After a run of nearly 1,000 years, quipped the French philosopher and writer Voltaire, the fading Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. Today, some two and a half centuries later, the problem, to paraphrase Voltaire, is that the fading liberal world order is neither liberal nor worldwide nor orderly.
The United States, working closely with the United Kingdom and others, established the liberal world order in the wake of World War II. The goal was to ensure that the conditions that had led to two world wars in 30 years would never again arise.
To that end, the democratic countries set out to create an international system that was liberal in the sense that it was to be based on the rule of law and respect for countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity. Human rights were to be protected. All this was to be applied to the entire planet; at the same time, participation was open to all and voluntary. Institutions were built to promote peace (the United Nations), economic development (the World Bank) and trade and investment (the International Monetary Fund and what years later became the World Trade Organization).
All this and more was backed by the economic and military might of the US, a network of alliances across Europe and Asia, and nuclear weapons, which served to deter aggression. The liberal world order was thus based not just on ideals embraced by democracies, but also on hard power. None of this was lost on the decidedly illiberal Soviet Union, which had a fundamentally different notion of what constituted order in Europe and around the world.
The liberal world order appeared to be more robust than ever with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But today, a quarter-century later, its future is in doubt
The liberal world order appeared to be more robust than ever with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But today, a quarter-century later, its future is in doubt. Indeed, its three components – liberalism, universality, and the preservation of order itself – are being challenged as never before in its 70-year history.
Liberalism is in retreat. Democracies are feeling the effects of growing populism. Parties of the political extremes have gained ground in Europe. The vote in the United Kingdom in favor of leaving the EU attested to the loss of elite influence. Even the US is experiencing unprecedented attacks from its own president on the country’s media, courts, and law-enforcement institutions. Authoritarian systems, including China, Russia, and Turkey, have become even more top-heavy. Countries such as Hungary and Poland seem uninterested in the fate of their young democracies.
It is increasingly difficult to speak of the world as if it were whole. We are seeing the emergence of regional orders – or, most pronounced in the Middle East, disorders – each with its own characteristics. Attempts to build global frameworks are failing. Protectionism is on the rise; the latest round of global trade talks never came to fruition. There are few rules governing the use of cyberspace.
At the same time, great power rivalry is returning. Russia violated the most basic norm of international relations when it used armed force to change borders in Europe, and it violated US sovereignty through its efforts to influence the 2016 election. North Korea has flouted the strong international consensus against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The world has stood by as humanitarian nightmares play out in Syria and Yemen, doing little at the UN or elsewhere in response to the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons. Venezuela is a failing state. One in every hundred people in the world today is either a refugee or internally displaced.
There are several reasons why all this is happening, and why now. The rise of populism is in part a response to stagnating incomes and job loss, owing mostly to new technologies but widely attributed to imports and immigrants. Nationalism is a tool increasingly used by leaders to bolster their authority, especially amid difficult economic and political conditions. And global institutions have failed to adapt to new power balances and technologies.
But the weakening of the liberal world order is due, more than anything else, to the changed attitude of the US. Under President Donald Trump, the US decided against joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. It has threatened to leave the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. It has unilaterally introduced steel and aluminum tariffs, relying on a justification (national security) that others could use, in the process placing the world at risk of a trade war. It has raised questions about its commitment to Nato and other alliance relationships. And it rarely speaks about democracy or human rights. “America First” and the liberal world order seem incompatible.
My point is not to single out the US for criticism. Today’s other major powers, including the EU, Russia, China, India, and Japan, could be criticized for what they are doing, not doing, or both. But the US is not just another country. It was the principal architect of the liberal world order and its principal backer. It was also a principal beneficiary.
America’s decision to abandon the role it has played for more than seven decades thus marks a turning point. The liberal world order cannot survive on its own, because others lack either the interest or the means to sustain it. The result will be a world that is less free, less prosperous, and less peaceful, for Americans and others alike.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2018.
www.project-syndicate.org
What exactly is an authoritan state?
China is a meritocracy and its leaders are elected without massive spending on media.
The fake news and misinformation by the media in US is definitely not democratic nor representative of a true liberal order.
A world order "based on rule of law and respect for countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity"… Well, was this ever respected whether we’re talking about the Vietnam war, the partitioning of Yugoslavia, the bombing of Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria etc? And to resurrect the canard of chemical attack by the Syrian government merely shows the writer’s leaning, ie more "humanitarian intervention" aka regime change.The term "liberal world order" is just a catchphrase for full spectrum domination — the project to make every country either an ally or vassal of the United States of America. Not many outside the west will not mourn its passing.
Sergei,
Bravo! Well articulated! l like this statement – "Russia is not an ideologically motivated state. What ideology it does have is based on Russian culture and civilisation"
Vincent Cheok
Liberalism is a double edged sword. The philosophy holds out that the outliers also be accepted this assuring it’s failure. There are many examples. The failure of the liberal order to deal with Islamic extremism. Liberal have failed the cause of liberalism by not confronting extremism head on. Another good example is how China abuses the current order , exploting the global commons to create a protective mercantile economy at the expense of others.
So, I disagree with the author. This balance is needed. Liberals should have spoken up before it was too late. Now it is as it’s evident that they are very selective about the topics they want to address.
This is rich coming from a region with possibly the highest concentration of totalitarian regimes.
What Mr. Hass is really saying is that he is terrified of the new US populism resulting in the turning off of the foreign aid spigot which amounts to almost 49 billion taxpayer dollars and which often goes to prop up terrorist regimes like the Palestinian government which then uses that money to undermine American politics.
Our elected representatives are supposed to protect the interest of their constituents – not the establishment of a world government run by 0.0001% of the world’s population.
Do ‘authoritarian’ governments execute 2,000 people without trial?
Do ‘authoritarian’ governments imprison another 2,000,000 a year, also without trial?
Do ‘authoritarian’ governments keep secret lists of 50,000 people whom it won’t allow to fly and won’t explain why?
Do ‘authoritarian’ governments have secret courts whose records and rulings are unavailable to the public, where only the government’s lawyers appear without possibility of challenge to the government’s submissions and requires only probable cause of a relationship to a foreign power? [FISA]
Do ‘authoritarian’ governments have a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy? (74% of Americans say yes…20% say no).
Do ‘authoritarian’ governments eavesdrop on all their citizens communications 24 x365? 80% say yes 53% say this activity is widespread (“Public Troubled by ‘Deep State”, Monmouth.edu)
Do ‘authoritarian’ governments hold prisoners in offshore jails for 15 years without trial by claiming that their Constitution does not hold there?
Do ‘authoritarian’ governments permit votes but never change their policies?
Do ‘authoritarian’ governments have debtors prisons?
Do ‘authoritarian’ governments have the trust of only 11% of their citizens?
If so, I’m against authoritarian governments, and America’s Government perpetrates all these behaviors, not Xi’s.
Obama, you idiot: it was his presidency that began the American retreat.
The usual self-serving swill from the Best and the Brightest of the Predator Class out of the CFR.
The liberal order aka the New British Empire, was born 70 years ago by firebombing and nuking undefended civilian targets. It proceeded to launch serial genocidal rampages in the Koreas, SE Asia, Latin America until finally burning down a large portion of the Middle East.
The fact that there has not been a catastrophic nuclear war is pure dumb luck. The Deep State came within seconds of engineering a nuclear cataclysm off the waters of Cuba in 1962. When JFK started dismantling the CIA Deep State and ending the Cold War with the USSR, Dulles dispatched a CIA hit-squad to gun down the President. (RFK and Nixon immediately understood the assassination was a CIA-led wet-works operation since they chaired the assassination committees themselves in the past).
The liberal order is dying because it is led by criminally depraved Predators who have pauperized the labor force and created political strife, though the populists don’t pose much threat to the liberal-order Predators.
However by shipping the productive Western economies overseas to Asia, the US in particular cannot finance and physically support a military empire or the required R&D to stay competitive on the commercial and military front.
So the US Imperialists are being eclipsed by the Sino-Russo Alliance and wants us to believe this is a great tragedy. Meanwhile the same crew of Liberal -neoCon Deep Staters presses on with wars and tensions that are slipping out of control.
The Us Deep Stte rns Islamic terrorism as a shock force against uncooperative adversaries in places like Russia, Syria and Libya
QUESTION,QUESTIONS,QUESTIONS———–how does this so called expert live with himself———the dude is a total ZERO——–and anything he says is FICTION!!
The operative word is "voluntary". It was never voluntary. The west used everything short of outright invasion to promote their western liberal democratic ideas. They bribed in the form of grants and aid. They financed destabilizations and lately regime changes. Yemen, Syria, Lybia, Iraq, Afghanistan and even Venezuela are just the prime examples of these interference. They should have just allowed Holywood to do its thing to entice new converts. It could have worked.
So, before Trump, the liberal world order under US leadership was the best for the world. What A LAUGH. Ask the Vietnamese when their country was destroyed by bombs, poisoned by agent orange and millions killed. Ask the Laotians and Cambodians. All these destruction and killings were carried out on the false premise that Vietnam and China were " joined at the hips ", to spread communism to SE Asia, to quote Kissinger, and to defend the liberal world order. The Korean Peninsula was nuclearised by the US breaking the Armistice Agreement.
The US destroyed democracy in Iran in 1953, US destroyed democracy in Chile, Yugoslavia was bombed and broken up, what was left of the Soviet Union was ripped away by capitalism, Iraq, Libya and now, Syria were destroyed, Palestine was destroyed, coups, regime changes, unrests were created in Latin America and Africa. Sudan was broken up in two by Clinton. Afghanistan was destroyed by US machinations with the mujahideen under President Carter on the advise of Soviet-hater, Brzezinski. After this, the western " democracies" were busy training and supplying jihadists to stir up rebellions in iran and Syria. In the 1950’s, a South Korean dictator installed by the US killed thousands of opponents.
The west were busy selling arms to all and sundry especially to dictators deemed to follow the west. Mandela’s party, originally a pure and democratic party was corrupted by European arms manufacturers/sellers. See the documentary: " The Shadow Government." The liberal French governement was corrupting with the Malaysian government when it sold Skorpene submarines to that country.
If this is what the " liberal world order " brings to the world, then the people of the world would say " no, thanks."
Ah, one more thing. The US, the leader of the " liberal world order " forcefully and crookedly misleading the islanders, took over the Marshall Islands to conduct numerous atomic and hydrogen bomb tests equivalent to an atomic explosion on the scale of Hiroshima, everyday, over twelve years. Refer to " The Coming War on China " by J Pilger.
The Marshall Islanders were literally poisoned with radiation and used as guniea pigs. They were not regarded as humans. The US government knew full well the dangers of nuclear radiation and chose the Marshall Island instead of their own deserts to test their bombs.
The US governement, being an irresponsible entity, cusorily buried their atomic wastes under a concrete dome which is leaking radiation into the S Pacific and with global warming causing the rise of sea levels which will accelerate the process and poison the entire S Pacific.
What was once a pristine and pure S Pacific has been poisoned by the US government. This is what the " liberal world order " did and is doing to the S Pacific.
Only the zionist world order is fading. Liberalism and multiculturalism was not chosen but forced on the western nations.
Someone is shaking the Global Goverance and you don’t like it so too bad and get used to the reality that a few don’t run the show. Tough Sh++.
And . . . when will the Black Hills be returned to the Lakota ?
Everything has a lifespan: constitutions, political systems, ways of life. The only on constant on earth is change.
Any escalation of war with Russia and China by the US will be a war over the relevance of the Dollar in a couple of areas. The role of the dollar as the major currency of exhange and the Petrodollar. Back in 1944 under the Bretton Woods Agreement the US dollar became the currency of exchange based on the fact that the US had the largest gold holdings at that time.
In the 70’s after Nixon removed the dollar from the Gold standard it was moved to the "crude oil" standard. But due to so many sanctions against so many nations the role of the dollar is collapsing as these sanctioned nations drop the dollar for other currencies. The dollar remains America’s strongest weapon and weakest point. No matter how advanced America’s military is if the world moves away from the Dollar the US has basically lost.
World government. What could possibly go wrong? A bunch of unelected and unaccountable elite one percenters ruling the entire world. Great idea????????????
Unbelieveably inhumane and callous – The Bikini experiments and also the release of radioactive dusts over ghettoes in USA to study the effects on civilian populations
Liberal world order is another name for Imperialist world order. The world knows this.
How exactly did Xi "merit" the presidency-for-life? Also "spending on media campaigns" is called free speech -something the power elite in your country ensures hoi polloi do not possess. And an "authoritarian state" is one which claims equality, but means the leadership live by one set of rules and the people by another. You know, like in China.
Michael Walsh
You mean your congressmen are on food stamps? Sure you are only entitled to free speech if you have a few billion U$ to demonise your opponents and create falses images of yourself.
Removal of the 2 term limit does not mean that Mr Xi is president for life.
China is a socialist meritocracy and not a fake democracy like USA
They destroyed the National-Socialist german party, probably the best Party ever for the rights of the people, Germany and the rest of Europe to reconstruct by americans, invented an holocaust and since then, Democracy, a wise mafia, has taken power everywhere in order to legalize crime…
The US has been living free on the rest of the world for 70 years, so now they are moaning because their power is declinging. Pay back is a bitch