Book Review: G. John Ikenberry's "Liberal Leviathan"

China. Its rise on the international stage has stirred a measure of controversy. The more prominent reaction to the rising economic and political power of China has been to worry about the decline of United States and the international system it has built in the wake of WWII. While Ikenberry acknowledges the growing clout of China on the international stage, he sees China as no threat to the existing international order as established. Rather, in his view, China's growing clout is precisely because of its increased buy-in to the United State's world order. But can the US-led order last forever?

See below for my take on Ikenberry's argument.  


G. John Ikenberry’s Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order posits that there is a crisis of authority in the post WWII international system that was built and maintained by the United States of the system’s own making. The United States had emerged out of WWII the dominant power of the international system. Thus, an anomalous lack of a competing great power or balancing coalition meant that the United States had wide latitude to shape the international order according to its preferences. Ikenberry outlines three “logics of order” that the United States could have chosen to build its new world order upon after WWII, including command (the imposition of rules on others through force), balance (relative power equity between states), and consent (based upon the establishment of multilateral institutions and rules) (Ikenberry, 2011, p. 76). Ultimately, the United States chose to shape the new order based on consent because it recognized that it would not always retain its status as hegemon.

Thus, the building and shaping of an international system of multilateral institutions that reflected its liberal values (democracy, free markets, cooperation, human rights) may constrain its ability to act unilaterally in the short-term, but would serve as a long-term insurance policy to prevent other rising powers from fundamentally altering the system the U.S. established. However, today’s international system has seen an erosion of Westphalian notions of state sovereignty, with increased acceptance of interference in other states’ affairs to confront transnational problems as well as the threat of rising powers like India and China. Ikenberry thus sees a need for renegotiation of the terms of U.S. hegemony in the international order as necessary to offset the crisis of leadership, offering three potential paths the international system could take. It is these three paths that I evaluate more closely, as these paths represent the core of the argument made in the book.

Ikenberry presents three paths that the international system could take: a “post-hegemonic” liberal order, a “renegotiated” American liberal order, and a complete fracturing of the current international order (Ikenberry, 2011, p. 303-313). While the first two paths entail some form of continuing liberal international order, with the United States retaining most of its hegemonic influence in the “renegotiated” order as opposed to the multipolar “post hegemonic” liberal order, a fracturing of the order entails no guarantee of continued American or liberal influence (Ikenberry, 2011 p. 303-313). While his reasoning for the viability of the first two potential orders is sound, as multipolar systems with more equitable power-sharing have proven to be relatively stable (i.e. the logic of deterrence through power equity), I would dispute his reasoning that in all cases core elements of the American liberal order would persist in some form. As aforementioned, Ikenberry defines these “core elements” around broad conceptions of open markets, democracy, the new “social bargain” (an economic safety net), multiple other forms of interdependencies and the upholding of certain universal values like those concerning human rights (Ikenberry, 2011, p. 169-186). Additionally, Ikenberry outlines in detail how these key organizational features could be preserved in each order. I will introduce his arguments before providing a critique of his faith in the durability of the international order.

Starting with the “post-hegemonic” order, Ikenberry sees the United States retaining indirect influence as its powers wane as becoming one of many powers governing more “publicly,” without most of the special rights and privileges it retains in organizations like the Security Council (Ikenberry, 2011, p. 302). I interpreted this kind of system to largely be a non-negotiable multipolarity. Similarly, a “renegotiated” liberal order would involve the United States retaining limited hegemonic control, limited to such areas as serving the role of security provider (Ikenberry, 2011, p. 306). Moreover, this renegotiated order would serve to place further constraints on U.S. use of unilateral power. While the differences between the latter orders were not made explicitly clear, I interpreted the difference to be the source of power constraint on the United States. In a post-hegemonic order, the U.S. exercise of power would be constrained primarily by multipolar balancing (reduced power differentials) versus a more voluntary acquiescence to multilateral institutional restraints and bargains. Lastly, a complete breakdown of the international order into rival, mercantilist blocs entails a complete shift to multipolarity, whereas the previous two orders would merely mean a redistribution of unipolar power from the U.S. to other states. In this scenario, the international community could resemble the Cold War era great power rivalries and spheres of influence in terms of potential security competition.

It is with this latter order that I dispute Ikenberry’s argument for the resiliency of the international system to survive such a shift to dangerous multipolarity in which Ikenberry remarks that the liberal order could instead “evolve” based on how the world chooses to respond to “the pressures and incentives for change…in regard to the way roles and responsibilities are allocated in the system” (Ikenberry, 2011, p. 332). A world divided into rival blocs does not have the same institutional mechanisms through which to facilitate cooperation and minimize interactional uncertainty through the mutual constraining of states’ abilities to act unilaterally under the pressures of the security dilemma. If any such institutions or mechanisms exist, I would argue that such entities would be very limited and would largely follow the logic of security competition in a more uncertain, anarchic environment where “there is no supranational” or semi-autonomous supreme authority (like an institution) “capable of wielding overwhelming power” to hold competing actors in check (Ritterberger et al., 2011, p. 16). Moreover, the same incentives to establish predictable mechanisms of relations would not be present in a critical mass (merely limited to relations within spheres) and thus contribute to the breakdown of the core aspects of the international system that are based on transparency and multilateralism in part due to the cohesive power that common values have in promoting cooperation in the first place. Mercantilism by definition is inherently exploitative and not grounded in cooperative values so much as imperial hierarchical values Ikenberry describes in which cooperation itself with the core on the part of the weaker states is mandatory.

In other words, Machiavellian realism would prove to be the better paradigm for organizing and analyzing this particular system in comparison to a liberal outlook. A liberal outlook could ignore security competition pressures between nuclear powers while conflating the limited aspects of cooperation present in such a system, such as the potentially imperial “hub-and-spoke” relations between the power centers of each bloc and between the cores of certain blocs that would be motivated by unconstrained self-interest (Ikenberry, 2011, p. 90, 133). In contrast, a merely reformed or post-hegemonic liberal international order would at least provide the safeguards against the unilateral use of coercive force when power is to some degree diffused among the different actors in a collective security setting. For example, the incentives among states around nuclear disarmament present in today’s order or a reformed order could be weakened in a such a setting in which institutions do not exist on large enough a scale to provide critical conflict mediation services among states to prevent a runaway arms race. It is in those first two hypothetical cases that I find Ikenberry’s reasoning, based mostly off of a broad conception of liberalism, to be the soundest. However, in the end, the core arguments of his book do not always hold up due to his overwhelming faith in the long-term viability of a liberal world order in some form, even in more mercantilist visions of world order.

In conclusion, Ikenberry’s Liberal Leviathan presents an engaging read overall, despite repetition in parts of the book concerning his theoretical buildup of key concepts and history before presenting his central thesis on the visions of the future international order. It is this theory-heavy first half of the book that may alienate more general audiences. Despite the theoretical thicket in the first half, this piece provides an important cornerstone for students of international relations rather than a more general readership, especially in consideration of the hypothetical future paths of the international order. This theoretical buildup, while lengthy, provides a critical exploration of many major theoretical perspectives in international relations, allowing readers to come to their own conclusions about the future of the existing international order. While offering suggestions to preserve the existing liberal international order largely around the lines of renegotiating America’s continued hegemonic role, at the very least, Liberal Leviathan is sure to provoke a critical and vigorous debate among students and scholars of international relations.
 
Works Cited:
Ikenberry, G. J. (2011). Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ritterberger, V., Zangl, B., & Kruck, A. (2011). International Organization (2nd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.