Following the English School of International Relations pioneered by the late Hedley Bull, indeed, the late Stanley Hoffman at Harvard University, too, G. John Ikenberry argued that rules and regulations are critical to the viability of an international order. Without them, no amount of force could compel the two hundred and odd nation states to behave in an according manner. They would be like random quarks, each allowing their neutrons and electrons, to snap at one another, with or without any internal cohesion.
“Liberal Leviathan,” is written with one puzzle in mind: When the US embarks on a unilateral War on Terror against Al Qaeda, be it rightly or wrongly, can the liberal-democratic elements that were originally put in place since 1940s begin to unravel? G. John Ikenberry, one of the top academics in US, argued that the effects can cut both ways. The Bush administration’s unilateralism can indeed undo the good work of the previous US administration to build a liberal international order, but the more the US seeks to contain radical Islam, it also requires more, rather than less, Muslim countries to embrace certain modicum of liberal democratic values.
A coalition of countries, Muslim or non-Muslim, are well poised to create a liberal Leviathan. By liberal one means the emphasis on election, democracy and free press to make the world tick. A Leviathan is a state or coalition of states that can ensure this outcome collectively; although the fount of those liberal democratic values should ideally come from the United States first.