To Make and Keep Peace Among Ourselves and with All Nations

Overview

Author Angelo Codevilla asks, What is to be America’s peace? How is it to be won and preserved in our time? He notes that our government’s increasingly unlimited powers flow in part from our statesmen’s inability to stay out of wars or to win them and that our statesmen and academics have ceased to think about such things. The purpose of this book is to rekindle such thoughts. The author reestablishes early American statecraft’s understanding of peace—what it takes to make it and what it takes to keep it. He reminds Americans why our founding generation placed the pursuit of peace ahead of all other objectives; he shows how they tried to keep the peace by drawing sharp lines between America’s business and that of others, as well as between peace and war. He shows how our 20th-century statesmen confused peace and war as well as America’s affairs with that of mankind’s. The result, he shows, has been endless war abroad and spiraling strife among Americans. Codevilla provides intellectual guidelines for recovering the pursuit of peace as the guiding principle by which the American people and statesmen may navigate domestic as well as international affairs.

Reviews

"[T]he writing is clear and reveals that it is well researched, making the content credible and sensible, with a balance of both idealism and reality. Codevilla's expertise in international relations shows in his attention to detail and sound logic. He handles controversial topics calmly and methodically. To Make and Keep Peace equips peace-hungry people with the motivation from and wisdom of history." —Melissa Wuske, Foreword Reviews

Author Biography

Angelo M. Codevilla (1943–2021), formerly a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, was a professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University. He was a Foreign Service officer and served on the Senate Intelligence Committee as well as on presidential transition teams. He is the author of, among others, Advice to War Presidents, Informing Statecraft, The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It, and A Student's Guide to International Relations. His articles have appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, as well as in Commentary, Foreign Affairs, and the Claremont Review of Books.