"In this timely and important volume, Jurgen Habermas responds to the dramatic political events of the period since September 11, 2001, and maps out a way to move the political agenda forward, beyond the acrimonious debates that have pitched opponents of the war against the Bush Administration and its "coalition of the willing." What is fundamentally at stake, argues Habermas, is the Kantian project of overcoming the state of nature between states through the constitutionalization of international law. Habermas develops a detailed multidimensional model of transnational and supranational governance inspired by Kantian cosmopolitanism, situates it in the context of the evolution of international law toward a cosmopolitan constitutional order during the nineteenth anti twentieth centuries, and defends it against the new challenge posed by the "hegemonic liberal" vision underlying the aggressive unilateralism of the current US administration."--BOOK JACKET.