All but predicting the September 11 attacks, Pat Buchanan warns that America is inviting terrorist attacks and conflict by engaging in an interventionist foreign policy that is costly, dangerous, and does not serve our own interests.

Anyone who has caught Pat Buchanan's television appearances, or heard his campaign rhetoric, will be surprised at his relatively evenhanded and thoughtful tone as he writes - often quite persuasively - in favor of the restoration of the political, military, and economic independence that largely drove U.S. foreign policy in the 19th century. At the heart of A Republic, Not an Empire is a well-written history of U.S. foreign policy beginning with the end of the American Revolution, going through the First and Second World Wars, Vietnam, and the end of the cold war, up to the superpower's involvement in the Persian Gulf and the former Yugoslavia.