[MUSIC] The role and influence of liberalism in international relations is unseparably linked with the United States of America. With the very existence of the United States and the four policies that the US has been pursuing especially in the end of course of 21st century. The United States is by nature a liberal creature. The US has been established by the founding fathers as the shining city of the hill, as a liberal project. American identity is very different from the identities of the overwhelming majority of states in the world. It is not an ethnic identity, not a religious identity. It's not even language, which constitutes the America, the identity of the United States. It is ideology, liberal ideology. The ideas of liberty, freedom, and democracy constitutes the foundation of the American ideology. And you are an American if you share these beliefs, if you believe in the values of democracy, human rights and liberties. And thus from the very beginning, the United States has been established as an ideological project as a new society, drastically different, or even opposite to the rest of the world. Opposite to the sinful Europe, or to the bad and sinful international relations of the moment, of late 18th, early 19th century. And this ideological identity determines strong Messianic tradition of the United States. American foreign policy is undistinguishable from ideology. It cannot conduct a normal, realist foreign policy by default. And ideologization has been a prominent feature, Messianism has been the prominent feature of the US foreign policy from the very beginning. Instruments of Messianism and ideologization were different, but this ideologization as such has been the constant of American foreign policy. In late 18th and 19th century, the way for the United States to promote its idealogization was isolationism. The United States wanted to protect American system, American continent from the negative, sinful, dictatorial influence of Europe. But then capping the revolution, then Woodrow Wilson, the America president in 1913 to 1924 fundamentally changed American foreign policy from isolationism to internationalism. Internationalism, which became associated with the name of Woodrow Wilson, and it's called Wilsonianism, as the American foreign policy tradition means that the United States came, or turned, from protecting American continent to transforming the world. From protecting democracy and liberty on the American continent to spreading democracy and liberty to the rest of the world. And the major manifestation of this change was the famous 14 Points that Woodrow Wilson presented at the Versailles Peace Conference after the end of the World War I. And these 14 Points basically contained a plan of a fundamental reform of the international system. What were these 14 points about? Free trade, disarmament, banning elimination of secret diplomats and secret deals. The principle of self-determination of nations, basically which led to the destruction of colonial system later on, and of course, the establishment of the League of Nations, the first ever collective security organization. It was a C change in comparison to the international reality that was existing in early 20th century. So we have to keep in mind that this Wilsonian or internationalist tradition of the United States, it is not just its active participation in international systems. But it is active participation with the purpose of transformation of this international system. So the United States wants to transform the world in accordance with American values, in accordance with American interests and act as a leader. So it is the manifestation of the American mission of being the shining city of the hill. It is kind of spreading the light of this shining city of the hill throughout the world. Thus, the United States started to pursue this policy on systemic basis after the II World War. Woodrow Wilson failed, basically, to establish sustainable internationalism, as to keep internationalism sustainable foreign policy tradition because the US Senate rejected the League of Nations statute. And for 20 years, the United States moved back to isolationist foreign policy. But, after the II World War, the United States adopted internationalism and is conducting internationali9st policy up to now. So Woodrow Wilson can be considered, not just the founding father of this classic idealist liberalism, but of contempoary libralism as well. Because he's still the founding father of the contemporary policies of the United States up to now. And the role that the United States have been playing in the world after the II World War is indeed, essentially liberal. The purpose of this policy, the strategy is creating a US led liberal international order. And indeed, the United States played a pivotal role in establishing the UN system, the United Nations organization, the major manifestation of the influence of liberalism in the world. The US created a system of alliances such as NATO, or bilateral alliances in Asia and in the Middle East, which were not dictatorial structures, which were really based on rules and mutual obligations. The United States established Bretton Woods system, a system of international institutions, IMF and World Bank, that were governing world economic system. And of course, the United States established the global free trade system. First, it was the free trade system for the world which was not controlled by communism by the Soviet Union. But then it was spread to the rest of the world. So even in the Cold War time, the United States was conducting a liberal foreign policy towards the regions and the countries that were under American leadership, that were not controlled by the US side. And after the end of the Cold War and in conditions of the globalization, this liberal push, this liberal component of the American foreign policy of American strategy intensified drastically. Indeed after the end of the Cold War there was an impression that many basic liberal propositions are true, that the world is changing in a liberal way. That American historic mission of transforming the whole world in accordance with American values is coming true, is becoming a reality. Thus, the United States turned to the policy of enlarging liberal international order, which was initially existing since 1940s within the American subsystem, the US-centric subsystem of the international system. So the United States after the end of the Cold War, started to enlarge this system to the rest of the world, making it universal, making liberal international order universal and global. And given this indispensable role of the United States in creating liberal international order, it is not not a coincidence that the majority of prominent and new liberals are American scholars and statesmen. Scholars Such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Keohane, and Joseph Nye, Francis Fukuyama, John Ikenberry, Michael McFaul, and many others. And statesmen including US President Harry Truman in 1940s, Zbigniew Brzenzinski who is both a statesman and a scholar. He was National Security Advisor under the President Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton, the first post-Cold War president of the United States. Anthony Lake, National Security Advisor under Bill Clinton. Strobe Talbott, one of the most remarkable American diplomats in ninth and ninth is and later the president of the Brookings Institution. Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State of the United States. Hillary Clinton, another former Secretary of State and candidate for the president in the United States. Prominent diplomat Ivo Daalder, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, and many, many others. [SOUND]
