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

In After Victory, John Ikenberry examines the attempts of states to create lasting peace through international order after major wars. Arguing that major wars create a new distribution of power, Ikenberry contends that winning states have increasingly had incentives to exercise strategic restraint in post-war agreements to lock-in long-term influence in the international order through institutions that preserve and maintain existing power structures. Ikenberry's empirical analysis of the institutions and peace processes developed after wars in 1815, 1919, and 1945 shows that institutionalism helps explain the increased stability in post-war environments and the success that states have had in "reducing the implications of winning" in politics by reducing fears of abandonment and domination.
While the three post-war cases presented do not all perfectly fit the constitutional order that best implements strategic constraints on power, Ikenberry effectively shows that winning states have sought to develop a more durable world order by creating binding agreements, that by placing limits on state power can create peace. Ikenberry's analysis shows that domestic politics play an important role in allowing the use of strategic restraint to create lasting peace. It also shows the importance of a winning state's hegemony in its ability to compel losing states to enter into sustainable peace agreements.
To analyze the three empirical cases, Ikenberry first discusses three different explanatory models of order: balance of power, hegemonic, and constitutional. While Ikenberry predominately uses the constitutional framework, he admits that any of the types of order can exhibit characteristics of another. Ikenberry contends that states will seek to order based on constitutional principles to best conserve power in the long term.
Using these frameworks, Ikenberry begins his empirical analysis by looking at the political order that emerged from the Vienna settlement in 1815. Moving away from solely balance of power considerations, Britain, the newly hegemonic state, sought to lock in a favorable post-war order and lasting peace by creating legitimacy among all involved states through a pactum de contrehendo. Britain's economic power enabled it to finance the war efforts of other allies and lock them into the creation of the Treaty of Chaumont. British subsidies were contingent on allied support of British aims and gave Britain leverage to design the post-war order. Although the Vienna settlement offers evidence of some institutional characteristics, Britain does not appear to have significantly constrained itself in order to lock in the post-war agreement.
In 1919, the United States similarly sought to establish a favorable post-war order by locking states into institutional commitments. Because the United States did not yet possess hegemonic power, its ability to force Britain and France to abandon territorial claims in favor of institutionalism, was limited. President Wilson's attempt to use the League of Nations to foster collective security among democracies represented a significant constitutional order; however, Wilson's calculus that a wave of democracy would spread and allow the League to expand, was premature. Ultimately, a lack of domestic support and insufficient global power doomed Wilson's vision of a democratic league that could prevent another great war.
Ikenberry finally examines the peace after 1945. The lessons of the 1919 peace process coupled with greater American power and domestic acknowledgement that the US needed to prevent European states from going to war with one another led to the creation of significant institutions that have facilitated peace in Europe for over 65 years. The use of NATO to assuage other countries' fears of German rearmament by binding American security forces to Europe allowed the United States to create other institutions that promoted its strategic goals through the Marshall Plan and the Bretton Woods institutions. Ikenberry also argues that the stability that these institutions established allowed for the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union because the Russians were convinced of the US's benign intentions of the expansion of NATO after 1990.
Ikenberry's empirical analysis of the three peace agreements in post-war periods shows the importance domestic political actors play in facilitating the creation of institutions. The advantage that democratic states have in creating credible commitments due to their democratic processes also exposes them to the vicissitudes of domestic polities. Democratic governance yields a longer, more precarious process in providing guarantees to other states as in the inability of Britain to provide a general security guarantee in the peace of 1815, the inability of Wilson to convince domestic politicians to sacrifice flexibility and make binding security commitments to Europe in 1919, and the six competing visions for peace by different domestic groups in the US in 1945. Thus, while democracies appear more willing to constrain their power, domestic realities restrain states' ability to enter into commitments that quickly and effectively institute peace agreements.
The book also suggests the importance of a hegemonic state in creating lasting peace. Because the countries of continental Europe depended on Britain's economic power to finance themselves, they negotiated more readily for a lasting alliance. The lack of US hegemony and France and Britain's desire to maintain power appear to have limited the ability of the US to dictate reasonable concessions in the Treaty of Versailles. Finally, US hegemony ameliorated European fears of potential German dominance through security guarantees and granted Europe the ability to rebuild through financial commitments in the Marshall Plan. Both domestic politics and a lack of financial strength appear to limit the US's ability to dictate peace agreements in today's wars either because of a lack of will or financial ability to assure Afghans and Iraqis fear of abandonment.
Overall, Ikenberry's use of three main comprehensive peace agreements to show that states' exercise of strategic restraint can lead to lasting peace and sticky institutions is persuasive. While the scope of the book is limited to major wars between great powers, it provides the implications for other wars that peace is limited by the extent that states are able to use the power derived from victory to compel losers to enter into agreements, and get domestic actors to coalesce around strategic restraints.