Back to the Future: The Case for Strengthening — Not Replacing — the Rules-Based Order

Editor’s Note: The New Visions for Grand Strategy Project brought scholars across the political and ideological spectrum to discuss what the future has in store for the United States in the world. The editors of this series sought to foster a lively debate about America’s global role and strategic future. Michael Poznansky contributed to this series in his personal capacity. The views expressed in this piece are of Michael alone and do not represent those of the Naval War College, Department of the Navy, or Department of War.

By Emma Ashford, Senior Fellow, New Visions for Grand Strategy Project

For all the profound differences between former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, the two agree on one major thing: Great power competition is back, and the People’s Republic of China is America’s chief competitor. The waning of the unipolar era combined with the outbreak of overlapping global crises has accelerated fierce debates about the future of U.S. grand strategy. Many proposals call for major changes. Some want to turn the page on the postwar rules-based, or liberal international order (LIO). That would be a mistake.

Rather than replacing the LIO, the United States should recommit to its core principles, rules, and norms — things like the rule of law, multilateralism, openness, respect for sovereignty, and most importantly, strategic restraint. This does not preclude making much-needed changes in a host of areas. But the postwar order itself has good bones. It should not be abandoned wholesale. The goal of this essay is less to specify granular reforms and instead to explain why the LIO is well-suited to a renewed era of great power competition, dispel prominent myths about it, and chart a path forward.

One popular misconception is that the way American foreign policy manifested during unipolarity was fully emblematic of the LIO. Some of it was, but U.S. behavior was also frequently at odds with the liberal international order, despite the ostensibly liberal goals at the heart of key policies. One of the driving forces behind the United States’ decision to ignore core rules of the liberal order in this period, particularly those governing the use of force, was the absence of a peer competitor. With renewed competition here to stay, policymakers need to relearn lessons from the architects of the postwar order about the value of self-restraint, while avoiding the excesses of that period.

A primary benefit of this approach is its positive impact on America’s alliances. The United States is far more likely to outcompete rivals by working closely with Washington’s allies and partners than by acting on its own. But these critical relationships are not guaranteed. Beyond military protection, allies want to be assured that the United States will wield its immense power in ways that are predictable, restrained, and responsive to their concerns. The unabashed unilateralism of the post-Cold War period strained this trust. Recommitting to the fundamentals of the rules-based order offers a pathway to restoring confidence. Abiding by the agreed-upon rules and norms of the LIO is neither a sign of weakness nor a slippery slope to transformative and controversial endeavors. Rather, it is a recipe for winning great power competition by ensuring that America remains an attractive partner relative to rivals.

Why the US Needs Allies

One of America’s greatest strengths in geopolitical competition is its extensive network of alliances. America’s chief rival, China, lacks a comparable network. Although Beijing has aligned with Moscow in Russia’s war against Ukraine, with the two countries promising close cooperation, and has supported Iran in various ways, China’s only formal alliance is with North Korea.¹ It is also evident that America’s competitors view the U.S. alliance network as an asset. As Mireya Solís, the director of the Center for Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution notes, “Testament to the clout of American alliances is how much U.S. rivals chafe at them and seek their erosion.”²

It is easy to forget sometimes precisely how and why allies matter for great power competition. In a testament to this, Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, points out that many proponents of liberal internationalism “regard alliances as ‘sacred commitments’ and view them as an end, rather than a means in U.S. foreign policy.”³ This approach to thinking about allies is clearly insufficient. That said, Washington reaps at least three major benefits from its extensive alliance network.⁴

First, allies provide significant economic benefits. In a head-to-head competition across a range of sectors and industries, China poses a major challenge to the United States. At a high level, America’s nominal gross domestic product (GDP) is larger than China’s, but the ranking flips if purchasing power parity is measured.⁵ The picture changes significantly once U.S. allies and partners are included. According to Kurt Campbell, the former U.S. deputy secretary of state, and Rush Doshi, the director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations, “Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, the United States, and the European Union have a combined economy of $60 trillion to China’s $18 trillion.”⁶ With respect to trade, existing research shows that Washington gets better deals as a result of the security guarantees it provides to allies.⁷ The economic benefits of alliances extend beyond the positive returns to the United States. A large part of the reason that U.S.-led economic sanctions against other countries greatly impact target nations is that they are imposed in conjunction with support from allies who, by joining the U.S. sanctions, significantly ratchet up the pain.⁸

A second benefit that allies provide is geopolitical. Any potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific, for example, would include a need for what is known as access, basing, and overflight (ABO), from key allies in the region including Japan and the Philippines. More broadly, ABO acts as a force multiplier. Writing about Europe’s importance, Celeste Wallander argues that the 30-plus American bases across the continent enables the United States “not only to defend Europe but also to support American interests across the globe.”⁹ A similar story could be told in Asia and the Middle East. ABO, of course, is not a given during conflicts.¹⁰ But all else being equal, it is far more likely that Washington can leverage this critical resource from allies with whom it has shared interests and strong bonds. America’s security partnerships also contribute to deterrence by increasing the perceived likelihood that any military moves or coercion against its allies could bring the United States in.

A third benefit allies offer relates to the defense industrial base. In testimony before Congress, the commander of Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Paparo, argued that China was “build[ing] combatants at the rate of 6-to-1.8 [relative] to the United States.”¹¹ According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), China already has the largest navy.¹² The Chinese Navy was on track to exceed 400 ships in 2025, compared to 295 in the U.S. Navy.¹³ Again, the picture changes when allies are included. For example, despite America’s ailing shipbuilding industry, it can work with South Korea and Japan, two close allies with immense shipbuilding capacity, for maintenance, repair, and possibly production.¹⁴ Other powerful allies offer unique capabilities that bolster U.S. power to include production of critical munitions and other assets.

That said, the current alliance system is imperfect. Many areas require improvement and creative thinking. Some analysts argue that the United States needs to work with allies to “generat[e] shared capacity across all critical domains.”¹⁵ Others believe that the United States needs to empower Europe to take on greater responsibility for dealing with Russia so America can focus the lion’s share of attention on China.¹⁶ One of the most ambitious proposals calls for forming multilateral security relationships in Asia through the creation of a new Pacific Defense Pact.¹⁷ Although these approaches differ in important ways, all acknowledge the value of alliances. To be sure, alliances do entail risks — the most dangerous of which is the threat of entrapment wherein a junior partner drags the United States into an unwanted conflict or war. But there is no escaping the fact that when it comes to competition with China and others, U.S. allies enable the United States to function as a superpower.

How to Win Allies and Influence Partners

If allies offer so many benefits to the United States, what do they want in return? First and foremost, military protection in the form of security guarantees is critical.¹⁸ In Europe, this need is addressed through NATO and its collective security provisions. In Asia, bilateral security arrangements with countries like Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea similarly provide defense guarantees. These security commitments are especially valuable for countries lacking nuclear weapons because U.S. protection doubles as a nuclear umbrella.

Security pacts alone, however, will not engender the kind of deep cooperation necessary for the United States and its allies and partners to out-compete China, Russia, and other would-be competitors. There are at least two additional considerations. First, allies want to know that Washington uses resources wisely such that it can continue to deliver on its many global commitments, particularly as urgent crises and threats emerge. Even though U.S. defense spending is greater than that of every other nation by a significant margin, resources are not infinite. As the war in Ukraine has shown, the West faces real constraints in terms of maintaining stockpiles of critical munitions and weapons platforms. These are not new considerations. During the Vietnam War, policymakers worried that core U.S. allies “could become seriously concerned if we get ourselves involved in a major conflict that degraded our ability to defend Europe and produced anything less than an early and completely satisfactory outcome.”¹⁹ Acting as a good steward of precious limited assets is a boon to the alliance network.

The second, and arguably most important, factor for engendering deeper cooperation with allies is confidence that the United States is fundamentally trustworthy and will wield its enormous power in ways that are predictable, restrained, and responsive to allies’ concerns. This is no easy feat. Fortunately, there is a blueprint for how to do this: adhering to the rules-based, liberal international order. The liberal order, as originally conceived in the postwar period, was built for this moment. The way it often manifested in the unipolar period was not. Policymakers should therefore internalize key lessons from the architects of the postwar order from the early Cold War while avoiding some of its major pitfalls.

The authors of the liberal international order established a dense array of institutions, rules, and norms to guide state behavior after World War II. Strategic restraint was at its core. In essence, this meant that the United States was “acknowledging that there will be limits on the way in which it can exercise its power”²⁰ by committing to rules and norms of behavior. Handcuffing itself in this way was not merely an act of benevolence. Rather, policymakers believed it was in the long-term interests of the United States to exercise strategic restraint and build legitimacy in the process as a tool for uniting allies, courting potential partners, and drawing a sharp contrast with the Soviet Union. In practice, the United States’ relationship to the liberal world order was complex.

During the Cold War, policymakers were highly sensitive to the risks of undermining confidence in America’s commitment to the LIO, especially by using force in ways that would be seen as arbitrary and unconstrained. As a result, they were hyper-concerned with optics. As the author of this paper shows in a new book, Great Power, Great Responsibility, leaders went out of their way to showcase compliance when they had the liberal order’s rules on their side. When they did not, they relegated violations to the covert sphere to minimize reputational damage even when it severely impeded effectiveness. Deliberations regarding the prospect of intervention in Guatemala in the early 1950s are illustrative. As one State Department memo argued, “Nothing would harm [the] overall interests of the United States in Guatemala more than the premature employment of overly ag[g]ressive measures with respect to Guatemalan internal matters. The communists would be furnished with a valuable weapon throughout Latin America and would be able to do great harm to the inter-American system through a revival of mistrust in the United States and fears of a return to the days of unilateral intervention and ‘big-stick’ diplomacy.”²¹ In the end, policymakers turned to secrecy and covert action. The Vietnam War is a major exception. Fears about domino theory and communist expansion in Southeast Asia ultimately overrode all other considerations. Even here, however, policymakers tried for years to quietly stabilize the situation, owing in part to concerns regarding the LIO.²²

Once the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States embarked on a wide range of new goals well beyond the containment of and opposition to communism. Many of these initiatives, including the promotion of democracy and human rights, were rooted in liberal values. At the same time, when push came to shove, policymakers were increasingly comfortable brazenly ignoring the agreed-upon rules and norms governing the use of force in pursuit of these goals. The concern with optics from the Cold War dissipated. Why the change? In a word, unipolarity. Without the need to compete with another superpower for primacy in the international order, leaders were far less concerned about how allies and nonaligned states would perceive U.S. power and were therefore more willing to openly ignore rules. While other states might complain about what looked like U.S. foreign policy run amok, exit options were limited. In short, it was not just that the United States failed to reform the United Nations or build new institutions during the period of unipolarity, as experts like Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at CSIS, argue.²³ It is that policymakers openly disregarded the original tenets at the heart of the postwar order.

Things are different now. The unipolar approach toward the liberal international order is ill-suited to today’s world. The return of great power competition means the United States is once again locked in a battle over the future of the international order. Allies, partners, and nonaligned powers are watching. Flagrantly violating the core tenets of the liberal order and acting without strategic restraint — whether in pursuit of well-intentioned liberal goals like advancing democracy and human rights, or hard-headed realist objectives like containing Chinese expansion — will come at a cost policymakers have been unaccustomed to worrying about for the last several decades.

What Critics Get Wrong About the Postwar Order

There is no shortage of criticism when it comes to the question of whether the United States should continue to uphold and invest in the liberal order, even in pursuit of nurturing key allies in the service of strategic competition. Many of these critiques, however, are rooted in misunderstandings about the LIO and its inner workings. One of the most common refrains, frequently touted by proponents of a restrained grand strategy,²⁴ is that the liberal order was the primary source of decades of disastrous U.S. foreign policy. Its list of supposed sins includes costly interventionism, attempts at nation-building, and forever wars. But using the excesses of the unipolar moment to argue that the entire liberal international order should be abandoned is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As mentioned, many U.S. foreign policy initiatives of the last 30 years — especially forcible interventions — were a departure from core tenets of the LIO as conceived in the rubble of World War II.²⁵ Although the brazenness with which policymakers ignored the LIO render these cases distinct from Cold War-era covert operations that quietly broke rules, they were violations all the same. Why, then, are these cases not held up as examples of how policymakers strayed from the liberal international order and used to support a refocusing on strategic restraint?

One possible reason is that many of the policies that the United States pursued in the unipolar period were “liberal” in a real sense. They responded to humanitarian crises (e.g., Kosovo) and targeted brutal dictators (e.g., Iraq). In contrast, most interventions during the Cold War were driven by the struggle with the former Soviet Union and realpolitik considerations. Because of this, many analysts probably assume that most post-Cold War interventions are part and parcel of the liberal international order. Indeed, for some restrainers, these unipolar policies are merely the liberal order fully realized.²⁶ This is understandable to some degree. It is also a misreading of the liberal international order.

Consider the Iraq War. Even though the U.S. military deposed a tyrant and attempted to install democracy, it was an abrogation of the LIO. Why? Because the liberal international order is, at its core, rules-based. When the LIO’s rules, such as those governing the use of force, conflict with liberal values, there is an implied hierarchy: The former predominates. This ordering is baked into the foundations of the liberal order. The United Nations (UN) Charter’s general prohibition on the threat or use of force, for example, is explicitly described as upholding the principles of self-determination and human rights. Many supporters of the U.S.-led order have effectively arrived at this conclusion without necessarily realizing it. The uptick in the usage of the phrase “rules-based international order” versus the “liberal international order” is telling.

This is also germane to debates about the Responsibility to Protect, or R2P. In 2005, the UN General Assembly pronounced that countries have an obligation to protect their populations “from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.” This was a deeply liberal idea that redefined the concept of sovereignty in profound ways. At the same time, it also stated that the international community must be “prepared to take collective action…through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter…should peaceful means be inadequate and [if] national authorities” fail in their obligations.²⁷ Thus, intervening to stop crimes against humanity is consistent with the LIO so long as it is not done unilaterally outside the auspices of UN rules.

Another common critique of the liberal order, most closely associated with America First, is that it puts the world’s interests ahead of U.S. interests. Secretary of State Marco Rubio summarized this point at his confirmation hearing. “While America far too often continued to prioritize the ‘global order’ above our core national interests,” he argued, “other nations continued to act the way countries always have and always will, in what they perceive to be in their best interest.” Thus, Rubio posited, the only way the United States can “create a free world out of chaos once again” is for there to be “a strong and confident America that engages the world, putting our core national interests above all else once again.”²⁸

The problem with this characterization is that it takes too narrow a view of America’s national interests. Much rests, however, on what the crux of the issue is. If the chief concern is that the United States has sometimes been pressed by allies to intervene in countries against its preferences and with suboptimal results, that would be one thing.²⁹ But if the argument is that the LIO’s constraints are the real issue, that is a different matter. There is no doubt that abiding by the rules of the liberal international order meant that policymakers were not free to make any decision they wanted in all times and places. Indeed, that was the point. By agreeing to exercise power within certain constraints, the United States built an order that helped it out-compete the Soviet Union. Honey, not vinegar, was key to this enterprise. Although the United States was freer to loosen the constraints after the Cold War, unabashed unilateralism serves America poorly in an era when it faces a powerful competitor vying for control over the global order.

Renovation, Not Rejection

In an essay in Foreign Affairs in 2019, Jennifer Lind and William Wohlforth argued that the liberal order’s survival required a healthy dose of conservatism.³⁰ The core thesis of their article, and other articles like it, call for U.S. policymakers to shift to much more of a status quo mindset. Recommendations in this vein include such matters as avoiding taking on new allies, eschewing state-driven democracy promotion, and so forth.

This author’s perspective shares many affinities with this view. As argued in this essay, maximizing the benefits the United States gets from allies does not just require security guarantees and using Washington’s vast but finite resources wisely. It also demands that leaders take a page out of the playbook of the postwar architects and ensure they are seen as wielding power responsibly by making strategic restraint and adherence to agreed-upon rules and norms a lodestar. This would undoubtedly make U.S. policy more “small-c” conservative in meaningful ways. Controversial democracy promotion or nation-building efforts, for example, would be unlikely to garner the needed support such that they could be pursued without running afoul of U.S. obligations under the liberal international order.

Following this template does not mean, of course, that the United States must abandon commitments to democracy, human rights, and freedom abroad. But it does mean the way that America exercises power in pursuit of these values should more closely reflect postwar constraints centered on strategic restraint and place less emphasis on its post-Cold War impulses, which were far more unilateral.

It also requires policymakers to plan for how best to achieve pressing national interests when they conflict with the agreed-upon rules and norms of the liberal international order. The unapologetic and overt unilateralism of the post-Cold War period is exceedingly risky. At the same time, using covert action to square this circle, particularly as practiced throughout much of the Cold War, comes with distinct risks. The possibility of exposure, particularly for controversial pursuits like regime change, entails meaningful costs for the United States, including a loss of trust.

Thus, policymakers would be well served by seeking international authorization where possible and building large, multilateral coalitions for important undertakings. Indeed, exercising power prudently should increase the likelihood that leaders can achieve this kind of support in the first place. Although increasing hostility with China and Russia may take UN Security Council (UNSC) action off the table given the two countries’ veto power, there is plenty of maneuver space. Most straightforwardly, the United States can seek backing from regional entities. UNSC authorization is the gold standard under the LIO, but formalized regional support is still an attractive second-best option. More creatively, Washington could pursue uniting-for-peace resolutions, which allow the UN General Assembly to authorize action to address threats to international peace and stability when the Security Council is deadlocked. Covert action could be an option when solutions like this are infeasible. But policymakers need to be prepared to defend such operations if — and often, when — they are exposed.

Calling for the United States to recommit itself to the liberal international order is not inherently at odds with a range of other suggestions for improving U.S. grand strategy. Proposals for U.S. allies to spend more on defense in the service of more equitable burden sharing, revising rules that have disproportionately benefited China or that have become too rigid, and prioritizing the Indo-Pacific are perfectly compatible with the approach called for here — with caveats.³¹ In brief, these measures would all have to be undertaken multilaterally through cooperation and consultation. Attempting to strong-arm allies into adopting new rules or spending more on defense might achieve short-term victories, but such an approach could realign incentives in ways that undermine U.S. interests over the long run.

Finally, it is crucial to address the million-dollar question: Can the genie really be put back in the bottle? That is, can the United States credibly commit to strategic restraint after decades of sidelining such concerns? Although difficult to achieve, it is possible. A little more than a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Pew conducted a survey of global views of the United States. Although 82% of those surveyed “believe the U.S. interferes in the affairs of other countries,” almost two-thirds “believe the U.S. contributes to peace and stability around the world.” As Pew notes, “in many nations, the share of the public that thinks the U.S. listens to countries like theirs has been on the rise, and in 12 countries, it is at the highest point we’ve seen in any of our surveys.”³² Although circumstantial, this suggests that the Biden administration’s efforts to unite allies in defense of Ukraine and make the rules-based order a centerpiece of its foreign policy had an effect. There is obviously more work to be done, but clearly, there is an appetite for principled, responsible U.S. leadership.

Notes

1
Evan N. Resnick and Hannah Elyse Sworn, “China and the Alliance Allergy of Rising Powers,” War on the Rocks, May 30, 2023, https://warontherocks.com/2023/05/china-and-the-alliance-allergy-of-rising-powers/.
2
Doug Bandow, Brian Blankenship, Mireya Solís, and Thomas Wright, “Are America’s Alliances a Source of Strength or a Burden as It Competes With China?” (Brookings, May 15, 2025), https://www.brookings.edu/articles/are-americas-alliances-a-source-of-strength-or-a-burden-as-it-competes-with-china/.
3
Emma Ashford, First Among Equals: U. S. Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2025), 5.
4
The United States also enjoys enormous advantages on its own. See Michael Beckley, Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018).
5
China Power Team, “Unpacking China’s GDP,” (Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), ChinaPower Project, August 22, 2024), https://chinapower.csis.org/tracker/china-gdp/.
6
Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi, “Underestimating China: Why America Needs a New Strategy of Allied Scale to Offset Beijing’s Enduring Advantages,” Foreign Affairs 104, no. 3 (2025): 12, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/underestimating-china.
7
Stephen G. Brooks and William Curti Wohlforth, America Abroad: The United States’ Global Role in the 21st Century, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016), 181-184.
8
Edward Fishman, Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare, (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2025); Ben A. Vagle and Stephen G. Brooks, Command of Commerce: America’s Enduring Economic Power Advantage Over China. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2025).
9
Celeste A. Wallander, “Beware the Europe You Wish For: The Downsides and Dangers of Allied Independence,” Foreign Affairs 104, no. 4 (2025), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/beware-europe-you-wish-wallander.
10
Renanah M. Joyce and Brian Blankenship, “Access Denied? The Future of U.S. Basing in a Contested World, War on the Rocks, February 1, 2021, https://warontherocks.com/2021/02/access-denied-the-future-of-u-s-basing-in-a-contested-world/.
11
Key Points, Testimony by Admiral Samuel J. Paparo, Commander, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, on U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Posture, April 17, 2025, https://www.andrewerickson.com/2025/04/testimony-by-admiral-samuel-j-paparo-commander-u-s-indo-pacific-command-on-u-s-indo-pacific-command-posture-april-2025/.
12
Alexander Palmer, Henry H. Carroll, and Nicholas Velazquez, “Unpacking China’s Naval Buildup,” (CSIS, June 5, 2025), https://www.csis.org/analysis/unpacking-chinas-naval-buildup.
13
Congressional Budget Office (CBO), “An Analysis of the
Navy’s 2025 Shipbuilding Plan,” Carla Babb, (Washington, DC: CBO, January 6, 2025), https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60732; Carla Babb, “China Far Outpacing US in Military, Commercial Ship Numbers,” (Washington, DC: VOA, March 9, 2025), https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-pledges-to-resurrect-shipbuilding-as-china-seen-outpacing-us-/8004070.html.
14
Mina Pollman, “Shipbuilding Industry Takes Center Stage in US Relations With Japan and South Korea,” Diplomat, May 7, 2025, https://thediplomat.com/2025/05/shipbuilding-industry-takes-center-stage-in-us-relations-with-japan-and-south-korea/; Aaron-Matthew Lariosa, “Navy Supply Ship Completes First Large-Scale Maintenance at South Korean Shipyard,” Aaron-Matthew Lariosa, USNI News, (US Naval Institute, March 13, 2025), https://news.usni.org/2025/03/13/navy-supply-ship-completes-first-large-scale-maintenance-at-south-korean-shipyard.
15
Campbell and Doshi, “Understanding China.” See also: Arthur Herman, “An Arsenal of Democracies Can Best the China, Russia, Iran Axis” (Hudson Institute, March 29, 2023), https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/arsenal-democracies-can-best-china-russia-iran-axis; and Trevor Phillips-Levine and Andrew Tenbusch, “Allied Arsenal: Building Strength Through Shared Production, War on the Rocks, July 22, 2025, https://warontherocks.com/2025/07/allied-arsenal-building-strength-through-shared-production/.
16
Alex Velez-Green and Robert Peters, “The Prioritization Imperative: A Strategy to Defend America’s Interests in a More Dangerous World,” (Heritage Foundation, August 2024), https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/the-prioritization-imperative-strategy-defend-americas-interests-more-dangerous; Jennifer Lind and Daryl G. Press. “Strategies of Prioritization: American Foreign Policy After Primacy,” Foreign Affairs, 104, no.4 (2025), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/strategies-prioritization-lind-press.
17
Ely Ratner, “The Case for a Pacific Defense Pact: America Needs a New Asian Alliance to Counter China,” Foreign Affairs 104, no. 4 (2025). https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/case-pacific-defense-pact-ely-ratner.
18
Jennifer Lind and William C. Wohlforth, “The Future of the Liberal Order Is Conservative: A Strategy to Save the System,” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 2 (2019): 4, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-02-12/future-liberal-order-conservative.
19
National Security Council, “418–Paper prepared by the National Security Council working group,” 1964, (The White House Office of the Historian, November 21, 1964), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v01/d418.
20
G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt7rjt2, 105.
21
Michael Poznansky, Great Power, Great Responsibility: How the Liberal International Order Shapes US Foreign Policy, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2025), 82.
22
See also domestic concerns in Andrew Payne, War on the Ballot: How the Election Cycle Shapes Presidential Decision-Making in War, (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2023), https://doi.org/10.7312/payn20964.
23
Max Bergmann, “How America Blew Its Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Policy, May 28, 2025, https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/05/26/how-america-blew-its-unipolar-moment.
24
Miranda Priebe, John Schuessler, Bryan Rooney, and Jasen Castillo, “Competing Visions of Restraint,” International Security 49 (2), [October, 2024]: 135–69, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00498.
25
For example, Christopher Preble, a prominent proponent of restraint, argues that “U.S. grand strategy since the end of the Cold War has been characterized by an attempt to maintain primacy, or what others call deep engagement or liberal hegemony.” See Christopher Preble, “Rethink US Grand Strategy,” Stimson Center, November 19, 2024, https://www.stimson.org/2024/rethink-us-grand-strategy/#:~:text=U.S.%20grand%20strategy%20since%20the,mostly%20reflects%20this%20primacist%20mindset. But proponents of deep engagement would argue that the United States has pursued this grand strategy since 1945 and that the more expansive liberal pursuits of the post-Cold War period are better described as “deep engagement plus.” See Brooks and Wohlforth, America Abroad, 82-83.
26
John J. Mearsheimer, “Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order,” International Security 43 (4), April, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00342.
27
United Nations, 2005b. “Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly on 16 September 2005.” A/RES/60/1, https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n05/487/60/pdf/n0548760.pdf?OpenElement&_gl=1*1l5wndv*_ga*MTgwNjUzMzg4Mi4xNzQ5OTE4MDEx*_ga_TK9BQL5X7Z*czE3NDk5MTgwMTAkbzEkZzAkdDE3NDk5MTgwMTAkajYwJGwwJGgw – emphasis added.
28
Marco Rubio, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Confirmation Hearing, Opening Remarks, (January 2025), https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/6df93f4b-a83c-89ac-0fac-9b586715afd8/011525_Rubio_Testimony.pdf.
29
Prior to NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011, for example, U.S. officials in the Obama administration were initially inclined not to get involved in the ongoing civil war. France and Britain, however, effectively forced the United States with a vote in the UN to establish a no-fly zone, which they could not accomplish on their own. According to Dartmouth Professor Jeffrey Friedman, “UN Ambassador Susan Rice thus reportedly accused her French counterpart of trying ‘to drag us into your sh[—]ty little war.’” See Jeffrey Friedman, The Commander in Chief Test: Public Opinion and the Politics of Image-Making in US Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023), 143.
30
Lind and Wohlforth, “The Future of the Liberal Order is Conservative.” On deep engagement versus deep engagement plus, see Brooks and Wohlforth, America Abroad, 82-83; and Stephen Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, “Don’t Come Home, America,” International Security, 37 (3), [WINTER] 2012/13, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41804173. On openness versus liberal universalism, see Mira Rapp-Hooper and Rebecca Friedman Lissner, “The Open World: What America Can Achieve After Trump.” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 3 (May/June 2019), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/open-world.
31
In a new essay, Stacie Goddard et al. argue that the LIO’s main problem stems from too much liberalism. That is, the order became overly legalistic and rigid. While that is certainly true in some areas, especially trade, few would argue that the key issue with how the U.S. wielded force in the post-Cold War was that it was too constrained or too responsive to international institutions. This, then, showcases the complexity of the task at hand when it comes to revising an order as large and unwieldy as the LIO. See Stacie E. Goddard, Ronald R. Krebs, Christian Kreuder-Sonnen, and Berthold Rittberger, “Liberalism Doomed the Liberal International Order: A Less Legalistic System Would Help Protect Democracies.” Foreign Affairs (July 28, 2025), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/liberalism-doomed-liberal-international-order.
32
Richard Wike, Janell Fetterolf, Moira Fagan, Sarah Austin, and Jordan Lippert, “International Views of Biden and U.S. Largely Positive,” (Pew Research Center, June 27, 2023), https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/06/27/international-views-of-biden-and-u-s-largely-positive/.