Owen argues persuasively that the fate of American democracy depends on the health and well-being of other democracies. One of the oldest insights of the liberal internationalist tradition, championed by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and many others, is that democracies are most likely to survive and thrive in a world of open trade and multilateral rules in which liberal democracies call the shots. In exploring this thesis, Owen compares democracies to what biologists call “creators,” or keystone species in a biological ecosystem that actively seek to shape the environment to suit their purposes and needs. Democracies do the same, shaping the world around them to reinforce liberal values and institutions at home. Owen’s best example of this kind of “ecosystem engineering” comes from the early postwar period, when U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and his successors pursued New Deal-style reforms and liberal internationalism at home, ushering in a golden era in which democracies flourished and reinforced each other. Today, this ecosystem has collapsed for two reasons: first, due to the neoliberal turn in the United States and Europe since the 1970s and the resulting erosion of economic security; and second, due to the rise of China and Russia, two authoritarian states seeking to build their own overlapping ecosystems.
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