Anything Amitai Etzioni writes is worth reading. Considered the father of “communitarianism” — an intellectual trend of the past 15 years that has positioned itself against an “individualism” that could not take account of social obligations and the imperatives of communities — Mr. Etzioni specializes in exploring dilemmas such as individual rights versus social obligations, and civil liberties versus security. He never ducks the hard questions. Mr. Etzioni knows that in political life there are multiple goods that may conflict with one another, especially when the crunch comes. The crunch came for Americans on September 11, 2001.

One doesn’t usually write a book on current affairs unless one is exercised about something and Mr. Etzioni is mightily exercised in “Security First” (Yale University Press, 338 pages, $27). He thinks America has gone off the rails with an excess of democratic enthusiasm; indeed, he pronounces the policy of pushing democratization abroad a failure. Liberal interventionism, he believes, misconstrues matters by equating the spread of democratization with enhanced prospects for peace and security. But democracy, Mr. Etzioni insists, “does not beget security.”

By contrast, Mr. Etzioni’s “Security First” foreign policy — and it should be noted that the architects of the foreign policy Mr. Etzioni opposes would cavil at the suggestion that they have not put security first — would require America to eschew officially any plan to overthrow rogue governments and to ignore relatively “minor” threats. At the same time, his plan would require us to take the lead headfirst in the Rwandas and Darfurs of the world where security needs were, and are, ignored and another of Mr. Etzioni’s first principles, “Primacy of Life,” is violated in systematic and egregious ways. Basic security for all, he claims, does not mean democratic or constitutional regimes for all. The world will resist our attempts to democratize it but happily go along with our efforts to “provide security for one and all.” This is a rather amazing conviction and a formidable challenge: How on earth do you focus on security for all, assuming it is in America’s best interest? And on what grounds can one proffer reassurances that the world will welcome our “security for all efforts” with open arms?

Mr. Etzioni subsumes American national interest under service to the common good of a global community. He construes this as the vehicle to move from a “pragmatic and realistic foreign policy into one that is also principled and legitimate.” At present, American foreign policy suffers from what Mr. Etzioni calls “Multiple Realism Deficiency Disorder,” which invites us to get many important matters backwards. Putting democracy before security is but the most glaring example. But I am hard pressed to think of an American president or administration that put democratic initiatives abroad before American security needs.

What does “Security First” entail? Mr. Etzioni answers: freedom from deadly violence, maiming, and torture. Where is this security lacking? Primarily in failed states, in newly liberated states, and in the Middle East. America knows this empirically but resists the implications of this knowledge. Mr. Etzioni is not alone, of course, in making the observation that it is very difficult to build the institutions of civil society in situations in which people live in fear of random violence. To promote security for all, however, he must pledge to forego coercive regime change.

This is very tricky. What would such a pledge accomplish? The pledge of one administration can readily be overturned by its successor. Pledges haven’t the status of treaties — they are not laws. Might not such a pledge dishearten many domestic opponents of dictatorial regimes? Should America, in the name of either realism or idealism, really signal that we will never use coercion to promote regime change? How do you distinguish efforts to limit violence and the horror perpetrated by rogue regimes from attempts to undermine those regimes? What about undermining from within — that, too, is part of “regime change” over the long haul. Material and moral assistance to dissidents will surely be construed by rogue regimes as an attempt to overthrow them.

Wouldn’t it be better to say that regime change is never a first option; that the primary agents of transformation must be those internal to a country; that all measures short of such a drastic one to stop violations of the sort that Mr. Etzioni marks — Rwanda, Darfur, etc. — will be tried? We didn’t state that regime change was our aim in World War II, but the idea that we should have stopped short of dislodging Hitler is clearly preposterous. That was an extreme case, to be sure, and such cases make not only bad law but lazy argument. But I presume the reader takes the point. Don’t articulate in advance everything you are going to do or not to do. Do not put all your cards on the table, à la Barack Obama when it comes to foreign policy. It’s never a good idea in the sphere of diplomacy and war.

Along the way, Mr. Etzioni offers a controversial discussion of religious belief systems as he rejects the “clash of civilizations” scenario. But he overassimilates Islam, Christianity, and Judaism — each has good and bad bits — and important distinctions are obscured. The upshot of this discussion is Mr. Etzioni’s reassuring insistence that “only relatively small minorities in numerous Muslim nations hold violent beliefs.” Assuming one can trust the polls, this is indeed heartening but scarcely reassuring. It doesn’t take very many people to carry out suicide bombings, blow up subways, fly airplanes into buildings, drive cars turned into gas bombs into airports, and detonate bombs in crowded train stations. What is the upshot of recognizing that we cannot expect majorities in Muslim countries to support our version of rights, especially for women, or our version of religious freedom? That we give no encouragement to human rights groups and women’s groups fomenting dissent internal to countries with Muslim majorities?

Mr. Etzioni believes that the terrorist attacks of September 11 generated a “new global architecture focused on security.” But we have made a mistake in pushing democratization when we should have pushed security first. Here his recommendations get a bit loosey-goosey. Mr. Etzioni speaks of a kind of global council, or parliament, composed of representatives of democratic governments. America would “submit” to this body and that would enhance our legitimacy. (To whom?) Mr. Etzioni assumes that the voice of the U.N. General Assembly will become more “democratically compelling” as more governments are democratized, even without America putting such efforts first. I’m not so sanguine about how things are likely to go. No one can accuse Amitai Etzioni of being a cockeyed optimist: He is too tough-minded for that. But he gets tangled up in too many scenarios and his conclusion is a letdown by contrast to the hard-hitting material featured in much of the rest of the book. What is refreshing is the absence of the vitriol and bad faith that is characteristic of so many current discussions of security and foreign policy matters: that alone makes this book worth reading, though I do not think it is Mr. Etzioni’s most successful effort.

Ms. Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago and holds the Leavey Chair in the Foundations of American Freedom at Georgetown University. Her most recent book is “Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World” (Basic Books).