Table Of ContentWhat Was the Liberal Order?
The World We May Be Losing
FOREIGNAFFAIRS.COM
March 2017
Introduction
Gideon Rose
October 1943
Datum Point
Hamilton Fish Armstrong
April 1942
The Economic Tasks of a Postwar World [Excerpt]
c
o Alvin H. Hansen and C. P. Kindleberger
v
e
r
p
h
January 1945
o
t Bretton Woods and International Cooperation [Excerpt]
o
:
Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
c
o
u
r
t
e April 1949
s
y The Illusion of World Government [Excerpt]
r
e Reinhold Niebuhr
u
t
e
r
s July 1951
Widening Boundaries of National Interest [Excerpt]
Nelson A. Rockefeller
May/June 1996
The Myth of a Post-Cold War Chaos [Excerpt]
G. John Ikenberry
September/October 1997
The Real New World Order
Anne-Marie Slaughter
May/June 1998
Globalization and Its Discontents: Navigating the Dangers of a
Tangled World
Richard N. Haass and Robert Litan
May/June 1999
NATO at Fifty: An Unhappy Successful Marriage: Security
Means Knowing What to Expect
Michael Howard
January/February 2014
The Unruled World
The Case for Good Enough Global Governance
Stewart Patrick
May/June 2014
The Return of Geopolitics
The Revenge of the Revisionist Powers
Walter Russell Mead
May/June 2014
The Illusion of Geopolitics
The Enduring Power of the Liberal Order
G. John Ikenberry
April 8, 2016
The Reform Reformation
International Organizations and the Challenge of Change
Tine Hanrieder
September 14, 2016
The End of the G-20
Has the Group Outlived Its Purpose?
Rebecca Liao
January/February 2017
Will the Liberal Order Survive?
The History of an Idea
Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
January/February 2017
Liberalism in Retreat
The Demise of a Dream
Robin Niblett
January/February 2017
The Once and Future Order
What Comes After Hegemony?
Michael J. Mazarr
November 15, 2016
Global Trumpism
Why Trump’s Victory Was 30 Years in the Making and Why It
Won’t Stop Here
Mark Blyth
March/April 2017
Trump and the World Order
The Return of Self-Help
Stewart M. Patrick
March 6, 2017
Introduction
Gideon Rose
REUTERS
The United Nations headquarters, New York.
Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve
got till it’s gone?
The central fact about international politics is anarchy, the
lack of a common sovereign authority able to settle disputes
and establish order. This has meant that throughout history,
states have been forced to fend for themselves, protecting
and advancing their national interests as they see fit,
embracing whatever policies and temporary partnerships
seem expedient.
Life in such a self-help system is precarious. As Thomas
Hobbes noted, “Without a common power to keep them all in
awe,” the players in the game have to worry constantly and
make sure the other players aren’t trying to screw them. In
such circumstances, he observed,
...there is no place for industry, because the fruit
thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the
earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that
may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no
instruments of moving and removing such things as
require much force; no knowledge of the face of the
earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society;
and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of
violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short.
Over the centuries, this coordination problem has contributed
to countless depressions, crises, and wars. Anarchy allows
bad leaders and bad regimes to wreak havoc. But it also
makes it hard for even not-so-bad regimes to cooperate with
one another reliably enough for everyone to stop being so
suspicious, relax a bit, and turn their attention to the business
of living productively.
In the 1940s, as they suffered through yet another round of
destruction and turmoil, policymakers in Washington and
other major Western capitals finally decided that enough was
enough. They recognized that the horrors of the first half of
the twentieth century had emerged because their countries
had hunkered down in the face of economic and geopolitical
crisis, passing the buck rather than fighting together against
their common enemies. So they swore not to repeat their
mistakes and designed a postwar order based on mutually
beneficial cooperation.
Acknowledging that anarchy would continue to persist, they
sought to overcome the coordination problems it posed
through sheer strength of will and reason. They chose to see
international politics as resembling not Hobbes’s state of
nature but John Locke’s—as a realm in which the players did
not simply have to suffer or submit to Leviathan but could
follow a third path, voluntarily binding themselves together
for common advancement. They linked their countries to one
another in international institutions, trade agreements, and
military alliances, betting that they would be stronger
together. And they were correct: backed by extraordinary and
enduring American power, the system they created has
flourished, underwriting seven decades of progress, great-
power peace, and economic growth.
Today this liberal international order is a bit dilapidated. The
structure still stands, but paint is peeling, walls are cracking,
and jerry-built additions jut out from odd angles. Even at its
best the arrangements never fully lived up to their ideals, and
benefits have not always been distributed equally or fairly.
Slowing growth, increasing inequality, declining social
mobility, excessive bureaucracy, self-dealing elites, poor
responses to transnational problems such as terrorism and
climate change—the litany of current problems is long and
familiar. And with its great ideological rivals vanquished, the
authority of the order must now be judged by actual
performance, not simply comparison with even more
dysfunctional competitors.
Major renovations are clearly called for, and they will
inevitably be slow, difficult, and costly. Still, most of the
challenges involved are manageable, and the system has
plenty of capacity and resources to deploy against the
problems. And there are a number of sensible solutions that
could be implemented successfully if the professionals across
the globe responsible for managing economic, political, and
military affairs were given more leeway to devise and
implement upgrades to the system.
The new administration in Washington takes a different view,
of course. President Donald Trump never mentions the order
and seems not to understand what it is or why it is a good
thing. He appears to see the world in zero-sum
terms—international politics as a Hobbesian war of all against
all in which there are only deals, not relationships, and in
which only relative gains matter. He combines this, moreover,
with an acute sense of grievance—a conviction that everybody
is winning at the United States’ expense. “Every country
takes advantage of us,” he says, and notes that he intends to
reverse the process.
No U.S. leader has talked this way in several generations, and
most responsible officials in most countries, including the
United States, are flummoxed—for they understand that if the
White House actually tried to turn its more extreme ideas into
policy, the entire system on which global security, stability,
and prosperity is based would collapse.
Particularly shocked are the other members of the team—U.S.
allies that have spent more than half a century believing
American promises of open-ended support and basing their
national policies on it. Does the president believe what he
tweets, they ask? Are they official U.S. policy or a harbinger
of it? The administration can send senior officials abroad to
soothe nerves, walk back the heresies, and reassure everyone
that the hegemon is not, in fact, planning to take its marbles
and go home. But now that the unthinkable has been said, it
will be hard to fully dispel the suspicion that Washington
cannot be trusted to hold up its end of the bargain.
It is still early days for the Trump administration, and nobody
knows what’s going to happen next. Foreign Affairs will be
covering this story in real time, both in print and online. But
to set the stage for the ensuing drama, we offer this
biography of the order’s life to date, so readers can
understand the stakes.
The collection begins with a great but long-forgotten essay
from early 1943 by then editor Hamilton Fish Armstrong,
capturing the period when the foreign policy establishment
realized what needed to be done to win both the war and the
peace that would follow. Next come excerpts from articles by
various luminaries showing how different concepts and
components of the order emerged—all emphasizing the
importance, as Nelson Rockefeller puts it, of “widening the
boundaries of national interest.” Then (because life is short)
the story jumps to the challenges and opportunities of the
post–Cold War era, by which point the liberal order had
spread around the globe and become the main game in town.
The volume concludes with some discussion of what has
happened since last November and what might follow.
Current global arrangements are not, in fact, “a mess,” and so
there will be substantial resistance from many quarters to any
attempts to overturn them. So far the new administration has
talked much but done little. And many of its senior officials
are impressive professionals who fully understand the order’s
value. So the title and subtitle of this collection are
exaggerated and alarmist. But they were chosen
deliberately—to remind readers of how special and precious is
the legacy today’s policymakers have inherited, and of the
damage that will be caused until Washington recovers its
bearings.
Gideon Rose is Editor of Foreign Affairs.
© Foreign Affairs
October 1943
Datum Point
Hamilton Fish Armstrong
REUTERS
OUR aim in this war is the complete material and
psychological defeat of our enemies. We have rejected the
idea of an armistice or negotiated peace and have pledged
ourselves not to accept either at any stage or in any guise.
When we have beaten Germany, Japan, Italy and their
satellites, together or seriatim, into unconditional surrender,
and while we are making sure that our accomplishment
cannot be evaded or undone, we shall not recognize any
limitations on our action except those imposed by our own
consciences or any commitments except those which have
been arrived at openly among the United Nations.
