America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism

Lieven contrasts the high idealism of American civic nationalism, the "American Creed"—liberty, constitutionalism, law, democracy, individualism, and the separation of church and state—with current hypernationalistic attitudes that influence both domestic and foreign affairs. His book, Lieven writes,

should in no sense be read as an attack either on a reasonable American nationalism or on the war on terrorism in its original form of a struggle against al Qaeda and its allies. As I shall argue throughout this book, American civic nationalism is a central support of American power and influence in the world, and has tremendously positive lessons to offer to humanity.

Lieven maintains that because American-style free-market liberal democracy has now become ideologically acceptable in most of the world, logically the United States should be "behaving as a conservative hegemon, defending the existing international order and spreading its values by example."
Instead, the George W. Bush administration has attempted to go in the opposite direction. "American power," Lieven writes, "in the service of narrow American...nationalism is an extremely unstable basis for hegemony." Particularly after September 11, when there was a chance to "create a concert of all the world's major states—including Muslim ones—against Islamist revolutionary terrorism," the Bush administration "chose instead to pursue policies which divided the West, further alienated the Muslim world, and exposed America itself to greatly increased danger."