The Rise of the American System - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 124

ern social democracy. This unfolding social bargain allows governments to operate within an
open world economy and simultaneously make good on commitments to manage and protect
domestic social and economic life. 33
What the New Deal and national security liberalism brought to postwar American inter-
nationalism was a wider domestic constituency for liberal order building than in earlier eras.
The desired international order would need to have more features and moving parts. It would
need to be more elaborate and complexly organized. In several senses, the stakes had grown
since the end of World War I—more had to be accomplished, more was at risk if the right
sort of postwar order was not constructed, and more of American society had a stake in a
successful American internationalism project.
Multilateral Institutional Cooperation
In constructing the postwar order, the United States also sought to create new permanent in-
stitutions that would manage a widening array of political, economic, and security relation-
ships. American officials believed that it was not enough simply to open up the system. There
would need to be a variety of international institutions that would bring government officials
together on an ongoing basis to manage economic and political change. New forms of inter-
governmental cooperation would need to be invented. This emphasis was remarkable—never
before had a major state laid out such an expansive agenda for international institution build-
ing.
This American impulse toward institution building was driven by a pragmatic interest in
managing international relations in what officials saw as an emerging era when national solu-
tions to economic stability and national security would not suffice. The country could not
solve its problems alone. It needed new forms of institutionalized cooperation. And the fact
that the United States was so powerful meant that it could dominate these institutions. It could
set the terms for cooperation, and the institutions would for the most part operate in ways
that would be congenial to American interests. The United States would need to make some
concessions in the form of commitments and restraints on its power, but in return, it would
get a stable and cooperative system of postwar order.
The end of the war was a propitious moment for this endeavor. The old arrange-
ments—economic, political, security—were destroyed, and America could step forward to
shape the world according to its wishes. To the extent that these rules and institutions were
agreed upon by other states, the United States would not be drawn into costly efforts to en-
force order through direct forms of domination; to the extent that these rules and institutions
were durable, America was making an investment in its long-term security and welfare. All
these considerations came together to make institution building both a practical necessity and
an enlightened inspiration. 34