ABSTRACT
This chapter contends that mitigating an American-led Orientalism is a matter of urgency. Conveniently for pedagogic purposes, and dangerously with regard to its political and human effects, this Orientalism is presently configured in the crucible of Middle Eastern turmoil. This is not a marginal matter but a core issue if there are to be positive responses to the threats to world order of the early twenty-first century this side of severe catastrophe. Part of the challenge is to redeem the role of international law as a foundation for constructive, inter-civilizational, normative discourse and mutually beneficial international behavior by purging it, as far as possible, of the taint of Orientalism, or at the very least, alerting observers to the Orientalist twists and turns of international law doctrine and practice.1
