The Rise of the American System - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 132

izations, such as NATO, or in bilateral security pacts, such as the U.S.-Japan alliance. The
leading state's economy is also a source of leadership. Offering market access to the world's
largest domestic market is a tool that the United States can use to influence the policies and
orientations of other states. These states, in turn, experience economic gains through trade
and investment with the United States.
From One-World Order to the American System
The American liberal hegemonic order did not spring full blown at the end of the war. There
was no singular “moment of creation.” There were many moments of creation.
The Roosevelt administration, from the moment it began to plan for peace, wanted to build
a postwar system of open trade that would largely run itself. It would be a reformed “one-
world” global order. 63 But the order that actually took shape in the decades after the war
came to have a more far-reaching and complex logic. It was more Western-centered, mul-
tilayered, and deeply institutionalized than originally anticipated, and it brought the United
States into direct political and economic management of the system. America found itself to
be not just the sponsor and leading participant in a new postwar order—it was also the owner
and operator of it. The vision of liberal order turned into liberal hegemonic order.
Liberal order, the United States discovered, required the ongoing exercise of direction
and control by Washington. Its own economic and political system became, in effect, central
components of the larger liberal hegemonic order. America's domestic market, the U.S. dol-
lar, and the Cold War alliances emerged as critical mechanisms and institutions through
which postwar order was founded and managed. America and the Western liberal order were
fused into one system. The United States established itself at the top of a global political hier-
archy. It had more power and control than it had originally anticipated—but it also was com-
pelled to take on more far-reaching responsibilities. It had more direct power in running the
postwar order, but it was also more tightly bound to the other states within that order. Along
the way, tacit bargains—security, economic, and political—were struck between Washington
and the states that operated within this evolving American-led order.
Ultimately, the United States got both more and less than it wanted in the postwar settle-
ment. It wanted a universal order; it got an American system.
Constructing Economic Relations
In economic affairs, the Roosevelt administration's initial impulse to establish an open trad-
ing system traveled a long diplomatic pathway during the 1940s. As negotiations over post-
war economic rules and institutions proceeded, the character of openness—and America's