liberals find that position hard to criticize because they take the same stance on trade. This stance is increasingly dangerous. The world needs a stabler international financial order; it needs globalization on fairer terms; and it needs universal rules on the environment and the deployment of child labor (and, in the noneconomic domain, over arms trade and nuclear weapon testing and proliferation).

It is not good enough for the United States to attempt to assert its interests unilaterally in all these areas. It must create and shape a new liberal international consensus, not least in its own self- interest. A world recession induced by a financial calamity will not pass it by. Environmental risk confronts the United States as it does the rest of the world, and the falloutfrom any nuclear explosion has a global impact. But if the United States is to give that lead, its better side has to assert itself and win at home. The battle that American liberals fight against American conservatism is not just for a more generous, just, and equitable vision of the United States; it is for a more generous, just, and equitable vision of the world.