Geography Reference
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mained at the core of Truman-era liberal internationalism. But there were new understandings
about the dangers and opportunities of economic and security interdependence. The econom-
ic calamities of the 1930s and the successes of New Deal regulation and governance informed
these new views. Advanced societies were seen to be deeply and mutually vulnerable to in-
ternational economic downturns and the bad policies pursued by other states. States would
need to become more involved in more intense and institutionalized forms of joint manage-
ment of the global system. New institutions would be needed in which states worked together
side by side on a continuous basis to regulate and reduce the dangers inherent in increasingly
interdependent societies.
In these ways, the hierarchical character of the order was more liberal than imperial. The
United States engaged in public goods provision, supported and operated within agreed-upon
rules and institutions, and opened itself up to voice opportunities from subordinate states. To
be sure, these liberal features of hierarchy differed across regions and over time. The Un-
ited States was more willing to make multilateral commitments to Western European partners
than to others. In East Asia, the United States built a hub-and-spoke set of security pacts that
made the regional order more client-based than rule-based. Generally speaking, America's
dominant global position made de facto hierarchy an inevitable feature of the postwar order.
But its dominant global position—together with Cold War bipolar competition—also gave
Washington strategic incentives to build cooperative relations with allies, integrate Japan and
Germany, share the spoils of capitalism and modernization, and, generally, operate the sys-
tem in mutually acceptable ways.
1 Melvin P. Leffler, “The Emergence of an American Grand Strategy, 1945-1952,” in Melvin Leffler and Arne
Westad, eds., Cambridge History of the Cold War , vol. 1 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 67-89.
2 The end of World War II marked the culmination of a half century of extraordinary American economic growth.
In 1870, the United States had 8.8 percent of global GNP. In 1913, it had 18.9 percent, and in 1944, its share had
grown to 35 percent. See Angus Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics (Paris: OECD, 2003), 258.
Moreover, the war had left the United States with a extensive worldwide system of bases, airfields, and communic-
ation stations. In 1945, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Strue Hensel estimated that the United States had built 443
bases and other facilities during the war, including 195 in the Pacific, 228 in the Atlantic area, and 11 in the Indi-
an Ocean and Middle East. Robert E. Harkavy, Great Power Competition for Overseas Bases (Oxford: Pergamon,
1982).
3 Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers , 359.
4 Jeffry A. Frieden, Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century (New York: Norton, 2006),
262 5 I make this distinction in “Liberal Order Building,” in Melvyn P. Leffler and Jeffrey W. Legro, eds., To Lead
the World: American Strategy after the Bush Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). It follows from
Arnold Wolfers's classic distinction between “possession” goals and “milieu” goals of states. In Wolfers's render-
ing, possession goals involve a state “aiming at the enhancement or the preservation of one or more of the things to
which it attaches value,” whereas milieu goals involve efforts to change the wider international order, influencing
 
 
 
 
 
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