Liberal internationalism in a nutshell

28 August 2008, 0132 EDT

I’m watching PBS coverage of the 2008 Democratic Convention. In response to Bill Clinton’s line about how the world is more impressed by the power of the United States’ example than the example of its power, Brooks quipped (I paraphrase): “I don’t think Vladimir Putin or Ahmadinejad will be impressed by our example.”

But that completely misses the point. The wager of liberal internationalism is that the United States can better achieve its objectives by building strong alliances through multilateral cooperation. The aim isn’t to “impress” people like Ahmadinejad, but to impress the leaders we need to place concerted leverage on Ahmadinejad.

There’s a legitimate debate about whether that kind of policy will work. Just as there’s a legitimate debate about whether the last eight years of Brooks’ preferred policies have proven effective against Ahmadinejad. But Brooks’ simplistic dismissal of the policy choices hardly, if you’ll excuse me, impresses.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.