John Ikenberry

Instead, in his article "The Rise of China and the Future of the West", Foreign Affairs, Ikenberry suggests strengthening and re-investing in the existing institutions and rules of U.S.-led western order. He argues that the first thing that U.S. must do is to reestablish itself as a foremost supporter of the global system that underpins the Western order. In this view, when other countries see the U.S. using its power to strengthen the existing rules and institutions, US authority will be strengthened because they will become more inclined to work in collaboration with U.S. power. Secondly, the U.S. should update the key post-war security pacts, such as NATO and Washington’s East Asian alliances. When the U.S. provides security, the U.S. allies, in return, will operate within the western order. Thirdly, the U.S. should renew its support for wide-ranging multilateral institutions. Economically speaking, building on the agreements of the WTO, concluding the current Doha Round of trade talks that seek to extend market opportunities and trade liberalization to developing countries are possible examples. Fourthly, the U.S. should make sure that the order is all-encompassing, meaning there shouldn’t be any space left for other rising countries to build up their own “minilateral” order. Lastly, U.S. must support efforts to integrate rising developing countries into key global institutions. Less formal bodies, like G-20 and various other intergovernmental networks, can provide alternative avenues for voice and representation.

Ikenberrry was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.

Ikenberry served on the State Department's Policy Planning staff from 1991 to 1992. He was a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 1992 to 1993, a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars from 1998 to 1999, and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution from 1997 to 2002. He has also worked for several projects of the Council on Foreign Relations.

After receiving his BA from Manchester University, Indiana, and his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1985, Ikenberry became an assistant professor at Princeton, where he remained until 1992. He then moved to the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught from 1993 to 1999, serving as co-director of the Lauder Institute from 1994 to 1998, while since 1996 he has been Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of Milan in Italy. In 2001, he moved to Georgetown University, becoming the Peter F. Krogh Professor of Geopolitics and Global Justice in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He returned to Princeton in 2004, recruited by Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter, becoming the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs there. Ikenberry is also a Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea. In 2013-2014 Ikenberry was the 72nd Eastman Visiting Professor at Balliol College, University of Oxford.

Gilford John Ikenberry (October 5, 1954) is a theorist of international relations and United States foreign policy, and the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Compared to the end of the first World War, the United States was even more powerful in 1945 following the conclusion of the second World War. The nation possessed a preponderance of military power and close to half of the world's wealth. Once again, leaders from the United States attempted to leverage this powerful position and create a stable order that would serve to benefit their nation for decades to come. Political and economic openness was the centerpiece of this envisioned framework. It was believed that the closed economic regions which had existed before the war had led to worldwide depression and at least in part contributed to the start of the conflict. Reconstructing a stable Europe was also a priority, as safeguarding American interests was seen as being rooted in European stability. The region also became a staging ground for the Cold War, and building a strong West Germany was seen as an important step in balancing against the Soviet Union. In the end, the United States created its desired order through a series of security, economic, and financial multilateral institutions, including NATO and the Marshall Plan. West Germany was bound to its democratic Western European neighbors through the European and Coal and Steel Community (later, the European Communities) and to the United States through Atlantic security pact; Japan was bound to the United States through an alliance partnership and expanding economic ties. The Bretton Woods system meeting in 1944 laid down the monetary and trade rules that facilitated the opening and subsequent flourishing of the world economy. In institutionalizing its power, the United States was willing to act as a "reluctant superpower," making concessions to weaker states in order to ensure their participation in their desired framework.