Crisis? What crisis? This slender volume is the product of four authors who share a keen scholarly interest in, and frequently write about, Woodrow Wilson and the American foreign policy traditions associated with liberal internationalism. They explore the legacy of the twenty-eighth US president and posit that there are both coherent meanings, and divergent definitions, of Wilsonianism and its conceptual contents. One searches laboriously for a clear explanation of the 'crisis' in the book's title, which should refer to a situation more carefully delineated than the policy forks in the diplomatic road which Barack Obama will face. One key question is this: If the new president were presented with foreign policy recommendations emanating from the controversial (and multi-meaning) Bush Doctrine, would this putative framework for action be sufficiently Wilsonian to proffer a legitimate guide for America's international behaviour? At stake seems to be the nature of the grand strategy of the United States in the twenty-first century.
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