Review: The Crisis of American Foreign Policy

Abstract

THE CRISIS OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY Wilsonianism in the Twenty-first Century G. John Ikenberry, Thomas J. Knock, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Tony Smith Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. 157PP, US$24.95 cloth ISBN 978-0-691-1396-2Speaking before the United Nations general assembly on 22 September 2009, American President Barack Obama recognized that he took office a time when many around the world had come to view America with skepticism and distrust. Part of this, he said, due to opposition to and a belief that on certain critical issues, America has acted unilaterally, without regard for the interests of others. And this has fed an almost reflexive anti- Americanism. Determined to change those specific policies, Obama has pledged to open a new era of multilateral cooperation. In fact, he stressed that we've also re-engaged the United Nations. We have paid our bills. We have joined the Human Rights Council. We have signed the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.. .and we address our priorities here, in this institution - for instance, through the Security Council meeting that I will chair tomorrow. Moreover, given the contested attempt to export to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East more broadly, Obama adamantly affirmed that democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside. The contrast with George W Bush's administration is obvious. Obama differs with Bush not only in his approach to the management of international issues, preferring multilateralism over his predecessor's unilateralism. He also advances an alternative vision of American internationalism. Whereas Bush espoused what might be called imperial internationalism, Obama champions internationalism.The book under review is a formidable contribution to the understanding of the differences between these two internationalisms. It tackles a crucial question: was Bush's foreign policy consistent with the main features of the Wilsonian tradition or was it a deviation from it? If the answer is the former, then the bloody failure of Bush's foreign policy implies the demise of the liberal internationalism that Woodrow Wilson elaborated and practiced during the difficult years of the First World War and its immediate aftermath. If the latter, Bush's failure not only leaves Wilsonianism unscathed, but also creates an opportunity for its revival. The debate is not academic in nature at all. As Thomas J. Knock argues in his informative chapter, Wilson may be considered the founder of American internationalism. Wilson's predecessors had brought America to the world stage, but Wilson aimed radically to transform the basic institutional structure of the international system. Notwithstanding the domestic debacle over the League of Nations, his legacy inspired Franklin Roosevelt's proposal to create a multilateral international system after the Second World War. That system was a departure from the centuries-long tradition of great power politics, whose survival depended on the maintenance of the balance of power. When that balance tipped in one direction or another, war was the inevitable result.After 1945, thanks to American leadership, the balance of power system was superseded by a new rules-based international system centred on the UN. Although the Cold War froze the potential of the UN system to constitutionalize relations between states, the end of the Cold War offered an extraordinary opportunity to expand the Wilsonian system to encompass the entire world, not just the west. However, 9/11 and George W. Bush's administration radically changed the American approach. As G. John Ikenberry explains, Bush's international vision, as defined in the national security strategy of September 2002, was grounded in American exceptionalism. One of its core ideas was that it was up to America, not multilateral institutions, to make the world safe for democracy. In Bush's view, the multilateral system was either outdated or of secondary importance, and constrained the US's capacity to guarantee its own security and that of its allies. …