The Future of the Liberal World

You are required to critically analyse the following article by Professor John
Ikenberry published in Foreign Affairs, 90(3), “The Future of the Liberal World
Order: Internationalism After America”, 2011.
1. Read the article carefully and begin to analyse it. Take down notes on the
key points that you find interesting and you would like to address in your
essay. It is okay just to focus on two or three points, especially given that
this not a very long essay.
2. Once you have chosen your key points, then read extensively on them so
that you have a solid argument. In additional to academic papers and
books, you could also consult other sources including newspapers, NGO
papers and papers from different international organisations. However,
your primary sources should be academic ones.
3. As a postgraduate student you can ask the library to order any article from
a journal that Monash University does not subscribe to. However
remember this could take some time.
4. You then need to design an essay plan. The questions you need to ask
yourself are as follows: (These questions are for your benefit only (to help
you plan your essay and you do not need to include your design in your
essay).
a. What are main points the author makes in his article?
b. Does the author’s argument have merit?
c. What is my line of argument and why?
d. What are the two or three main points that I will make in my essay?
e. How will I structure my essay so that it flows smoothly?
f. What examples will I use to make my case?
5. While formulating your answer please note the following:
a. This essay is designed to build your research and analytical skills. It
is not enough to read widely on the issue and then present the
material in an essay form. You have to demonstrate your ability
to critically analyse the issue using strong pertinent examples.
b. What you are NOT required to do is summarise the arguments put
forward by Professor Ikenberry in his Foreign Affairs article. Your
argument must be uniquely your own.
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c. You need to adequately cover the theory on the specific question
asked. There are many theories out there and you need to be able
to demonstrate that you have understood these as well as explain
what you think about them.
d. Please make sure that your essay is based on your own work.
While lectures and lecture slides provide you with an important
starting point, please do not regurgitate lecture material.
6. You are required to use an essay-writing format. As much as possible
avoid using dot points. Work submitted for this assessment must follow the
Faculty Style as outlined in the Faculty Q Manual. Copies of this Manual
can be obtained at the bookshop or on line at URL:
http://www.buseco.monash.edu.au/publications/qmanual/
7. Your essay structure should be as follows:
a. Introduction: You need to write a strong introduction which clearly
outlines your line of argument and explains how your essay is
structured.
b. Analysis: This section will constitute the bulk of the writing and you
may use sub-headings within this section to help organise the
argument.
c. Conclusion: You need to write a paragraph which draws out the
conclusions you are making, and any particular policyrecommendations
you might suggest.
8. References: Set out references in the appropriate manner. Remember,
you must provide in-text references, with the author(s) name, date of
publication and page number as well as a bibliography at the end. Work
should be properly referenced and there should be no missing references.
Cross check your work carefully.
9. Faculty Style Guide
Please use the Harvard style. I will email the style guide to you.
10. Plagiarism
The Faculty has very strict procedures to deal with cases of plagiarism.
See: http://www.buseco.monash.edu.au/esg/agu/policies/archive/collusncollabn-
palgrsm.html
Please make sure that you understand clearly what plagiarism is and the
Faculty procedures on plagiarism.
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SUBMISSION DETAILS
11. Soft Copy via turnitin
You are required to submit one document by the due date and time in
electronic format via turnitin. The submission login can be found on Moodle.
The document you submit through should be entitled as follows:
Last Name First Name followed by 2. For example, the document for Jagjit
Plahe would be entitled Plahe Jagjit 2. This is important.
You will be penalised if over 15% of your essay is not written in your
own words even if your work is properly referenced. You MUST write in
your own words.
Remember stringing together quotes from various sources (even if you
carefully reference them) does not constitute writing an essay. Plagiarism will
be picked up by turnitin and the software will list in detail the sources from
which the material is sourced.
12. Return of Grades
Students will receive a feedback sheet for their assignments approximately 3
weeks after submission.
13. Penalties for Late Lodgement
A maximum penalty of 5% of the total mark allocated to this assessment will
be deducted for each day that it is late.
With kind regards,
Jagjit Plahe
May 2015.
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MGF5722 Table 1: MARKING CRITERIA FOR TAKE HOME EXAM
Very poor Average Good Very
Good
Excellent
1. Introduction
2. Review of relevant literature
! Use of scholarly literature
! Use of other literature
3. Analysis and critical thinking
! A demonstrated understanding of
the international system and in
particular of the influence of
emerging economies in a globalising
world
! A demonstrated ability to develop a
strong and clear written argument
using appropriate examples
• Critical analysis
4. Essay Structure and flow
! Essay structure
! Presentation, organisation and flow
! Grammar, punctuation and spelling
! Appropriate word length
! Conclusion derived from a strong
argument
5. Use of References
! References cited are relevant to the
chosen topic
! Accurate text citation of references
as per the Harvard style
Comments
Grade

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Report Information from ProQuest
16 May 2015 04:28
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16 May 2015 ProQuest
Table of contents
1. The Future of the Liberal World Order: Internationalism After America………………………………………………. 1
16 May 2015 ii ProQuest
Document 1 of 1
The Future of the Liberal World Order: Internationalism After America
Author: Ikenberry, G John
ProQuest document link
Abstract: There is no longer any question: wealth and power are moving from the North and the West to the
East and the South, and the old order dominated by the US and Europe is giving way to one increasingly
shared with non-Western rising states. Some anxious observers argue that the world will not just look less
American — it will also look less liberal. Not only is the US’ preeminence passing away, they say, but so, too, is
the open and rule-based international order that the country has championed since the 1940s. Meanwhile, there
is no competing global organizing logic to liberal internationalism. An alternative, illiberal order — a “Beijing
model” — would presumably be organized around exclusive blocs, spheres of influence, and mercantilist
networks. Pronouncements of American decline miss the real transformation under way today. What is
occurring is not American decline but a dynamic process in which other states are catching up and growing
more connected. In an open and rule-based international order, this is what happens.
Links: Linking Service
Full text: There is no longer any question: wealth and power are moving from the North and the West to the
East and the South, and the old order dominated by the United States and Europe is giving way to one
increasingly shared with non-Western rising states. But if the great wheel of power is turning, what kind of global
political order will emerge in the aftermath?
Some anxious observers argue that the world will not just look less American-it will also look less liberal. Not
only is the United States’ preeminence passing away, they say, but so, too, is the open and rule-based
international order that the country has championed since the 1940s. In this view, newly powerful states are
beginning to advance their own ideas and agendas for global order, and a weakened United States will find it
harder to defend the old system. The hallmarks of liberal internationalism-openness and rule-based relations
enshrined in institutions such as the United Nations and norms such as multilateralism-could give way to a more
contested and fragmented system of blocs, spheres of influence, mercantilist networks, and regional rivalries.
The fact that today’s rising states are mostly large non-Western developing countries gives force to this
narrative. The old liberal international order was designed and built in the West. Brazil, China, India, and other
fast-emerging states have a different set of cultural, political, and economic experiences, and they see the world
through their anti-imperial and anticolonial pasts. Still grappling with basic problems of development, they do not
share the concerns of the advanced capitalist societies. The recent global economic slowdown has also
bolstered this narrative of liberal international decline. Beginning in the United States, the crisis has tarnished
the American model of liberal capitalism and raised new doubts about the ability of the United States to act as
the global economic leader.
For all these reasons, many observers have concluded that world politics is experiencing not just a changing of
the guard but also a transition in the ideas and principles that underlie the global order.The journalist Gideon
Rachman, for example, says that a cluster of liberal internationalist ideas-such as faith in democratization,
confidence in free markets, and the acceptability of U.S. military power-are all being called into
question.According to this worldview, the future of international order will be shaped above all by China, which
will use its growing power and wealth to push world politics in an illiberal direction. Pointing out that China and
other non-Western states have weathered the recent financial crisis better than their Western counterparts,
pessimists argue that an authoritarian capitalist alternative to Western neoliberal ideas has already emerged.
According to the scholar Stefan Halper, emerging-market states “are learning to combine market economics
16 May 2015 Page 1 of 8 ProQuest
with traditional autocratic or semiautocratic politics in a process that signals an intellectual rejection of the
Western economic model.”
But this panicked narrative misses a deeper reality: although the United States’ position in the global system is
changing, the liberal international order is alive and well. The struggle over international order today is not about
fundamental principles. China and other emerging great powers do not want to contest the basic rules and
principles of the liberal international order; they wish to gain more authority and leadership within it.
Indeed, today’s power transition represents not the defeat of the liberal order but its ultimate ascendance.Brazil,
China, and India have all become more prosperous and capable by operating inside the existing international
order-benefiting from its rules, practices, and institutions, including the World Trade Organization (wto) and the
newly organized g-20.Their economic success and growing influence are tied to the liberal internationalist
organization of world politics, and they have deep interests in preserving that system.
In the meantime, alternatives to an open and rule-based order have yet to crystallize. Even though the last
decade has brought remarkable upheavals in the global system-the emergence of new powers, bitter disputes
among Western allies over the United States’ unipolar ambitions, and a global financial crisis and recession-the
liberal international order has no competitors. On the contrary, the rise of non-Western powers and the growth
of economic and security interdependence are creating new constituencies for it.
To be sure, as wealth and power become less concentrated in the United States’ hands, the country will be less
able to shape world politics. But the underlying foundations of the liberal international order will survive and
thrive. Indeed, now may be the best time for the United States and its democratic partners to update the liberal
order for a new era, ensuring that it continues to provide the benefits of security and prosperity that it has
provided since the middle of the twentieth century.
THE LIBERAL ASCENDANCY
China and the other emerging powers do not face simply an American-led order or a Western system. They
face a broader international order that is the product of centuries of struggle and innovation. It is highly
developed, expansive, integrated, institutionalized, and deeply rooted in the societies and economies of both
advanced capitalist states and developing states. And over the last half century, this order has been unusually
capable of assimilating rising powers and reconciling political and cultural diversity.
Today’s international order is the product of two order-building projects that began centuries ago. One is the
creation and expansion of the modern state system, a project dating back to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.
In the years since then, the project has promulgated rules and principles associated with state sovereignty and
norms of great-power conduct. The other project is the construction of the liberal order, which over the last two
centuries was led by the United Kingdom and the United States and which in the twentieth century was aided by
the rise of liberal democratic states. The two projects have worked together. The Westphalian project has
focused on solving the “realist” problems of creating stable and cooperative interstate relations under conditions
of anarchy, and the liberal-order-building project has been possible only when relations between the great
powers have been stabilized. The “problems of Hobbes,” that is, anarchy and power insecurities, have had to
be solved in order to take advantage of the “opportunities of Locke,” that is, the construction of open and rulebased
relations.
At the heart of the Westphalian project is the notion of state sovereignty and great-power relations. The original
principles of the Westphalian system-sovereignty, territorial integrity, and nonintervention-reflected an emerging
consensus that states were the rightful political units for the establishment of legitimate rule. Founded in
western Europe, the Westphalian system has expanded outward to encompass the entire globe. New norms
and principles-such as self-determination and mutual recognition among sovereign states-have evolved within
it, further reinforcing the primacy of states and state authority. Under the banners of sovereignty and selfdetermination,
political movements for decolonization and independence were set in motion in the non-Western
developing world, coming to fruition in the decades after World War II. Westphalian norms have been violated
16 May 2015 Page 2 of 8 ProQuest
and ignored, but they have, nonetheless, been the most salient and agreed-on parts of the international order.
A succession of postwar settlements-Vienna in 1815,Versailles in 1919, Yalta and Potsdam in 1945, and the
U.S., Soviet, and European negotiations that ended the Cold War and reunified Germany in the early 1990sallowed
the great powers to update the principles and practices of their relations. Through war and settlement,
the great powers learned how to operate within a multipolar balance-of-power system. Over time, the order has
remained a decentralized system in which major states compete and balance against one another. But it has
also evolved. The great powers have developed principles and practices of restraint and accommodation that
have served their interests.The Congress of Vienna in 1815, where post-Napoleonic France was returned to the
great-power club and a congress system was established to manage conflicts, and the un Security Council
today, which has provided a site for great-power consultations, are emblematic of these efforts to create rules
and mechanisms that reinforce restraint and accommodation.
The project of constructing a liberal order built on this evolving system of Westphalian relations. In the
nineteenth century, liberal internationalism was manifest in the United Kingdom’s championing of free trade and
the freedom of the seas, but it was limited and coexisted with imperialism and colonialism. In the twentieth
century, the United States advanced the liberal order in several phases. After World War I,President Woodrow
Wilson and other liberals pushed for an international order organized around a global collective-security body,
the League of Nations, in which states would act together to uphold a system of territorial peace. Open trade,
national self-determination, and a belief in progressive global change also undergirded the Wilsonian worldviewa
“one world” vision of nation-states that would trade and interact in a multilateral system of laws. But in the
interwar period of closed economic systems and imperial blocs, this experiment in liberal order collapsed.
After World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration tried to construct a liberal order again,
embracing a vision of an open trading system and a global organization in which the great powers would
cooperate to keep the peace-the United Nations. Drawing lessons from Wilson’s failure and incorporating ideas
from the New Deal, American architects of the postwar order also advanced more ambitious ideas about
economic and political cooperation, which were embodied in the Bretton Woods institutions.This vision was
originally global in spirit and scope, but it evolved into a more American-led and Western-centered system as a
result of the weakness of postwar Europe and rising tensions with the Soviet Union. As the Cold War unfolded,
the United States took command of the system, adopting new commitments and functional roles in both security
and economics. Its own economic and political system became, in effect, the central component of the larger
liberal hegemonic order.
Another development of liberal internationalism was quietly launched after World War II, although it took root
more slowly and competed with aspects of the Westphalian system.This was the elaboration of the universal
rights of man, enshrined in the un and its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A steady stream of
conventions and treaties followed that together constitute an extraordinary vision of rights, individuals,
sovereignty, and global order. In the decades since the end of the Cold War, notions of “the responsibility to
protect” have given the international community legal rights and obligations to intervene in the affairs of
sovereign states.
Seen in this light, the modern international order is not really American or Western-even if, for historical
reasons, it initially appeared that way. It is something much wider. In the decades after World War II, the United
States stepped forward as the hegemonic leader, taking on the privileges and responsibilities of organizing and
running the system. It presided over a far-flung international order organized around multilateral institutions,
alliances, special relationships, and client states-a hierarchical order with liberal characteristics.
But now, as this hegemonic organization of the liberal international order starts to change, the hierarchical
aspects are fading while the liberal aspects persist. So even as China and other rising states try to contest U.S.
leadership-and there is indeed a struggle over the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of the leading states
within the system-the deeper international order remains intact. Rising powers are finding incentives and
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opportunities to engage and integrate into this order, doing so to advance their own interests. For these states,
the road to modernity runs through-not away from-the existing international order.
JOINING THE CLUB
The liberal international order is not just a collection of liberal democratic states but an international mutual-aid
society-a sort of global political club that provides members with tools for economic and political advancement.
Participants in the order gain trading opportunities, dispute-resolution mechanisms, frameworks for collective
action, regulatory agreements, allied security guarantees, and resources in times of crisis. And just as there are
a variety of reasons why rising states will embrace the liberal international order, there are powerful obstacles to
opponents who would seek to overturn it.
To begin with, rising states have deep interests in an open and rule-based system. Openness gives them
access to other societies- for trade, investment, and knowledge sharing. Without the unrestricted investment
from the United States and Europe of the past several decades, for instance, China and the other rising states
would be on a much slower developmental path. As these countries grow, they will encounter protectionist and
discriminatory reactions from slower-growing countries threatened with the loss of jobs and markets. As a result,
the rising states will find the rules and institutions that uphold nondiscrimination and equal access to be critical.
The World Trade Organization-the most formal and developed institution of the liberal international orderenshrines
these rules and norms, and rising states have been eager to join the wto and gain the rights and
protections it affords. China is already deeply enmeshed in the global trading system, with a remarkable 40
percent of its gnp composed of exports-25 percent of which go to the United States.
China could be drawn further into the liberal order through its desire to have the yuan become an international
currency rivaling the U.S. dollar. Aside from conferring prestige, this feat could also stabilize China’s exchange
rate and grant Chinese leaders autonomy in setting macroeconomic policy. But if China wants to make the yuan
a global currency, it will need to loosen its currency controls and strengthen its domestic financial rules and
institutions. As Barry Eichengreen and other economic historians have noted, the U.S. dollar assumed its
international role after World War II not only because the U.S. economy was large but also because the United
States had highly developed financial markets and domestic institutions-economic and political-that were stable,
open, and grounded in the rule of law. China will feel pressures to establish these same institutional
preconditions if it wants the benefits of a global currency.
Internationalist-oriented elites in Brazil, China, India, and elsewhere are growing in influence within their
societies, creating an expanding global constituency for an open and rule-based international order. These
elites were not party to the grand bargains that lay behind the founding of the liberal order in the early postwar
decades, and they are seeking to renegotiate their countries’ positions within the system. But they are
nonetheless embracing the rules and institutions of the old order. They want the protections and rights that
come from the international order’s Westphalian defense of sovereignty. They care about great-power authority.
They want the protections and rights relating to trade and investment. And they want to use the rules and
institutions of liberal internationalism as platforms to project their influence and acquire legitimacy at home and
abroad. The un Security Council, the g-20, the governing bodies of the Bretton Woods institutions-these are all
stages on which rising non-Western states can acquire great-power authority and exercise global leadership.
NO OTHER ORDER
Meanwhile, there is no competing global organizing logic to liberal internationalism. An alternative, illiberal
order-a “Beijing model”-would presumably be organized around exclusive blocs, spheres of influence, and
mercantilist networks. It would be less open and rule-based, and it would be dominated by an array of statetostate
ties. But on a global scale, such a system would not advance the interests of any of the major states,
including China. The Beijing model only works when one or a few states opportunistically exploit an open
system of markets. But if everyone does, it is no longer an open system but a fragmented, mercantilist, and
protectionist complex- and everyone suffers.
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It is possible that China could nonetheless move in this direction. This is a future in which China is not a fullblown
illiberal hegemon that reorganizes the global rules and institutions. It is simply a spoiler. It attempts to
operate both inside and outside the liberal international order. In this case, China would be successful enough
with its authoritarian model of development to resist the pressures to liberalize and democratize. But if the rest
of the world does not gravitate toward this model, China will find itself subjected to pressure to play by the rules.
This dynamic was on display in February 2011, when Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff joined U.S. Treasury
Secretary Timothy Geithner in expressing concern over China’s currency policy. China can free-ride on the
liberal international order, but it will pay the costs of doing so-and it will still not be able to impose its illiberal
vision on the world.
In the background, meanwhile, democracy and the rule of law are still the hallmarks of modernity and the global
standard for legitimate governance. Although it is true that the spread of democracy has stalled in recent years
and that authoritarian China has performed well in the recent economic crisis, there is little evidence that
authoritarian states can become truly advanced societies without moving in a liberal democratic direction. The
legitimacy of one-party rule within China rests more on the state’s ability to deliver economic growth and full
employment than on authoritarian-let alone communist-political principles. Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean
intellectual who has championed China’s rise, admits that “China cannot succeed in its goal of becoming a
modern developed society until it can take the leap and allow the Chinese people to choose their own rulers.”
No one knows how far or fast democratic reforms will unfold in China, but a growing middle class, business
elites, and human rights groups will exert pressure for them. The Chinese government certainly appears to
worry about the long-term preservation of one-party rule, and in the wake of the ongoing revolts against Arab
authoritarian regimes, it has tried harder to prevent student gatherings and control foreign journalists.
Outside China, democracy has become a near-universal ideal. As the economist Amartya Sen has noted,
“While democracy is not yet universally practiced, nor indeed universally accepted, in the general climate of
world opinion democratic governance has achieved the status of being taken to be generally right.” All the
leading institutions of the global system enshrine democracy as the proper and just form of governance-and no
competing political ideals even lurk on the sidelines.
The recent global economic downturn was the first great postwar economic upheaval that emerged from the
United States, raising doubts about an American-led world economy and Washington’s particular brand of
economics. The doctrines of neoliberalism and market fundamentalism have been discredited, particularly
among the emerging economies. But liberal internationalism is not the same as neoliberalism or market
fundamentalism. The liberal internationalism that the United States articulated in the 1940s entailed a more
holistic set of ideas about markets, openness, and social stability. It was an attempt to construct an open world
economy and reconcile it with social welfare and employment stability. Sustained domestic support for
openness, postwar leaders knew, would be possible only if countries also established social protections and
regulations that safeguarded economic stability.
Indeed, the notions of national security and economic security emerged together in the 1940s, reflecting New
Deal and World War II thinking about how liberal democracies would be rendered safe and stable. The Atlantic
Charter, announced by Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in 1941, and the Bretton Woods agreements of 1944
were early efforts to articulate a vision of economic openness and social stability. The United States would do
well to try to reach back and rearticulate this view. The world is not rejecting openness and markets; it is asking
for a more expansive notion of stability and economic security.
REASON FOR REASSURANCE
Rising powers will discover another reason to embrace the existing global rules and institutions: doing so will
reassure their neighbors as they grow more powerful. A stronger China will make neighboring states potentially
less secure, especially if it acts aggressively and exhibits revisionist ambitions.Since this will trigger a balancing
backlash, Beijing has incentives to signal restraint. It will find ways to do so by participating in various regional
16 May 2015 Page 5 of 8 ProQuest
and global institutions. If China hopes to convince its neighbors that it has embarked on a “peaceful rise,” it will
need to become more integrated into the international order.
China has already experienced a taste of such a backlash.Last year, its military made a series of provocative
moves-including naval exercises-in the South China Sea, actions taken to support the government’s claims to
sovereign rights over contested islands and waters. Many of the countries disputing China’s claims joined with
the United States at the Regional Forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (asean) in July to reject
Chinese bullying and reaffirm open access to Asia’s waters and respect for international law. In September, a
Chinese fishing trawler operating near islands administered by Japan in the East China Sea rammed into two
Japanese coast guard ships. After Japanese authorities detained the trawler’s crew, China responded with what
one Japanese journalist described as a “diplomatic ‘shock and awe’ campaign,” suspending ministerial-level
contacts, demanding an apology, detaining several Japanese workers in China, and instituting a de facto ban
on exports of rare-earth minerals to Japan. These actions-seen as manifestations of a more bellicose and
aggressive foreign policy-pushed asean, Japan, and South Korea perceptibly closer to the United States.
As China’s economic and military power grow, its neighbors will only become more worried about Chinese
aggressiveness, and so Beijing will have reason to allay their fears. Of course, it might be that some elites in
China are not interested in practicing restraint. But to the extent that China is interested in doing so, it will find
itself needing to signal peaceful intentions-redoubling its participation in existing institutions, such as the asean
Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit, or working with the other great powers in the region to build new
ones. This is, of course, precisely what the United States did in the decades after World War II. The country
operated within layers of regional and global economic, political, and security institutions and constructed new
ones-thereby making itself more predictable and approachable and reducing the incentives for other states to
undermine it by building countervailing coalitions.
More generally, given the emerging problems of the twenty-first century, there will be growing incentives among
all the great powers to embrace an open, rule-based international system. In a world of rising economic and
security interdependence, the costs of not following multilateral rules and not forging cooperative ties go up.As
the global economic system becomes more interdependent, all states- even large, powerful ones-will find it
harder to ensure prosperity on their own.
Growing interdependence in the realm of security is also creating a demand for multilateral rules and
institutions. Both the established and the rising great powers are threatened less by mass armies marching
across borders than by transnational dangers, such as terrorism, climate change, and pandemic disease.What
goes on in one country- radicalism, carbon emissions, or public health failures-can increasingly harm another
country.
Intensifying economic and security interdependence are giving the United States and other powerful countries
reason to seek new and more extensive forms of multilateral cooperation. Even now, as the United States
engages China and other rising states, the agenda includes expanded cooperation in areas such as clean
energy, environmental protection, nonproliferation, and global economic governance. The old and rising powers
may disagree on how exactly this cooperation should proceed, but they all have reasons to avoid a breakdown
in the multilateral order itself. So they will increasingly experiment with new and more extensive forms of liberal
internationalism.
TIME FOR RENEWAL
Pronouncements of American decline miss the real transformation under way today.What is occurring is not
American decline but a dynamic process in which other states are catching up and growing more connected. In
an open and rule-based international order, this is what happens. If the architects of the postwar liberal order
were alive to see today’s system, they would think that their vision had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Markets and democracy have spread. Societies outside the West are trading and growing. The United States
has more alliance partners today than it did during the Cold War. Rival hegemonic states with revisionist and
16 May 2015 Page 6 of 8 ProQuest
illiberal agendas have been pushed off the global stage. It is difficult to read these world-historical developments
as a story of American decline and liberal unraveling.
In a way, however, the liberal international order has sown the seeds of its own discontent, since, paradoxically,
the challenges facing it now-the rise of non-Western states and new transnational threats- are artifacts of its
success. But the solutions to these problems- integrating rising powers and tackling problems cooperatively-will
lead the order’s old guardians and new stakeholders to an agenda of renewal. The coming divide in world
politics will not be between the United States (and the West) and the non-Western rising states. Rather, the
struggle will be between those who want to renew and expand today’s system of multilateral governance
arrangements and those who want to move to a less cooperative order built on spheres of influence.These fault
lines do not map onto geography, nor do they split the West and the non-West. There are passionate
champions of the un, the wto, and a rule-based international order in Asia, and there are isolationist,
protectionist, and anti-internationalist factions in the West.
The liberal international order has succeeded over the decades because its rules and institutions have not just
enshrined open trade and free markets but also provided tools for governments to manage economic and
security interdependence. The agenda for the renewal of the liberal international order should be driven by this
same imperative: to reinforce the capacities of national governments to govern and achieve their economic and
security goals.
As the hegemonic organization of the liberal international order slowly gives way, more states will have authority
and status. But this will still be a world that the United States wants to inhabit. A wider array of states will share
the burdens of global economic and political governance, and with its worldwide system of alliances, the United
States will remain at the center of the global system. Rising states do not just grow more powerful on the global
stage; they grow more powerful within their regions, and this creates its own set of worries and insecuritieswhich
is why states will continue to look to Washington for security and partnership. In this new age of
international order, the United States will not be able to rule. But it can still lead.
Sidebar
Today’s international order is not really American or Western- even if it initially appeared that way.
Democracy and the rule of law are still the hallmarks of modernity and the global standard for legitimate
governance.
Paradoxically, the challenges facing the liberal world order now are artifacts of its success.
AuthorAffiliation
G. JOHN IKENBERRY is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University
and the author of Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order
(Princeton University Press, 2011), from which this essay is adapted.
Subject: Power; Developing countries–LDCs; Globalization; Liberalism;
Location: United States–US
Classification: 9190: United States; 1210: Politics & political behavior
Publication title: Foreign Affairs
Volume: 90
Issue: 3
Pages: 56-68
Number of pages: 13
Publication year: 2011
16 May 2015 Page 7 of 8 ProQuest
Publication date: May/Jun 2011
Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations NY
Place of publication: New York
Country of publication: United Kingdom
Publication subject: Political Science–International Relations
ISSN: 00157120
CODEN: FRNAA3
Source type: Scholarly Journals
Language of publication: English
Document type: Feature
ProQuest document ID: 863517044
Document URL: http://search.proquest.com/docview/863517044?accountid=12528
Copyright: Copyright Council on Foreign Relations NY May/Jun 2011
Last updated: 2011-04-28

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