My (outlandish) hope in Capitalism and Christianity, American Style is to help push capitalism closer to the center of political theory and political science. On my reading, a capitalist “axiomatic” binds together labor, capital, growth imperatives, and commodities. But these defining elements are also insufficient. A specific capitalist assemblage simultaneously depends upon, affects, and folds to varying degrees into its institutions other relatively autonomous force fields, including climate change, religious intensities, mutating diseases, scientific research, new political movements, novel financial instruments, compensatory hopes poured into investment and consumption, wars, and security anxieties. Such intersections combine with the intrinsic instability of markets to produce the volatility of capitalism. It, too, is an open system in a world of open systems that invade, energize, and threaten it.

In this book, Graciana Del Castillo draws on theory, her own experiences as senior economist in the Cabinet of the United Nations secretary-general and as an International Monetary Fund staffer, and qualitative case studies to critically reconsider the challenges of postconflict economic reconstruction. The core argument is as follows. Countries making the shift from war to peace face a multipronged transition in the economic, legal, political, social, and security sectors. Given this multifaceted transition, economic reconstruction is fundamentally different from the “development as usual” approach taken by the international community to address typical socioeconomic challenges faced by peaceful developing countries. Instead, economic reconstruction in postconflict countries is a “development plus” challenge, meaning that these countries face the same challenges as other developing countries plus the added challenge of achieving reconciliation and peace. Del Castillo concludes that many post–Cold War reconstruction efforts have failed because of the development as usual approach to reconstruction, a lack of comprehensive planning, insufficient aid and assistance, and the inadequacies of international organizations (e.g., the United Nations and international financial institutions) in dealing with the challenges of reconstruction.

As an academic and editor of a theoretical journal on Austrian economics it is understandable that Christopher J. Coyne fails to grasp what is at stake on the ground. Like Dambisa Momo, Coyne has a dogmatic and unflinching belief in the markets and naively thinks that poor countries coming out war or chaos can do it on their own.

This is a highly readable book that provides strong and rigorous arguments to prove a thesis that is intuitive to many but still denied by some—that the United States foreign policy of using military intervention, occupation, and reconstruction to establish liberal democracies across the world is more likely to fail than to succeed.

I would like to thank Graciana del Castillo for her remarks regarding After War. I will focus my response on what del Castillo finds to be the major shortcoming of my book—the main policy implication. In After War, I conclude that current approaches to reconstruction, which typically rely on military occupation, are more likely to fail than to succeed. This outcome is not due to a lack of planning, effort, or political will, but is instead is the result of the array of incentives and constraints limiting what occupiers and policymakers can rationally design and implement in foreign societies. In considering alternative strategies for exporting the ideas, values, and beliefs underpinning liberal democracy, I argue that the U.S. should assume a default position of military non-intervention and free trade (unilateral if necessary). Del Castillo is sympathetic to this position as a “preventive measure,” but does not seem convinced of its suitability as a primary strategy. For example, she points out that offering trade preferences to the Taliban following 9/11 would hardly have brought liberalism to Afghanistan. I agree. However, I do not think this point undercuts my argument for a default position of free trade and non-intervention. Let me clarify why I believe this to be the case.