A New Deal for the World: America's Vision for Human Rights by Elizabeth Borgwardt

From the Publisher

In a work of sweeping scope and luminous detail, Elizabeth Borgwardt describes how a cadre of World War II American planners inaugurated the ideas and institutions that underlie our modern international human rights regime.

Borgwardt finds the key in the 1941 Atlantic Charter and its Anglo-American vision of "war and peace aims." In attempting to globalize what U.S. planners heralded as domestic New Deal ideas about security, the ideology of the Atlantic Charter--buttressed by FDR's "Four Freedoms" and the legacies of World War I--redefined human rights and America's vision for the world.

Three sets of international negotiations brought the Atlantic Charter blueprint to life--Bretton Woods, the United Nations, and the Nuremberg trials. These new institutions set up mechanisms to stabilize the international economy, promote collective security, and implement new thinking about international justice. The design of these institutions served as a concrete articulation of U.S. national interests, even as they emphasized the importance of working with allies to achieve common goals. The American architects of these charters were attempting to redefine the idea of security in the international sphere. To varying degrees, these institutions and the debates surrounding them set the foundations for the world we know today.

By analyzing the interaction of ideas, individuals, and institutions that transformed American foreign policy--and Americans' view of themselves--Borgwardt illuminates the broader history of modern human rights, trade and the global economy, collective security, and international law. This book captures a lost vision of the American role in theworld.

Kirsten Sellars - International Affairs

Elizabeth Borgwardt's fascinating book shows how Roosevelt's administration projected the lessons of the New Deal onto a global stage by linking individual security (realized though domestic social welfare programmes) with international security (realized by halting aggression and maintaining peace)...Borgwardt skilfully conveys the light and shade of American politics during the years bracketed between the Atlantic conference and the opening of the Nuremberg trial...Whatever the future may hold, A New Deal for the world stands as a valuable and perceptive account of a unique period of American ascendancy, when a combination of pragmatism and idealism
inspired the nation to play a decisive role in the history of human rights.

Simon Payaslian - Journal of American History

This is an extraordinarily well-written volume, and Borgwardt should be commended for her enormous contribution to the literature on U.S. diplomatic history and international human rights.

Alex Bellamy - Political Studies Review

This beautifully written book sheds new light on the founding moments of post-war international society...[An] excellent and important book.

Debra DeLaet - Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Demonstrates Borgwardt’s familiarity with a wide range of academic disciplines—including political philosophy, international relations, and economics...The strength of her argument is in presenting an official, “top-down” version of the contributions of American foreign policy to the modern international human-rights regime.

Jason Scott Smith - Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

In August 1941, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met off the coast of Newfoundland to discuss the course of World War II and their ideas for the postwar world. This meeting serves as the departure point for Elizabeth Borgwardt's absorbing and passionately argued study...[A New Deal for the World] provides a fascinating chronicle of how diplomatic interactions shaped human rights law, and it challenges its readers to think further about this history's broader significance.

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