Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
This order-building project was a remarkable undertaking. It signified the triumph of
American internationalism after earlier post-1919 and interwar failures. It fused new forms
of liberalism, internationalism, great-power politics, and national security. It marked the be-
ginning of the “long peace”—the longest period in modern history without war between the
great powers. It laid the foundation for the greatest economic boom in history. In almost all
important respects, we still live in the world created during these dramatic postwar years of
international order building.
How do we make sense of this order? This is a question both about its character—its fea-
tures and logic—and about how we explain it as a historical-political outcome. What sort of
order is it, as seen in theoretical and historical perspective? If it is best described as a liberal
hegemonic order, what are the bargains and institutions that give it its distinctive logic and
character? Beyond this, why did the United States in fact take the lead in creating such an or-
der? No world power had ever sought to build such an order in the past. What was distinctive
about America—its power, position, and ideas—that engendered this project?
In grappling with these questions, this chapter makes four arguments. First, the United
States led in the creation of a distinctive international order that combined the ordering
mechanisms of balance, command, and consent. This order established governance arrange-
ments—formal and informal—for the states that operated within it and a hierarchical system
of rule, through both rules and relationships. Hierarchy and domination were infused with
consent and the rule of law. Three features in particular gave it a liberal character: public
goods provision, rule-based cooperation, and voice opportunities and diffuse reciprocity.
This is not empire—it is an American-led open-democratic political order.
Second, the American-led postwar order was actually the fusing of two order-building
projects. One was driven by the unfolding Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union, organ-
ized around deterrence, containment, alliances, and the bipolar balance of power. The other
was aimed at creating an open, stable, and managed order among the Western democracies
and was conceived by American officials before the onset of the Cold War—at least as early
as the issuance of the Atlantic Charter in 1941—drawing on and updating liberal internation-
alist ideas. As it emerged, this liberal hegemonic order existed inside the larger bipolar global
system. When the Cold War ended, the inside order became the outside order—that is, its
logic was extended to the larger global system.
Third, the order was not conceived in a singular vision and imposed on the world. It was
cobbled together in a rolling political process. The initial American impulse was to urge
upon other states the creation of a rather straightforward open and rule-based order. But the
complexity of the vision—and of the resulting order itself—increased as the United States
and the other major Western states dealt with an unfolding array of circumstances: the eco-
nomic weakness and political vulnerability of Europe, a rising Soviet threat, the constraints
of domestic politics, and a continuous process of intergovernmental bargaining and institu-
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