Ikenberry on Democracy and International Order

John Ikenberry has a great post over at America Abroad entitled “Democratic Enlargement versus Liberal Order.” I think it neatly contrasts the world views of conservatives and liberal internationalists (and by “liberal” I don’t mean “left wing”). I’ll write on this more in the coming days. For now, here’s a few excerpts from Ikenberry’s post (but the whole post is worth reading):

…Bush’s vision is distorted and incomplete. The big difference between Bush
and the great liberal internationalist presidents is that Bush wants to promote
democracy and freedom and Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and Clinton wanted to build liberal order. More precisely, they believed that you can’t really have
one without the other – to spread democracy you must also deepen the liberal
democratic order.

The Bush – and neo-conservative – view seems to be that you can do democratic engagement without building liberal order. One reason seems to be that, in their view, the character of regimes matters more than the institutions, treaties, and other aspects of international community that sit atop and bind together democratic states. If all the states of the world are democratic, you don’t need a lot of international rules and institutions – you will get peace without a lot of international superstructure…

…Wilson’s view and that of the more “realist” liberal internationalist presidents – FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and Clinton – has been that democratic enlargement and liberal order must go together. One reason is that democracies share values and aspirations that can only be fully realized through a thriving liberal international order. Democratic “man” is a free individual and a citizen with civic sensibilities and responsibilities that cut across national borders. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, liberal order is needed so as to generate the collective resources and cooperative efforts to sustain the long-term democratic enlargement agenda. Indeed, this is increasingly true: The “easy” cases of democratization have been achieved. After each wave of democratic enlargement, the remaining laggard states are increasingly tough cases – requiring the democratic world to concert their efforts. Democratic enlargement requires a “democratic village.” Thirdly, the absence of an American commitment to liberal order – i.e. a commitment to multilateralism and rules-based relations – imposes too high a cost on the U.S. in terms of encouraging balancing, resistance, and free riding by other democracies — and it undermines the legitimacy of the broader commitments to international and domestic liberalism.