The Rise of the American System - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 128

der would be global and universal, but the most important commitments and core institu-
tions would be established within the West. Walter Lippmann gave voice to this view of the
Western system in 1943: “The Atlantic Ocean is not the frontier between Europe and the
Americas. It is the inland sea of a community of nations allied with one another by geo-
graphy, history, and vital necessity.” 46 The United States and Europe increasingly seemed to
share both a common fate and affinities of value and identity.
The effort to anchor the postwar order in the West was driven by the fact that the newly
established global institutions—the United Nations and Bretton Woods mechanisms—were
insufficient to deal with the practical economic and security problems that emerged after the
war. The rebuilding of European economies and the construction of a security alliance re-
quired intense cooperation across the Atlantic. The sense that America and Europe were im-
periled by a common threat strengthened the feelings of Western solidarity. But the notion of
a Western core to liberal international order also suggested that unusual opportunities exis-
ted—because of a common culture and democratic institutions—to cooperate and build post-
war institutions. This notion of a shared political community came with the expectation that
the actual dealings between the United States and Europe would be based more on consensus
and reciprocity than on the imperial or patron-client exercise of American power. 47
The notion of an Atlantic order was supported by political figures and experts on both
sides of the Atlantic. Ideas of an Atlantic union can be traced to the turn of the century and
a few British and American statesmen and thinkers, such as John Hay, British ambassador
to Washington Lord Bryce, American ambassador to London Walter Hines Page, Admiral
Alfred T. Mahan, and Henry Adams. 48 These ideas resurfaced during and after World War
II, reflecting a variety of convictions: that the failure of the League of Nations revealed the
virtues of a less universal security community and that there was a pressing need to protect
the shared democratic values and institutions that united the Atlantic world. American elites
increasingly saw themselves as part of an Atlantic community, or, as Andrew Johnston ob-
serves, “a state that belongs to a political-economic community of liberal-capitalist states.” 49
There were several layers of shared identity that came into play after the war. One was
the sense of a special Anglo-American bond invoked by Roosevelt and Churchill in the 1941
Atlantic Charter meeting. They identified the principles common to their two countries as the
working principles for the postwar order. “Meeting to consider broad oceanic strategy and
problem of supply,” as one contemporary observer noted, “the seagoing statesmen charted
also a Pax Anglo-Americana, which was, in point of terms, a broadening of the liberal prac-
tice of the Atlantic world—nonaggression, political and economic freedom—into a formula
for wide application when the war is ended.” 50
American officials were also responding to the wider sense of shared Western identity.
The United States saw itself as part of this Western community, which made it easier to make
commitments and anchor postwar architecture within the Atlantic area. In arguing for eco-