Moral Reflections on Foreign Policy in a Religious War

Moral Reflections on Foreign Policy in a Religious War argues that foreign policy thinkers and actors must take religion more seriously than they have in analysis and action. The tragedy of U.S. policy in Iraq is in part due to the dangers of ignoring religious conflicts in that country until it was too late, and then responding too lightly. Working as a philosopher of religion and politics, Stone shows how both in the United States and the Middle East unreflective religion in a dialogic relationship with politics power has proven hazardous. Stone proposes policy changes for the United States based on his analysis and calls for reform in the ways that both politics and religion are understood. Without peace between religions, there will be no peace in the Middle East. Without understanding how religion functions in international politics, the United States is doomed to repeat disastrous policies in the Middle East.

Ronald Stone has done as much, or more, than anyone else to utilize the Christian realism of Reinhold Niebuhr to deal with the conflicts of the twenty-first century. In this book he devotes special and perceptive attention to the role of religion in these conflicts. His helpful insights—historical, political, moral, and theological—deserve careful consideration.

Ronald H. Stone is coeditor of Resistance and Theological Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).