Joe Biden will enter office as America’s 46th president next month in a spirit of confidence for the future—but also with an almost confessional sense of humility about the past. Because Biden and his top advisors seem acutely aware of just how badly they botched things the last time they were in power.
One of their chief manifestos for change, as some of the incoming Bidenites have already privately conceded, will be G. John Ikenberry’s new book, A World Safe for Democracy. It is in some ways the crowning achievement of the Princeton University’s scholar’s decadeslong work explaining and defending the liberal international order.
