Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America

Christian Century, Dec 12, 2006 by Walter Brueggemann

The book ends on a curious note. On the last two pages the author suggests that stability is both the great goal and the great gift of the U.S., but he does not write with enough candor to note that in his usage stability concerns an economics of privilege that operates to the disadvantage of much of the world. Joffe suggests that the U.S. should "provide a public service," though nothing in the book has prepared us for this notion. He refines the idea with the maxim, "Do good for others in order to do well for yourself," but offers no hint of what "good for others" might be. Then, as if to top this noble rhetoric, he reminds us that the U.S. was conceived as a "cittie upon a hill." This flash of religious idealism, especially with the archaic spelling, ill fits a book that is all about scarcely disguised pursuit of empire.

Reading Uberpower is one way to see in raw form the thinking that propels the policies of unrivaled world dominance. The idealism of the book's last pages might seduce the pious of an uncritical ilk, but among those who have digested some of the thought of Reinhold Niebuhr, Joffe's closing will early little weight. His is a shameless innocence of the most dangerous kind.

Reviewed by Walter Brueggemann, emeritus professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia.