[Independent Institute] Opposing the Crusader State: Alternatives to Global Interventionism, edited by Robert Higgs and Carl Close, examines the history of American noninterventionism and its relevance in today's world. For more than a century U.S. foreign policy—whether conducted by Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives—has been based on the assumption that Americans' interests are served best by intervening abroad to secure open markets for U.S. exports, fight potential enemies far from American shores, or engage in democratic nation building. Before the twentieth century, however, a foreign policy of nonintervention was widely considered more desirable, and Washington’s and Jefferson's advice that the republic avoid foreign entanglements was largely heeded. Arguing that interventionism is not an appropriate “default setting” for U.S. foreign policy, the book’s contributors clarify widespread misunderstandings about noninterventionism, question the wisdom of n