Liberal Internationalism more like democratic internationalism in the US.
Ikenberry: America’s Liberal Grand Strategy
American promotion of liberal values and institutions in its foreign policy not
utopianism or idealism, but part of a grand strategy meant to foster American
interests and security and to create a stable world order based on a materialist
understanding of politics. Ultimately, there is no distinction to be made between
American policy focused on interests and policy focused on democratization and
international organization. “Wilsonianism” larger than Wilson and no more
utopian than realist phases of American policy. Thus while American liberal
strategy different than a realist strategy, in that it pays attention to regime type,
emphasizes trade and supports international institutions, its aims are the same in
terms of national security and the protection of material interests.
1. Democracy promotion is part of a liberal view that has a particular
understanding of the sources of a legitimate, secure and beneficial world
order.
2. American grand strategy is built on a set of claims and assumptions
regarding the utility of democratic politics, international organizations and
political identity to a stable and acceptable world order
3. This strategy has survived the Cold War and is generally accepted across the
political spectrum despite superficial differences
Historically:
Wilson a popularizer of this strategy, but in reality it preceded him and did not
necessarily incorporate the moralism that he injected into it. Based rather on a
materialist understanding of the effects of international trade, the industrial
revolution, the changing nature of economic relations among countries, the decline
of nationalism, the need for the coordinating function performed by international
institutions and the rising power of democratic politics.
After WWII, two kinds of settlements pursued by US policymakers. One was
confrontation with Soviet Union entailing containment policies based on balance
of power principles. The other was the “liberal democratic order” among nations
friendly to the US, based on trade liberalization, dispute resolutions procedures,
1
democratization efforts, international rules, standards and institutions. Most
important to this order was the assumption that closed regional and national
economic system breed conflict; thus it is necessary to promote free trade and
international economic interdependence.
Strategies:
1. Promote democracy as a way of promoting peace
Arguments that democracies share common values; democratic accountability
restrain leaders from pursuing war; democratic emphasis on peaceful resolution of
conflicts; importance of democratic emphasis on information and correctly
interpreting political signals; connection between democracies and respect for
international law and agreements.
2. Connection among Free Trade, Economic Openness and Democracy
Free trade undermines authoritarian regimes due to need for openness and
freedom; free trade brings prosperity, which leads to democracy
3. Free Trade and Economic Interdependence Bring Peace
In bringing prosperity, free trade eliminates grievances that lead to war; free trade
create mutual dependencies and mutual interests; free trade helps build
transnational sympathies and identities; free trade makes national barriers and
exclusive identities problematic, making decisions to go to war more difficult; free
trade helps socialize countries into a tolerant, peaceful international order
4. International Institutions Can Help Contain Conflict
When international institutions are available and states participate in them, they
create a political process that channel conflicts such that peaceful resolutions are
available and likely to be adopted; institutions help restrain states and make them
respect rights; institutions can overcome and integrate different interests; multiple
institutions disperse power and make it less likely that any group of people can
gain control of international affairs and create conditions in which war is necessary
to dislodge them; international institutions constrain and socialize states.
5. Importance of Building an International Community
2
Community creates order; communities create similar values and socialize states
into cooperative policies; a community created by democracies will foster
democratic values that will increase cooperation and minimize conflicts. Focused
on the Atlantic area.
Huntington: America Ideals vs. American Institutions
Another explanation that references national politics
What drives US foreign policy is the substance of American values and their
friction with American institutions and the American (lack) of achievement of
those values. There is a general consensus on those values, but a variety of ways in
which the gap between ideals and the achievement of those ideals is
conceptualized and addressed.
Ideals: (from 17th and 18th century English and Protestant values)
1. Liberal, democratic governance
2. Individualism
3. Egalitarianism
These ideals were never completely realized, though they came closest in the
middle of the 19th century. Since that time, organization and economic necessity
has moved American institutions away from the independent, egalitarian citizen
who was governed minimally by weak and decentralized state. While all states
experience a similar gap, it is especially acute in the US because American
ideology arose before the creation of the American state; it is uniquely based on
ideology rather than identity and history. This leaves other states at sea at times
given the focus of American policy in terms of ideals rather than straightforwardly
in terms of interests. This manifests itself as suspicion of American stability,
admiration for ideals, and criticism for inability of US to live up to its ideals.
Periodic attempts at reform attack the strong state and the military/security
establishments. This particularly occurred during the 1970s, but also occurred with
Wilson—in this he is just one of several reforming types. But reform, particularly
progressive reform, caught up in contradiction because pushing through reform
general requires more governmental power and activism than ideals allow. But
accepting the status quo also problematic because it either means seeing shortfalls
3
as ok because congruent with non-liberal values, or ok because one ignores them
(hypocrisy).
Consequences for Foreign Policy:
1. Attacks on the state and on institutions important for the formulation and
implementation of foreign policy
2. Pressure to implement ideals in foreign policy
3. Same gap between ideals and institutions in the foreign policy realm
4. Periodic attempts at reform to close that gap
5. Differentiates foreign policy debates in US from other countries
6. Intense debate over the morality of wars and presence of significant
opposition to wars in the US public
7. Debate over whether attempting to promote or impose these values in the
international arena is compatible with the ideals themselves
Against
a. Morally wrong to impose values
b. Task is too difficult given the problems of influencing other countries
c. Effort antagonizes other governments and puts in peril other foreign
policy goals
d. Requires expansion of military, security and foreign policy
institutions, which also violates ideals.
For:
a. Countries with non-liberal, non-democratic governments pose a threat
to the US
b. Existence of authoritarian regimes present a threat to values inside the
US
c. Should support people who support those values
d. Those values are universally applicable and valid
8. Creates impression that there is a deep divide between realists and idealists.
In fact, there is not. “Idealists” are really moralists who are attempting to
make foreign policy conform to the anti-statist parts of the ideals. “Realists”
are really those who are attempting to use state instruments to spread those
4
ideals throughout the world. Thus US interventions abroad are not
productive of repression in terms of those countries in which intervention
has taken place; rather, they have promoted freedom, even if in the long run
rightist authoritarianism has been supported. This is because the only other
choice has been leftist authoritarianism, and leftist authoritarian regimes
have much more resistant to transitions to liberal democracy than have been
rightist authoritarian regimes. (thus all “realists” in fact are muscular
Wilsonians—neo-conservatives).
9. Overall, must live with the gap between ideals and institutions. Reject
crusading moralism at home and abroad, as well as cynical acceptance of
power relations. Continue to believe in ideals, deplore gap, live in hope.
Ikenberry: Liberal internationalism is a coherent grand strategy rooted in
materialist understandings of political processes and motivations. It is a competitor
with realism as a strategy for attaining the goals of security and protection of
national interests.
Huntington: Liberal internationalism is the expression on the world stage of a set
of domestic American values that are incoherent and incapable of realization. It is
not a strategy. Realism is an inevitable alternative that the US turns to when the
expression of liberal values fail on the world stage (just as they inevitably fall short
domestically).
8 January, 1918:
President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points
It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun, shall be
absolutely open and that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret understandings of
any kind. The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret
covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and likely at some unlooked-for
moment to upset the peace of the world. It is this happy fact, now clear to the view of every
public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which makes it
possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with justice and the peace of the world to
avow nor or at any other time the objects it has in view.
We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and
made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secure once
for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to
5
ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe
for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own
institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against
force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest,
and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done
to us. The programme of the world's peace, therefore, is our programme; and that programme,
the only possible programme, as we see it, is this:
I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international
understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in
war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the
enforcement of international covenants.
III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality
of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for
its maintenance.
IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest
point consistent with domestic safety.
V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a
strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the
interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the
government whose title is to be determined.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia
as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for
her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own
political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of
free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of
every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister
nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of
her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish
sympathy.
VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt
to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single
act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they
have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another.
Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.
VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done
to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of
6
the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made
secure in the interest of all.
IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of
nationality.
X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded
and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.
XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia
accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one
another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and
nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and
territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.
XII. The turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty,
but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted
security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the
Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all
nations under international guarantees.
XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories
inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to
the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be
guaranteed by international covenant.
XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose
of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and
small states alike.
In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be
intimate partners of all the governments and peoples associated together against the Imperialists.
We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.
For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they
are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace
such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this programme
does remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this programme
that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise
such as have made her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her or to
block in any way her legitimate influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms
or with hostile arrangements of trade if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other
peace- loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing. We wish her
only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world, -- the new world in which we
now live, -- instead of a place of mastery.
7
Wilson Speech:
1. Importance of international institutions to slow recourse to war and to make
all agreements and positions open to public scrutiny
2. No territorial changes
3. Rights of self-determination, democracy
4. Peace through agreement not to go to war or delay going to war, noninterference, democracy, open negotiations, international arbitration
5. No international interference in internal affairs of countries
6. US veto power in League affairs if join
7. Agreements of members not to go to war without arbitration, not to interfere
with other nations, respect self-determination
8. Changes international law by allowing for the injection of morality that
restrains nations from interfering with others, as Germany and Russia did to
China.
9. Importance of participation by the Great Powers not only as a means of
restraining them, but also the use of their resources to restrain others.
10.Ratification of treaties owed to Americans who died in the war that there
might be no more wars.
8