The Rise of the American System - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 126

the organizing principles of liberal rule-based relations—openness, nondiscrimination, and
reciprocity.
The United States, as John Ruggie argues, had choices in organizing the postwar order.
Relations could have been built around spheres of influence, autarkic blocs, or an imperial
system. 41 The fact that the United States was the world's most powerful state and possessed
the largest and most competitive economy gave it material incentives to create an open world
system. But the political architecture of openness—the emphasis on a system of multilater-
al rules and institutions—was nonetheless encouraged and reinforced by America's liberal
identity. Roosevelt and Truman shared the view evinced by Woodrow Wilson and others that
the United States was the carrier of universal political ideas and ideals that could help set the
world on a more peaceful and prosperous pathway. 42
Security Binding
Although not initially in America's vision of postwar order, cooperative security—or security
binding—came to be an integral part of the system. Cooperative security is a strategy in
which states tie themselves together in economic and security institutions that mutually con-
strain one another. This was arguably the most important innovation in national security in
the twentieth century. It was manifest in the French decision to build binding ties with Ger-
many. It was also manifest in the binding of Western European countries within a com-
mon economic community and in the simultaneous binding of Western Europe to the United
States within NATO. Rather than balancing against each other as potential security rivals,
these Western states would embed themselves within layers of functional institutions that
would be difficult to break.
For the United States, this strategy meant agreeing to remain in close alliance with other
democratic countries, especially through NATO and the U.S.-Japan alliance. This single se-
curity system would ensure that the democratic great powers would not go back to the dan-
gerous game of strategy rivalry and power politics. It helped, of course, to have an emer-
ging Cold War to generate this cooperative security arrangement. But a security relationship
between the United States and its allies was implicit in other elements of liberal order. A co-
operative security order—embodied in formal alliance institutions—ensured that the power
of the United States would be rendered more predictable and restrained.
Security binding can be seen as an alternative to balancing strategies. Rather than aggreg-
ating power to counterbalance a threatening or powerful state, states act to overcome insec-
urities by tying one another down within a common security institution. By establishing in-
stitutions of mutual constraint, binding reduces the risks and uncertainties associated with
anarchy and unmitigated security competition. It ties potentially threatening states into pre-