Rethinking the 1990s: Liberal World Order-Building in the Aftermath of the Cold War

Rethinking the 1990s provides a timely, thought-provoking retrospective on a decade of world-historical importance. In an era of intensifying geopolitical rivalry, economic nationalism, and ideological extremism, this wide-ranging analysis explores the great hopes and expectations that inspired Western policymakers in the decade after the Cold War. Providing much-needed historical perspective, it offers new insight into the strategic choices, political trade-offs, and missed opportunities that have brought the world to this unsettled moment. Written in a highly accessible style, these engaging essays by leading experts will make it attractive to students and the educated reading public as well as essential reading for scholars of world politics.

G. John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the School of Public and International Affairs. He is also a Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea. In 2018-2019, Ikenberry was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University. In 2013–2014, he was the 72nd Eastman Visiting Professor at Balliol College, Oxford. Ikenberry is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Ikenberry is the author of eight books, most recently, A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism in the Making of Modern World Order, and Debating Worlds: Contested Narratives of Global Modernity and World Order.

Peter Trubowitz is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Phelan United States Center at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Associate Fellow at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs. His research focuses on international security, domestic politics and foreign policy, and party politics. His published work includes Geopolitics and Democracy: The Western Liberal Order from Foundation to Fracture, with Brian Burgoon, Politics and Strategy: Partisan Ambition and American Statecraft, and Defining the National Interest: Conflict and Change in American Foreign Policy, which won the annual J. David Greenstone Prize for best book on politics and history.