Michael Poznansky, "Great Power, Great Responsibility: How the Liberal International Order Shapes US Foreign Policy" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Sep 16, 2025

Michael Poznansky, an Associate Professor at the U.S. Naval War College, discusses his book on the Liberal International Order's impact on U.S. foreign policy. He explores the balance between rule compliance and violations, citing historical case studies like the Korean and Iraq Wars. Poznansky delves into the complexities of global power dynamics and evolving foreign policy strategies, stressing the importance of historical context in today's geopolitical landscape. He also touches on the role of cyber operations in modern conflicts, particularly in Ukraine.

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INSIGHT

Compliance Is Conditional

U.S. compliance with the liberal international order is contingent, not absolute, driven by system structure and compliance burden.
Presence of a peer competitor raises sensitivity to reputational costs; high compliance burden pushes leaders toward violations.

INSIGHT

Peer Competition Shapes Optics

A peer competitor makes U.S. leaders worry that visible violations will bring reputational and other costs.
Absence of a peer competitor reduces that sensitivity and raises chances of open rule-bending.

INSIGHT

Burden Of Compliance Matters

The "burden of compliance" is whether following liberal-order rules prevents achieving core goals in a case.
High burden increases incentives to violate; low burden encourages adherence for legitimacy gains.

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In the wake of World War II, the United States leveraged its hegemonic position in the international political system to gradually build a new global order centered around democracy, the expansion of free market capitalism, and the containment of communism. Named in retrospect the "liberal international order" (LIO), the system took decades to build and is still largely with us today even as the US's relative power within it has diminished.

In Great Power, Great Responsibility: How the Liberal International Order Shapes US Foreign Policy (Oxford UP, 2025), Michael Poznansky explores how the LIO has influenced US foreign policy from its founding to the present. Proponents argue that its impact has been profound, producing a system that has been more rule-bound and beneficial than any previous order. Critics charge that it has failed to prevent the US itself from consistently violating rules and norms. Poznansky contends that the answer lies in between. While rule-breaking has been a constant feature of the postwar order, the nature of violations varies in surprising and poorly understood ways. America's approach to compliance with the LIO, including whether leaders feel the need to conceal rule violations at all, is a function of two primary factors: the intensity of competition over international order, and the burden of complying with the liberal order's core tenets in a given case.

Drawing on nine case studies, including the Korean War and Iraq War, Great Power, Great Responsibility sheds important light on the future of US foreign policy in an era where American unipolarity has ended and great power rivalry has returned.

Our guest is Michael Poznansky, an Associate Professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department and a core faculty member in the Cyber & Innovation Policy Institute at the U.S. Naval War College.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

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