For nearly half a century, Mark Amstutz taught and mentored thousands of students at Wheaton College. For his last set of years, we shared an office wall and, while the soundproofing ensured the privacy of his conversations with students, I never wondered at the subject of those discussions: public service. Though the author of many influential books on topics like ethics and international relations, immigration, and U.S. foreign policy, his greatest legacy is the legion of students he has sent out with the enthusiastic admonition to use their gifts and talents in the public sector for the common good. Indeed, if you wander the halls of Congress or executive agencies or NGOs, you will discover a disproportionate number of Wheaton graduates who followed his advice and pursued their varied vocations of public service. By any measure, Mark should feel vindicated and satisfied, and we should all be grateful.

And yet, it is no news to anyone that the idea of public service finds itself increasingly unattractive. On the right, the Trump administration’s blitzkrieg against what it sees as a bloated, inefficient, and even dishonorable public sector reflects the peculiar combination of long-standing conservative suspicion of bureaucracies with an almost frenzied desire to wield that same bureaucracy for its own, often rather narrow, ends. Public service in this telling is both deeply suspect and deeply alluring. The left’s broad suspicion toward markets has made it traditionally friendlier to public service in the abstract. But two trends have perhaps dampened that enthusiasm as of late: the seemingly widespread embrace of radical critiques of the United States and the corresponding desire for forms of governance that would transcend the nation-state. Public service is great, but only within a particular political valence and with some suspicion about its relation to power, especially the power of the nation-state.

Amstutz’s Building World Order means to buttress his call for Christians in particular to consider public service by pushing back against the suspicions of both left and right, suggesting instead that the nation-state is in fact the best available vehicle for advancing the common good, both domestically and internationally. In one sense, Amstutz’s case rests on the commonsense observation that it is only national states that have the wherewithal and legitimacy to secure effectively the sorts of public goods necessary for peaceful, flourishing societies. The conditions of places where states are ineffective—Yemen and Libya are two that come to mind—certainly lend credence to this claim. So far as he can see, and it seems to me that he is right in this, there just is no substitute for a well-functioning state.

But Amstutz is not some hardheaded Hobbesian realist, content with institutions that merely keep the peace; order is not sufficient, though it is certainly necessary. The preservation of rights and liberties, material well-being, and a shared sense of national community should all represent the highest aims of states, yet cannot be approached by an actor whose sole legitimacy rests on deterring violence and maintaining order. So Amstutz’s realism is a “principled realism” that acknowledges the moral limitations of what politics can accomplish while also recognizing that the ends of politics are always informed by the moral principles that define a nation.

Three elements of Amstutz’s argument here are especially striking. The first is his embrace of what he calls a “beneficent” or “responsible” nationalism. Political communities on his telling are not mere agglomerations of self-interested individuals contracting for their mutual advantage but instead are drawn together by some sense of shared identity. Communities that lack common moral and cultural touchstones have difficulties in sharing resources, committing to public projects, and even just sustaining themselves as communities. For Amstutz, it’s the nation that is best equipped to provide that common identification, even as he acknowledges that national self-identification can (and has!) gone quite wrong at times. But as the old adage goes, unless you really are willing to toss the baby out with the bathwater, there’s no alternative to the nation-state.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—and the response—is telling in both directions here. Putin is clearly motivated by a revanchist Russian nationalism that looks to redress what he sees as the weaknesses of the last 30 years. But Ukraine has mostly managed to stave off Russia’s depredations on account of its own love of nation. Europe’s mixed responses—from the Baltic countries’ enthusiastic support to Hungary’s near-villainy—reflect the relative weakness of “Europe” by comparison. As for the United States, I for one wouldn’t mind a bit more American national pride in being the “indispensable nation” and a lot less of the sour, self-hating nationalism that currently rules the day.

And this is the second striking element of Amstutz’s argument. Contra many, he suggests that it is indeed this “beneficent” or “responsible” nationalism that has the best chance to promote the sort of international cooperation that global problems require. The reason is, I think, pretty straightforward: there isn’t a plausible alternative. If nation-states don’t take it upon themselves to contribute to solutions to climate change or international development or migration, what other institutions will? The U.N.? Unlikely.

With the particular example of climate change, the only way to achieve a meaningful reduction in carbon emissions is for the U.S. and China to significantly decarbonize, and that can only happen if they as sovereign nations choose to do so. There is not now nor is there likely to ever be a supranational body to compel the most powerful nations in the world to act against their own interests, and even if such an organization did exist, it would be tyrannical. Amstutz here seems to me quite correct conceptually, even as it is hard to see exactly how such “responsible” statecraft is in the immediate offing.

Finally, the third striking element is Amstutz’s confident admonitions to Christians that our faith can and should be considered part of the solution to contemporary public challenges rather than a source of problems. Christians have bequeathed to the modern world, sometimes inadvertently, broad commitments to human liberty, equality, the rule of law, and so on. Christians, he insists, have the theological resources to be of help. Actually, it’s a bit more pointed than that: we are obligated to help, for while there may indeed be many ways to love our neighbors, surely helping to construct and sustain good political communities is one of them.

It’s refreshing and indeed encouraging to read such a measured, serious encomium to Christian engagement in public life. There is no haranguing of enemies or apocalyptic laments, just a learned, fair, and even hopeful message from one whose scholarship and teaching have bequeathed much.