This time he tries to recast debates within the Bush administration between hawks and doves as debates between "eagles" (Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) and "owls" (Secretary of State Colin Powell). He contrasts what he calls "Pax Americana" ("a universal peace imposed by American arms; fear's empire founded in right's good name, because it matters not if they hate us as long as they fear us") with what he calls "lex humana" ("universal law rooted in human commonality").
He also contrasts the Bush administration's policy of "preventive war" with what he calls "preventive democracy," which "assumes that the sole long-term defense for the US (as well as other nations around the world) against anarchy, terrorism and violence is democracy itself."
While Barber can be highly persuasive in laying out the dangers of unilateralism and pre-emption, his talk about "preventive democracy" all too often devolves into fuzzy-minded generalities, made all the more confusing since administration hawks (or eagles, as he would have it) are also fond of talking about the exportation of democracy as a means of making the world a kinder, gentler place.
Worse, Barber's talk about "preventive democracy" has a way of slip-sliding into half-baked utopian musings about "global citizenship" and "the newly empowered voice of global opinion," Pollyanna-ish notions that undermine the many more valid points he wants to make in this book.
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