Princeton's John Ikenberry discusses his new book, A World Safe for Democracy, the first full account of liberal internationalism’s long journey from its 19th-century roots to today’s fractured political moment. Creating an international “space” for liberal democracy, preserving rights and protections within and between countries, and balancing conflicting values such as liberty and equality, openness and social solidarity, and sovereignty and interdependence—these are the guiding aims that have propelled liberal internationalism through the upheavals of the past two centuries. Ikenberry argues that in a 21st century marked by rising economic and security interdependence, liberal internationalism—reformed and reimagined—remains the most viable project to protect liberal democracy.
This event is co-sponsored by the Miller Center.
Author: G. John Ikenberry
G. John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, co-director of Princeton’s Center for International Security Studies, and a Global Scholar at Kyung Hee University, South Korea. Ikenberry is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In a recent survey of international relations scholars, Ikenberry was ranked in the top 10 in scholars who have produced the best work in the field of IR in the past 20 years, and ranked in the top 8 in scholars who have produced the most interesting work in the past 5 years. His books include Liberal Leviathan and After Victory.
Host: John M. Owen IV
John Owen is a Miller Center faculty senior fellow and a professor in the UVA Department of Politics. He is the author of Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security and The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change 1510-2010. A recipient of fellowships from Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton Universities, Owen is a member of the editorial board of International Security and a faculty fellow at the UVA Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.