American Power and Liberal Order

American Power and Liberal Order
Author: Paul D. Miller
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 1626163421

Paul D. Miller argues against recent calls for American restraint in international relations. Blending academic rigor with his experiences as former Director for Afghanistan on the National Security Council, he instead calls for active investment in the centuries-old grand strategy of liberal order.

Liberal Order and Imperial Ambition

Liberal Order and Imperial Ambition
Author: G. John Ikenberry
Publisher: Polity
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2006-06-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0745636497

This book of essays by the a leading figure in the new generation of American IR theorists explores the theoretical, historical, and foreign policy implications of American power and postwar order. The first part of the book focuses on the origins and foundational logic of America’s post-war order-building project – advancing ideas about ‘liberal hegemony’ and ‘constitutional order’. The second part reflects on its evolving character and fate in the aftermath of the Cold War, the rise of unipolarity, and the post-9/11 threat of global terrorism. In this unique study of a superpower, Ikenberry argues that though the American world order is now in upheaval, in the end, the United States still has powerful incentive to sponsor and operate within a liberal rules-based system.

Conservative Internationalism

Conservative Internationalism
Author: Henry R. Nau
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2015-08-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691168490

A reexamination of America's overloaded foreign policy tradition and its importance for global politics today Debates about U.S. foreign policy have revolved around three main traditions—liberal internationalism, realism, and nationalism. In this book, distinguished political scientist Henry Nau delves deeply into a fourth, overlooked foreign policy tradition that he calls "conservative internationalism." This approach spreads freedom, like liberal internationalism; arms diplomacy, like realism; and preserves national sovereignty, like nationalism. It targets a world of limited government or independent "sister republics," not a world of great power concerts or centralized international institutions. Nau explores conservative internationalism in the foreign policies of Thomas Jefferson, James Polk, Harry Truman, and Ronald Reagan. These presidents did more than any others to expand the arc of freedom using a deft combination of force, diplomacy, and compromise. Since Reagan, presidents have swung back and forth among the main traditions, overreaching under Bush and now retrenching under Obama. Nau demonstrates that conservative internationalism offers an alternative way. It pursues freedom but not everywhere, prioritizing situations that border on existing free countries—Turkey, for example, rather than Iraq. It uses lesser force early to influence negotiations rather than greater force later after negotiations fail. And it reaches timely compromises to cash in military leverage and sustain public support. A groundbreaking revival of a neglected foreign policy tradition, Conservative Internationalism shows how the United States can effectively sustain global leadership while respecting the constraints of public will and material resources.

Liberal Leviathan

Liberal Leviathan
Author: G. John Ikenberry
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2012-08-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691156174

In the second half of the twentieth century, the United States engaged in the most ambitious and far-reaching liberal order building the world had yet seen. This liberal international order has been one of the most successful in providing security and prosperity to more people, but in the last decade the American-led order has been troubled. Some argue that the Bush administration undermined it. Others argue that we are witnessing he end of the American era. In Liberal Leviathan G. John Ikenberry argues that the crisis that besets the American-led order is a crisis of authority. The forces that have triggered this crisis have resulted from the successful functioning and expansion of the postwar liberal order, not its breakdown.

The False Promise of Liberal Order

The False Promise of Liberal Order
Author: Patrick Porter
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2020-05-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1509542132

In an age of demagogues, hostile great powers and trade wars, foreign policy traditionalists dream of restoring liberal international order. This order, they claim, ushered in seventy years of peace and prosperity and saw post-war America domesticate the world to its values. The False Promise of Liberal Order exposes the flaws in this nostalgic vision. The world shaped by America came about as a result of coercion and, sometimes brutal, compromise. Liberal projects – to spread capitalist democracy – led inadvertently to illiberal results. To make peace, America made bargains with authoritarian forces. Even in the Pax Americana, the gentlest order yet, ordering was rough work. As its power grew, Washington came to believe that its order was exceptional and even permanent – a mentality that has led to spiralling deficits, permanent war and Trump. Romanticizing the liberal order makes it harder to adjust to today’s global disorder. Only by confronting the false promise of liberal order and adapting to current realities can the United States survive as a constitutional republic in a plural world.

A World Safe for Democracy

A World Safe for Democracy
Author: G. John Ikenberry
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2020-09-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0300256094

A sweeping account of the rise and evolution of liberal internationalism in the modern era For two hundred years, the grand project of liberal internationalism has been to build a world order that is open, loosely rules-based, and oriented toward progressive ideas. Today this project is in crisis, threatened from the outside by illiberal challengers and from the inside by nationalist-populist movements. This timely book offers the first full account of liberal internationalism’s long journey from its nineteenth-century roots to today’s fractured political moment. Creating an international “space” for liberal democracy, preserving rights and protections within and between countries, and balancing conflicting values such as liberty and equality, openness and social solidarity, and sovereignty and interdependence—these are the guiding aims that have propelled liberal internationalism through the upheavals of the past two centuries. G. John Ikenberry argues that in a twenty-first century marked by rising economic and security interdependence, liberal internationalism—reformed and reimagined—remains the most viable project to protect liberal democracy.

The End of American World Order

The End of American World Order
Author: Amitav Acharya
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 115
Release: 2014-04-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0745684653

The age of Western hegemony is over. Whether or not America itself is declining, the post-war liberal world order underpinned by US military, economic and ideological primacy and supported by global institutions serving its power and purpose, is coming to an end. But what will take its place? A Chinese world order? A re-constituted form of American hegemony? A regionalized system of global cooperation, including major and emerging powers? In this timely and provocative book, Amitav Acharya offers an incisive answer to this fundamental question. While the US will remain a major force in world affairs, he argues that it has lost the ability to shape world order after its own interests and image. As a result, the US will be one of a number of anchors including emerging powers, regional forces, and a concert of the old and new powers shaping a new world order. Rejecting labels such as multipolar, apolar, or G-Zero, Acharya likens the emerging system to a multiplex theatre, offering a choice of plots (ideas), directors (power), and action (leadership) under one roof. Finally, he reflects on the policies that the US, emerging powers and regional actors must pursue to promote stability in this decentred but interdependent, multiplex world. Written by a leading scholar of the international relations of the non-Western world, and rising above partisan punditry, this book represents a major contribution to debates over the post-American era.

Taming American Power: The Global Response to U. S. Primacy

Taming American Power: The Global Response to U. S. Primacy
Author: Stephen M. Walt
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2006-09-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0393292711

Finalist for the 2006 Gelber Prize: "A brilliant contribution to the American foreign policy debate."—Anatol Lieven, New York Times Book Review At a time when America's dominance abroad was being tested like never before, Taming American Power provided for the first time a "rigorous critique of current U.S. strategy" (Washington Post Book World) from the vantage point of its fiercest opponents. Stephen M. Walt examines America's place as the world's singular superpower and the strategies that rival states have devised to counter it. Hailed as a "landmark book" by Foreign Affairs, Taming American Power makes the case that this ever-increasing tide of opposition not only could threaten America's ability to achieve its foreign policy goals today but also may undermine its dominant position in years to come.

The Liberal Order and Its Contestations

The Liberal Order and Its Contestations
Author: Taylor & Francis Group
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2020-06-30
Genre:
ISBN: 9780367587703

The notion that we are experiencing a change in times, whereby an old global order is giving way to a new one, has been gaining legitimacy in international debates. As US power is waning, the argument goes, so is the set of liberal norms, rules and institutions around which the Unites States organised its global supremacy. Ideational contests, power shifts, regional fragmentation, and socio-economic turmoil paint a broad picture of complex and often inter-related challenges that fuel contestation of the liberal order, both as a normative project and as an emanation of US power. Major players - China and India, Europe and Russia, and the United States itself - are all engaged in a process of global repositioning, most notably in areas where the liberal project has only fragile roots and order is contested: Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. This volume aims to provide critical frames of reference for understanding whether geopolitical and ideational contestations will eventually bring the US-centred liberal order down or lead to a process of adjustment and transformation. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue in The International Spectator.

The World America Made

The World America Made
Author: Robert Kagan
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2013-01-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0345802713

Robert Kagan, the New York Times bestselling author of Of Paradise and Power and one of the country’s most influential strategic thinkers, reaffirms the importance of United States’s global leadership in this timely and important book. Upon its initial publication, The World America Made became one of the most talked about political books of the year, influencing Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address and shaping the thought of both the Obama and Romney presidential campaigns. In these incisive and engaging pages, Kagan responds to those who anticipate—or even long for—a post-American world order by showing what a decline in America’s influence would truly mean for the United States and the rest of the world, as the vital institutions, economies, and ideals currently supported by American power wane or disappear. As Kagan notes, it has happened before: one need only to consider the consequences of the breakdown of the Roman Empire and the collapse of the European order in World War I. This book is a powerful warning that America need not and dare not decline by committing preemptive superpower suicide.