(Before getting to my point, let me say that I agree with Michael Lind's comment that both sides of the debate get at something that is part of the picture.)

An aspect in this debate about liberal internationalism that has not been brought up is the structural growth of executive power separately from international policy and practice. This is a kind of growth of executive power that is different from the powers granted the executive due to national security emergencies, e.g. the War on Terror. Emergency powers are, by definition, exceptional; the power I am getting at, is not. It is structural, and begins long before the current emergencies. In my analyisis its roots lie in the growth of privatisation, deregulation, and economic globalization: because of these the executive branch, central banks, and a few key agencies, notably ministries of finance, have gained power, even as much of the rest of the state apparatus lost power. It begins with Reagan, after the decades of embedded liberalism when the legislative actually contested and restricted some features of executive power. And it has continued since, regardless of political party....and, in that sense, also holds for Obama (where the question becomes will he use it as good power! see here).

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In my contribution to our volume, I attempt to put Wilsonian internationalism in historical context in light of the war in Iraq and of the growing number of pundits who have compared George W. Bush to Woodrow Wilson or have invoked the latter's name in connection with the broader crisis in American foreign policy in the new century. Their commentaries are the latest in a series of writings reflecting on Wilson's centrality that stretch back to the period between the world wars. Like others before them, they are informed by some degree of ideology and partisanship and are freighted in the context of the times in which they were written.

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In response to Tony's post, I'd like to emphasize something that John wrote:

Finally, it was really Truman and the coming of the Cold War that led to the reinvention of liberal internationalism, creating what I would call liberal internationalism 2.0. This involved a more direct role for the United States as a hegemon - working with Europe and other allies, running the system, etc. The United States found itself not just the sponsor and leading participant in a new liberal international order - it was also owner and operator of it. The vision of liberal order turned into liberal hegemony. (And today the debate is whether the United States can renegotiate its old hegemonic order and create liberal internationalism 2.5, or whether we are moving to 3.0 or something entirely new and different).

I think this gets to the heart of the matter, particularly in the case of the neocons. They are influenced more by their idealized image of Truman and the Cold War liberal internationalism of 1949-1989--John's liberal internationalism 2.0--than by Wilson in 1919 or FDR in 1945. Truman (along with Churchill), rather than Wilson or Roosevelt, is the hero of the neocons and like-minded liberal hawks--witness the Truman National Security Project.

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John Ikenberry seems to me to be exactly right that Wilson showed himself to be realistic when the final Covenant of the League was set up. While it would have been preferable that the League be dominated by democratic states, in the world such as it was that could not be. What was possible was a system of collective security composed of a mix of regime types, the hope being that even autocratic states would often have an interest in peace and that the democratic form of government would be making progress in bringing more and more nations to the light. Wilson surely recognized as well that not all autocratic states were the same. I suspect he would have agreed with John Rawls that some were "relatively decent hierarchical states" and could be worked with. That said, Wilson was surely nervous that without the League being dominated by democracies it could be effective.

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Saskia Sassen objects to seeing Bush as a legitimate descendant of Wilson by remarking on the vastly different circumstances of the two presidencies, and I agree. But I do think Wilson "intuited" democratic peace theory and this perhaps as early as 1901 and certainly when he was thinking of the Pan American Union and the Covenant of the League between 1915 and 1919. Wilson thought regime type mattered enormously--thus he insisted on the Kaiser's abdication in 1918, and had a "non-recognition doctrine" of Latin American governments that came to power by military means.. Now obviously Wilson was not as sophisticated in his argument as, say, Bruce Russett is, but his intuitive sense was clearly in exactly the sense that the democratic peace crowd moved in the 1990s.

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This is an excellent discussion - and I want to respond to both Tony Smith and Michael Lind, offering my own version of liberal internationalism's intellectual family tree.

First, Tony argues that "democracy promotion" is at the heart of Wilsonianism. But I simply do not think this is true. Yes, as Michael Lind indicates, Wilson did argue that a peaceful order would best to be built on a community of democratic states. War was the product of antiquated social systems. Accountable governments that respect the rule of law are essential building blocks of a peaceful and just world order. But the world that Wilson envisaged in 1918 was not one where the United States - alone or with other states -- would equip itself to go out and democratized the world. Rather, the Wilsonian vision was of an international order organized around a global collective security body in which sovereign states would act together to uphold a system of territorial peace. Open trade, national self-determination, and a belief in progressive global change also undergirded the Wilsonian world view. It was a "one world" vision of nation-states that trade and interact in a multilateral system of laws creating an orderly international community.

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What a pleasure to see my good friend Michael Lind is mellowing with age! He doesn't take sides or swat us all down as in days of yore, but instead tries to bring us together, and more, he does a pretty good job of it.

I agree with Lind that Roosevelt was far more realistic than Wilson and hence would sup with the devil were it necessary. Even Wilson was open to compromise, however. The League as it emerged in late April 1919 was not the League that Wilson hoped for in several key respects for he abandoned his insistence that democracies dominate it in favor of a pledge from those states that joined that they would abide by the peace keeping regulations of the organization and that 2/3 of those already members would accept such a pledge as convincing. But it was FDR who decided that the Occupations of Japan and Germany should change them in fundamental ways internally (democratic regime change linked to economic openness), and called for the meeting at Bretton Woods--developments that were quintessentially Wilsonian. The result as John Ikenberry has argued in other books and articles was a "two track" Cold War, where the US sought to promote a Wilsonian order within the "free world" while containing communism without.

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I will respectfully sidestep the issue of whether Bush or liberal internationalists are the legitimate inheritors of Wilsonianism and instead reflect on a few of the implications of this rich debate for contemporary issues.

First, it is important to keep in mind that the invasion of Iraq would not have occurred were it not for the attacks of September 11. Neither neoconservatives nor liberal interventionists would have been able to take this country to war in Iraq were it not for the atmosphere of fear and anger that persisted through the balance of Bush's first term. In that sense, the war is not a good test case of Wilsonianism, liberal internationalism, or any other tradition in US foreign policy. The country was effectively in a state of shock - precisely why so many reasonable people of different political persuasion rallied behind a war that was as flawed in conception as it was in implementation.

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Is it possible that both sides in this debate are right? I think it is. Today's liberal internationalists and today's neoconservatives each lay claim to a different yet equally authentic aspect of Woodrow Wilson's thinking about world affairs.

John Ikenberry along with Anne-Marie Slaughter and Thomas Knock are right that Wilson believed in liberal internationalism, defined as a rule-governed, multilateral world order. At the same time, Tony Smith is right that Wilson believed in what nowadays is called democratic peace theory: "A steadfast concert for peace can never be sustained except by a partnership of democratic nations."

In Wilson's mind, liberal internationalism and democratic peace theory coexisted. But neither of these approaches depends on the other, and each can exist apart from the other.

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(Let me say that I am just responding to the posted text -not to the book--in the spirit of creating a common platform for dialogue since many may not have read the book).

This is a provocative post. The notion that Bush might be the heir of Woodrow Wilson's internationalism is, at first reading, almost preposterous. But it is getting me to mull this over.

For now, just two points.

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I appreciate the opportunity to appear on this website. The invasion of Iraq was arguably the biggest mistake in the history of American foreign policy. Our book asks how we got into Iraq so as not to make a similar mistake again. Were Wilsonian concepts responsible for this calamity, or might they spare us further misadventures? John Ikenberry sets the stage well when he opens the book asking, "Was George Bush the heir of Woodrow Wilson?" All four of us will be interested in comments on our contributions.

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Is George Bush the heir of Woodrow Wilson? This is the question that is at the core of this book by Anne-Marie Slaughter, Tony Smith, Tom Knock, and me. In the book, we have a lively debate - one with implications for liberal thinking about the world and Obama foreign policy.

The book's question is important because we all want to know what went wrong in foreign policy during the Bush years. Bush pursued a controversial security doctrine, launched a preventive war in Iraq, disrespected global rules and institutions, and brought America's standing in the world to a new low. Yet along the way, Bush also wrapped himself in the rhetoric of Woodrow Wilson and the Cold War liberalism of Truman and Kennedy. In the words of his Second Inaugural address: "We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." So did Bush foreign policy - and the Iraq war in particular - grow out of the Wilsonian tradition or was it actually an aberration or even the antithesis of this tradition? This is another way of asking if liberals share the blame for the Iraq war. After all, many liberals did in fact support the invasion. Was the Iraq war an outgrowth - at least indirectly - of an evolved Wilsonian worldview that is widely shared across the political spectrum in America, or was American foreign policy hijacked by a group of ideological outliers who hid behind Wilsonian ideas but were ultimately wielding a very different vision of America and the world?

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