Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War

by Samuel Moyn

The trouble was, for a long time it had been difficult to imagine the prospect of the United States playing the role of peacemaker. It may have been the state most identified with peace, but that was only because of its refusal to traffic in war outside its hemisphere. Yet there was no denying that by 1914, in spite of its Civil War and resulting late start, America boasted perhaps the richest peace culture of any transatlantic state. In addition to commonalities with Western Europe, the country’s peace culture relied on two distinctive resources. The nation’s unreconstructed Christianity and geographical isolation meant that Americans—especially in the agrarian Midwest—could make up for their lack of exposure to the bloodbaths of European war with a fervency for the cause of peace that Europeans could not always match.