Britain and the United States have been mixed up together for a long time, and the relationship has not always been an easy one. As the dominant economic, financial, imperial, and naval power of the nineteenth century, Britain viewed the rise of the United States as a threat to its interests. At the beginning of the twentieth century, war between these two great powers was still considered a possibility. But Britain was forced to recognize its inability to fight wars simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic, and this made possible an accommodation between the established and the rising power. The subsequent economic partnership and military alliance between them, although subject to many ups and downs, became one of the most important shapers of the international politics in the twentieth century. In his new book, Global Rules: America, Britain and a Disordered World, James Cronin argues that this partnership between the United States and Britain gave birth to three attempts to create a world order in the twentieth century, all of them shaped by ideas that were primarily Anglo-American in origin, and all of them following the end of a conflict with other great powers. The first and least successful followed the end of the First World War in 1918; the second, and most successful, the end of the Second World War in 1945; and the third the end of the Cold War in 1991, following the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

The relationship between Britain and the United States is very different in 2015 than it was in 1918. Britain's power and global reach shrank dramatically in the course of the twentieth century, which might make us question how significant Britain really was in the shaping of the American world order of the last seventy years. Certainly since 1941, when the United States entered the Second World War on Britain's side, this has not been a partnership between equals. The United States has always been the dominant partner. But, Cronin argues, the relationship was still important because of the close military alliance, the common history, and, above all, the shared vision and interests between the two states about what the ideals and institutions of a world order should be. The idea of a special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States is a much-disputed reading of postwar history, but one of the merits of the book is that Cronin does not oversell it. He acknowledges that there were many other relationships, many other states that were important at different times, and that the main impetus and leadership was always American. Nevertheless, he is able to show convincingly that there was real substance to the special relationship, particularly in the 1980s and 2000s, and that the Anglo-American architects of world order, although they did not achieve all their goals, were surprisingly successful, so that the world we currently inhabit still bears their imprint.

Cronin's main focus in this book is on the third of the attempts to create a stable and enduring world order, the new order of the post–Cold War era. He concentrates in particular on the various historical contexts that shaped the moment of 1991. However, he also pays a great deal of attention to domestic and international politics of the lead-up years of the 1970s and 1980s, discussing the setbacks which both the United States and Britain suffered in the 1970s and the way in which the special relationship appeared to be weakening at the time of the Vietnam War and Britain's entry into the European Community. This period of distance was followed by a strong revival during the renewed Cold War at the beginning of the 1980s and the close ideological and political partnership forged between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. The great strength of the book is that Cronin gives equal attention to geopolitics and to political economy and understands the interrelation between the two. He explores the final stages of the Cold War and the twists and turns of the security debate, as well as the neoliberal turn in economic policy and the creation of a new political economy model that was successfully imposed by degrees on the rest of the world. In the final part of the book, Cronin discusses the way in which the new postwar order emerged after 1991, its initial successes, and then its mounting problems, taking the story up to 9/11 and its aftermath, and to the 2008 financial crisis and recession, which for many have cast doubt on the ability of this third Anglo-American world order to survive. Cronin argues, however, that the present upheavals are unlike the geopolitical and political economy upheavals in the 1970s and 1980s, which created the opportunity for the construction of the new world order of the 1990s, and that the dominance of this new world order is likely to persist for many decades because there is no fundamental challenge to it. This judgment may be premature, given the challenges that lie ahead, and Cronin does not really consider whether the Anglo-American order still has the capacity or the political will to renew itself again.

The book is a very great achievement. It succeeds first as a narrative history, giving a detailed account of how the Cold War ended and how democracy, free markets, and human rights came to be the founding principles of the new world order. But Cronin also offers a subtle analysis of the geopolitical and political economy forces which have shaped world politics. It is also an absorbing read that takes the reader back into details of recent history that many will have already forgotten. This is contemporary history of the best kind, with a focus on the need to understand the context in which events occurred and decisions were taken, but at the same time aware of the bigger picture that was unfolding.