The Rise of the American System - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 125

Officials at the U.S, State Department were an important source of support for multilat-
eralism. The conference diplomacy of the interwar period provided experience and lessons
for diplomats who were later involved in postwar planning. During the 1920s, the govern-
ments of the United States and European nations engaged in a variety of multilateral efforts
to tackle issues such as disarmament and debt—the Washington Naval Treaties, the Kellogg-
Briand Treaty, and a series of agreements relating to debt and reparations were prominent
outcomes of this post-Versailles multilateralism. 35 The stabilization agreements and peace
initiatives were simply incapable of withstanding the deterioration of economic and political
conditions that led to war. But State Department officials—along with many European coun-
terparts—retained the conviction that multilateral mechanisms of cooperation were essential
for the management of economics and security. As the historian Kenneth Weisbrode notes,
American diplomats engaged in interwar multilateralism “bought into it, claiming credit not
only for its achievements . . . but also for passing it on to their successors, thereby contribut-
ing to the so-called second chance for a liberal world order after 1945.” 36
In the background, American officials also brought lessons from the New Deal to their
vision of an institutionalized postwar order. The heightened role of government during the
downturn of the 1930s was relevant to the wider world economy. Governments would need
to play a more direct supervisory role in stabilizing and managing economic order. Markets
left to their own devices would end in calamity. At the international level, this meant putting
in place regulatory and public-goods mechanisms to guard against economic dysfunction or
failure—and its spread to other countries and regions. 37
This view was embraced by the economic officials who gathered in Bretton Woods in
1944. Governments would need to play a more direct supervisory role in stabilizing and man-
aging economic order. As U.S. Treasury Secretary Harry Dexter White warned in 1942, “a
high degree of economic collaboration among the leading nations” would be needed in the
postwar era to prevent a return to “economic warfare.” 38 The democratic countries would en-
mesh themselves in a dense array of intergovernmental networks and loose rule-based insti-
tutional relationships. They would create permanent governance institutions—ones that they
themselves would dominate—to facilitate the cooperative management of growing realms of
economic and political interdependence. 39
America's identity as a liberal polity organized around the rule of law reinforced its post-
war agenda of building order around multilateral rules and institutions. Liberal principles
of political order within domestic society were relevant to the world of states. As Stewart
Patrick suggests, “One reason that multilateralism was so compelling to the Roosevelt and
Truman administrations was that it resonated with the liberal political culture that forms the
core of American national identity.” 40 In making strategic choices about how to build order,
Washington policy makers drew upon American values and political culture to emphasize