The Myth of the Liberal International Order

In the late 1700s, the philosopher Immanuel Kant put forth a vision of universal peace in which nations would subordinate themselves to principles and entities that would make this possible. Many shared this vision, with good reason. It was believed to have “norms, rules and institutions” that were respected, creating a system that was stable, predictable and able to manage disagreements without creating conflict. Many believe we had achieved that order, which they called the liberal international order, and that it’s now dying. They mourn the loss.

The problem is that the liberal order never really existed. And their nostalgia is dangerous if what they pine for is a fiction.

Not that there weren’t attempts to create such an order. There were three tries in the past century. The first came after the end of World War I. Europe was horrified by what it had done to itself. The United States introduced the idea of a League of Nations that would manage international friction to prevent future self-destructive efforts. Except no nation was prepared to surrender its interests to an international organization, and in any case the organization had no real power to impose its will. The United States turned out to be the most honest among all nations in this regard, declining to join it in spite of the fact that its architect was the American president, Woodrow Wilson. Other nations joined; joining was easy, since none of them had any intention of obeying the league’s edicts anyway. What made the entire idea absurd was that most of the members were imperial powers with colonies, and their interest was in creating “norms, rules and institutions” for ruling and exploiting those colonies. The League of Nations was primarily but not exclusively a European club, and it lasted only as long as it took European powers who opposed the post-war peace to recover and reassert themselves.

The second attempt came after World War II with a more ambitious entity, the United Nations. The League of Nations made clear that no country would really abide by an international organization, so the U.N. created the Security Council, comprising the United States, the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom and China, which could block anything its members didn’t like. And since there was always at least one country at the table that didn’t like something, the U.N. could never really achieve its purpose: stopping wars. (Only once did it do so, in Korea, when the Soviets boycotted the Security Council.)

The United Nations created some tools that major powers might use, things like the World Health Organization and UNICEF and so forth. But the international order, to the extent that it existed, was formed primarily from alliances created in preparation for war against the other. One half of the structure was the Warsaw Pact, an international institution with rules and norms that were not especially liberal.

The other half comprised the allies of the United States, bundled together in a variety of international institutions. There was, of course, NATO. There was the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. There was U.S.- and U.K.-supported economic integration, starting with the European Coal and Steel Community, which in turn ultimately became the European Union. They were all liberal institutions with rules and norms.[..]

All the while, the prospect of nuclear holocaust hung over the world like a cloud of smoke. The Cold War didn’t bring about the end of the world, of course, but its failure to do so wasn’t the result of the strength of our international institutions. It was because the United States and the Soviet Union tried very hard not to engage in nuclear war. As always, with the end of the Cold War, the victors believed two things. The first thing was that they would be able to reshape the world as they chose. The second was that all reasonable people would want to be just like them. [..] The problem is in the vast ambition of the victors, who believe they can defy history with the administration of an unruly world. This is not liberalism. This was the hubris of the victors.

What is known as "globalization" is actually Pax Americana rebranded. Petrodollar system meant that countries are forced to sell their oil in dollars or else. China was courted, in fact pushed to become what it is today, to contain Russia, starting with Nixon years, also beneficial for US business was the ability to have access to slave labor. Noone cares about any rules, the freedom of trade, etc, Everyone does what they think will work for them.