G. John Ikenberry tackles the origins and development of the current liberal international order, outlines the centrality of the United States in its creation and operation, assesses the future prospects of such an order, and proposes a “grand strategy” for the United States to continue to lead it. Such an agenda is clearly ambitious, but the author addresses it skillfully. And the result is a compelling volume that students, scholars, and analysts should find useful.

Ikenberry begins Liberal Leviathan by outlining the basic concern that guides his inquiry: the “crisis of the old order.” By that he means that the current international order is suffering from a “crisis of authority” or a “crisis of governance,” and that the order (including American leadership of it) will be hard to sustain without important changes. He points to several factors that led to this crisis: the “shifts in power” with the rise of new actors; the “contested norms of sovereignty,” represented most vividly by the emergence of the responsibility to protect doctrine; the “threat related to nonstate actors”; and the “scope of participating states” (p. 6). Although such factors are readily familiar to students of international relations, Ikenberry packages them nicely into a compelling argument. In addition, he contends that the unipolar activities of the United States since the end of the Cold War (and particularly during the George W. Bush administration) and the decline in the need for the United States to provide security and other global collective goods have exacerbated this lack of legitimacy for an American-led order. Still, he does not premise his inquiry on the replacement of the order or the ending of US leadership of that order; instead, he calls for “a new bargain, not a new system” for the future (p. 7).

In Part I, Ikenberry outlines the “theoretical foundations” for the creation and maintenance of an international order and the strategies available to the hegemonic state to lead such an order. These chapters systematically work through the principal ways in which an international order (including a liberal order) is developed and sustained: either through balance (the distribution of power), command (domination by a powerful state), or consent (agreed-upon rules and institutions) among the parties and how the order is ruled—either by “rule through rules,” as agreed to by the parties multilaterally or by “rule through relationships” as agreed to by the parties bilaterally. The author also explores the consequences of a move toward greater unipolarity by the hegemonic state and its impact on the participating states, the hegemon, and the liberal international order more generally. These chapters are the richest ones conceptually as Ikenberry works through the “logics” (his term) of hegemonic rule, not only teasing out the underlying assumptions but also advancing the propositions that flow from those assumptions. Similarly, he identifies why “counterbalancing” against American unipolarity has not occurred, but also argues why now is an opportune time for “renegotiating” the relationships within this order. In all, this theoretical section is pregnant with a host of propositions that empirically minded political scientists could fruitfully put to the test in order to enhance our understanding of the creation and management of international order.

In Part II, Ikenberry focuses on the historical development of the liberal international order, explains how the United States contributed to the creation of such an order, and analyzes more fully the causes and consequences of the current crisis. Chapter 5, the longest chapter in the book, is a detailed and careful treatment of the development of the current order, dating principally from the postwar period, but with obvious Wilsonian underpinnings. He carefully utilizes seven “logics” to characterize the liberal international order created by the United States over the past six decades—a commitment to open markets, the promotion of economic security, the development of multilateral institutional cooperation, the building of security structures, the advancement of democratic solidarity in the West, expansion of human rights and progressive change, and, importantly, the leadership of the United States. The author points out that “there was no singular ‘moment of creation’” (p. 193) for this order; instead, “it was an order cobbled together in a rolling process in which Washington bargained and compromised with its emerging partners in Western Europe and East Asia” (p. 217). Importantly, and correctly, the author notes that bargains for the creation of the liberal order, especially in Europe, were facilitated by the Cold War environment. Indeed, the threat environment was probably a larger factor in developing and sustaining the order for 50 years than Ikenberry acknowledges in this chapter, since he chooses to focus more on his logics of the order than on threat. Nonetheless, this chapter is so rich in summarizing the historical evolution of the “American system” that it could stand alone and be fruitfully used by students and scholars alike for understanding the liberal order.

The next two chapters outline the impact of the end of the Cold War on the American-led order and identify some alternatives for dealing with the future. The effects of the “transformation of the Westphalian Order”—the decline of the state, rise of nonstate actors, the emergence of the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, and the changed threat environment—are especially troublesome for the current order, although they are not the only problems. The rise of democratic states and the creation of a democratic community worldwide have also placed greater constraints “on how powerful states can operate within it” (p. 252). Although the George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations sought to develop new institutional bargains as the Cold War ended, they did not succeed in the context of these powerful transformational forces to a great extent. By contrast, Ikenberry argues, the George W. Bush administration “embraced the evolving post-Westphalian order … and proposed a new hegemonic bargain with the world,” albeit one that was unsustainable and further endangered the American-led liberal order (p. 254). Although Bush's new bargain put the United States at the center of power in the international order, it also put the United States above “its rules and institutions” (p. 276). Such an approach was an “unwelcome” and “unsustainable” order and one where “the United States has the capacity to dominate, but not the legitimacy to rule” (p. 277).

Ikenberry expands on, and largely reinforces, the previous discussion when he turns to his analysis of the “dilemmas” and stresses in the present international order and the potential difficulties that they pose for the future. These dilemmas include the decline in the balance of power (that actually stabilized the “rule-based” order in the past); the tension between the preservation of state sovereignty and the pressure for universal rights (and the dangers of “liberal imperialism” that might result); and the paradox of an expanding democratic global community and a hierarchical order (and the effect on the hegemon). To address these dilemmas (and others), the author analyzes three alternative orders for the future—a more universal, less hierarchical order; a renegotiated US-led order; or a breakdown of the order and the rise of regional or coalitional blocs in its place. Several variables, he contends, will determine which of these alternatives will emerge, although clearly, American willingness “to cede authority back to the international community and accommodate itself to a system of more binding rules and institutions” (p. 313) is crucial. Indeed, he believes that there are numerous incentives for the United States to move in this direction.

In his concluding chapter, therefore, Ikenberry provides a compelling case for the continuation of the liberal international order and proceeds to offer a litany of policy prescriptions for the United States to follow to maintain (and reform) the order. For instance, a number of institutional and structural factors already point to a continuance of the present order—the low probability of great power war (and, hence, the lack of opportunity for systemic change), the stabilizing effect of nuclear weapons and great power deterrence, and the reality that the rising states in the system, including China, “do not constitute a potential united opposition bloc to the existing order” (p. 341). At the same time, the United States should adopt a new “grand strategy” that is based upon “liberal order building” to sustain the order—and improve it. In essence, his approach calls for the United States to embrace liberal internationalism more fully at home and abroad and to shed the unilateralism and unipolarity that has caused the crisis of authority. Such a general recommendation is hardly new (cf. Fareed Zakaria's prescriptions in The Post-American World, 2008), but his formulation is much richer in detail than others.

In all, Liberal Leviathan makes several useful theoretical, substantive, and normative contributions to our understanding of international order and American foreign policy. On a theoretical level, the careful development of the ways in which hegemons can rule and the “logics” of those approaches will surely be useful for analysts and students to test and critique. On a substantive level, the historical treatment of the evolution of the “American system” will be a ready resource for many, but the array of systemic challenges, and how they should be addressed, will likely stir debate. On a normative level, the volume will undoubtedly stir debate with what is said and not said. Indeed, a more detailed and systematic assessment of the three alternative futures proposed and how they actually address the “dilemmas” of the current system would have been welcomed. Similarly, a fuller discussion of the important domestic constraints in the United States that likely will hinder a full embrace of liberal internationalism in the near term would also have strengthened the volume. Nonetheless, the sheer breadth of the work, the clarity of the presentation (albeit at times redundant in its arguments across the chapters), and the synthesis of an extraordinary amount of theoretical and historical literature will make the volume an important resource for students and scholars for a very long time.