The dream of global governance through international institutions and law is a lovely dream that supervenes, like oil floating upon water, alas, upon the fact of the American hegemonic security guarantee. A genuinely multipolar world is not only a more insecure one (as the ever bleak but always incisive David Rieff has pointed out); it is also a more unjust one. Be careful what you wish for. Your dreams of liberal internationalism were never on so firm a foundation as upon the US’s clumsy and imperfect security hegemony.Hear, hear. The recent shenanigans at the United Nations have done nothing but reaffirm my personal conviction that the good professor is right. I cheerlead without shame for the Pax Americana.
Oh, and if you are so inclined, you can take a look at Anderson's academic paper on the subject. The abstract is here, and here is a nice bit of it:
The essay also argues that those who want to see an end to loose US hegemony in favor of the supposed freedoms and sovereign equality of a multipolar world should think carefully about what they wish for. The dreams of global governance by international institutions turn out to have their greatest possibilities precisely in a world that, to a large extent, relies upon a parallel hegemon rather than collective institutions for its underlying order. In a multipolar, more competitive world, the winner is unlikely to be liberal internationalist global governance or UN Platonism or collective security, but instead the narrow, often directly commercial, interests of rising new powers such as China.Yeah, you just stop and think if you want to swap American influence for Chinese (Tom Friedman and his pernicious ilk need not chime in).
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