End of the liberal international order?

Karl Marx in his book Das Capital (1864) wrote how capitalism carries the seeds of its own destruction and how communist societies will prevail. Following the powerful Russian Revolution in 1917 — which sent shockwaves to democratic nations in Europe and the Pacific — liberal democracy faced a major peer competitor. In 1939 again, when fascism spread like wildfire in Europe, it only added more fuel to the fire for the already struggling liberal democracy. At that moment in history, there were three powerful ideologies fighting for supremacy. After the intense World War II in which nuclear weapons were used on civilian populations for the first time in history, liberal democracy triumphed in 1945. This was the official start of the Liberal Western Order; with the United States in the forefront as its leader in the West.

In 1989 again, the US defeated the disintegrated Soviet Union and its communist ideology. It was this when the start of the International Liberal Order officially kicked off. The World Order had transformed from Liberal Western Order to Liberal International Order in a matter of a few decades. It became an “International Order” not in 1945 — but after the end of the Cold War — when we witnessed the start of the unipolar world. Liberal democracy then became the linchpin of political institutions. Former UK prime minister Tony Blair had famously quoted, “We are all liberal internationalists now.”

Today, the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed new fault-lines in the international political arena where shades of the Liberal International Order are nowhere to be seen. But even before the pandemic had unleashed its destructive potential, the existing world order was already in danger. There are four main reasons which suggest why the Liberal International Order was already under retreat.

First, the Liberal International Order had two main goals: to globalise economy, and to liberalise politics. The US had made its long-term foreign policy mission to transform dictatorships and socialist countries into democracies. Professor at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer said that the US even wanted to spread liberal democracy in China which was too ambitious even by their standards. Moreover, if we look at the Liberal International Order’s track record since the 1990s, it has been failing in quite some aspects with numerous interventions in the Middle East, failure in Afghanistan and also with illiberal values being rampant at home (in the US). The US, being the home of democracy, has been struggling to steer the wheel of the international liberal order at home and abroad.

Second, the elections of Trump and Brexit in 2016 had already put a big question mark on the existing liberal order. With a referendum in Europe and a presidential election in the US, liberal democracy as we’ve known it seems to have finally and dramatically, collapsed at its birthplace. Trump’s policies at home and abroad have been exactly opposite of what the international liberal order had been preaching in the previous decades. The UK’s decision to depart from the EU was too against the spirit of the existing World Order which focused on globalising the economy.

Third, the dawn of the industrial revolution came with exciting new opportunities for the world but at the same time gave life to a massive increase in greenhouse gases (GHGs) into our atmosphere, which today is causing ecological disruption. Accelerated climate change is a borderless challenge which must be countered in coordinated forums. However, the US — being the prime architect of the Liberal International Order — pulled out from the historic Paris Agreement of 2015 which vowed to bring all countries together in a bid to fight ecological disruption.

Fourth, sustaining a social contract between the government and its citizens is at the heart of what liberal democracy preaches. What liberalism has been preaching for many centuries is to empower the common man and reduce the social inequality gap. But today, social inequality breaks all numbers and the picture remains quite bleak. According to a recent Oxfam report on social inequality, 82% of the wealth generated in the world is owned by the 1%. It is quite clear that capitalism and liberal democracy has exacerbated social inequality around the globe rather than empowering the vulnerable and poor.

Today, there is no running away from the fact that the Covid-19 crisis has exposed many vulnerabilities of our political institutions. Globally, we are experiencing choking health systems, crippling economies, and little cooperation among states. During this pandemic, which has taken the lives and livelihoods of millions, the US had opted to cut the World Health Organization’s (WHO) funding. Again, this action was truly against the spirit of liberal democracy.

In this era of political and economic uncertainty, there are no overnight or quick fixes, and that is why there is a dire need of a new social contract now more than ever. The current system has widened the social inequality gap, ignored the climate crisis, and placed nations at loggerheads. At a national level, political disunity has hampered progress of many nations. The WHO director general had clearly stated that national unity is key in combatting the Covid-19 pandemic. The same concept applies for all the other hurdles we are facing.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 15^th, 2020.

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