John Ikenberry - A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crises of Global Order

Professor Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the School of Public and International Affairs. He is one of the most notable scholars in the entire field of international relations, with an expansive body of work spanning countless books, journals, essays, working at think tanks, advisory groups, and more. In this interview, Princeton freshmen Ryan Vuono and Neal Reddy discuss with Professor Ikenberry the theory of liberal internationalism, lessons from the history of international orders, and the future of the liberal international framework.

Considering that Professor Ikenberry is a leading proponent of the liberal internationalist school of thought within international relations, we start off the interview asking the basic questions for our listeners: what is liberal internationalism, and what does Professor Ikenberry’s vision of liberal internationalism look for today’s international climate.

We move to discuss some of the themes of the book-- the fact that liberal internationalism is fluid in nature, which Professor Ikenberry acknowledges can serve to be both beneficial and deceptive, in that liberal internationalist governments have historically become involved in colonial and imperialist exploitation of the Global South under the guise of free trade. Ikenberry makes clear that while liberal internationalism has become a guise for neoliberal economics, fundamentally it should be a form of international relations that seeks to promote welfare as a more general idea, rather than optimizing economic output.

In the interview, we also reflect on the geopolitical trends since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. While many scholars predicted a United States-led global hegemony and an indefinite stasis of world politics, we’ve seen the rise of populist, both left and right, as a form of backlash to neoliberalism and globalization. Professor Ikenberry sees the recent trends as a rebuke to the idea of realist international relations theory, of which he is a critic. However, he also concedes that the overly liberalized trade that occurred in the 1990s and 2000s that fomented these political movements was highly ignorant of what he sees as prerequisites for liberal internationalism-- a country’s ability to ensure the social welfare of its citizens.

Without this credibility, liberal internationalism has lost its credibility among many voters worldwide, but Professor Ikenberry is hopeful that with a return to the roots of social democracy as is occurring in the United States after the COVID-19 pandemic, liberal internationalism can return and the world, in his mind, will be better for it.