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Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies After the Cold War, by Ethan B. Kapstein and Michael Mastanduno (eds.)
Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry
The end of the Cold War and efforts to explain it have triggered new debates about international relations theory. Equally important, however, is how this epochal development raises new questions about the impact of forty years of East-West rivalry on relations among the great powers of the West. Will the end of the Cold War lead to the decline of cohesive and cooperative relations among Western liberal democracies? Will major Western political institutions, such as NATO and the U.S.-Japanese alliance, decay and fragment? Will “semisovereign” Germany and Japan revert to traditional great power status? Will the United States return to its traditional less engaged and isolationist posture? Our answers depend on the source of Western order: was the Cold War the primary source of Western solidarity or does the West have a distinctive and robust political order that predated and paralleled the Cold War?
Realism advances the most clearly defined—but pessimistic—answers to these questions. Neorealist theory offers two powerful explanations for cooperation within the West: balance of power and hegemony. Neorealist balance-of-power theory depicts Western cooperation and institutions as the result of balancing to counter the Soviet threat. 1 The specter of Soviet military and political expansion provided the incentive for Western countries to ally and cooperate. With the end of that Soviet threat, neorealist balance-of-power theory expects the West, and particularly security organizations such as NATO, to weaken and eventually return to a pattern of strategic rivalry. 2
A second realist theory holds that American hegemony created and maintained order in the West. 3 The preponderance of American power allowed the United States to offer incentives, both positive and negative, to other Western democracies to form and maintain political institutions. Although the end of the Cold War does not itself signal the waning of American hegemony, many realist theorists argue that America’s relative power position has been slowly and inexorably eroding for several decades. 4 So long as Cold War bipolarity produced incentives for Western cooperation, the consequences of the decline of American hegemony were not fully felt. But with the end of the Cold War, those consequences—institutional decay and conflict in the West—will finally manifest themselves. The basic thrust of these realist theories is that relations among the Western states will return to the patterns of the 1930s and early 1940s, in which the problems of anarchy dominated: economic rivalry, security dilemmas, arms races, hypernationalism, balancing alliances, and ultimately the threat of war.
But these realist theories overlook important parts of the story. In the wake of World War II, the United States and its liberal democratic allies created a political, economic, and strategic order that was explicitly conceived as a solution to the problems that led to world war. 5 Importantly, this order predated the onset of the Cold War and was developed and institutionalized at least semi-independently of it. Major features of this order cannot be explained by hegemonic and balance-of-power theories—the Western order contains too many consensual and reciprocal relations for such explanations. Nor can the degree of Western institutionalization, its multilateral pattern, and the stable “semisovereignty” of Germany and Japan be explained by balancing and American hegemony. The timing of this order’s creation and many of its salient features provide a puzzle that can be accounted for only by looking beyond realist theories.
Of course, many liberal theories have attempted to understand and explain the distinctive features of the Western political order. But they too fall short in important ways. Theories of the democratic peace, pluralistic security communities, complex interdependence, and the trading state attempt to capture distinctive features of liberal, capitalist, and democratic modern societies and their relations. 6 Their overall picture of the West’s future after the Cold War is much more optimistic than that of realism. While offering important insights into the Western order, these liberal theories are incomplete and miss several of its most important aspects. They do not give sufficient prominence to or attempt to explain the prevalence of co-binding security practices over traditional balancing, the distinctive system-structural features of the West, the peculiarly penetrated and reciprocal nature of American hegemony, the role of capitalism in overcoming the problem of relative gains, and the distinctive civic political identity that pervades these societies.
This chapter aims to develop a theory of “structural liberalism” that more adequately captures the unique features of this Western order and builds on the strengths but goes beyond the weaknesses of current realist and liberal theories. Structural liberalism seeks to capture the major components of the Western political order and their interrelationships.
In assessing the claims of structural liberalism, it is important for us to note that conflict within the Western system is not itself contrary to the propositions of structural liberalism. Likewise, the existence of conflict within the West does not in itself validate realist arguments. In holding up “harmony” as the standard of the success of liberal practices, many realists have set a standard that is not only impossible to meet but also deeply misleading concerning the character of liberal political systems. 7 Liberal political systems exhibit endemic conflict, but such conflict is bound and channeled without calling into question the liberal consensus and liberal institutions. In liberal systems, the diversity of actors and interests ensures a continuous, often heated, political struggle with real winners and losers. Indeed, conflict is evidence of the health and vitality of liberal political orders so long as it remains contained and falls short of the use of violence or highly asymmetrical coercion.
The argument unfolds in six sections, each focused on a component of the Western order. The first section examines the security practice of co-binding as a liberal solution to the problem of anarchy. The second explores the penetrated character of American hegemony, the role of transnational relations in American hegemony, and its reciprocal rather than coercive character. The third section analyzes the role of the semisovereign and partial great powers of Japan and Germany as structural features of the Western political order. The fourth section examines structural openness, the political foundations of economic openness, and its solutions to relative gains problems. The fifth section focuses on the distinctive Western civic identity and community and its role in underpinning the liberal institutions in the West. We conclude by summarizing the differing predictions of realism and structural liberalism after the Cold War.
Security Co-Binding
Neorealism provides a very strong argument relating system structure to unit-level practices. The core of neorealist theory is that states in an anarchical system will pursue a strategy of balancing. Anarchy means that there is no central government that the units can rely on for security; and in such a situation, states seeking security will balance against other states that they perceive to be threats to their security. Balancing has both an internal and external dimension. Internally, it takes the form of the domestic mobilization of power resources (via armament and the generation of state capacity). Externally, balancing typically results in ad hoc, counter-hegemonic alliances in which states join together with other states that fear for their security from threatening or powerful states. 8 Moreover, successful balancing, by undercutting the concentration of power at the system level, tends to reinforce and reproduce anarchy; in effect, balancing and anarchy are co-generative. Likewise, balancing in anarchy tends to strengthen the capacity of the state in its relation with society. That in turn makes the creation of system-wide governance more difficult. This balancing pattern in anarchy has characterized the Western state system both in its early-modern, Europe-centered phase as well as in the global system that has emerged in late-modern times. Because of this long pattern and deep logic, realists expect balancing to be pervasive in international politics wherever anarchy exists.
This realist view overlooks a distinctive practice that liberal states have pioneered and that has given the West a structure unlike anarchy. Neorealists fail to recognize that liberal states practice co-binding—that is, they attempt to tie one another down by locking each other into institutions that are mutually constraining. 9 Binding constraint can be either asymmetrical or symmetrical. Asymmetrical binding is characteristic of hegemony or empire, but liberal states practice a more mutual and reciprocal co-binding that overcomes the effects of anarchy without producing hierarchy. Co-binding does not ignore the problems and dynamics of anarchy, but aims to overcome them. By establishing institutions of mutual constraint, co-binding reduces the risks and uncertainties associated with anarchy. It ties potential threatening states into predictable and restrained patterns of behavior, and it makes balancing unnecessary.
Co-binding practices are particularly suited to liberal states. When it is successful, co-binding reduces the necessity for units to have strong and autonomous state apparatuses. Moreover, the internal structures of democratic and liberal states more readily lend themselves to the establishment of institutions that constrain state autonomy. Just as anarchy gives rise to balancing in traditional great power politics, a community of liberal states gives rise to and is reinforced by co-binding. This co-binding practice, although overlooked by neorealist theory, has a robust logic that liberal states in the West have exhibited.
Co-binding is an important feature of the Western liberal order. While balancing and hegemony played a role in the formation of these Western institutions, co-binding practices were significantly and independently motivated by an attempt to overcome anarchy and its consequences among the Western states. After World War I, the United States sought through the League of Nations to establish a system of co-binding restraints among Western states. It was not fully attempted in practice, however, and to the extent it was, it failed for a variety of reasons. 10 After World War II, the United States and liberal states in Europe sought again to bind themselves through NATO. Although realists dismiss failed efforts at binding as idealistic, and successful post-World War II institutions as the result of balancing, these institutions were mainly created by Europeans and Americans eager to avoid the patterns that had led to the two world wars.
The most important co-binding institution in the West, of course, is NATO. Although the Soviet threat provided much of the political impetus to form NATO, the alliance always had in the minds of its most active advocates the additional purpose of constraining the Western European states vis-à-vis each other and tying the United States into Europe. 11 Indeed, NATO was as much a solution for the “German problem” as it was a counter to the Soviet Union. As the first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, famously put it, the purpose of NATO was to keep the “Russians out, the Germans down, and the Americans in.” These aims were all interrelated: to counterbalance the Soviet Union it was necessary to mobilize German power in a way that the other European states did not find threatening and to tie the United States into a firm commitment on the continent.
The NATO alliance went beyond the traditional realist conception of an ad hoc defense alliance. It created an elaborate organization, drew states into joint force planning and international military command structures, and established a complex transgovernmental political process for making political and military decisions. 12 The co-binding character of this alliance is manifested in the remarkable effort its member states made to give their commitment a semipermanent status—to lock themselves in so that it is difficult to exit.
The desire to overcome the dynamics of anarchy also gave rise to an agenda for economic co-binding, particularly in Europe. The European union movement explicitly attempted to achieve economic interdependence between Germany and her neighbors in order to make strategic military competition much more costly and difficult. The first fruit of this program, the European Coal and Steel Community, effectively pooled these heavy industries that had been essential for war making. In its administration of the Marshall Plan, the United States sought to encourage the creation of joint economic organizations in order to foster economic interdependencies that crossed over the traditional lines of hostilities between European states. 13 The United States also supported the creation of political institutions of European union, thereby foreclosing a return to the syndromes of anarchy. 14 American supporters of European reconstruction as well as European advocates of the European community explicitly strove to develop institutions to make Western Europe look more like the United States than like traditional Westphalian states in anarchy.
Faced with this argument, realists might point to significant conflicts between the United States and its allies, such as the 1956 Suez crisis, the Vietnam war, the 1982–83 Euromissiles controversy, and the 1982–83 gas pipeline crisis. But most of these conflicts had their roots not in conflicts internal to the West, but rather in the larger Cold War competition, thus pointing out that bipolarity was as much a source of conflict in the West as it was a source of cohesion. The underlying cause of these conflicts was the fundamental discrepancy between the American perception of the requirements for a global strategy of containment, and the more narrow, regional perspective of the Europeans. Moreover, these conflicts were often resolved in ways that resulted in closer ties, thus both revealing and reinforcing the robustness of Western relations and linkages. The end of the Cold War has reduced this systematic irritant in Western relations.
In sum, security co-binding among Western liberal states has produced a political order that successfully mitigated anarchy within the West in ways that neorealist theory fails to appreciate. Although these institutions created by co-binding practices significantly altered the anarchical relations within the Atlantic world, they fell far short of creating a hierarchy. Because Waltzian neorealism conceives of order as either hierarchical or anarchical, it lacks the ability to grasp institutions between hierarchy and anarchy that constitute the structure of the liberal order.
Penetrated Hegemony
The second major realist explanation for the Western political order is American hegemony. Hegemony theorists, tracing their roots from Thucydides through E. H. Carr, claim that order arises from concentrations of power and that, when concentrated power is absent, disorder marks politics, both domestic and international. In international systems, concentrations of power produce hegemony, which is conceived as a system organized around asymmetrical power relations. 15 Hegemonic theorists argue that Western order is the product of American preponderance, which was at its zenith in the immediate post-World War II years when the major security and economic rules and institutions were established. In this image of the West, order is maintained because the United States has had the capacity and will to compel and others to establish and maintain rules and to provide inducements and rewards to its client states in Europe and East Asia. 16
Both balance-of-power and hegemonic theories are conventionally viewed as versions of neorealism, but their relationship is much more problematic. In fact, these two versions of neorealist theory have quite contradictory images of order in world politics—one emphasizing that order comes from concentrations of power and the other that such concentrations produce resisting measures. Thus, balance-of-power theory poses a fundamental question to hegemonic theory: why do subordinate powers within a hegemonic system not balance against the hegemon? 17 To answer this question, one must look at the ways in which stable hegemonic orders depart from the simple image provided by hegemonic theory.
The American-centered Western order exhibits far more reciprocity and legitimacy than an order based on superordinate and subordinate relations would expect. American hegemony has had a distinctively liberal cast—one more consensual, cooperative, and integrative than coercive. The distinctive features of this American-centered political system—particularly its transparency, the diffusion of power into many hands, and the multiple points of access to policymaking—have enabled Western European and Japanese allies to participate in the formation of policies for the overall Western system. 18 As a result, American hegemony has been marked by a high degree of legitimacy, without major challenges or efforts to balance against American leadership. In large measure, this system is an “empire by invitation,” in which the secondary states have sought American leadership rather than resisted it. 19
To understand this system, and explain why it deviates from the realist hegemonic model, we must incorporate two factors neglected by realists: the structure of the American state and the prevalence of transnational relations. A distinctive feature of the American state is its decentralized structure, which provides numerous points of access to competing groups—both domestic and foreign. When a hegemonic state is liberal, the subordinate actors in the system have a variety of channels and mechanisms for registering their interests with the hegemon. Transnational relations are the means by which subordinate actors in the system represent their interests to the hegemonic power and the vehicle through which consensus between the hegemon and lesser powers is achieved. This system provides subordinate states with transparency, access, representation, and communication and consensus-building mechanisms. It supplies the means for secondary states to significantly express their concerns and satisfy their interests. Taken together, liberal state openness and transnational relations create an ongoing political process within the hegemonic system without which the system would either be undermined by balancing or the need to be coercive.
The key point is that the open domestic structure of the United States is not simply an anomalous or solely domestic phenomenon, but is integral to the operation of the Western system. The openness and extensive decentralization of the American liberal state provides subordinate powers with routine access to the decisionmaking processes of the hegemonic state relevant to their concerns. And, because the decisionmaking process of the American liberal state is so transparent, secondary powers are not subject to surprises. 20 The fundamental character of the American liberal state is that it is elaborately articulated and accessible to groups and forces emerging from civil societies. 21 The size, diversity, and federal character of the American political system also offers many points of influence and access. The American polity has many of the features associated with international politics—such as decentralization and multiple power centers—and is therefore particularly well prepared to incorporate pressures and influences from liberal societies outside itself. 22 In a large and pluralistic polity, such as the United States, it is relatively easy for foreign actors to represent their interests in forms that more resemble domestic politics than traditional diplomacy. 23
Transnational relations are a second integral component of the liberal hegemonic system, whose role and significance have not been grasped by either realist or liberal theorists. Realists view transnational relations as derivative of hegemonic power and thus of secondary importance. Hegemony provides a framework within which such interactions can flourish, and realists explain the growth of transnational relations in the post-World War II era as a consequence of American hegemony. 24 Conversely, liberal theorists, who pay a great deal of attention to transnational relations, see them as the beginnings of a system that is expected to eventually displace the state and locate political power in nonstate entities such as multinational corporations, international organizations, and networks of transnational and transgovernmental experts. 25
Far from being ancillary or derivative, transnational relations are a vital component of the system’s operation. 26 Because of the receptiveness of the liberal state and the existence of transnational relations, subordinate states achieve effective representation. Furthermore, transnational connections between the actors in a hegemonic system constitute a complex communication system that is continuously shaping preferences and thus moderating the divergence of interests among actors. Transnational networks also serve to forge a consensus and lobby policymakers throughout the system. In hegemonic systems infused with transnational relations, the legitimacy of the asymmetrical relationships is enhanced. Such processes endow the relations with a degree of acceptability in the eyes of subordinate powers. This in turn reduces the tendency for subordinate powers to resist and, correspondingly, diminishes the need for the hegemon to exercise coercion. 27 Such legitimacy endows hegemonic systems with a greater degree of stability and resilience than what the realist hegemonic model expects. Because of the accessible state structure and transnational state processes, the arrows of influence are not in one direction—from the center to the periphery—as in the hegemonic model, but rather run in both directions, producing a fundamentally reciprocal political order.
In Atlantic relations, the United States and West European states have been tightly linked by transnational forces and influences. The elaborate consultative arrangements in NATO provide venues and forums for European concerns to be registered in the American public policy process. 28 An extensive network of public and private Western institutions exists. Official venues include the G-7 process, the OECD, intergovernmental consultative networks, and the NATO Council. Quasi-official institutions include the Atlantic Council, Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Assembly, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Transatlantic Policy Network, and the Trilateral Commission. Extensive social, cultural, and economic networks also span the Atlantic, including business roundtables, parliamentary exchanges, networks of journalists, and common media sources. Taken together, these constitute a dense system of routinized channels for consultation, exchanges of views, dispute resolution, and consensus building. These links ensure that the Atlantic relationship will be consensual more than coercive.
The relationship between the United States and Japan is less extensively institutionalized; however, it also exhibits similar features. 29 Japanese corporate representatives have significant access to the Washington policymaking process and have been able to influence American decisionmaking in areas that affect Japanese interests, particularly in trade policy. 30 This Japanese access has not been reciprocated, but such asymmetry helps compensate for the subordinate role of Japan as an ally. From the Japanese perspective, access to and influence over the Washington process helps Japan cope with the enormous power the United States has over Japan, thus adding legitimacy and stability to the relationship. Viewed from the perspective of the American state, Japanese access is a weakness; viewed from the perspective of the American system, it is a strength.
Faced with this argument, realists might object that America’s relations with Europe and Japan still contain significant elements of coercion and conflict, and that the American political system is not fully transparent but is capable of generating shocks and surprises. First, the strongest case of American hegemonic coercion is toward France, which has routinely complained about and actively sought to resist American leadership. France, however, is the most statist and thus its domestic structures are least suitable for participation in the system. 31 But, more generally, “coercion” is endemic to the exercise of power and the processes of politics, and the Western system is not characterized by its absence but by its moderation and reciprocity. Indeed, an American nationalist could object that the Western system coerces the United States into significant commitments and constraints, which is something that fundamentally reflects the European desire to permanently involve the United States in Europe and combat American isolationism.
Second, the American political process is not completely transparent, and it is capable of actions—such as the Nixon shock of 1971, the neutron bomb reversal of 1979, the extension of pipeline sanctions in 1984—that the other actors find surprising and undesirable. But most shocks have related to the prosecution of the Cold War, further demonstrating its potential to produce conflicts in the West, and American actions have hinged upon the concentration of authority in the presidency, which is in significant measure a Cold War artifact. The most salient case of economic surprise within the West was the closing of the gold window; this marked a movement of the system away from American dominance to a more reciprocal system. Overall, coercion has been moderate and surprises infrequent, given the extensiveness and intensity of Western political relations.
In sum, transnational relations are not ancillary or oppositional to the operation of the American hegemonic system as most realists and liberals argue, but are rather integral to its structure and help account for its stability and durability. Transnational relations provide subordinate actors in the system with channels through which their interests can be expressed to the hegemon. Were such relations less robust, the hegemonic system would invite balancing and be more coercive and less legitimate. Realist hegemonic theory has failed to appreciate the significance of transnational relations in the operation of state hegemonic systems and thus furnishes an incomplete picture of the Western system.
Semisovereignty and Partial Great Powers
A third major structural feature of the Western liberal order distinguishing it from the realist image of states in anarchy is the status of Germany and Japan as semisovereign and partial great powers. The “peace constitutions” of Germany and Japan, which in both cases were initially imposed by the United States and the Western allies after World War II, have, contrary to realist expectations, come to be embraced by the German and Japanese publics as acceptable and even desirable features of their political systems. The structure of these states is highly eccentric for realist models, but these are integral and not incidental features of the Western political order.
Realist theories assume that the nature of the units making up the international system are sovereign and, to the extent that they have sufficient capacity, they are great powers. Sovereignty, as understood by realists, is Westphalian sovereignty, which means that states are accorded a set of rights and assume a set of responsibilities, the most important of which is the mutual recognition of each other’s autonomy and juridical equality. 32 Moreover, Westphalian sovereignty is understood by realists to be one of the primary means by which the system of anarchical states is institutionalized, thus reinforcing the primacy of the state and the absence of hierarchy characteristic of anarchy, and providing a degree of regularity to anarchy. 33 Central to realist theory is also the concept of the “great power,” the exclusive set of states that have sufficient capacity not only to secure themselves but also to exercise influence over surrounding smaller states and to affect the entire system. Integral to this realist notion of the great power is that such states possess a full range of instruments of statecraft, especially a robust military establishment for making good their claims to great power status and influencing the system. 34 Together, Westphalian sovereignty and the great power are enduring features of the realist vision of anarchical society.
Two major states in the Western system, Germany and Japan, do not follow the expected realist pattern, but are semisovereign and partial great powers. It is widely noted that since World War II, Germany and Japan have been “semisovereign” states. 35 Such a label, while partly misleading, is nevertheless essential in capturing their distinctive and eccentric character and roles. As the reconstruction after 1945 progressed, Germany and Japan both sought to be accorded the full panoply of rights and responsibilities of a Westphalian sovereign, and the United States and other Western states were forthcoming with this recognition as part of their reconstruction and reintegration into the international system. However, it is still appropriate to characterize these states as fundamentally semisovereign because in return for sovereign recognition they accepted a role in international relations that was self-constrained in major ways. They were able to gain juridical sovereignty only because they were willing to eschew the full range of great power roles and activities.
At the heart of this odd configuration of juridical sovereignty and effective semisovereignty have been two levels of structure: strong self-imposed constitutional constraints and the integration of Germany and Japan in wider political, security, and economic institutions. German and Japanese domestic political structures that were created during occupation and reconstruction featured parliamentary democracy, federalism, and an independent judiciary—and thus they were much more similar to the liberal American state than the traditional and closed autocratic state. 36 These domestic structures facilitate binding linkages, transnational interaction, and political integration. These structures of constraint and the practice of semisovereignty were anchored in a strong domestic consensus that traditional autocracy and imperialism had catastrophic consequences, which were to be avoided at all costs. 37
The most important way in which Germany and Japan are eccentric states in the realist model is that they are not playing the traditional role of great powers. Their partial great power status is defined by the discrepancy between their power potential and power mobilization and between the breadth of foreign policy interests and the underdevelopment of their policy instruments. As a product of the American and Western occupations of Germany and Japan, both countries created “peace constitutions” that wrote into their basic law a foreign policy orientation radically at variance with the requirements of great power status and activities. Most important was that their constitutions committed these states to purely defensive military orientations. A powerful expression of this self-restraint is that both Germany and Japan have voluntarily foregone the acquisition of nuclear weapons—the military instrument that more than any other has defined great powers during the last half century. In the postwar period, the international strategic environment has not allowed them to retreat into isolation or maintain neutrality. But their defensive military postures have not been autonomous; instead, they have been elaborately and extensively integrated into multilateral arrangements. In addition to explicitly eschewing great power postures, German and Japanese constitutions contain a strong mandate for an activist foreign policy directed at maintaining international peace and building international institutions.
Although both Germany and Japan are semisovereign and partial great powers, there are important differences between them. Their regional contexts have imposed very different constraints and opportunities. 38 Germany, sharing long-contested land borders with many countries, has pursued its unique postwar role by integrating itself militarily and economically with its neighbors. In contrast, insular Japan was alone in the Far East as a postwar liberal power and therefore its strategic co-binding with the rest of the system has been through the bilateral U.S.-Japanese alliance. Furthermore, the Western reconstruction of Germany along liberal lines was much more intensive, while the early demands of the Cold War led the United States to reconfigure Japan less comprehensively. Partially as a result, domestic political structures in Germany became more liberal and decentralized than in Japan, where strong state capacity remained, particularly in the economic domain. Overall, German integration into the Western political order is much more complete, both in multilateral economic and security systems. One expression of this difference is that German rearmament has been more extensive than Japanese because Germany is more thoroughly bound into the Western order.
The existence of Germany and Japan as semisovereign and partial great powers constitutes a fundamental anomaly for realist theory. The features of these states are not, however, incidental but are integral to the Western political order. The widely held neorealist expectation that Germany and Japan will revert back to great power status poses a test for these competing theories: if this pattern eccentric to realism persists, will the explanatory utility of realism have been compromised? Conversely, should Germany and Japan return to the normal realist pattern, the Western political order is not likely to endure—and, if it does, the concept of structural liberalism will be called into question.
Structural Economic Openness
A major feature of the Western order is the prevalence of capitalist economies and international institutions dedicated to economic openness. Neorealist theories offer two powerful explanations for the Western liberal economic order, one stressing American hegemony and the other Western alliance within bipolarity. Liberals also claim many explanations, including the rise of “embedded liberalism” among the advanced industrial nations. While providing important insights, these theories are insufficient and miss two crucial dimensions of the political structure and practice of the liberal economic order. First, advanced capitalism creates such high prospects for absolute gains that states attempt to mitigate anarchy between themselves to avoid the need to pursue relative gains. Second, liberal states have pursued economic openness for political ends, specifically by using free trade as an instrument to alter and maintain the motivations and characteristics of other states to make them more politically and strategically congenial.
One powerful realist explanation for the prevalence of open economies in the Western order is hegemonic stability theory. 39 These realists argue that open international orders are created by and must be sustained by the concentration of power in the hands of one state. Hegemonic powers produce and support openness by establishing and enforcing rules, supplying exchange currency, absorbing exports, and wielding incentives and inducements to encourage other states to remain open. Hegemonic stability theorists argue that economic openness in the nineteenth century was made possible by British hegemony and that when British power waned in the first decades of the twentieth century, the open trading system broke down. Likewise, after World War II, the United States, then at the peak of its relative power, provided the leadership to establish Western liberal economic institutions, thereby catalyzing another era of economic openness and high growth. 40 Hegemonic stability theorists maintain that the relative economic decline of the United States has the potential to undermine the openness and stability of this order. Because of bipolarity and American leadership in the Cold War, the effects of American relative decline have not been fully registered, but after the Cold War the expectation is that the system will decay.
Another realist position is that free trade has resulted from bipolarity and the Western strategic alliance. 41 In this view, allied states are less concerned with relative gains considerations than unallied states. Because states are allied, they are at least partially removed from anarchical relations and thus are not as sensitive to relative shifts in economic advance that might result from free trade. Similarly, realist theorists argue that states that are members of a military alliance see relative gains by their allies as adding to the overall strength of the alliance, and therefore they are willing to participate in an open system with their allies. With the decline of bipolarity and the diminished importance of strategic alliances after the Cold War, the expectation of these realist theories is that the free trade order will come under increasing stress.
Liberals also advance powerful arguments about the sources of the Western system of open economies. Of particular note is the proposition that liberal states in the twentieth century have committed themselves to ambitious goals of social welfare and economic stability, which in turn requires them to pursue foreign economic policies that maintain a congenial international environment for realizing these goals. 42 This notion of “embedded liberalism” situates the motivation for open economic policies in the domestic structures of advanced industrial societies, which have changed from laissez-faire to welfare states. As long as Western welfare states retain their commitment to full employment and social welfare, the theory expects that they will remain committed to liberal foreign economic policies regardless of changes in the strategic environment. 43
These realist and liberal views make important insights, but they neglect two important sources of Western economic openness. Neorealists rightly point out that in an anarchical system, states must be more concerned with relative than absolute gains, and therefore are willing to forego the absolute gains that often derive from economic exchange out of fear that their relative position will suffer. 44 The relative and absolute gains argument is typically seen as an important reason why states will not accept economic openness. In reality, however, it suggests a powerful explanation for why states will take steps to mitigate anarchy. In a world of advanced industrial capitalist states, the absolute gains to be derived from economic openness are so substantial that states have the strong incentive to abridge anarchy so that they do not have to be preoccupied with relative gains considerations at the expense of absolute gains. The assumption of the neorealist argument is that the only alternative to anarchy is hierarchy, but, in fact, liberal states have developed co-binding institutions and practices that make it possible to moderate anarchy without producing hierarchy. The extensive institutions, both strategic and economic, that liberal states have built can be explained as the mechanisms by which they have sought to avoid the need to abandon absolute gains out of the need to pursue relative gains. The Western system of co-binding is highly developed across security, political, and economic realms, and it provides states with confidence that changes in their relative position do not translate into security threats.
Another feature of advanced industrial capitalist society with significant implications for the politics of relative and absolute gains is the uncertainty about how relative gains will be distributed, the high probability that their distribution will fluctuate fairly rapidly, and the many sectors of modern societies that make it likely that patterns of gains and losses will be variegated. Modern industrial economies are characterized by great complexity. This means that states attempting to calculate the relative gains consequences of any particular policy face a high degree of uncertainty about its effects. In highly dynamic markets with large numbers of sophisticated, fast-moving and autonomous corporate actors, it is very difficult to anticipate the consequences of policies and thus the relative distribution of gains and losses. Moreover, the rate of change in advanced industrial capitalism is so great that the distribution of relative gains and losses is likely to fluctuate between countries fairly rapidly. Thus, even if one country can foresee that it will be a loser in a particular period, it can assume that it will experience a different outcome in successive iterations. 45 Finally, modern industrial capitalist societies contain many different sectors and the different sectors in one country may be simultaneously declining and rising as a result of international openness, making it difficult for states to calculate their aggregate relative gains and losses. The multifaceted character of these societies helps ensure that the pattern of relative gains and losses will be highly variegated, thus rendering it unlikely that any one state will be a loser or winner across the board. 46
A second motivation that Western states have in establishing and maintaining an open economic order is political. The expansion of capitalism that free trade stimulates has the effect of altering the goals and character of other states in the international order in a liberal and democratic direction, thus producing a more strategically and politically hospitable system. Free trade is thus a political instrument for the spread and strengthening of liberal democracy as well as for the security consequences that follow. The collapse of the world economy in the Great Depression and the ensuing political turmoil was a major cause of the retreat of democracy and liberalism in the 1930s, the rise of fascist and imperialist states, the emergence of rival blocs, and ultimately the outbreak of World War II. In reaction to these events, the principal architects of the post-World War II liberal order viewed economic openness as a strategy to avoid regional blocs, trade wars, illiberal regimes, and ruinous imperial rivalry. 47 They understood that a world populated by liberal states would be much more compatible with American interests and the survival of democracy and capitalism in the United States, and they saw economic openness and institutions to spread and stabilize capitalism as powerful instruments for achieving these strategic ends. 48 Thus, contrary to the realist proposition that free trade is the product of political and security structures, the institutions of economic openness are in part the cause of those structures. This proposition suggests that the Western liberal economic order is not fundamentally dependent on bipolarity and American hegemony, but instead has a powerful independent origin unlikely to be affected by the end of the Cold War.
Realist claims that the Western economic order derives from hegemony and alliance overlooks crucial features of the Western system. The theory of structural liberalism argues that there is a political logic and structure that emerges more directly from capitalism. The character of capitalism provides states with powerful incentives to create structures that replace or mitigate anarchy so as to sidestep relative gains concerns and the impediments they pose to the realization of high absolute gains. Likewise, the dynamic and complex character of modern capitalism frustrates calculations of relative gains and thus the formulation of policies that might seek to advance it. Finally, open economies are themselves the product of a liberal political strategy that seeks to reinforce and spread liberal political structures and their security benefits. In short, the political economy of capitalism and the structural features of the Western political order are much more integrally related than realists suggest, and the viability of this order is likely to be much less dependent on the end of the Cold War and the decline of American hegemony than they lead us to believe.
Civic Identity
The fifth dimension of the Western political order is a common civic identity. The common elements of Western identity take two interrelated and reinforcing forms. The first is the parallel emergence of domestic identities centered around liberalism, democracy, and capitalism—which is now dominant in all Western countries. The second is the emergence of a common Western political identity, which is less hegemonic and tends to be concentrated in elites rather than in the more general public. Together, they have significantly displaced more virulent and xenophobic forms of national identity, producing forms of identity quite at odds with realist expectations. Although difficult to quantify, what Montesquieu called “spirit” is an essential component of any political order. The West’s “spirit”—common norms, public mores, and political identities—gives this political order cohesiveness and solidarity. Throughout the Western world, there is an overwhelming consensus in favor of political democracy, market economics, ethnic toleration, and personal freedom. The political spectrum in the West looks increasingly like the narrow “liberal” one that Louis Hartz once identified as distinctively American. 49 Compared to the diversity that characterized Europe as recently as the 1930s, the convergence of political practices and identities within the countries of the West is an important feature whose causes and consequences require explanation.
Realist approaches to international theory largely assume that the separate state units have distinct national identities. Realists emphasize that national identity provides states with legitimacy and serves as a basis for the mobilization of resources against outside threats. 50 For realism, the experience of interstate war serves as an important source of national identity and loyalty because it offers the most potent and emotive symbolism of heroism, battlefield sacrifice, and collective memory of opposition and triumph. 51 Military organizations are one of the most powerful means of socializing individuals into patriotism and veterans organizations constitute a major interest group that reinforces the primacy of the nation-state. For realism, these sociological processes are a crucial link between international anarchy and interstate war and the prevalence of the nation-state as a unit in international system.
No enduring political order can exist without a substantial sense of community and shared identity. Political identity and community and political structure are mutually dependent. Structures that work and endure do so because they are congruent with identities and forms of community that provide them with legitimacy. Conversely, structures and institutions create and reinforce identities and community through processes of socialization and assimilation. These important sociological dimensions of political orders have been neglected by both neorealist and neoliberal theories, which take the preferences of the actors as given and examine only the interaction between interests and structure. As a result, they miss the identity and community dimensions of political order—both national and liberal civic alternatives.
An essential component of the Western political order is a widespread civic identity distinct from national, ethnic, and religious identities. At the core of civic identity in Western countries is a consensus around a set of norms and principles, especially political democracy, constitutional government, individual rights, private property-based economic systems, and toleration of diversity in non-civic areas of ethnicity and religion. Throughout the West, the dominant form of political identity is based on a set of abstract and juridical rights and responsibilities that coexist with private and semipublic ethnic and religious associations. Just as warring states and nationalism reinforce each other, so do Western civic identity and Western political structures and institutions.
Civic identity within the West is intimately associated with capitalism, along with its business and commodity cultures. As Susan Strange argues, capitalism has generated a distinctive “business civilization.” 52 Across the advanced industrial world, capitalism has produced a culture of market rationality that permeates all aspects of life. The intensity and volume of market transactions across the industrial capitalist world provide a strong incentive for individual behaviors and corporate practices to converge. One strong manifestation of this convergence is the widespread use of English as the language of the marketplace. Likewise, the universality of business attire across the industrial capitalist world signifies this common business culture.
Another cultural dimension of the Western order is the commonality of commodities and consumption practices. Throughout the advanced industrial world, mass-produced commodities have spawned a universal vernacular culture that reaches into every aspect of daily existence. The symbolic content of day-to-day life throughout the West is centered not on religious or national iconography, but upon the images of commercial advertising. The ubiquitously displayed scenes of the good life are thoroughly consumerist. The demands of mass marketing and advertising place a premium on reaching the largest number of purchasers, thus contributing to the homogenization of identities and the avoidance of polarizing ethnic or religious or racial traits. Further defining popular culture throughout the West is mass entertainment, particularly television, movies, music, and athletic events. Because of increased incomes and cheap transportation, international tourism has become a mass phenomenon. The cumulative effect of this symbolic and popular culture and interaction is to create similar lifestyles and values throughout the West. 53
Beyond emergence of very similar identities within Western countries, the widespread circulation of elites and educational exchanges has produced a significant and growing sense of shared identity. 54 The advanced industrial countries contain many transnational networks based on professional and avocational specialization. Enabled by cheap air transportation and telecommunications, scientific, technological, medical, artistic, athletic, and public policy networks draw membership from across the Western world and have frequent conferences and events. Also significant is the great increase in the volume of international education activities, most notably the growing transnational character of the student bodies in elite universities, and particularly professional schools. These developments have produced a business, political, cultural, and technical elite with similar educational backgrounds and extensive networks of personal friendships and contacts. 55 The cumulative weight of these international homogenizing and interacting forces has been to create an increasingly common identity and culture—a powerful sense that “we” constitutes more than the traditional community of the nation-state.
As civic and capitalist identities have strengthened, ethnic and national identity has declined. Although it is still customary to speak of the West as being constituted by nation-states, the political identity of Westerners is no longer exclusively centered on nationalism. The West has evolved a distinctive solution to the problem of nationalism and ethnicity that is vital to its operation and inadequately recognized by realists. The Western synthesis has two related features. First, ethnic and national identity has been muted and diluted to the point where it tends to be semiprivate in character. Although not as homogeneous as anticipated by cosmopolitan philosophers of the Enlightenment, the identities of Westerners are largely secular and modern, thus allowing for many different loyalties and sensibilities—none of which predominates. Second, an ethic of toleration is a strong and essential part of Western political culture. This ethic permits—and even celebrates—a highly pluralist society in which muted differences coexist, intermingle, and cross-fertilize each other. Unlike the chauvinism and parochialism of premodern and non-Western societies, an ethic of toleration, diversity, and indifference infuses the industrial democracies.
Many realists forecast that nationalist and ethnic identity will reassert itself in Western Europe in the wake of the Cold War, fueling conflict and destroying liberal democratic society. The virulence of ethnic conflict in the Balkans and elsewhere in former communist lands has revived the specter of the worst of Europe’s past. The increase in anti-immigrant violence in Western Europe, particularly in Germany, demonstrates that the West is not immune to a new epidemic of ethnic violence and national war. The opponents of liberal pluralism are a loud but small minority of the alienated and economically dislocated. Their voices are not, however, a cause for a crisis of self-confidence. The ethos of the West remains overwhelmingly tolerant and receptive to diversity. Indeed, the anti-foreigner violence and ethnic ferment have been most revealing in the magnitude of the condemnation they have evoked. Measured by the standards of the past—even the recent past of the 1930s—these episodes are marginal and highlight the strong majorities committed to a liberal civic order.
Contrary to the dominant neorealist and neoliberal theories, identity and community are important components of political order. Identities are not primordial or immutable. Rather they are the product of social, economic, and political forces operating in specific historical contexts. The Western political order is strengthened by and in turn strengthens the distinctive Western civic identity. The continued viability and expansion of capitalism, made possible by Western multilateral institutions, sustain the business, commodity, and transnational cultures that in turn make it more politically feasible to sustain these institutions. Similarly, the success of security binding practices in preserving peace among Western countries reinforces the identity of the West as a political community by allowing memories of war, traditionally generative of conflicting national identities, to fade into an increasingly remote past. While the Cold War and the construction of the Western identity as the “free world” contributed to Western solidarity and helped marginalize memories of international conflict in the West (just as bipolarity contributed to Western institutional development), the Western civic identity has deeper sources that the end of the Cold War does not affect.
Realism versus Structural Liberalism after the Cold War
Realism and structural liberalism have very different understandings of the nature of the Western political system, and therefore produce very different expectations about the trajectory of Western relations after the Cold War. In principle, it should be possible to test their different expectations—to demonstrate the superiority of one over the other. However, during the Cold War such a clean test was elusive because both theories expected that there would be cohesion in the West, but for very different reasons. After the Cold War, a sharp clash between the theories has come to the fore: realist theories expect the Western system to decay as a result of the end of bipolarity and the continuing decline of American power, while the structural liberal theory expects Western order to persist, since the factors that gave shape to the West remain. Events in the first years after the Cold War provide the beginnings of a clean test of the competing theories—a test that will grow sharper as time passes.
Realist theories generate sharp expectations that Western order will decay with the end of the Cold War, and realist scholars have advanced explicit predictions drawn from these theories; balance-of-power theory expects that with the end of bipolarity and the end of the Soviet threat bases of solidarity will decline and conflicts endemic to anarchy will emerge. Without a unifying threat, balance-of-power theory predicts that strategic rivalry among the Western powers will reemerge, and specifically that the NATO alliance will fall apart and movement toward European union will halt and reverse. 56 Realist theories of hegemony have long expected Western order to crumble in the face of declining American power capabilities relative to its Western allies, and with the end of the Cold War—and the end of the masking influence of bipolarity—this theory expects more rapid decay. 57 A corollary expectation generated by realist balance-of-power theory is that the semisovereignty of Germany and Japan will be abandoned and both countries will acquire the full trappings of great power capabilities and ambitions. 58 In the realm of political economy, a corollary expectation of realist hegemony theory is that the liberal trading order will break down and be replaced by trade wars and competing economic blocs. In particular, the U.S.-Japanese relationship is seen as being ripe for increased conflict; with the end of the Soviet threat and the declining significance of the U.S.-Japanese defense alliance, Japan is seen to be free to intensify its mercantilist economic strategies. 59 Finally, realist theory generates the expectations that with the return of anarchy and great power rivalry, nationalism will take a more prominent place in Western identities at the expense of civic identity. 60 The overall prediction of realism is that the future of the West will be much like the pre-Cold War period, characterized by strategic conflict, economic warfare, alliance rivalry, hypernationalism, and ultimately the risk of war.
Structural liberal theory expects a very different pattern for the Western system. Because the institutions and practices that give the Western system its distinctive character are driven largely by internal logics, structural liberal theory posits that the overall cohesion and strength of these institutions will not wane with the end of the Cold War but stand out more clearly. Western practices of security co-binding emerged as responses to fears of anarchy and its consequences, and because this possibility remains a perennial one, the theory expects that co-binding will continue to be practiced, indeed it may become more salient as the assistance and reinforcement of bipolarity and hegemony decline. Similarly, because American hegemony is penetrated and reciprocal, the structural liberal theory does not expect these institutions to decay with the decline of American hegemony—and, if anything, they are likely to become more reciprocal.
On the question of the semisovereignty of Germany and Japan, the structural liberal theory holds that this status, so anomalous to realism, has strong roots in the domestic political systems of these countries, and it is viewed by these states as a successful technique for dealing with the historically grounded fears of their neighbors. From this it follows that semisovereignty is likely to persist and sustain the support of the German and Japanese publics. In the realm of political economy, structural liberalism holds that openness is the product of the imperatives of capitalism rather than balancing and hegemony, and therefore the theory expects that the system will remain and continue to grow in openness. Finally, the evolution toward more complex and similar civic identities, according to structural liberal theory, derives from capitalism, wealth, and the prevalence of liberal norms. Because of this, the theory expects that the end of the Cold War will not contribute to the resurgence of nationalism but that civic identity will continue to be dominant in the West.
It has been less than a decade since the end of the Cold War, and therefore the unfolding of events during this period can provide only preliminary rather than definitive tests of the clash between these competing theories. However, it is striking that the major trends have so far been quite inconsistent with realist expectations and quite consistent with structural liberalism. From the perspective of the last fifty years, it would be difficult to argue that the scope and intensity of conflict between the Western countries have increased measurably since the Cold War’s end. Across the whole range of test issues, the pattern has followed structural liberal expectations. Contrary to the realist expectation, the NATO alliance has not begun to decay; Western leaders have unambiguously reaffirmed its central place. After the Cold War, NATO’s role as the provider of order in Western Europe has become increasingly dominant in its purpose. 61 Indeed, the NATO countries have initiated an ambitious program of expansion. The initial entry of the Visegrad countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary) during the summer of 1997 signals that NATO is evolving into a security institution that addresses contemporary European security issues. While some advocate and interpret NATO expansion as an insurance policy against Russian resurgence, NATO has simultaneously brought Russia into the formal structure of the alliance through the creation of a NATO-Russian council, and has sought vigorously to reassure Russia that NATO is not an anti-Russian alliance. 62 Consistent with structural liberal expectations, this expansion is widely seen as a way to extend the co-binding pattern of Western security practices to cope with the void created by the end of the Warsaw Pact rather than a balancing measure. 63 Also consistent with structural liberal expectations, Germany has played a key role on supporting NATO expansion to the east, and authoritative German figures speak of the importance of tying Germany within international institutions as well as mitigating anarchy in Eastern Europe. 64
Also, contrary to realist expectations, efforts toward greater European unity have not reversed but have continued to show the same pattern of two steps forward and one step backward—the pattern evident over the last half century. Reflective of the European view on the relationship between European union and security is Helmut Kohl’s defense of further European integration as being necessary in order to avoid a return to anarchy, rivalry, and extreme nationalism. 65 On the question of hegemony, America’s major allies have shown no willingness to balance against the United States, and indeed have evinced continued enthusiasm for American leadership. It is striking that the most pointed European criticism of the United States has not been about coercion or heavy handedness, but rather for their perceptions of American unwillingness to lead. 66
The stability of German and Japanese semisovereignty, expected by structural liberalism, has also continued. The fact that Germany and Japanese defense spending has fallen more rapidly than American spending is a telling indication that these states are not pursuing great power ambitions and capabilities. As a recent analysis indicates, “Germany, of all the states in Europe, continued to promote its economic and military security almost exclusively through multilateral action. . . .[B]edrock institutional commitments were never called into question, and many reform proposals, notably in connection with the EC, aim to strengthen international institutions at the expense of the national sovereignties of member states, including, of course, Germany itself.” 67 While Germany and Japan have been seeking a greater political role in international institutions, most notably the UN Security Council, the United States has supported these efforts.
Similarly, developments in the international political economy are inexplicable to realism, but follow the expectations of structural liberalism. The successful completion of the Uruguay round and the evolution of GATT into the World Trade Organization mark a major widening and deepening of the international free trade regime. The intensive discussions of a Transatlantic Free Trade Area also indicate that the momentum of trade liberalization remains strong. As a result, expectations of the rapid emergence of exclusionary and antagonistic trade blocs have not been fulfilled. 68 On the critical case of U.S.-Japanese trade relations, realist expectations of enhanced conflict have been largely confounded. The United States has continued to insist that Japan open its domestic markets and bring its economic practices in line with Western norms, but Japan has not responded with increased intransigence, as the realists expect, but rather has taken major steps toward openness and deregulation—driven by economic necessity as much as American policy. Despite expectations that the post-Cold War domestic realignment in Japan would lead to a strengthened commitment to mercantilist policies and a weakening of U.S.-Japan security arrangements, the Japanese government has affirmed both a commitment to deregulation and greater openness and the primacy of its security treaty with the United States.
Finally, realist expectations that nationalist sentiment would resurge and eclipse civic identities and liberal democratic norms have not been borne out by recent developments. The speed with which the liberal consensus among Western countries responded to incidents of illiberal prejudice and right-wing nationalist violence suggests that liberal identities and values are robust and politically dominant. While there has been an effort on the part of Europeans to exclude non-Europeans from North Africa or people from the lands of the former Soviet empire, the relentless homogenization of cultural life, professional accreditation, educational systems, and business practices has marched onward.
The pattern of events clearly follows the expectations of the structural liberal theory and has so far offered little support for realist expectations. However, the relatively few years of the post-Cold War period indicate that the jury is still out on the ultimate superiority of these competing theories. To escape the implications of these developments, realists might modify their argument with the claim that there has been an overhang in the institutions of the Cold War that accounts for the absence of balancing conflict and institutional decay. However, since key features of the Western system are actually strengthening rather than simply persisting or decaying with imperceptible slowness, this clearly prompts serious doubts about the validity of realist expectations and the theories that generate them.
Conclusion
A principal implication of this chapter for international relations theory is that realist theories of balance of power, hegemony, sovereignty, and nationalism fail to capture the core dynamics of the Western political order. We have demonstrated that the Western political order has five distinctive and important components that together constitute structural liberalism: security co-binding, penetrated hegemony, semisovereignty and partial great powers, structural openness, and civic identity and community. The overall Western political order is a complex composite in which these elements interact and mutually reinforce each other. The overall pattern of these elements and their interaction constitute the structure of the liberal political order—the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Any picture of the West that fails to bring in all these components will fail to capture its structural character.
As realists point out, American hegemony and the bipolar balance helped form and give cohesion to this order. But the penetrated character of hegemony makes it unlike the realist formulation in its mutual and reciprocal operation. Likewise, Western co-binding institutions and practices are a distinctive and independent response to the problem of anarchy among Western states and not something derivative of bipolar balancing. Overall, the Western liberal world exhibits patterns of political order that lie between traditional images of domestic and international politics, thus creating an unusual and distinctive subsystem in world politics.
Although there is good reason to believe that the Western order has a very robust character, the fact that neither realism nor liberalism captures it very well is not only revealing of their theoretical limitations but also troubling in its implications for the maintaining of this system. Because of the Cold War, it is understandable that realpolitik approaches overshadowed liberal ones in policy discourse and practice as well as in academic international relations theory. The hegemonic status of realism has marginalized and displaced the earlier American approaches to international affairs that were more pragmatic and more liberal. The realist characterization of liberalism as idealist and utopian belies its “realistic” sophistication and the extent to which the postwar order was created as a response to the earlier failures of both Wilsonian internationalism and the extreme realism of the interwar period (and its economic blocs, mercantilism, hypernationalism, and imperialism). With the end of the Cold War, the persistence of realism as a dominant approach to international affairs is consequential because of its limited understanding of the Western political order and its inability to provide policy tools for operating within it. Policy agendas derived from realism could also become self-fulfilling prophecies and gradually undermine the Western order, particularly if those agendas include the conversion of Germany and Japan back into “normal” great powers. With the end of the Cold War, it is necessary to recover the theory and practice of structural liberalism so as to chart policy within the Western order.
Liberal theory has also failed to adequately grasp the Western liberal system. The preoccupation of many liberals with building global institutions with universal scope, such as the United Nations, has ironically diverted their attention from understanding and building the liberal order within the West. Similarly, liberal international relations theory is not well situated to understand the Western order because of its lack of accumulation and sense of itself as a long tradition with significant historical accomplishments. Liberal theory’s conceptual focus on process over structure and “micro” over “macro” also contributes to its inappropriate theoretical gauge. Also part of liberalism’s limitations are the deference it gives realism on security issues and its related focus on “low politics” rather than “high politics.” Liberal theory is very heterogeneous and it does capture various components of the Western political order, such as the democratic peace, but it fails to appreciate the West’s distinctive history, architecture, and structure. Given the success of the Western liberal order and its centrality within the larger world system, a liberal international relations theory refocused on structure can lay claim to at least equality with realism.
If structural liberalism does capture the logic of the Western political order, then this suggests that the solidarity, cohesion, and cooperation of these countries will outlast the rise and fall of external threats. At the same time, no political order arises purely spontaneously and no political order endures without practices and programs based on an accurate understanding of its nature. In the post-Cold War era, the absence of bipolarity and the waning of American hegemony does remove forces that have contributed to the Western order. Therefore, to sustain this order, it is worthwhile to think about what might constitute a more self-conscious and robust liberal statecraft. A central task of such a liberal statecraft is the formulation of an agenda of principles and policies that serve to strengthen, deepen, and codify the Western political order.
Endnotes
Note 1: See Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979). For extensions and debates, see Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). Back.
Note 2: John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability of Europe after the Cold War,” International Security 15 (Summer 1990): 5–57; Mearsheimer, “Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War,” The Atlantic, 266 (August 1990): 35–50; and Conor Cruise O’Brien, “The Future of the West,” The National Interest, 30 (Winter 1992/93): 3–10. Back.
Note 3: See Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Back.
Note 4: For contrasting views, see Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987); Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Bound to Lead: The Changing Natureof American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990); Henry Nau, The Myth of America’s Decline: Leading the World Economy in the 1990’s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Susan Strange, “The Persistent Myth of Lost Hegemony,” International Organization 41 (4) (Autumn 1987): 551–74. See also the articles in David P. Rapkin, ed., World Leadership and Hegemony (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1990). Back.
Note 5: See G. John Ikenberry, “Creating Liberal Order: The Origins and Persistence of the Western Postwar Settlement,” unpublished paper, 1995; Ikenberry, “Creating Yesterday’s New World Order: Keynesian “New Thinking” and the Anglo-American Postwar Settlement,” in Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, eds., Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); and Ikenberry, “Rethinking the Origins of American Hegemony,” Political Science Quarterly 104 (Fall 1989): 375–400. Back.
Note 6: Michael Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (1983): 205–35, 323–53; Karl Deutsch, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957); Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition 2nd Edition (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1989); Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 1986). For a survey of liberal theories, see Mark W. Zacher and Richard A. Mathew, “Liberal International Theory: Common Threads, Divergent Strands,” in Charles W. Kegley, Jr., ed., Controversies in International Relations Theory: Realism and the Neoliberal Challenge (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995). Back.
Note 7: See Robert Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), ch. 1. Back.
Note 8: Waltz, Theory of International Politics; and Steve Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987). Back.
Note 9: See Daniel H. Deudney, “The Philadelphian System: Sovereignty, Arms Control, and Balance of Power in the American States-Union, 1787–1861,” International Organization (Spring 1995); and Deudney, “Binding Sovereigns: Authority, Structure, and Geopolitics in Philadelphian Systems,” in Thomas Biersteiker and Cynthia Weber, eds., State Sovereignty as Social Construct (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Back.
Note 10: See Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Back.
Note 11: Mary Hampton, “NATO at the Creation: U.S. Foreign Policy, West Germany and the Wilsonian Impulse,” Security Studies 4(3) (Spring 1995): 610–56; Geir Lundstadt, The American “Empire” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); David P. Calleo, Beyond American Hegemony: The Future of the Western Alliance (New York: Basic Books, 1988), ch. 1; and Joseph Joffe, “Europe’s American Pacifier,” Foreign Policy No. 54 (Spring 1984): 64–82. Back.
Note 12: John Duffield, Power Rules: The Evolution of NATO’s Conventional Force Posture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995). Martin H. Folly, “Breaking the Vicious Circle: Britain, the United States, and the Genesis of the North Atlantic Treaty,” Diplomatic History 12 (1988): 59–77. See also Gunther Hellman and Reinhard Wolf, “Neorealism, Neoliberal Institutionalism, and the Future of NATO,” Security Studies 3(1)(Autumn 1993): 3–43. Back.
Note 13: Michael Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947- 1952 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Back.
Note 14: Alberta Sbragia, “Thinking about European Future: The Uses of Comparison,” in Sbragia, ed., Euro-Politics: Institutions and Policymaking in the “New” European Community (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1992). Back.
Note 15: See Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics; also Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations, esp. pp. 72–80. Back.
Note 16: See Stephen D. Krasner, “American Policy and Global Economic Stability,” in William P. Avery and David P. Rapkin, eds., America in a Changing World Political Economy (New York: Longman, 1982). Back.
Note 17: The neorealist argument that secondary states will balance against American hegemony is made by Christopher Layne: “Proponents of America’s preponderance have missed a fundamental point: other states react to the threat of hegemony, not the hegemon’s identity. American leaders may regard the United States as a benevolent hegemon, but others cannot afford to take such a relaxed view.” Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion,” International Security 17(4) (Spring 1993): 35. Back.
Note 18: Interestingly, some realists and others have faulted the United States for lacking a centralized and autonomous capacity to make and implement foreign policy. But we argue that it is precisely the absence of these features that have made possible the reciprocal and consensual exercise of American power—and, hence, the stability of the Western order. Back.
Note 19: Geir Lundstad, “Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945–1952,” in Charles Maier, ed., The Cold War in Europe: Era of a Divided Continent (New York: Wiener, 1991): 143–68. See also G. John Ikenberry, “Rethinking the Origins of American Hegemony,” Political Science Quarterly. Back.
Note 20: The importance of liberal state institutions for the effective functioning of a hegemonic system has been noted by scholars who focus on Japan’s potential for hegemonic status. The incomplete nature of Japanese liberalism and the difficulty that transnational forces have in influencing the Japanese policy process suggest that Japanese hegemony would be more resisted and more coercive. See Richard Rosecrance and Jennifer Taw, “Japan and the Theory of Leadership,” World Politics, 42(2) (January 1990): 184–209. Back.
Note 21: See Gianfranco Poggi, The Development of the Modern State: A Sociological Introduction (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1878), esp. ch. 6, “State and Society Under Liberalism and After,” pp. 117–49. Back.
Note 22: These characteristics of the American state have been described by many scholars. Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982); and Samuel Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981). Back.
Note 23: On the connection between domestic structures and transnational relations, see Thomas Risse-Kappen, ed., Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Back.
Note 24: See Samuel P. Huntington, “Transnational Organizations in World Politics,” World Politics 25 (April 1973); and Robert Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1975). Back.
Note 25: See, for example, Wolfgang Handreider, “Dissolving International Politics: Reflections on the Nation- State,” American Political Science Review 72(4) (1978): 1276–87; and James Rosenau, “The State in an Era of Cascading Politics: Wavering Concept, Widening Competence, Withering Colossus?” in James Caparaso, ed., The Elusive State: International and Comparative Perspectives (Newbury Park, CA: Sage. 1989): 17–48. Back.
Note 26: For an exception, see Susan Strange, “Toward a Theory of Transnational Empire,” in Ernst-Otto Czempiel and James N. Rosenau, eds., Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges: Approaches to World Politics for the 1990s (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989), 161–76. Back.
Note 27: See G. John Ikenberry and Charles Kupchan, “Socialization and Hegemonic Power,” International Organization, 44(3) (Summer 1990): 283–315. Back.
Note 28: See Thomas Risse-Kappen, Cooperation Among Democracies: The European Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). Back.
Note 29: See Peter J. Katzenstein and Yutaka Tsujinaka, “ ‘Bullying,’ ‘Buying,’ and ‘Binding’: U.S.-Japanese Transnational Relations and Domestic Structures,” in Risse-Kappen, ed., Bringing Transnational Relations Back In, 79–111. Back.
Note 30: Pat Choate, Agents of Influence: How Japan Manipulates America’s Political and Economic System (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990). Back.
Note 31: Viewed from the perspective of great power politics, France’s continued pursuit of “first tier” status is a quaint vestige that is possible precisely because its geographic position always allows it to ride free on the American system. Indeed, the degree to which the United States has tolerated the continued French posturing and irritation is a reflection, not of American coerciveness, but of American noncoerciveness. Back.
Note 32: See Michael Ross Fowler and Julie Marie Bunck, Law, Power, and the Sovereign State: The Evolution and Application of the Concept of Sovereignty (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1995). Back.
Note 33: See Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977); Barry Buzan, “From International System to International Society: Structural Realism and Regime Theory meet the English School,” International Organization, 47(3) (Summer 1993): 327–52. Back.
Note 34: See Leopold von Ranke, “The Great Powers,” in Theodore von Laue, ed., The Writings of Leopold von Ranke (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950); Jack Levy, War in the Modern Great Power System, 1495–1975 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1983); and Martin Wight, Power Politics, edited by Hedley Bull and Carsten Holbraad (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978). Back.
Note 35: See Peter J. Katzenstein, Policy and Politics in West Germany: The Growth of a Semi-Sovereign State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987). Back.
Note 36: On American and Western efforts to liberalize postwar German and Japanese political institutions, see John Montgomery, Forced to Be Free: The Artificial Revolution in Germany and Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957); John Herz, ed., From Dictatorship to Democracy: Coping with the Legacies of Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1982); Thomas A. Schwartz, America’s Germany: John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991); Robert E. Ward and Sakamoto Yoshikazu, eds., Democratizing Japan: The Allied Occupation (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987); and Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), ch. 6. Back.
Note 37: See Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan (New York: Meridian, 1995). Back.
Note 38: See the chapter by Joseph Grieco, this volume. Back.
Note 39: Robert Gilpin, “The Politics of Transnational Economic Relations,” International Organization 25 (Summer 1971); Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); Kindleberger, “Dominance and Leadership in the International Economy: Exploitation, Public Goods, and Free Riders,” International Studies Quarterly 25 (1981): 242–54; Stephen Krasner, “State Power and the Structure of International Trade,” World Politics 28 (April 1976): 317–47; and Robert O. Keohane, “The Theory of Hegemonic Stability and Changes in International Economic Regimes, 1967–1977,” in Ole R. Holsti, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alexander L. George, eds., Changes in the International System (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980). Back.
Note 40: See Gilpin, “Economic Interdependence and National Security in Historical Perspective,” in Klaus Knorr and Frank Trager, eds., Economic Issues and National Security (Lawrence, KS: Regents Press of Kansas, 1977): 19–66. Back.
Note 41: For variations of this argument, see Joanne Gowa, Allies, Adversaries, and International Trade (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); and Edward D. Mansfield, Power, Trade, and War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Back.
Note 42: See John Gerard Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,” in Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); and Ruggie, “Embedded Liberalism Revisited: Institutions and Progress in International Economic Relations,” in Beverly Crawford and Emmanuel Adler, eds., Progress in International Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). See also Eric Helleiner, States and the Reemergence of Global Finance: From Bretton Woods to the 1990s (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). Back.
Note 43: Conversely, if states abandon their commitment to the welfare state then this motivation for their support of a liberal economic system would decline. Or structural changes in the international economy might be less congenial to domestic welfare commitments, in which states would also pull back from the pursuit of open foreign economic policies. In either case, the liberal order would become “disembedded” and much less robust. See John Gerard Ruggie, “At Home Abroad, Abroad at Home: International Liberalism and Domestic Stability in the New World Economy,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 24(3) (Winter 1995): 507–526. Back.
Note 44: The most systematic discussion of this logic is Joseph Grieco, “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of Neoliberal Institutionalism,” International Organization 42 (1988): 485–507; and Grieco, Cooperation Among Nations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). For additional discussion and debate, see David Baldwin, ed., Neoliberalism and Neorealism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). Back.
Note 45: An example of this phenomenon is the high technology sectors. In the late-1980s, Germany and Japan were leading the United States in many areas, but in more recent years this pattern has been reversed. Back.
Note 46: This is a variation on the argument, made by Snidal, that multiple actors (in this case sectors and firms rather than states) complicate the simple calculation of relative gains and therefore mitigates its influence over policy. See Duncan Snidal, “International Cooperation Among Relative Gain Maximizers,” International Studies Quarterly 35(4) (December 1991): 387–402. The sector focus also yields mixed results in Michael Mastanduno, “Do Relative Gains Matter? America’s Response to Japanese Industrial Policy,” International Security 16 (Summer 1991): 73–113. See also Jonathan Tucker, “Partners and Rivals: A Model of International Collaboration in Advanced Technology,” International Organization 45(1) (Winter 1991): 83–120. Back.
Note 47: See Robert Pollard, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). Back.
Note 48: See G. John Ikenberry, “Creating Liberal Order: The Origins and Persistence of the Western Postwar Settlement.” Back.
Note 49: Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955). Back.
Note 50: See Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: Knopf, 1948). Back.
Note 51: George Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 199x). Back.
Note 52: See Susan Strange, States and Markets (New York: Blackwell, 1988). Back.
Note 53: For an analysis of global cultural formations, see Mike Featherstone, ed., Global Culture (Newbury Park: Sage, 1990). Back.
Note 54: This second form of common identity is less extensive and institutionalized than the parallel emergence of domestic liberalism, but it is significant in the cohesion it gives the Western system. Back.
Note 55: The United States is the hub of this increasingly open and circulating system of elites. In discussing the globalization of the world economy and rising American competitiveness within it, one reporter argues: “The increased openness of American society appears to be an advantage as well. U.S. graduate schools continue to attract leading foreign students, and entrepreneurs from around the globe often consider the U.S. the best place to launch an innovative concern. Foreign-born managers are far more prevalent at U.S. companies now than 20 years ago. The top executives of both Apple Computer Inc. and Compaq Computer Corp. are German nationals. Goodyear’s Mr. Gibara—born in Egypt—says, “It’s a big strength that we have a cadre of multinational managers. We can better relate to other cultures.” G. Pascal Zachary, “Behind Stock’s Surge is an Economy in which Big U.S. Firms Thrive,” Wall Street Journal, November 22, 1995, A7. Back.
Note 56: See John Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future,” International Security. See also Kenneth Waltz, “The Emerging Structure of International Politics,” International Security 18 (Fall 1993): 44–79; Samuel P. Huntington, “Why International Primacy Matters,” International Security 17 (Spring 1993): 68–83; Pierre Hassner, “Europe Beyond Partition and Unity: Disintegration or Reconstruction?” International Affairs 66 (July 1990): 461–75; Hugh DeSantis, “The Graying of NATO,” Washington Quarterly 14 (Autumn 1991): 51–65. Back.
Note 57: Robert Gilpin, “American Policy in the Post-Reagan Era,” Daedelus (Summer 1987): 33–67. Also, Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500–2000 (New York: Random House, 1987). Back.
Note 58: Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion,” International Security. For a review of this argument, see Robert Jervis, “The Future of World Politics: Will It Resemble the Past?” International Security 16(3) (Winter 1991/92): 39–73. Back.
Note 59: Chalmers Johnson, “History Restarted: Japanese-American Relations at the End of the Century,” in Johnson, Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Developmental State (New York: Norton, 1995). See also Edward Luttwak, “From Geopolitics to Geo-Economics: Logic of Conflict, Grammar of Commerce,” National Interest No. 20 (Summer 1990); Edward Olsen, “Target Japan as America’s Economic Foe,” Orbis 36(4) (Fall 1992): 491–504; and Erik R. Peterson, “Looming Collision of Capitalisms,” Washington Quarterly (Spring 1994): 65–75. Back.
Note 60: See Conor Cruise O’Brien, “The Future of the West,” The National Interest 30 (Winter 1992/93): 3–10; and Owen Harries, “The Collapse of ‘the West,’ Foreign Affairs 72(4) (September/October 1993): 41–53. Back.
Note 61: John Duffield, “NATO’s Functions After the Cold War,” Political Science Quarterly, 119(5) (1994–95): 763–787. Back.
Note 62: For an overview of issues surrounding NATO expansion, see: Philip H. Gordon, ed., NATO’s Transformation: The Changing Shape of the Atlantic Alliance (New York: Rowman Littlefield, 1997). Back.
Note 63: Strobe Talbott, “Why NATO Should Grow,” The New York Review of Books, August 10, 1995. Back.
Note 64: Voigt Karsten, a member of Germany’s parliament who was involved in shaping Germany’s policy toward NATO expansion has observed: “We wanted to bind Germany into a structure which practically obliges Germany to take the interests of its neighbors into consideration.” Jane Perlez, “Blunt Reason for Enlarging NATO: Curbs on Germany,” New York Times, December 7, 1997. Back.
Note 65: Alan Cowell, “Kohl Casts Europe’s Economic Union as War and Peace Issue,” New York Times, October 17, 1995, A10. Back.
Note 66: In the most pointed remarks, President Chirac of France complained during the summer of 1995 that “the Western alliance had no leader.” This helped galvanize the Clinton administration to play a more active role in ending the conflict in the former Yugoslavia Back.
Note 67: Jeffrey J. Anderson and John B. Goodman, “Mars or Minerva? A United Germany in a Post-Cold War Europe,” in Robert O. Keohane, Joseph S. Nye, and Stanley Hoffmann, eds., After the Cold War: International Institutions and State Strategies in Europe, 1989–1991 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 34. Back.
Note 68: See Miles Kahler, “A World of Blocs?” World Policy Journal, 1995. Back.
Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies After the Cold War
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