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Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order
A new vision for the American world order
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 history 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, with its war on terror, invasion of Iraq, and unilateral orientation, undermined this liberal order. Others argue that we are witnessing the end of the American era. Liberal Leviathan engages these debates.
G. John Ikenberry argues that the crisis that besets the American-led order is a crisis of authority. A political struggle has been ignited over the distribution of roles, rights, and authority within the liberal international order. But the deeper logic of liberal order remains alive and well. The forces that have triggered this crisis―the rise of non-Western states such as China, contested norms of sovereignty, and the deepening of economic and security interdependence―have resulted from the successful functioning and expansion of the postwar liberal order, not its breakdown. The liberal international order has encountered crises in the past and evolved as a result. It will do so again.
Ikenberry provides the most systematic statement yet about the theory and practice of the liberal international order, and a forceful message for policymakers, scholars, and general readers about why America must renegotiate its relationship with the rest of the world and pursue a more enlightened strategy―that of the liberal leviathan.
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 history 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, with its war on terror, invasion of Iraq, and unilateral orientation, undermined this liberal order. Others argue that we are witnessing the end of the American era. Liberal Leviathan engages these debates.
G. John Ikenberry argues that the crisis that besets the American-led order is a crisis of authority. A political struggle has been ignited over the distribution of roles, rights, and authority within the liberal international order. But the deeper logic of liberal order remains alive and well. The forces that have triggered this crisis―the rise of non-Western states such as China, contested norms of sovereignty, and the deepening of economic and security interdependence―have resulted from the successful functioning and expansion of the postwar liberal order, not its breakdown. The liberal international order has encountered crises in the past and evolved as a result. It will do so again.
Ikenberry provides the most systematic statement yet about the theory and practice of the liberal international order, and a forceful message for policymakers, scholars, and general readers about why America must renegotiate its relationship with the rest of the world and pursue a more enlightened strategy―that of the liberal leviathan.
392 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
About the author
G. John Ikenberry
78 books58 followersGilford John Ikenberry (October 5, 1954) is a theorist of international relations and United States foreign policy, and a professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
July 28, 2018
A dense but interesting study from one of the dons of liberal international thought. Ikenberry spells out the logic of the liberal international system, both in high theory and in the actual design of the system by the United States. The book is very political science-y: game theory, rationalist paradigm, and a lot of rehashing of the same basic argument. Nonetheless, it is a strongly argued, accessible account of this crucial school of thought.
I was struck by 3 big things in this book. First, Ikenberry really brings home the extent to which liberal internationalism is built on the foundations of liberal thought at the domestic level: civil society, the social contract, the provision of public goods, Rawlsian justice, and positive sum games, among others. This point suggests that the broader project of liberal internationalism is to mirror the formation of the state but at the international level, to create laws, institutions, and networks that condition and restrain countries' actions while facilitating trade. This is a powerful rejoinder to the belief that the international sphere must be an anarchy; if the state in history could be achieved, then it is at least possible to create a similar structure on international (not necessarily global) levels.
Second, Ikenberry makes the great point that the international order could not have been built without American power, and that the functioning of this system depends not just on laws/institutions but the trade-off/balance of the exercise of US power to define and defend the system and the need for institutionalized constraint. This point kinda shoots down the straw man idea that international law and cooperation must stand on their own without the exercise of power. The history of this system suggests otherwise. Ikenberry shows that US governance of this system depends on a mix of contract, consent, and coercion, one of several very helpful typologies in the book.
Lastly, this book has one glaring weakness: the political and cultural fears of openness. Openness to other societies (trade, population flows, labor flows, cultural exchange, etc) creates a self-undermining dynamic. People are generally extremely fearful of being cheated by the outsider, or the newcomer to their society that represents the outsider. Openness may generate more goods for the society as a whole, but it raises these deep-seated fears of the outsider and also creates some losers; in today's case, working class people who don't value cosmopolitanism but are hurt by labor competition and the flight of jobs. There's then the potential for a political movement that can undermine openness (you know who I'm talking about) and ultimately damage the lib int system. I'm sure Ikenberry has an answer to this dilemma, but it doesn't really come up in the book. This is a general weakness in IR thought: not looking inside the black ball of the state/society.
I was struck by 3 big things in this book. First, Ikenberry really brings home the extent to which liberal internationalism is built on the foundations of liberal thought at the domestic level: civil society, the social contract, the provision of public goods, Rawlsian justice, and positive sum games, among others. This point suggests that the broader project of liberal internationalism is to mirror the formation of the state but at the international level, to create laws, institutions, and networks that condition and restrain countries' actions while facilitating trade. This is a powerful rejoinder to the belief that the international sphere must be an anarchy; if the state in history could be achieved, then it is at least possible to create a similar structure on international (not necessarily global) levels.
Second, Ikenberry makes the great point that the international order could not have been built without American power, and that the functioning of this system depends not just on laws/institutions but the trade-off/balance of the exercise of US power to define and defend the system and the need for institutionalized constraint. This point kinda shoots down the straw man idea that international law and cooperation must stand on their own without the exercise of power. The history of this system suggests otherwise. Ikenberry shows that US governance of this system depends on a mix of contract, consent, and coercion, one of several very helpful typologies in the book.
Lastly, this book has one glaring weakness: the political and cultural fears of openness. Openness to other societies (trade, population flows, labor flows, cultural exchange, etc) creates a self-undermining dynamic. People are generally extremely fearful of being cheated by the outsider, or the newcomer to their society that represents the outsider. Openness may generate more goods for the society as a whole, but it raises these deep-seated fears of the outsider and also creates some losers; in today's case, working class people who don't value cosmopolitanism but are hurt by labor competition and the flight of jobs. There's then the potential for a political movement that can undermine openness (you know who I'm talking about) and ultimately damage the lib int system. I'm sure Ikenberry has an answer to this dilemma, but it doesn't really come up in the book. This is a general weakness in IR thought: not looking inside the black ball of the state/society.
November 21, 2014
I'm still a little angry for devoting as much time as I did reading this book. Ikenberry needs an editor and could have cut this book in half (at least) by removing his needless recounts and attempting to add something of applicable substance. I would have accepted the length had he actually had recommendations deeper than theory. I'll be honest, in his use of the movie "The Man Who Shot Libert Valance" to be a metaphor for international world order, I'm more of a Tom Doniphon than a Ransom Stoddard (see page xiv-xv) and I just interpreted it as why institutions are useful until they aren't (spoiler alert: Stoddard, aka institutions, did not shoot Liberty Valance). Enter James Taylor's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" here. I digress. There are some interesting historical accounts of the development of institutions, but I prefer Kissinger's account to this. In the end, I will defer to Richard Betts and his review (http://nationalinterest.org/bookrevie...). After finally finishing this monstrocity, his review was spot on and made me chortle. It almost made it worth it. Almost.
December 3, 2017
Ikenberry is known across the international relations community as one of the foremost liberal scholars. I would recommend it to those wanting to understand liberal theory
August 18, 2026
“In an imperial order, the dominant state operates unilaterally and above the rules and institutions. In a liberal hegemonic order, the lead state establishes agreed-upon rules
and institutions and operates - more or less - within them. The lead state negotiates rather than imposes order. In an imperial order, the lead state rules through command and, ultimately, coercion. In a liberal hegemonic order, the lead state rules by shaping the milieu in which states operate." In Liberal Leviathan, political scientist G. John Ikenberry claims that through this mixed system, America rules the world.
Ikenberry wrote this book in 2011 as a follow-up to his 2001 book “After Victory.” In that book, he looked at how international political order was restored after Great Power wars that ended in 1815, 1919, 1945, and 1989. He explained that the order the United States imposed after 1945 was so successful because the USA both embedded and restrained its power through institutions like GATT, the UN, NATO and the World Bank. This rule-based order encouraged other powers to cooperate with the United States for their mutual benefit. Thus, restraining American power through institutionalization is a more effective strategy for the long-term exercise of that power than the naked use of power, which requires coercion and inspires resentment and counter-balancing.
While the previous book analyzed all of those settlements, this one concentrates on how American power operated in 2011. Ikenberry characterizes American power as a “liberal hegemonic order” that incorporates elements of international constitutionalism through embedding and restraining American power in institutions with America as a unipolar state that sometimes sets itself above global rules and acts in its own perceived interest. While both these faces exist in all America’s relationships with other states, it acts most constitutionally with regards to Europe and other constitutional democracies, in a more “hub-and-spoke” arrangement with its allies in Asia, and in a more nakedly imperialistic manner in the Middle East and Central and South America.
Ikenberry saw a system in crisis. The legitimacy of American leadership was under threat for several factors. First, there was the Bush administration’s unilateralism. For example, it did not join initiatives such as the International Criminal Court or the Kyoto Accords and acted without United Nations approval to invade Iraq. American administration officials explicitly stated that American forces should be able to act above the rules for other states. But this was not the only reason for crisis. There was eroding state sovereignty, as economic and human rights organizations started to limit the domestic actions of states. Shifting sources of violence from terroristic threats within anarchic states on the periphery were another threat. And American unipolarity itself meant that there were fewer curbs upon it than would exist within a multipolar international system.
The pushback from other democracies to the Bush administration’s unilateralism meant that this was unsustainable. Thus, by 2011, the Obama administration was amending its ways. And yet other tensions remained.
Fast forward to 2026, and we can see that the Trump administration has resurrected the Bush policy on steroids. Rule-based institutions are dismissed as irrelevant, trade agreements are torn up, and military force is used unilaterally. Who can say with authority that the United States would intervene in Poland or Estonia were attacked by Russia? Or Taiwan by China? I just read an Economist issue that referred to Trump as a gangster.
And, as Ikenberry predicted, the pushback from allies has begun. After the US and Israel attacked Iran and responded by closing the Gulf of Hormuz, Trump called for NATO help. The response was crickets.
My country, Canada, has gone all in on a Middle Power strategy to balance against Washington. According to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Canada was spending 70% of every defense dollar in the United States. No longer. Canada is now partnering with Ukraine to build drones, buying submarines from Germany and Norway, building ice breakers with Finland, and building spy planes (and soon fighter jets) with Sweden. We bought a new over-the-horizon radar system from Australia. Canada is finding new trade partners in the EU, Mercosur, India and even China. Oil and gas pipelines are being built to the coasts to bypass refineries the United States. The MAGA impulse to treat Canada as a 51st state finally has Canadians uniting about something: anti-Americanism.
Ikenberry posited that the United States’ character as an advanced liberal democracy lent itself to extend this liberal constitutional system to its allies. Now we can see that as the quality of American democracy has declined, so has its liberal international character. It is becoming more illiberal both internally and internationally. Freedom House ranks America as a “free” country, but it only has a score of 84/100. Most European democracies score in the 90s. The Economist Intelligence Unit gives America a score of 7.65/10 and lists it as a “flawed democracy.” As Enlightenment ideas such as civic nationalism over ethnic nationalism and the rule of law are under siege in America, American leaders just don’t have much in common with the leaders of other democracies these days. Authoritarianism at home and abroad.
Personally, I see Trump as both a cause and a result of disturbing trends in American life. Seventy-seven million people voted for him As a Canadian, I know those trends will seep north of their border sooner or later. A former Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, said that the relationship with the USA was like sleeping with an elephant. No matter the elephant’s intentions, if it rolls over, we are in trouble. But I also take heart with another quote from another former Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. “We must make any sacrifice necessary to preserve the unity and independence of this blessed land.” That will be necessary in the near future.
As the United States becomes more like Russia or China, that means its neighbors must become more resilient to the same kinds of troubles that Russia and China present to their neighbors. The use of the American dollar as a reserve currency means the US can run trade deficits and hold debt at levels other countries cannot. It can have low taxes, a big army, and keep a welfare state. Ending the supremacy of the United States dollar is job number one.
and institutions and operates - more or less - within them. The lead state negotiates rather than imposes order. In an imperial order, the lead state rules through command and, ultimately, coercion. In a liberal hegemonic order, the lead state rules by shaping the milieu in which states operate." In Liberal Leviathan, political scientist G. John Ikenberry claims that through this mixed system, America rules the world.
Ikenberry wrote this book in 2011 as a follow-up to his 2001 book “After Victory.” In that book, he looked at how international political order was restored after Great Power wars that ended in 1815, 1919, 1945, and 1989. He explained that the order the United States imposed after 1945 was so successful because the USA both embedded and restrained its power through institutions like GATT, the UN, NATO and the World Bank. This rule-based order encouraged other powers to cooperate with the United States for their mutual benefit. Thus, restraining American power through institutionalization is a more effective strategy for the long-term exercise of that power than the naked use of power, which requires coercion and inspires resentment and counter-balancing.
While the previous book analyzed all of those settlements, this one concentrates on how American power operated in 2011. Ikenberry characterizes American power as a “liberal hegemonic order” that incorporates elements of international constitutionalism through embedding and restraining American power in institutions with America as a unipolar state that sometimes sets itself above global rules and acts in its own perceived interest. While both these faces exist in all America’s relationships with other states, it acts most constitutionally with regards to Europe and other constitutional democracies, in a more “hub-and-spoke” arrangement with its allies in Asia, and in a more nakedly imperialistic manner in the Middle East and Central and South America.
Ikenberry saw a system in crisis. The legitimacy of American leadership was under threat for several factors. First, there was the Bush administration’s unilateralism. For example, it did not join initiatives such as the International Criminal Court or the Kyoto Accords and acted without United Nations approval to invade Iraq. American administration officials explicitly stated that American forces should be able to act above the rules for other states. But this was not the only reason for crisis. There was eroding state sovereignty, as economic and human rights organizations started to limit the domestic actions of states. Shifting sources of violence from terroristic threats within anarchic states on the periphery were another threat. And American unipolarity itself meant that there were fewer curbs upon it than would exist within a multipolar international system.
The pushback from other democracies to the Bush administration’s unilateralism meant that this was unsustainable. Thus, by 2011, the Obama administration was amending its ways. And yet other tensions remained.
Fast forward to 2026, and we can see that the Trump administration has resurrected the Bush policy on steroids. Rule-based institutions are dismissed as irrelevant, trade agreements are torn up, and military force is used unilaterally. Who can say with authority that the United States would intervene in Poland or Estonia were attacked by Russia? Or Taiwan by China? I just read an Economist issue that referred to Trump as a gangster.
And, as Ikenberry predicted, the pushback from allies has begun. After the US and Israel attacked Iran and responded by closing the Gulf of Hormuz, Trump called for NATO help. The response was crickets.
My country, Canada, has gone all in on a Middle Power strategy to balance against Washington. According to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Canada was spending 70% of every defense dollar in the United States. No longer. Canada is now partnering with Ukraine to build drones, buying submarines from Germany and Norway, building ice breakers with Finland, and building spy planes (and soon fighter jets) with Sweden. We bought a new over-the-horizon radar system from Australia. Canada is finding new trade partners in the EU, Mercosur, India and even China. Oil and gas pipelines are being built to the coasts to bypass refineries the United States. The MAGA impulse to treat Canada as a 51st state finally has Canadians uniting about something: anti-Americanism.
Ikenberry posited that the United States’ character as an advanced liberal democracy lent itself to extend this liberal constitutional system to its allies. Now we can see that as the quality of American democracy has declined, so has its liberal international character. It is becoming more illiberal both internally and internationally. Freedom House ranks America as a “free” country, but it only has a score of 84/100. Most European democracies score in the 90s. The Economist Intelligence Unit gives America a score of 7.65/10 and lists it as a “flawed democracy.” As Enlightenment ideas such as civic nationalism over ethnic nationalism and the rule of law are under siege in America, American leaders just don’t have much in common with the leaders of other democracies these days. Authoritarianism at home and abroad.
Personally, I see Trump as both a cause and a result of disturbing trends in American life. Seventy-seven million people voted for him As a Canadian, I know those trends will seep north of their border sooner or later. A former Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, said that the relationship with the USA was like sleeping with an elephant. No matter the elephant’s intentions, if it rolls over, we are in trouble. But I also take heart with another quote from another former Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. “We must make any sacrifice necessary to preserve the unity and independence of this blessed land.” That will be necessary in the near future.
As the United States becomes more like Russia or China, that means its neighbors must become more resilient to the same kinds of troubles that Russia and China present to their neighbors. The use of the American dollar as a reserve currency means the US can run trade deficits and hold debt at levels other countries cannot. It can have low taxes, a big army, and keep a welfare state. Ending the supremacy of the United States dollar is job number one.
July 15, 2020
Excellent theoretical and historical exposition on the post-WWII American-led liberal international order, including a convincing and well-structured argument about the nature of its present crisis.
Shows how unipolar American power since the end of the Cold War, as well as shifting norms around state sovereignty, led the George W. Bush administration to pursue a unilateral and imperialist foreign policy in Iraq. However, Bush's national security strategy was rejected by the international community as illegitimate and led to a crisis in American authority, which Ikenberry argues can be resolved by a renegotiation of the international order and America's place within it.
My only critique would be that, while Ikenberry aknowledges that the U.S. has acted in an imperial manner towards many parts of the world since WWII, he does it in a more or less passing manner and doesn't really center it when describing the history of the liberal international order.
Shows how unipolar American power since the end of the Cold War, as well as shifting norms around state sovereignty, led the George W. Bush administration to pursue a unilateral and imperialist foreign policy in Iraq. However, Bush's national security strategy was rejected by the international community as illegitimate and led to a crisis in American authority, which Ikenberry argues can be resolved by a renegotiation of the international order and America's place within it.
My only critique would be that, while Ikenberry aknowledges that the U.S. has acted in an imperial manner towards many parts of the world since WWII, he does it in a more or less passing manner and doesn't really center it when describing the history of the liberal international order.
July 24, 2018
A very important book. Ikenberry's account of the American led world order is at once very enlightening and deeply flawed, yet its very flaws help illuminate the uncomfortable relationship between liberal intellectuals and American empire. Requires reading with a critical eye, but is probably one of the most important IR texts written so far this century.
November 5, 2023
An interesting guy
i don't always agree much though
........
Ikenberry impresses with his range of concerns, by his drive to formulate clear and parsimonious propositions about interstate relations, and by the pains he takes to express himself with clarity and precision. He announces his lines of argument, develops them, repeats them, and for good measure cross references them.
Michael H. Hunt, Political Science Quarterly
John Ikenberry, America's leading scholar of international affairs, brilliantly relates theory to historical change in his timely advocacy of a new U.S. foreign policy.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Center for Strategic and International Studies
.........
Contemporary International History
John Ikenberry's book-length study of postwar American internationalism- and the second Bush administration's break from it offers many insights, but it covers events from 20o1 to 2008 in insufficient detail to gauge their significance.
.........
Oliver Stuenkel
Those who are familiar with Ikenberry’s previous work will recognize several arguments he has made in After Victory, and in The Crisis of American Foreign Policy: Wilsonianism in the 21st Century: Today’s system is highly integrative ('easy to join and hard to overturn'), as everyone – including not yet fully integrated powers – benefits from its existence. Add to that an extremely low probability of great power war (the ultimate sign that an international order has failed), and the continued existence of today’s global order is assured.
Still, Ikenberry argues that the 'liberal Leviathan' will have to regain its lost authority and share responsibility. While the Bush administration weakened the liberal characteristics of the system and strengthened the imperial ones, the U.S. should commit more to the rules and norms – which would help stay at the center of the system for decades to come, and avoid the decline of the system.
At the same time, it needs to strengthen the rules of the system and “recover the public philosophy of internationalism” in preparation for the moment when China will surpass the United States as the world’s most powerful actor.
If it plays its cards right, the U.S. can assure that China will continue the United States' 'grand strategy of liberal order building'.
This raises the question in how far an authoritarian regime like China can play a leading role in today’s order — and to what extent the United States would accept anyone but itself at the center of global order.
This question is particularly important as today’s liberal international order can no longer be narrowly drawn as a security order, but includes many complex rights and obligations, such as the 'Responsibility to Protect'.
While one may not always agree with Ikenberry’s interpretation — many will accuse him of having a romanticized view of US-leadership — Liberal Leviathan is indispensable reading for all those interested in the future of global order.
The author’s analysis offers more than just a US-centered analysis as he recognizes that not all regions experienced the US-led global order in the same way.
For example, while Western Europe enjoyed multilateral agreements, the Middle East and Latin America were exposed to the imperial characteristics of the system, thus creating regional imbalances that deeply affect how elites in different countries think about global order today.
i don't always agree much though
........
Ikenberry impresses with his range of concerns, by his drive to formulate clear and parsimonious propositions about interstate relations, and by the pains he takes to express himself with clarity and precision. He announces his lines of argument, develops them, repeats them, and for good measure cross references them.
Michael H. Hunt, Political Science Quarterly
John Ikenberry, America's leading scholar of international affairs, brilliantly relates theory to historical change in his timely advocacy of a new U.S. foreign policy.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Center for Strategic and International Studies
.........
Contemporary International History
John Ikenberry's book-length study of postwar American internationalism- and the second Bush administration's break from it offers many insights, but it covers events from 20o1 to 2008 in insufficient detail to gauge their significance.
.........
Oliver Stuenkel
Those who are familiar with Ikenberry’s previous work will recognize several arguments he has made in After Victory, and in The Crisis of American Foreign Policy: Wilsonianism in the 21st Century: Today’s system is highly integrative ('easy to join and hard to overturn'), as everyone – including not yet fully integrated powers – benefits from its existence. Add to that an extremely low probability of great power war (the ultimate sign that an international order has failed), and the continued existence of today’s global order is assured.
Still, Ikenberry argues that the 'liberal Leviathan' will have to regain its lost authority and share responsibility. While the Bush administration weakened the liberal characteristics of the system and strengthened the imperial ones, the U.S. should commit more to the rules and norms – which would help stay at the center of the system for decades to come, and avoid the decline of the system.
At the same time, it needs to strengthen the rules of the system and “recover the public philosophy of internationalism” in preparation for the moment when China will surpass the United States as the world’s most powerful actor.
If it plays its cards right, the U.S. can assure that China will continue the United States' 'grand strategy of liberal order building'.
This raises the question in how far an authoritarian regime like China can play a leading role in today’s order — and to what extent the United States would accept anyone but itself at the center of global order.
This question is particularly important as today’s liberal international order can no longer be narrowly drawn as a security order, but includes many complex rights and obligations, such as the 'Responsibility to Protect'.
While one may not always agree with Ikenberry’s interpretation — many will accuse him of having a romanticized view of US-leadership — Liberal Leviathan is indispensable reading for all those interested in the future of global order.
The author’s analysis offers more than just a US-centered analysis as he recognizes that not all regions experienced the US-led global order in the same way.
For example, while Western Europe enjoyed multilateral agreements, the Middle East and Latin America were exposed to the imperial characteristics of the system, thus creating regional imbalances that deeply affect how elites in different countries think about global order today.
February 20, 2026
I found the core idea in this book--that a hegemonic power can choose to rule as an empire (by directly coercing the behavior of other states) or as a liberal hegemon (by establishing mutually beneficial institutions and rules that are overall favorable to the power but that it must, to an extent, respect) and that ruling as a liberal hegemon has the advantage of establishing favorable conditions that will persist even after the relative decline of the hegemon--to be pretty persuasive. Ikenberry published this in 2011, after the Bush administration had attempted to rule, in Ikenberry's terminology, as an imperial power. At that time, the Obama administration had officially repudiated the Bush approach, so Ikenberry appeared to be defending an approach to foreign policy that was well established. Ikenberry identifies what he calls a contradiction in the Bush unilateralism: it claimed that the US would defend the entire world through direct military action, which is a provision of a public good, and it also claimed and defended as legitimate that the US would act in its own national interest, as a private good. Ikenberry observes that defending everything was exhausting, especially when the commitment to private interest made it likely that other powers would resist or would try to freeload. So the commitment to national interest, made it more likely that the US would give up end up abandoning attempts to provide public goods. And with the commitment to public goods abandoned, the US could embrace the logic of great power self interest without contradiction. The great power mindset, once introduced, created the conditions for its own legitimation. I found this still interesting reading in 2026, more than a decade after its publication.
September 1, 2018
Liberal Leviathan
“Sed quis custodiet ipso custodes?”
[“But who watches the watchers?”]
Juvenal, (Satires, VI,347)
The Pax Americana, the relative world peace and stability is attributed to the U.S. rebuilding of the global world order after WW2. Organizations like NATO, the IMF, and European-U.S. coaliations were established to fight the communist threat and preserve a lasting peace. Nuclear proliferation evinced an attitude of deterrence against aggression by leading countries. Through the course of Ikenberry's apropos book on world war, he explores the history of the liberal theories, the domination of the U.S. after the second world war, and the acute anxieties of our era such as terrorism, ecological destruction and health pandemics.
Ikenbery's work serves as a historical piece but also as a portentous clue to our future position in the world. He examines what can occur if the U.S.'s imperial strategy of unilateral action and non-rule based behavior remains unchecked. “In every era, great powers have risen up to build rules and institutions of relations between states, only to see those ordering arrangements eventually break down or transform (p.11)”. These global arrangements of openness with trade, emigration and values are beginning to be tested since the Bush war strategy in the Iraq War and the global retreat from leadership during the first years of the Trump administration.
Overall, it's a fascinating and timely read. There is so much content here, i'd imagine i'd need another two or three reads to really absorb it all. Great entreaty to the U.S. lead world order and the challenges it faces today.
“Sed quis custodiet ipso custodes?”
[“But who watches the watchers?”]
Juvenal, (Satires, VI,347)
The Pax Americana, the relative world peace and stability is attributed to the U.S. rebuilding of the global world order after WW2. Organizations like NATO, the IMF, and European-U.S. coaliations were established to fight the communist threat and preserve a lasting peace. Nuclear proliferation evinced an attitude of deterrence against aggression by leading countries. Through the course of Ikenberry's apropos book on world war, he explores the history of the liberal theories, the domination of the U.S. after the second world war, and the acute anxieties of our era such as terrorism, ecological destruction and health pandemics.
Ikenbery's work serves as a historical piece but also as a portentous clue to our future position in the world. He examines what can occur if the U.S.'s imperial strategy of unilateral action and non-rule based behavior remains unchecked. “In every era, great powers have risen up to build rules and institutions of relations between states, only to see those ordering arrangements eventually break down or transform (p.11)”. These global arrangements of openness with trade, emigration and values are beginning to be tested since the Bush war strategy in the Iraq War and the global retreat from leadership during the first years of the Trump administration.
Overall, it's a fascinating and timely read. There is so much content here, i'd imagine i'd need another two or three reads to really absorb it all. Great entreaty to the U.S. lead world order and the challenges it faces today.
April 21, 2026
This book is a bit repetitive but it does a good job of explaining how postwar global institutions both enable and constrain U.S. empire and how the Bush administration opposed multilateralism in a new phase of U.S. hegemony. While not exactly radical or anti-imperialist, Ikenberry does call for restraint and multilateralism as the U.S. negotiates relationships with rising powers such as Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa. Ikenberry does not see China as a military threat to the U.S. but rather an actor that seeks to benefit from the U.S.-led world order, at least in the near future, which seems to be true, at least before Trump’s second term. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s own inexplicable attempt to somehow dismantle the U.S.-led liberal world order, it’s unclear how China and other powerful actors will respond to the U.S. weakness. This book is useful for students of foreign policy who want to understand realism and liberal internationalism.
March 9, 2021
A lot of what Ikenberry has hoped for when writing this book a decade ago took a couple of dramatic turns that he actually laid out as possible outcomes. (E.g. Mass-Migration, American Isolationism due to domestic pressures, even an epidemic). Still, this book offers a solid summary of American global leadership and the liberal rules based international order with all of it's ups and downs, risks, opportunities, and dilemmas)
May 19, 2022
This book could have been way shorter. I find the points and ideas in this book so repetitive. Ikenberry will make a point in chapter 3 and recycle this many times throughout the book ("as I noted in chapter 3" or "as I mentioned in chapter 3"). I don't particularly appreciate that he didn't just write each idea in a continuous passage and connect back all of them at once. He has the urge to stretch them to almost 400 but is so wordy. This book is torture to read!!
March 3, 2024
Long-winded thats for sure, but someone has to make the case for the Liberal International Order. Unfortunately for Ikenberry, his arguments haven't aged as well as he would have liked, and his beloved American led system is likely still to face its greatest challenges in the coming years.
March 29, 2025
Why would you read this
May 18, 2025
Read:
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Four
December 24, 2025
la manera en la q estados unidos tiene la culpa de absolutamente todos los problemas de este mundo da q pensar
January 18, 2012
Quels sont les déterminants de la puissance ? Comment s’organise le système international ? La suprématie américaine est-elle vouée au déclin ? L’émergence de la Chine et des BRICs annonce-t-elle l’instauration d’un nouvel ordre mondial ? La crise financière mondiale de 2008 et l’arrivée au pouvoir de Barack Obama redonnent à ces interrogations une actualité que le 11-septembre et la guerre en Iraq avaient un temps occultée.
Trois essayistes américains renommés esquissent des réponses. Elles sont étonnamment semblables. Cela n’est pas si surprenant. Ikenberry, Nye et Zakaria appartiennent tous les trois à la mouvance libérale et multilatéraliste.
Tout en contestant que les Etats-Unis exercent une domination impériale sur le reste du monde, ils font tous les trois le constat d’un ordre international caractérisé par l’hégémonie américaine. Les Etats-Unis selon G. John Ikenberry sont un « Léviathan libéral », oxymore renvoyant au paradoxe de l’ordre international à la fois libéral et hégémonique. Joseph Nye rappelle que les Etats-Unis sont passés maîtres dans l’exercice du soft power.
Cette hégémonie a vocation à durer. A rebours des théories déclinistes, ils estiment que la puissance américaine restera encore longtemps inégalée. Sans doute la puissance relative des Etats-Unis diminue-t-elle ; mais cela est moins dû à son déclin qu’à « l’ascension des autres » (F. Zakaria). Chacun consacre de longs développements à l’émergence de la Chine. Tous en relativisent la portée et contestent la projection mécanique des courbes de croissance actuelles qui prédisent son accession au premier rang mondial vers 2030. Pour Nye, l’influence chinoise dans le monde sera limitée par son insuffisante capacité d’attraction. Pour Ikenberry, la Chine est une puissance de statu quo qui a moins d’intérêt à révolutionner l’ordre libéral qu’à s’y intégrer.
Cela ne signifie pas que la domination américaine ne connaîtra aucun changement. Le système unipolaire américain qui a résulté de l’écroulement de l’URSS n’a pas vocation à durer éternellement. Comme l’analyse Joseph Nye, les critères de la puissance évoluent avec la dissolution du système westphalien et l’émergence de nouveaux acteurs non-étatiques. Cette idée est au centre de la démonstration de Fareed Zakaria : le nouveau monde sera post-américain.
Mais il ne sera pas nécessairement anti-américain. Les trois ouvrages sont des plaidoyers en faveur d’une participation plus intelligente des Etats-Unis à la marche du monde. En creux, ils se lisent comme une critique sans concession de l’unilatéralisme mis en œuvre par George W. Bush. C’est John Ikenberry qui est le plus radical dans sa description des impasses de cette politique : il souligne les illusions dont se sont bercés les néo-conservateurs quant à la popularité des Etats-Unis dans le monde et leur cruelle sous-estimation des résistances que leur action unilatérale allait entraîner. Nye souhaite que la puissance américaine s’exerce par la séduction plus que par la contrainte et combine les ressources du soft et du hard power pour donner naissance à un smart power. Fareed Zakaria – dont l’ouvrage sorti en 2008 fut initialement publié en France sous le titre L’Empire américain : l’heure du partage – estime que les Etats-Unis resteront le pivot du nouveau système international à condition de joueur un rôle bismarckien de faiseurs d’alliances.
L’optimisme de ces auteurs est frappant. Loin du catastrophisme de certains prophètes de malheurs qui prédisent l’éclatement du système international sur fond de prolifération nucléaire, de faillites d’Etats et de protectionnisme rampant, la fine fleur de l’école libérale américaine est beaucoup plus sereine. Sans se cacher le caractère exceptionnel et temporaire de la domination américaine, ils estiment que les Etats-Unis ne sont pas sans atout face à l’avenir. A condition de faire bon usage de leur puissance, les Etats-Unis auront leur mot à dire dans le monde post-américain.
Trois essayistes américains renommés esquissent des réponses. Elles sont étonnamment semblables. Cela n’est pas si surprenant. Ikenberry, Nye et Zakaria appartiennent tous les trois à la mouvance libérale et multilatéraliste.
Tout en contestant que les Etats-Unis exercent une domination impériale sur le reste du monde, ils font tous les trois le constat d’un ordre international caractérisé par l’hégémonie américaine. Les Etats-Unis selon G. John Ikenberry sont un « Léviathan libéral », oxymore renvoyant au paradoxe de l’ordre international à la fois libéral et hégémonique. Joseph Nye rappelle que les Etats-Unis sont passés maîtres dans l’exercice du soft power.
Cette hégémonie a vocation à durer. A rebours des théories déclinistes, ils estiment que la puissance américaine restera encore longtemps inégalée. Sans doute la puissance relative des Etats-Unis diminue-t-elle ; mais cela est moins dû à son déclin qu’à « l’ascension des autres » (F. Zakaria). Chacun consacre de longs développements à l’émergence de la Chine. Tous en relativisent la portée et contestent la projection mécanique des courbes de croissance actuelles qui prédisent son accession au premier rang mondial vers 2030. Pour Nye, l’influence chinoise dans le monde sera limitée par son insuffisante capacité d’attraction. Pour Ikenberry, la Chine est une puissance de statu quo qui a moins d’intérêt à révolutionner l’ordre libéral qu’à s’y intégrer.
Cela ne signifie pas que la domination américaine ne connaîtra aucun changement. Le système unipolaire américain qui a résulté de l’écroulement de l’URSS n’a pas vocation à durer éternellement. Comme l’analyse Joseph Nye, les critères de la puissance évoluent avec la dissolution du système westphalien et l’émergence de nouveaux acteurs non-étatiques. Cette idée est au centre de la démonstration de Fareed Zakaria : le nouveau monde sera post-américain.
Mais il ne sera pas nécessairement anti-américain. Les trois ouvrages sont des plaidoyers en faveur d’une participation plus intelligente des Etats-Unis à la marche du monde. En creux, ils se lisent comme une critique sans concession de l’unilatéralisme mis en œuvre par George W. Bush. C’est John Ikenberry qui est le plus radical dans sa description des impasses de cette politique : il souligne les illusions dont se sont bercés les néo-conservateurs quant à la popularité des Etats-Unis dans le monde et leur cruelle sous-estimation des résistances que leur action unilatérale allait entraîner. Nye souhaite que la puissance américaine s’exerce par la séduction plus que par la contrainte et combine les ressources du soft et du hard power pour donner naissance à un smart power. Fareed Zakaria – dont l’ouvrage sorti en 2008 fut initialement publié en France sous le titre L’Empire américain : l’heure du partage – estime que les Etats-Unis resteront le pivot du nouveau système international à condition de joueur un rôle bismarckien de faiseurs d’alliances.
L’optimisme de ces auteurs est frappant. Loin du catastrophisme de certains prophètes de malheurs qui prédisent l’éclatement du système international sur fond de prolifération nucléaire, de faillites d’Etats et de protectionnisme rampant, la fine fleur de l’école libérale américaine est beaucoup plus sereine. Sans se cacher le caractère exceptionnel et temporaire de la domination américaine, ils estiment que les Etats-Unis ne sont pas sans atout face à l’avenir. A condition de faire bon usage de leur puissance, les Etats-Unis auront leur mot à dire dans le monde post-américain.
May 5, 2015
The best book I read during my research for my own book on US grand strategy. Ikenberry gets almost everything right. What he's wrong about: it is culture, not institutions, that undergirds liberal order; that culture is not universally shared and power balancing has indeed returned; the US increasingly faces countervailing pressures from Russia and China; and therefore Ikenberry is a touch naive in his assessment of US-China and US-Russia relations. Otherwise, Ikenberry is spot on. This should be required reading for any student or practitioner of U.S. foreign policy.
April 10, 2014
Pretty cut and dry description of the Third-Wave of Liberal theories in international relations. Should be read with the knowledge that it will critique American order, but positively, proposing that US foreign policy governance as a benevolent sort of "Empire". Not very heavy on normative political concepts.
August 17, 2015
John Ikenberry´s pathbreaking work is one of the most important studies on international order to appear in many years. It will be required reading for all students and scholars of international relations. A must for sure!
August 9, 2016
Too American centric for my taste. He misses the shift in US politics that happened around 1970 and his book is much poorer for it.
March 26, 2012
Very neo-conservatism -- too much so for my taste. But as an assigned course reading this was well written and easy to understand!
February 1, 2014
Skip it. Read After Victory. This is (in the author's words) a follow-on, but it doesn't break new ground and in fact, confuses the argument. Love Ikenberry, disappointed here.
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