to that
of secular liberals, this exposition of a communitarian approach achieves more
of a distinct identity. It is less militarist and interventionary than most main-
stream thinking, more normative, and is properly insistent on the imperative of a
global architecture to address the spectrum of post-Westphalian challenges to
world order. As with the institutional dimensions of the global architecture, it
would have been illuminating to discuss here the affinities and deviations of
communitarianism in relation to the work of Hans Küng (1998), who seems to
have urged a normative orientation that closely resembles what Etzioni pre-
sented. Küng is not a communitarian but rather, a pioneer in the movement
toward a dialogue of world religions as the key to discovering core commonali-
ties that can serve to promote the human interest in a globalizing world. The two
approaches, soft communitarianism and interreligious collaboration, are
complementary in most respects.11

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010

1586 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

Etzioni (2004) is less attractive internationally because he seems so rooted,

as previously discussed, in a specific and current American reality and has
expressed his outlook so that it relates to the flow of discussion that dominates
the policy debate and thinking within and in the surroundings of the U.S. gov-
ernment. This gives his approach a quality of historical immediacy. As such, he
has affirmed the primacy of antiterrorist and antiproliferation agendas that have
preoccupied the Bush presidency. His distinctive emphasis is on what means
will be most effective given the persistence of a statist character of world order
and the growing challenges associated with the globalist scope of pressing for-
eign policy issues. He believes in the value of practical and gradualist innova-
tions that build on what exists, relying on states to provide the main agency for
the construction of the needed global architecture, while at the same time
acknowledging a positive reinforcing role for civil society actors as sources of
pressure and advocacy (more or less along the lines of Keck & Sikkink, 1998).
Again I suspect that Etzioni’s essentially statist view of reform and agency for
change is a reflection of his social and vocational location in a city that aspires to
be the capital of the world. In this regard, the contributions, actual and potential,
of civil society actors tend to be minimized despite their seeming congeniality
with communitarianism.
Etzioni (2004) is duly impressed with the European experience in developing
a regional form of governance that contains encouraging insights for the global
project. The European experience with regional economic and political integra-
tion offers some reassurance on a regional level that a cumulative, self-
interested process designed to generate the new global architecture is a feasible
21st century undertaking.

III. DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF SOFT COMMUNITARIANISM

There is no doubt that Etzioni’s (2004) communitarian world is distinguish-

able from the horizons of aspiration of both American liberals and conserva-
tives. It is more receptive to non-Western cultural and religious perspectives and
values than are most liberals, who stress individualism and economic globaliza-
tion and tend overwhelmingly to be secularists. It is also more receptive to multi-
nationalism, cooperative internationalism, and global institutionalism than are
conservatives. At the same time, soft communitarianism as depicted by Etzioni
is rooted in present realities and explicitly repudiates both utopian and radical
viewpoints that reject mainstream constraints based on current modes of
thought as to what is desirable, possible, and necessary. But I am quite sure that
it would be possible to rearticulate soft communitarianism in other con-
figurations that more closely resemble “cosmopolitan” views on the same
range of issues, occupying a different middle ground between liberalism and
conservatism.12

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010

 Falk / INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND WORLD ORDER 1587

Similarly, the extensive literature produced by the World Order Models Pro-
ject, although contextualized during the cold war, was similarly based on the
idea that a viable world order depended on soliciting non-Western normative
inputs, including varying horizons of aspirations and differing policy priori-
ties.13 This earlier exercise, perhaps an instance of what could be called
precommunitarian thought, does, I believe, still confirm the view that a global
synthesis devised by an individual thinker working in a given national space will
not be globally persuasive. A transnational, collaborative, and interactive pro-
cess is required to create the conceptual and normative underpinnings for a
global synthesis capable of attracting non-American and non-Western support.
Let me put the issue in its most provocative form: So long as soft com-
munitarianism is perceived as “made in the USA,” it will be restricted in its role
to providing a domestic touchstone for debate. And so what I would propose is
that either a transnational gathering of scholars and activists be convened to
respond, as I have, to Etzioni’s (2004) From Empire to Community or that a
series of papers on an emerging global synthesis be commissioned from repre-
sentative thinkers in different civilizational settings, and then see how closely
these outlooks converge with that of Etzioni and with each other. To some
extent, such an exercise would test my criticism that Etzioni’s presentation of
communitarianism is too tainted with mainstream Americanism to have a wide
appeal beyond national borders or to civil society activists even within the
United States. What I would most like to see is another book from Etzioni
devoted exclusively to soft communitarianism, purged of commentary pro or
contra American foreign policy preoccupations of the moment.
Furthermore, in my view, there are additional elements of soft com-
munitarianism that need to be worked out in more detail. For one thing, the stra-
tegic relationship between regions and globe with respect to shared values. The
European experiment demonstrates regional possibilities for community, given
certain conditions. To what extent is this experiment capable of being imitated in
other regions? There are, of course, regionalist initiatives in Africa, Asia, and
Latin America, but are these capable of evolving into a regional polity of the sort
that seems to be taking shape in Europe? Furthermore, does regionalization
hamper the strengthening of bonds of human solidarity on a global scale, and are
these bonds necessary for the construction of a global architecture capable of
sustaining world order and solving a range of global problems that are not sus-
ceptible to national or regional solutions? These are complex inquiries for which
there are no simple responses, but it seems desirable to explore the future of
communitarianism in regional as well as global settings. To do so would also be
a corrective to assessing world order prospects from the accident of social/polit-
ical location on the planet. I predict that if Amitai Etzioni were to rewrite his
book after 1 or 2 years in Delhi, Shanghai, or Istanbul, the whole shape and sub-
stance of analysis and prescription would shift in fascinating ways. Perhaps, this
article can be best read as an extended endorsement of study abroad programs
for senior scholars!

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010

1588 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

NOTES

1. It is not surprising that one of the more visible sympathizers with neoconservative foreign
policy, Max Boot (2002), makes much of the lineage that links George W. Bush to Woodrow Wilson.
For a more thoughtful, more qualified discussion of this lineage, see Walter Russell Mead (2004,
especially pp. 83-105).
2. The linkage of security policy with the global promotion of democracy is the major theme of
Frum and Perle (2003).
3. See, for instance, the notorious study of the Project for a New American Century (2000), sug-
gesting the link between aggressive democratizing, especially in the Middle East, and an American
grand strategy involving global domination.
4. For an illuminating and convincing account of this divergence between conservatism and
neoconservatism, expressed in relation to the teachings of Leo Strauss, see Anne Norton (2004).
5. Also of significance, Etzioni (2004) referred respectfully to the work of such rightest figures
as Francis Fukuyama, Charles Krauthammer, and Max Boot but refrained even mentioning such rad-
ical critics of the American way of empire as David Harvey, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and
Michael Mann, each of whom enjoys a considerable international following.
6. Etzioni (2004) seems to accept the idea that there can never be a “just war,” only a “justified
war,” and also oddly mentions the names Fukuyama and Huntington as endorsers, along with his
own, apparently to convey his association with prominent conservative (noncommunitarian) figures
in this undertaking (p. 109). If the statement had been limited to the Afghanistan War, then it would
have seemed reasonable to justify on the basis of just-war criteria, but to endorse a more generalized
war on terrorism seemed unjustified at the time, and even more so in retrospect (see Falk, 2003, for
analysis along these lines).
7. There are a number of conceptual problems that affect policy choices, including the limited
utility of war as an instrument against a nonstate adversary network, as well as the importance of lim-
iting response to transnational jihadist terrorism and not enlarging the scope of the undertaking, as
was done by the Bush administration from the outset, to encompass all nonstate political violence,
including such self-determination struggles as those of the Palestinians and the Chechens.
8. Elsewhere in the book, Etzioni (2004) underpinned his criticism of America’s overestimation
of the role of military superiority in establishing its global influence by invoking his own experience
“as a Special Force (commando) fighter in Israel” (p. 103).
9. It is this idea of adaptive transformation that constitutes the foundation of the inquiry reflect-
ing a belief widely shared that world order can no longer address the collective needs of humanity if
constituted primarily by territorial sovereign states. The call for a new global architecture echoes a
vast literature of global reform. Among the most coherent presentations of this case is to be found in
the extensive writings of David Held (1995, 2004). Incidentally, I think Held, along with Doyle, is
one of the best contemporary examples of a “liberal” thinker, but the work of neither is mentioned by
Etzioni (2004).
10. This sentence seems not entirely fair to Huntington, whom I read as a civilizational pluralist
who is skeptical about Westernizing or globalizing the world and rather, anticipates a post-
Westphalian shift from statist conflicts to intercivilizational struggle. The less-studied book version
of Huntington’s clash argument is somewhat ambivalent on this central point, substituting the notori-
ous prediction of “the West against the rest” highlighted in his Foreign Affairs article (Huntington,
1993) with a predicted war between China and an American-led coalition of Western countries. Of
course, China can be regarded either as an emerging and challenging superpower or as the embodi-
ment of a Confucian civilizational cluster (see Huntington, 1996, pp. 312-318).
11. My attempt to situate Hans Küng in contemporary world order thinking can be found in Falk
(2001, pp. 123-142).
12. This is the essential undertaking of Held (2004; see Note 9 above); see also Archibugi and
Held (1995).
13. These perspectives are summarized in a series of essays collected in Saul H. Mendlovitz (1975).

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010

 Falk / INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND WORLD ORDER 1589

REFERENCES

Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism.
London: Verso.
Archibugi, D., & Held, D. (Eds.). (1995). Cosmopolitan democracy: An agenda for a new world
order. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Barnett, T. P. M. (2004). The Pentagon’s new map: War and peace in the twenty-first century. New
York: Putnam.
Boot, M. (2002, July 1). George Woodrow Bush: The president is becoming a Wilsonian interven-
tionist. Wall Street Journal, p. A14.
Brzezinski, Z. (2004). The choice: Global domination or global leadership. New York: Basic Books.
Etzioni, A. (2004). From empire to community: A new approach to international relations. New
York: Palgrave.
Falk, R. (2001). Religion and humane global governance. New York: Palgrave.
Falk, R. (2003). The great terror war. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press.
Falk, R. (2004). The declining world order: America neo-imperial foreign policy. New York:
Routledge.
Friedman, T. (1999). The lexus and the olive tree. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Frum, D., & Perle, R. (2003). An end to evil: How to win the war on terror. New York: Random
House.
Garrison, J. (2004). America as empire: Global leader or rogue power. San Francisco: Berrett-
Koehler.
Held, D. (1995). Democracy and global order: From the modern state to cosmopolitan governance.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Held, D. (2004). Global covenant: The social democratic alternative to the Washington consensus.
Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Huntington, S. P. (1993). The class of civilizations? Foreign Affairs, 72(3), 22-49.
Huntington, S. P. (1996). The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. New York:
Simon & Schuster.
Ignatieff, M. (2003, January 5). The American empire: The burden. New York Times Magazine,
p. 22ff.
Ignatieff, M. (2004). The lesser evil: Political ethics in an age of terror. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-
versity Press.
Keck, M., & Sikkink, K. (1998). Activists beyond borders: Advocacy groups in international poli-
tics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Küng, H. (1998). Global ethic for global politics and economics. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Lewis, B. (2002, November 19) The revolt of Islam. The New Yorker, 50-63.
Lewis, B. (2003, January). What went wrong? The Atlantic, 43-45.
Luttwak, E. (2004, November 28). Governing against type. New York Times, p. D11.
Mead, R. W. (2004). Power, terror, peace, and war: America’s grand strategy in a world at risk. New
York: Knopf.
Mendlovitz, S. H. (Ed.). (1975). On the creation of a just world order. New York: Free Press.
Norton, A. (2004). Leo Strauss and the politics of American empire. New Haven, CT: Yale Univer-
sity Press.
Project for a New American Century. (2000, September). Repairing America’s defenses. Washing-
ton, DC: Author.
Slaughter, A. (2004). A new world order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
White House. (September 2002). National security strategy of the United States of America. Wash-
ington, DC: Author.

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010

1590 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

RICHARD FALK is Albert Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus at Princeton

University where he was a member of the faculty for 40 years. Since 2002, he has been a visit-
ing professor in the Global Studies Program of the University of California–Santa Barbara.
His most recent books are The Great Terror War (Olive Branch Press, 2003); The Declining
World Order: America’s Imperial Foreign Policy (Routledge, 2004); and (with Howard
Friel) The Record of the Paper: How the NY Times Misrepresents American Foreign Policy
(Verso, 2004). He is also chair of the board, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and coeditor of
two book series, one devoted to Global Horizons (Routledge) and the other to Islamic Voices
(Rowman & Littlefield).

Downloaded from abs.sagepub.com by Martin Holland on October 9, 2010