The Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University present:

Liberal Success and Illiberal Failure in the Balance of Power: Engineering a Liberal Comeback

Event Details:

February 24, 2026

12:00 PM – 1:30 PM

1219 International Affairs Building

Lecture by Jack Snyder, Acting Director, Harriman Institute; Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations; Member, Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies

Moderated by Alexander Cooley, Claire Tow Professor of Political Science; Vice Provost for Research, Libraries and Academic Centers, Barnard College; Member, Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies

Description:

Please join the Harriman Institute and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies for a lecture by Acting Director Jack Snyder. Moderated by Alexander Cooley.

Liberal great powers have been on the winning side of six out of the last six contests for hegemony in the international system. Their superiority is grounded in four “invisible hand” mechanisms that overcome problems of uncertainty and opportunism in decision making: free markets, free politics, free speech, and the liberal form of the balance of power. Illiberal powers like Russia lack these mechanisms, leading them down self-destructive paths.

However, for liberalism’s core systems to work well, these decentralized liberal systems of coordinated equilibrium need to be set up and managed by the visible hand of rule-making and regulation. Today’s crisis of the liberal order is caused by the deregulation of all four of liberalism’s subsystems. Liberalism’s comeback depends on achieving a better balance between the dynamism of “creative destruction” and the equilibrium of regulated decentralized interactions.

Interested participants should contact Eileen Huhn (eph2125@columbia.edu) for a copy of the paper in advance of the lecture.