Ikenberry - Liberal leviathan: the origins, crisis, and transformation of the American world order

PRINCETON STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL HISTORY AND POLITICS

SERIES EDITORS G. John Ikenberry, Thomas J. Christensen, and Marc Trachtenberg

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Copyright 2011 by Princeton University Press

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Third printing, and first paperback printing, 2012

Paperback ISBN 978-0-691-15617-0

The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows

Ikenberry, G. John.

Liberal leviathan : the origins, crisis, and transformation of the American world order / G. John Ikenberry.

p. cm. (Princeton studies in international history and politics)

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-691-12558-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. United StatesForeign relations21st century. 2. Hegemony, 3. Unipolarity (International relations) I. Title.

E895.I44 2011

327.73009'05dc22

2011001740

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Garamond Premier Pro

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[But who watches the watchers?]

Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347

What I fear more than the strategies of my enemies

is our own mistakes.

Pericles in his funeral oration as recorded by Thucydides

He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered,

though overcome; for he is still an enemy.

Hobbes, Leviathan, conclusion

For my wife Lidia Reiko and our son Jackson Kan

This book is an inquiry into the logic and changing character of liberal international order. Over the last two hundred years, Western democratic states have made repeated efforts to build international order around open and rule-based relations among statesthat is, they have engaged in liberal order building. This liberal project has unfolded amidst other great forces and events that have shaped the modern worldimperialism, revolution, world war, economic boom and bust, nation-building, and globalization. In the second half of the twentieth century, the United States engaged in the most ambitious and far-reaching liberal order building the world had yet seen. The result was a particular type of liberal international ordera liberal hegemonic order. The United States took on the duties of building and running an international order, organizing it around multilateral institutions, alliances, special relationships, and client states. It was a hierarchical political order with liberal characteristics. Defined in terms of the provision of security, wealth creation, and social advancement, this liberal hegemonic order has been, arguably at least, the most successful order in world history. This book offers an account of the origins and inner workings of this far-flung political order.

But in the last decade, this American-led hegemonic order has been troubled. The most obvious crisis in this order occurred during the recent George W. Bush administration as it generated worldwide opposition to its unilateralist tendencies, war on terror grand strategy, and invasion of Iraq. Some observers argue that under Bushs watch, the United States turned itself into an empire. The United States coerced more than it led. For those who trace this imperial turn to the Bush administration, the crisis may now be over. But for those who see imperial tendencies in the unipolar distribution of power that stands behind American foreign policy, the crisis continues. Other observers argue that the problems with the American-led order run deeper. We are witnessing a passing of the American era, a return to multipolarity, and the rise of rival nonliberal order-building projects. In the view of some commentators, it is liberal internationalism itself that is passing away.

This book engages this debate. I argue that the crisis that besets America-led liberal world order is a crisis of authority. A political struggle or contest has been ignited over the distribution of roles, rights, and authority within liberal international order. The hegemonic aspect of liberal orderthat is, Americas role and the old hegemonic bargains that surround itis under pressure. But the deeper logic of open and loosely rule-based international order remains widely embraced. Problems and dilemmas about the organization and operation of liberal international order have mounted in recent years. But the solutions to these problems and dilemmas lead toward the renewal and reorganization of liberal ordernot its overturning.

To get to this argument, I make some distinctions between levelsor layersof international order. It is useful to think of these levels as geological strata. At the deepest level, you have the bedrock of the modern international order: the Westphalian system of sovereign states organized around a group of leading states arrayed in a rough power equilibrium. On this foundation, various sorts of international orders have beenand can beorganized. As I have noted, liberal international order is order that is open and at least loosely rule-based, and as such, it can be contrasted with order that is organized into rival blocs or exclusive regional spheres. But liberal international order itself can be organized in different ways. And in the past decade, its organization through the leadership of a dominant statethe American-led hegemonic orderhas reached a crisis.