The Right to Rule: American Exceptionalism and the Coming Multipolar World Order

In The Right to Rule: American Exceptionalism in a Multipolar World Order, Hugh De Santis explores the evolution of American exceptionalism and its effect on the nation’s relations with the external world. De Santis argues that the self-image of a superior, providential society is based on the myth that the United States is unique rather than a nation with political, economic, and religious values that are inherited from seventeenth-century England. American exceptionalism has underpinned the nation’s foreign policy since its inception, but De Santis shows that it has become an anachronism. In the emerging multipolar world order, America will be one of several powers that determine the structure and rules of international politics rather than its sole arbiter.