Great Power, Great Responsibility: How the Liberal International Order Shapes US Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 2025)
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, 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.
In the Shadow of International Law: Secrecy and Regime Change in the Postwar World (Oxford University Press, 2020)
In the Shadow of International Law explores one of the most controversial forms of secret statecraft: the use of covert action to change or overthrow foreign regimes. Drawing from a broad range of cases of US-backed regime change during the Cold War, Michael Poznansky develops a legal theory of covert intervention to explain why leaders sometimes turn to secret methods when toppling foreign governments, rather than using overt tools to accomplish the same objective. He highlights the surprising role that international law plays in these decisions and finds that once the nonintervention principle—which proscribes violations of sovereignty—was codified in the mid-twentieth century, states became more reluctant to pursue overt regime change unless they had proper cause. Without a legal exemption to nonintervention such as a credible self-defense claim or authorization from an international body, states were more likely to attempt regime change covertly to conceal brazen violations of international law.
Shining a light on the secret underpinnings of the liberal international order, the conduct of foreign-imposed regime change, and the impact of international law on state behavior, Poznansky speaks to the consequences of America abandoning its role as the steward of the postwar order, as well as the promise and peril of promoting new rules and norms in cyberspace.
"In this volume, Michael Poznansky has taken on the difficult research subject of covert action-secret intervention by one state into the affairs of another… This book is well-researched and essential reading for anyone interested in the hidden side of American foreign policy." -Loch K. Johnson
"Deeply researched and engagingly written, In the Shadow of International Law advances our understandings of the politics of international law as well as those of secret and not-so-secret interventions." -Tanisha Fazal
“This fascinating book argues that the growth of international law changed how powerful states decided to intervene in weaker ones.... Poznansky presents archival evidence of officials worrying―to various degrees―about violating international law, pushing decision-makers to pursue covert rather than overt military action." -G. John Ikenberry
"In Great Power, Great Responsibility, Michael Poznansky tackles a question of great current interest—does the liberal international order (LIO) constrain US policy? In admirably clear prose, he argues that compliance depends upon both the costs of violations and the intensity of order competition. Poznansky explores the power of his theory across a wide swathe of US history—the Cold War, the transition to US unipolarity, and unipolarity. Everyone engaged with the debate over the LIO will want to read this book." -Charles Glaser, Senior Fellow in the Security Studies Program, MIT; Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University
"Into the debate over whether the United States complies with its own rules within the liberal international order, Michael Poznansky offers a sensible middle ground, arguing that Washington is a contingent complier. Somewhat counterintuitively, he demonstrates that the United States is more likely to comply when there is a great power competitor to whom it fears losing smaller friends and allies. This is an important contribution to our understanding of international order and its effects." -David A. Lake, Distinguished Professor of the Graduate Division, University of California, San Diego
"Covert action is seductive to leaders who want to eliminate their enemies without going to war. Covert action is also paradoxical, as Michael Poznansky argues in this deeply researched and provocative new book. Leaders turn to covert regime change only when they cannot justify military intervention under international law. Strangely, their respect for the law causes them to break it." -Joshua Rovner
"Michael Poznansky wrote an important book on the role of international law in decision-making about the use of force. It is a book all students who are interested in international security and foreign policy should read. Even if some of us are skeptical about the restraining effect of international law on leaders' decisions, In the Shadow of International Law offers a compelling theory and robust evidence to appreciate its importance." -Keren Yarhi-Milo