Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Two
Power and the Varieties of Order
The order created by the United States in the decades after World War II is a curious amalgam
of logics, institutions, roles, and relationships. It is an order that has been given various
names—the free world, the American system, the West, the Atlantic world, Pax Democratica,
Pax Americana, the Philadelphian system. It took shape in the early decades of the Cold War,
organized in part as an alliance aimed at countering and containing Soviet power. The United
States quickly became a pole or organizing hub within the emerging bipolar global system.
American postwar order building was, in this sense, an outgrowth or facet of geopolitical com-
petition and bipolar balancing. Along the way, this American-led order took on hierarchical
characteristics. The United States was vastly more powerful than other states within the or-
der. It organized and led the order, underwriting security, stability, and economic openness.
A global array of weaker and secondary states became junior partners and client states. But,
at the same time, the order was also—at least within its Western core—a community of lib-
eral democracies. These democracies shared a vision of liberal order that predated the Cold
War, and they worked together to organize open and loosely rule-based relations that were not
simple reflections of power hierarchies. Complex and institutionalized forms of cooperation
of increasing depth and breadth marked the order—cooperation that continues today.
How can we make sense of this American-led order? An international order is a political
formation in which settled rules and arrangements exist between states to guide their interac-
tion. How can we describe and situate the American postwar order within the wider array of
types of international orders? This chapter develops a framework for the theoretical and his-
torical depiction of international orders.
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