Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- 1 The Rise and Fall of the Cold War in Comparative Perspective
- 2 History Ends, World Collide
- 3 Globalization and National Governance: Antinomies or Interdependence?
- 4 Beyond Westphalia?: Capitalism after the ‘Fall’
- 5 The Potentials of Enlightenment
- 6 Marxism after Communism
- 7 Liberalism Since the Cold War: An Enemy to Itself?
- 8 Clausewitz Rules, OK? The Future is the Past—with GPS
- 9 Mission Impossible? The IMF and the Failure of the Market Transition in Russia
- 10 Europe after the Cold War: Interstate Order or post-Sovereign Regional System?
- 11 Where is the Third World Now?
- 12 Whatever Happened to the Pacific Century?
- 13 Still the American Century
- Index
7 - Liberalism Since the Cold War: An Enemy to Itself?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- 1 The Rise and Fall of the Cold War in Comparative Perspective
- 2 History Ends, World Collide
- 3 Globalization and National Governance: Antinomies or Interdependence?
- 4 Beyond Westphalia?: Capitalism after the ‘Fall’
- 5 The Potentials of Enlightenment
- 6 Marxism after Communism
- 7 Liberalism Since the Cold War: An Enemy to Itself?
- 8 Clausewitz Rules, OK? The Future is the Past—with GPS
- 9 Mission Impossible? The IMF and the Failure of the Market Transition in Russia
- 10 Europe after the Cold War: Interstate Order or post-Sovereign Regional System?
- 11 Where is the Third World Now?
- 12 Whatever Happened to the Pacific Century?
- 13 Still the American Century
- Index
Summary
Many expected that after the Cold War, there would be peace, order, increasing prosperity in expanding markets and the extension and eventual consolidation of civil and political rights. There would be a new world order, and it would in these ways be liberal. In international politics, the United States would be supreme. It would through security treaties command the peace in western Europe and east Asia; through its economic power command it in eastern Europe and Russia; through clients and its own domination command it in the Middle East; through tacit understanding command it in Latin America; and, in so far as any state could, command it in Africa also. It could choose whether to cooperate in the United Nations, and if it did not wish to do so, be confident that it would not be disablingly opposed by illiberal states. In the international markets, it would be able to maintain holdings of its bonds. In the international financial institutions, it would continue to be decisive in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; it would be an important influence in the regional development banks; and it would be powerful in what it was to insist in 1994 should be called the World (rather than Multinational) Trade Organisation. Other transactions in the markets, it is true, would be beyond the control of any state. But they would not be likely to conflict with the interests of the United States (and western Europe) in finance, investment and trade, and would discipline other governments.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Interregnum: Controversies in World Politics 1989–1999 , pp. 145 - 160Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000