Wilson’s Ghost

With Wilson’s Ghost, Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight deliver an impassioned plea and a decisive and multi-faceted program for making the 21st century a more peaceful century than the last. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the war that has followed, have made their argument even more imperative. In a provocative synthesis of the pragmatic, historical, and philosophical arguments for avoiding war and achieving a sustainable peace, McNamara and Blight put forth a plan for realizing Woodrow Wilson’s dream. The plan begins with a moral imperative that establishes the reduction of human carnage as a major goal of foreign policy across the globe, and details the necessity of adopting new policies to support that goal.

McNamara and Blight argue that now is the time for a radical approach to reducing the risk of human carnage, and they demonstrate why we cannot afford to fail in this effort.