This undeniably conservative book records a public debate between historians and commentators Niall Ferguson and Fareed Zakaria over the durability of the postwar system of American power, international institutions, global trade and diplomatic cooperation.

Ferguson takes the prosecutorial position: the order is neither especially liberal, genuinely international nor reliably orderly. He treats its stability as a temporary effect of American military dominance and argues that nationalism, economic discontent, geopolitical rivalry and institutional failure have already hollowed it out. Zakaria is less interested in defending the system’s innocence than its adaptability. For him, China’s participation in international institutions and the broad endurance of global cooperation suggest a damaged structure requiring renovation rather than ceremonial burial.

Because the book preserves the friction of live argument, it is more revealing than a smoothed-out survey. Both speakers operate within a fairly establishment understanding of global politics, but their disagreement exposes the central ambiguity of liberal internationalism: whether it describes a set of shared rules or simply gives moral vocabulary to an arrangement of power. Brief, pointed and particularly useful as a document of the geopolitical anxiety surrounding the rise of populism and renewed great-power conflict in the late 2010s. 

Oneworld paperback, 2017. Light edge and corner wear; clean and firmly bound.