After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars.

• Date: 01 August 2019
• Author: Talbert, Bart

Ikenberry, G. John, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001. xiii + 293 pages. Paperback, $45.00.

After Victory explores how winners of major wars since 1648 have sought to restore order and perpetuate their control. John Ikenberry, professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, finds that, paradoxically, winners in these great historical moments had the most success when limiting their exercise of power through binding international institutions. He believes we must move beyond realist theories of balance-of-power or hegemonic control to understand how institutions help allay fears of domination and abandonment by weaker states. The work focuses on how a super powerful, yet reluctant, U.S. willingly restrained itself after 1945 in a dense web of institutions to gain long-term peace. The strategy has worked because it is applied by mature, accessible, liberal industrial democracies, and thus American policy has sought to spread democracy worldwide.

Ikenberry maintains that the basic problem of order formation is how to cope with "asymmetries of power." When victors have attempted to create a balance-of-power, weaker states attempt to counter-balance against the hegemon, which leads to competing blocs...