![]() ![]() regional dominance? What Is the Liberal International Order? For example, should the United States retain its security commitments to its regional allies? Should it make concessions in East Asia that are essentially precluded by the LIO's status quo bias? Should the United States instead adopt competitive policies that are inconsistent with the LIO but that may be required to preserve U.S. In the conclusion, I identify policy issues and options raised by employing a grand strategy framework. In the seventh section, I argue for shifting entirely from an LIO lens to a grand-strategic lens. The sixth section reviews research that demonstrates that interactions between the LIO's security and economic components do not make it significantly more than the sum of its parts. The fifth section offers alternative explanations for international behavior that some theorists credit to the LIO. In the fourth section, I explore weaknesses in some of the LIO concept's theoretical arguments. I then show that the LIO concept's inward focus largely undermines its explanatory value. Next, I describe the logics and mechanisms of the LIO concept. In the first section, I discuss different meanings of the term “liberal international order” and argue that the lack of an agreed upon meaning is a source of policy and analytic confusion. By adopting a grand-strategic framework, analysts can correct the LIO's status quo bias, make theoretical debates more explicit, and ensure that a wider array of foreign policy options receive due consideration. I argue, therefore, that the United States should analyze the broad outlines of its international policy from the perspective of grand strategy. ![]() With China's rise generating a dramatic shift in the global balance of power, however, the United States needs to engage in a more fundamental evaluation of its interests and the best means for achieving them. international policy in terms of the LIO tends to build in a status quo bias: the vast majority of such discussions start from the premise that preserving the LIO deserves top priority. In addition to lacking analytic value, framing discussions of U.S. international policy in terms of the LIO. In light of all of these shortcomings, I conclude that scholars, policy analysts, and practitioners should stop framing their analyses of U.S. Given these theoretical weaknesses, the LIO concept cannot support claims that the LIO's institutions have been more effective or better able to weather shocks from the international system than they would have been otherwise. I show, however, that this has not been the case and that established theories of alliance cooperation explain cooperation within NATO quite well. According to this argument, hierarchy plays a central role in explaining cooperation among NATO's member states. Another strand of the LIO concept holds that hierarchy built on legitimate authority, granted by subordinate (i.e., weaker) states to the dominant (i.e., stronger) state, is essential to explaining cooperation under anarchy. A powerful state, however, cannot effectively constrain its ability to use its power/military force when the stakes are sufficiently high. For example, one strand argues that a powerful state can bind itself to institutions, thereby reassuring weaker partners that it will meet its alliance commitments, neither abandoning its allies nor using force coercively against them such reassurance was essential to NATO's success during the Cold War. Second, key strands of the LIO concept suffer serious theoretical weaknesses. international policy would be improved by dropping the LIO terminology entirely and reframing analysis in terms of grand strategy. The behavior that the LIO concept claims to explain-including cooperation under anarchy, effective Western balancing against the Soviet Union, the Cold War peace, and the lack of balancing against the United States following the Cold War-is better explained by other theories, most importantly, defensive realism. In addition, the LIO concept suffers theoretical flaws that further undermine its explanatory value. The “LIO concept”-the logics that proponents identify as underpinning the LIO-is focused inward, leaving it ill equipped to address interactions between members of the LIO and states that lie outside the LIO. ![]() Even worse, the LIO framing could lead the United States to adopt overly competitive policies and unnecessarily resist change in the face of China's growing power. Systematic examination shows that this framing creates far more confusion than insight. A more fundamental issue, however, has received little attention: the analytic value of framing U.S. allies and the open international trading system, policy analysts worried about challenges to the liberal international order (LIO). Well before President Donald Trump began rhetorically attacking U.S. ![]()
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