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The article explores on the role of the U.S. in shaping the East Asian order around American military and economic dominance. It states that the U.S. system provides security, political partnerships, underwriting stability and alliances with Japan, South Korea and other partners across Asia. It stresses the rise of Chinese economic and military capabilities with explicit balance of power dynamic in multilateral trade and cooperation. It also notes that the American-led alliance system deepened the economic and security ties with the regions.

Since the middle of the twentieth century, the governance of the global system has been organized around the United States and the advanced industrial democracies. In the shadow of the Cold War, these countries established a wide array of global and regional institutions to manage economic, political, and security relations. The Bretton Woods institutions, GATT (and later the WTO), the United Nations, and various functional institutions provided the bulwark for an open and managed postwar world economy and global order. An American-led alliance system provided a structure for regional security in Europe and East Asia. When the Cold War ended, these far-flung institutions were extended into a more fully global multilateral system of governance. The United States dominated the global order. But, more so than did leading states in previous eras, it established its dominance through institutions. It was an American-led liberal hegemonic order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After sixty-five years of pursuing a grand strategy of global leadership-- nearly a third of which transpired without a peer great power rival--has the time come for the United States to switch to a strategy of retrenchment? According to most security studies scholars who write on the future of U.S. grand strategy, the answer is an unambiguous yes: they argue that the United States should curtail or eliminate its overseas military presence, abolish or dramatically reduce its global security commitments, and minimize or eschew efforts to foster and lead the liberal institutional order. Thus far, the arguments for retrenchment have gone largely unanswered by international relations scholars. An evaluation of these arguments requires a systematic analysis that directly assesses the core claim of retrenchment advocates that the current "deep engagement" grand strategy is not in the national interests of the United States. This analysis shows that advocates of retrenchment radically overestimate the costs of deep engagement and underestimate its benefits. We conclude that the fundamental choice to retain a grand strategy of deep engagement after the ColdWar is just what the preponderance of international relations scholarship would expect a rational, self-interested leading power in America's position to do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American-led world system is troubled. Some would argue that it is in crisis. But what sort of crisis is it? Is it a crisis of America's position in the global system or is it a deeper world historical transition in which liberalism and liberal international order are at risk? Is the American-led 'liberal era' ending, or is it transforming into a new sort of liberal order? In this article, I argue that the American liberal hegemonic order is in crisis. But it is a crisis of authority within liberal international order and not a crisis of its underlying principles and organisational logic. That is, it is a crisis of the American governance of liberal order and not of liberal order itself. The crisis of liberalism today will ultimately bring forth 'more liberalism'. The post-Cold War liberal international order is more durable than many think. Russia and China are not inevitable enemies of Western international order. A grand alternative to liberal order does not exist. To put it sharply: the pathway to the future still runs through institutions and relationships created over the last 60 years. American unipolarity will eventually give way to something new. Power and authority will shift in the global system as they have over the centuries. But rival orders will not emerge -- even if new leaders will. In the decades ahead, the United States and Europe and rising states -- many of which are in Asia -- will have more reasons and not fewer reasons to cooperate in open and rule-based ways. The future still belongs to the liberal international order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty years ago, as the Cold War was being ushered to a close, American and Russian leaders crafted a settlement with principles and arrangements intended to constitute a great-power peace as well as to extend the liberal international order. Today, the promise these arrangements once held now seems distant. For both sides, relations are now marked by a sense of grievance, disappointment and dashed expectations. The new administration of President Barack Obama sees the repair of the relationship with Russia as a major foreign-policy objective, and is ambitiously attempting to reset it and place it on a more positive footing. Already this new policy has provoked a chorus of condemnation that the United States is appeasing Russia and sacrificing both its national interests and the interests of democratic allies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet region. In reality, the Obama policy is a move toward recovering some of America's most successful foreign-policy approaches that reached a zenith at the end of the Cold War under the later Reagan administration and the George H.W. Bush administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the liberal internationalism and the dilemmas of liberal world order in the U.S. It discusses the major versions of liberal international order, which refers to the settled arrangements between states that define the terms of their interaction. It concludes that in the past decades, shifts in the logic and character of liberal international order appeared in the wake of war and economic turbulence.

The United States emerged from the 1990s as an unrivaled global power to become a "unipolar" state. This extraordinary imbalance has triggered global debate. Governments and peoples around the world are struggling to understand to how an American-centered unipolar system operates—and to respond to it. What is the character of domination in a unipolar distribution? To what extent can a unipolar state translate its formidable capabilities into meaningful influence? Will a unipolar world be built around rules and institutions or be based more on the unilateral exercise of unipolar power? Scholars too are asking these basic questions about unipolarity and international relations theory. The individual contributions develop hypotheses and explore the impact of unipolarity on the behavior of the dominant state, on the reactions of other states, and on the properties of the international system. Collectively, they find that unipolarity does have a profound impact on international politics. International relations under conditions of unipolarity force a rethinking of conventional and received understandings about the operation of the balance of power, the meaning of alliance partnerships, the logic of international economic cooperation, the relationship between power and legitimacy, and the behavior of satisfied and revisionist states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the text of a debate between professors G. John Ikenberry and Stephen Walt over the U.S. foreign policy at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University on May 8, 2007. According to Walt, the overriding goal of U.S. policy is to protect citizens and promote prosperity. A more realistic strategy would be of offshore balancing, which recognizes that the country does not need to control other parts of the world or tell other societies how to govern their own internal processes. Ikenberry says one of the profound tragedies of the Iraq war would be if the U.S. decided that the war meant it could not do great things in the world.

We review the relevance of the international relations articles published in the first 100 years of the Review for American foreign policy. We define a spectrum of ‘policy relevance’ and give a brief overview of the Review s changing relationship to American foreign policy as the journal, the profession, and the foreign policy process evolved over the last century. We then look at the Review's role in key periods in American foreign policy, focusing in particular on the example of the democratic peace literature. We conclude that although the content of the journal has moved away from early aspirations to near-term and direct policy relevance, the journal has evolved toward basic research that influences American foreign policies by affecting what scholars teach students, publish in policy journals, write in newspaper op-eds, say on the media, advise political leaders, and do when they are themselves in public office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the logic behind US and Japanese approaches to regional security and the prospects for a more comprehensive co‐operative security order in the Asia‐Pacific. The current security order in the region bears the marks of long‐established and distinctive American and Japanese approaches. These approaches do hold out some hope in building a more inclusive and co‐operative order, but for years to come the Asia‐Pacific will be a region that will exist somewhere between a balance of power and a community‐based security order. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the stature of the U.S. as a global superpower without historical precedent and assesses its future as the empire of capitalist democracy. It offers a look at the expansive and highly durable political order secured by U.S. unipolarity through dominant military capabilities. It analyzes the manner in which the geographic setting and historical timing of the rise of the U.S. in power shaped the way U.S. primacy has been manifest. The article also cites factors that drive U.S. goals, such as modernization and industrialization.

The surprise attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon have been called this generation's Pearl Harbor, exposing America's vulnerabilities to the outside world and triggering a fundamental reorientation of foreign policy. To some, 11 September marks the end of the post-Cold War era: after a decade of drift, the United States has finally rediscovered its grand strategic purpose. But this evocative image of historical transition in American foreign policy and world order is misleading. The events of 11 September and the Bush administration's declaration of war on terrorism will have an enduring impact on world politics, primarily in reinforcing the existing Western-centred international order and providing new sinews of cohesion among the great powers, including Russia and China. If Washington plays its cards well, it is possible that engagement and accommodation--rather than balance-of-power and security rivalry--will continue to define great-power relations well into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the persistence of American-centered order as the dominant structure in post-cold war world politics. Creation of American-centered between 1944 and 1951; Elements of American strategy for building postwar order; Modern industrial society; Liberal hegemony; Democracy and international capitalism; Alliances, security and order; Support from European and Asian countries. INSET: Current history, 1915, by Norman Angell..

Analyzes the domestic political order in the United States in the wake of the Cold War's end in 1989. Prewar domestic dilemmas; Unifying effect of the Cold War; Foreign policy and trade platform of the Republican Party; Why Bill Clinton won the 1992 presidential election; New political agenda emphasizing domestic over foreign concerns.

Analyzes the United States' relations with China and Japan. Organization of American relations in Asia since the 1940s; Shifts in the United States' strategic partnerships raised by President Bill Clinton's visit to China; Japan's capabilities and international importance which should be considered by the United States.

Focuses on the effect of international relations on hegemony in the U.S. Details on the postwar diplomacy in the country; Redistribution of international power and wealth; Consequences of international political economy for hegemonic decline.

Focuses on the social security in the United States. Core of the U.S. system of public social benefits; Establishment of unemployment insurance as a federal-state system; Failure of progressive social insurance reform.