G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major War (Princeton: 2001)
New from Princeton University Press

"For the third time in this troubled century and following the end of the Cold War and the tragic events in the former Yugoslavia, the world is challenged to create a stable and enduring world order. In this path-breaking book, Ikenberry draws on novel theoretical insights and historical experience to determine what policies and strategies work best as the United States attempts to lead in the struggles to create a new world order. ..A major contribution to IR theory and to the thinking about international order. " -Robert Gilpin, Princeton University

The end of the Cold War was a "big bang" reminiscent of earlier moments after major wars, such as the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the end of the World Wars in 1919 and 1945. In this book, G. John Ikenberry asks the question: what are the choices and strategies that newly victorious -and newly powerful -states face in building a stable and legitimate world order at these critical historical turning points? In examining the major post-war settlements in modern history, he argues that powerful states at these defining post-war junctures have all recognized that their national interests were served by building a cooperative set of relations with the other great powers, but the type of order that ultimately emerged hinged on their own ability to make commitments and restrain power.

The novel insight of the book is that ability of a powerful state to restrain its own power -to make itself less threatening in its capacity to dominate or abandon weaker or secondary states -is critical to that country's primacy. When the leading state cannot commit and restrain its power other states have fewer incentives to pursue partnerships with it and the resulting world order will revert to a dangerous and less mutually beneficial balance of power order. But if the leading state is able to find ways to commit and restrain its power, new sorts of partnerships are possible and the resulting order can evolve into a more stable, cooperative, and mutually advantageous order. Ikenberry argues that only with the spread of democracy in the twentieth century and the innovative use of international institutions -both linked to the rise of the United States as a world power -has order been created that goes beyond balance of power politics to exhibit what he calls "constitutional" characteristics. The open character of the American polity and a web of multilateral institutions allow the United States to exercise strategic restraint and establish stable relations among the industrial democracies despite rapid shifts and extreme disparities in power.

The implications of this sweeping argument for today's American foreign policy makers are clear. First, although obscured by the Cold War, the United States did succeed in building a remarkably robust political order with its European and Asian partners. This order-- or democratic community --survived the Cold War and exists today as the center of global politics. Foreign policy makers often forget that this trilateral democratic order did not spring automatically to life but was built on political bargains and institutional commitments among the democratic great powers. To preserve this order we will need to renew and reinforce these bargains and institutional relationships. Second, American power today is again at an historical highpoint. American foreign policy makers should remember the secret that previous American officials recognized in the 1940s when attempting to build cooperative world order while also making American power acceptable to other states. Tying American power to the array of intergovernmental and multilateral institutions both extends American interests outwards and makes American power more legitimate in the eyes of other peoples. Unilateralism and unrestrained American power are the surest path to the end of the cooperative democratic order that America created and that serves its enlightened interests.