Toward a New World

Beschrijving van de uitgever

His speeches caused an uproar - and now seem eerily prescient...
"The stakes transcend the case of Iraq alone. Let us look at things lucidly: We are defining a method to resolve crises. We are choosing to define the world we want our children to live in. . . The use of force can arouse rancor and hatred, fuel a clash of identities, of cultures - something that our generation has, precisely, a prime responsibility to avoid."

When France's Dominique de Villepin spoke out in the United Nations in early 2003 against the impending war in Iraq - warning that the US plan for unilateral attack would only lead to devastating and long-lasting chaos - his passionate reasoning and beautifully crafted speeches caused an uproar. . . and won him a large and admiring American audience.

But the rest of the world has long been familiar with the speeches of the scholar, poet, and statesman who has become such a dominant figure in European politics.

Villepin's addresses to the European Union, for example, are some of the most stirring and edifying descriptions yet of that emerging - and, in the US, little examined - economic superpower. He has likewise become renowned for his talks about terrorism, proliferation, the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and the role of the UN.

TOWARD A NEW WORLD collects his most important speeches, interviews, and essays on those topics. But it is more than a primary documentation of critical recent history. Also included are commentaries from some of the world's leading intellectuals, making the book an exciting call to consider—as does Villepin himself - that the tumultuous changes sweeping the globe may yet be cause for hope.