A Postliberal Global Order? Challenge(r)s to the Liberal West

Abstract

What unites and divides critics of liberal international politics, from the populist radical right to non-Western powers? Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic upsurge in discussions within academia, media, and policy circles concerning a crisis afflicting a “post-1945 Liberal International Order”, in Western political parlance now usually dubbed “the Rules-Based Order”. Within liberal discourse the threat to this international order is presented as chiefly illiberal, non-Western, and thus external. This report questions some of the premises of those accounts, arguing that what actors such as the European populist radical right and non-Western powers like China are united in challenging is predominantly the expansive liberal internationalism of the post-Cold War era, not the post-1945 architecture as such. This critique also runs directly through the liberal West. At the same time, the liberal West has lost a significant degree of geopolitical and moral clout: the dynamic is also a conflict over who has the right – and credibility – to speak on behalf of global values and the “international community”. In parallel, we see increased calls for greater non-Western representation in global politics – and sustained challenges to the international legal order from both Western and non-Western states. Russia and China have become prominent and uniting voices in challenging Western hegemony, and liberal democracy as an ideal. What does all this entail for the future of global politics? The report first unpacks what intensified ideological contestation in global politics entails and discusses the problem with seeing these specific dynamics through the lens of a West/non-West, democracies/autocracies binary, or through the concepts of a post-1945 Liberal International or Rules-Based Order. What are the main themes uniting an otherwise diverse crowd in a mutual critique of Western international liberalism? What is the liberal West’s own role in precipitating this crisis? In its second part, the report zooms in on the international visions of the European and US populist radical right and “New Right”, discussing what Donald Trump’s second presidency means for the mainstreaming of the Far Right, and the pushback against the dominant international liberalism of the 1990s. Who are the central actors, and what do they want for global politics? The report concludes with a discussion of the implications of this broad backlash for the liberal West.

A Postliberal Global Order? Challenge(r)s to the Liberal West