In the midst of the Second World War and the 1944 election, it was the example of Abraham Lincoln, “the greatest wartime President in our history,” that Franklin D. Roosevelt evoked when he addressed the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. But fifty-nine years later, as America edges closer to a second Gulf War, it is FDR who provides the best historical example of a wartime president we can learn from.

What makes Roosevelt so relevant, as the Bush administration wavers between unilateralism and multilateralism, is that, from 1937 until his death in 1945, he constantly strove to maintain a policy that, in a time of unprecedented  danger, balanced American self-interest with American commitment to a shared world order.