Still the Route to Uphold Democracy
With the post-war liberal international order facing great challenges from within and without, G. John Ikenberry, a renowned liberal theorist at Princeton University, articulates a strong advocacy for liberal internationalism. For him, it is a set of ideas and projects for organizing the world so as to advance the security and wellbeing of liberal democracies. It is also a two-century tradition of thought and action that emerged out of the Enlightenment and age of democratic revolutions, and he argues that it focuses on how to cope with the problems of modernity.
Ikenberry finds a source of the current impasse of liberal internationalism, among others, in its expansion from within the Us-led Cold War bloc to encompass the globe. Despite its drawbacks, he contends it is the only viable response to the collective dangers of 21st century modernity. As for relations with the illiberal world, he suggests a mixed strategy, between accommodation and confrontation: Looking for chances to co-operate with China and Russia, focusing on such shared problems as arms control, the environment and the global commons, while seeking to strengthen co-operation across the liberal democratic world.
In Ikenberry’s theory of international order, liberal hegemonic power, or a post-hegemonic consortium of liberal states, institutes the rules of the game in a hierarchical international system.