The Future of Order

Chapter 9 (“The Future of Order”) reviews the empirical findings of the book and discusses their implications for the study of international relations. It then leverages these findings to address the two most important questions for international order in the twenty-first century: In the near term, what changes to the existing liberal order will the United States advocate as it continues to decline in relative power? And in the long term, what is its projected hegemonic successor, China, likely to do with the existing order when it finds itself in a position to fundamentally recast its underlying principles?

The Wilsonian Order Project

How do we account for the vision of international order the American delegation pursued at the Paris Peace Conference after World War I, manifested most concretely in the Covenant of the League of Nations that was written by avowed liberal internationalist Woodrow Wilson? The dominant inclusive narrative of order construction in 1919 emphasizes America’s liberal institutions at home coupled with its president’s progressive ideals and sense of ideological mission in world affairs. By contrast, chapter 6 (“The Wilsonian Order Project”) argues that the new ideological threat posed by radical socialism after the Bolshevik Revolution in late 1917 actually played the most critical role in shaping the order preferences of Wilson and his principal advisers both before and during the Paris Peace Conference.

Birthing the Liberal International Order

Chapter 7 (“Birthing the Liberal International Order”) focuses on the American order project after the Second World War. It argues that there were actually two distinct American visions for order in the 1940s, a universalist global order vision—manifested in the United Nations system—and a smaller Western order vision—comprised of the Bretton Woods economic and NATO security systems. Observers often posit that these layers were complementary, representing an evolving but not contradictory strategy by the United States to build an inclusive and multilayered international order. By contrast, this chapter argues that this transition from global to Western order can be best explained by American leaders’ shifting threat perceptions during this critical period. While they began with a more inclusive global order vision, they soon shifted to a more exclusive and adversarial Western order idea as they became increasingly wary of the extraordinary threat posed by their former wartime ally, the Soviet Union. The Soviet threat is the most important causal force in explaining this shift in America’s ordering strategy, and the story of the liberal international order’s origins simply cannot be told without it.

Order in the European Concert Era

Chapter 5 (“Order in the European Concert Era”) examines three moments of order change opportunity in the nineteenth century centered around the Concert of Europe. The first section assesses the scholarly debate over what the Concert actually was, making the case that it constituted a decisive departure from the brand of balance-of-power politics that had previously dominated Europe. And yet accepting what the Concert was says nothing about how it came to be, an argument developed in the second section that examines the strategic and exclusionary impulses behind its origins after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The third section assesses two more cases of opportunity where the dominant actors elected not to seek major changes to the Concert order: the aftermath of the liberal revolutionary wave of 1848 and the negotiations that ended the Crimean War in 1856.

Order in the Age of Great Power Politics

Chapter 4 (“Order in the Age of Great Power Politics”) assesses the first three cases of order change opportunity. In two of these instances—the Westphalian settlements after the Thirty Years’ War in 1648 and the peace of Utrecht following the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713—the great power victors of these conflicts seized their opportunity to reshape order, while in one—the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763—they did not. The chapter demonstrates that the logic of excluding introduced in chapter 3 best explains dominant-actors’ preferences and behaviors in these moments. When these states perceived no major threats on the horizon—in 1763—they were content to focus on the particularities of the recent war and its peace settlement rather than recasting larger order principles. But in the presence of looming threatening forces, the dominant actors of 1648 and 1713 sought larger and more fundamental order changes that went far beyond the particular issues of the day.

Consolidating the Liberal International Order

While the previous chapter chronicled the origins of the Cold War, chapter 8 (“Consolidating the Liberal International Order”) considers its ending. It focuses in particular on the principal security component of Western order during the Cold War’s endgame, NATO. In contrast to the extraordinary transformations after World War II, the pivotal changes in international power and influence that took place between the 1989 and 1991 did not correspond with matching changes in American order preferences or, more importantly, in order outcomes. Instead, US leaders ultimately chose to stick with existing principles, maintaining continuity of the Western order in the transition from the Cold War to a post–Cold War international system. We can account for this continuity, this chapter argues, by assessing American perceptions of the lack of new any new threatening entities or forces during this critical period.

A Theory of Exclusion

Chapter 3 (“A Theory of Exclusion”) develops the primary theoretical argument of the book. In brief, it argues that actors seek to enact order principles to target and weaken entities they believe threaten their future security and enduring primacy. The larger and more immediate the threat, the more likely dominant actors are to pursue significant change to foundational order principles. The chapter first details this core logic of the ordering-to-exclude theory before developing important extensions of and refinements to the argument. Second, it introduces three viable alternative explanations for dominant actor order preferences and deduces testable hypotheses for each that can be evaluated alongside and against ordering-to-exclude theory. Finally, it discusses the research methods that inform the subsequent empirical chapters of the book and previews the structure that each of the nine case studies will take.

Reordering International Order

Chapter 2 (“Reordering International Order”) reviews the pitfalls of existing conceptions of international order before arguing that order is best conceptualized not as particular material, institutional, or normative environments but instead as the presence of a set of observed rules in world politics. It then returns to the primary empirical focus of the book, dominant-actor preferences for international order. After justifying this focus on the most powerful polities, it more precisely defines dominant actors and moments of order change opportunity and identifies a universe of cases for potential study. It then introduces the nine cases to be studied in chapters 4 through 8 and justifies a focus on these historical periods in particular.

Power Politics and International Order

Chapter 1 (“Power Politics and International Order”) establishes a number of puzzles about global order more generally, and about the contemporary liberal international order more specifically. It explains why current commentary and scholarship have been insufficient for adequately addressing these puzzles, and then introduces a new argument—ordering-to-exclude theory—that is at the heart of the book. The current liberal international order, so revered by order optimists, is not as universally admired or as durable as many commentators believe. Ordering-to-exclude theory helps make sense of these discrepancies by pointing out the striking continuities behind the origins of past orders and those of the contemporary liberal international order. The chapter concludes by outlining the rest of the book’s structure and content and setting the stage for what is to come.