Dilemmas and Pathways of Liberal International Order - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 218

ited States will increasingly need to reconcile itself to a post-hegemonic world. But if other
countries do, in fact, value security protection, the United States will have more opportunities
to negotiate a modified hegemonic system.
A final variable is the degree of divergence among the leading states in their visions of
global governance. Europe is clearly more interested in moving to a post-American liberal
internationalism than the Chinese—at least to the extent that this entails further reductions in
Westphalian sovereignty. But the question really is whether non-Western countries such as
China and India will seek to use their rising power to usher in a substantially different sort
of international order. 44 One possibility is that they are not as inclined to embrace the open,
rule-based logic of liberal internationalism, hegemonic or otherwise. 45 But another possibil-
ity is that they actually see that their interests are well served within a liberal international
order. 46 If this second possibility is the case, the character of the negotiations on movement
away from American-led liberal hegemonic internationalism will be focused more on parti-
cipation and the sharing of authority—and less on shifts in the substantive principles of lib-
eral order.
American Incentives for Liberal International Order
The United States will remain the dominant state in the global system for several decades
to come. As such, its strategic orientation toward the logic and organization of the system
will shape decisively what comes next. So what are its underlying interests and incentives
in the maintenance of an open, rule-based international order? The United States might want
simply to hold on to the old order. It was, after all, one of the great beneficiaries of that order,
occupying its center, with all the authority and privileges that conveyed. But if the mainten-
ance of the old hegemonic order is not possible, the United States will want to help shape a
follow-on order that retains its open and rule-based character. It will surely struggle over how
authority, sovereignty, hierarchy, and institutions are arrayed within the order. But it will also
seek to preserve the order's underlying liberal features. The Bush administration's efforts to
transform the system into a unipolar security order in which the United States disentangled
itself from multilateral rules and institutions failed—and the lessons have not been lost on
its successor administration. Moreover, if unipolarity is, in fact, in a slow process of decline,
the incentives are actually intensified for putting in place and reinforcing a reformed liberal
order, even if this entails a reduction of American hegemonic rights and privileges.
The rise and fall of unipolarity—and the underlying transformation of the Westphalian
system—do not destine the United States to disentangle itself from a multilateral rule-based
order. There continue to be deeply rooted incentives for the United States to support multi-
lateralism—incentives that may actually be increasing. 47 These sources of support for open,