Crisis of the Old Order - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 6

Our most invoked theories of world politics begin with the assumption that the global system
is anarchical—organized around the diffusion and decentralization of power among compet-
ing sovereign states. In other words, our theories tend to focus on the “logic of anarchy.” But
in a global system in which one state is so powerful and a balancing or equilibrium of power
does not obtain, it is necessary to understand the logic of relations between superordinate
and subordinate states. We need, in effect, to illuminate the “logic of hierarchy” that operates
within the system.
I offer a basic distinction between imperial and liberal hegemonic forms of hierarchy.
After this, I explore the ways in which shifts from bipolarity to unipolarity alter the incentives
and forms in which leading states make institutional bargains and agree to operate within
rule-based order. The rise of unipolarity has altered—and to some extent diminished—the in-
centives that the United States has to bind itself to global rules and institutions. But it has not
negated those incentives. To the extent that the United States sees that its unipolar position
of power is or will wane, the incentives to renegotiate postwar hegemonic bargains actually
increase.
Fourth, the liberal ascendancy is not over. It is evolving and there are multiple pathways of
change. There are pressures for the reallocation of authority and leadership within the system.
But there are also constituencies that support a continued—if renegotiated—American hege-
monic role. Various features of the contemporary global system reinforce the continuity of
liberal international order. The disappearance of great-power war removes a classic mechan-
ism for the overturning of order. The growth and sheer geopolitical heft of the world's liberal
democracies creates a certain stability to the existing order. Moreover, liberal international
order—hegemonic or otherwise—tends to be unusually integrative. It is an order that is easy
to join and hard to overturn. Countries such as China and Russia are not fully embedded in
the liberal international order, but they nonetheless profit from its existence. These states may
not soon or ever fully transform into liberal states, but the expansive and integrative logic of
liberal international order creates incentives for them to do so—and it forecloses opportunit-
ies to create alternative global orders.
In the end, it is the United States itself that will be critical in shaping the evolving char-
acter of liberal internationalism. If the United States wants to remain the leading purveyor
of global order, it will need to rediscover and adapt its old strategy of liberal order build-
ing. 6 The United States will need to renegotiate its relationship with the rest of the world
and this will inevitably mean giving up some of the rights and privileges that it has had in
the earlier hegemonic era. In the twentieth century, the United States became a “liberal Le-
viathan.” Indeed, American global authority was built on Hobbesian grounds—that is, other
countries, particularly in Western Europe and later in East Asia, handed the reigns of power
to Washington, just as Hobbes's individuals in the state of nature voluntarily construct and
hand over power to the Leviathan. Today, amidst long-term transformations in power and in-