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Birthing the Liberal International Order

Chapter 7 (“Birthing the Liberal International Order”) focuses on the American order project after the Second World War. It argues that there were actually two distinct American visions for order in the 1940s, a universalist global order vision—manifested in the United Nations system—and a smaller Western order vision—comprised of the Bretton Woods economic and NATO security systems. Observers often posit that these layers were complementary, representing an evolving but not contradictory strategy by the United States to build an inclusive and multilayered international order. By contrast, this chapter argues that this transition from global to Western order can be best explained by American leaders’ shifting threat perceptions during this critical period. While they began with a more inclusive global order vision, they soon shifted to a more exclusive and adversarial Western order idea as they became increasingly wary of the extraordinary threat posed by their former wartime ally, the Soviet Union. The Soviet threat is the most important causal force in explaining this shift in America’s ordering strategy, and the story of the liberal international order’s origins simply cannot be told without it.