Is the Liberal International Order at Risk?: Causes and Remedies

Abstract

The threats to the liberal international order (LIO) are most likely to come from the rise and resurgence of the non-liberal, authoritarian powers, i.e. China and Russia, which have been moving toward more autocratic, personalistic, nationalistic, and corporative directions. But the LIO appears to have been significantly challenged by developments within liberal democratic states themselves. Divisions in liberal democracies and populist uprisings have weakened liberal internationalism that has long served as a basis of solidarity and stability among like-minded Western states. Nevertheless, the LIO will not be toppled so easily, as its fundamental values such as basic liberties, rule of law, cooperation, transparency, and progress continue to appeal to many societies and states across the globe. Even so, should these challenges against the LIO remain unaddressed, an increasingly illiberal international order may form into being, and such an order is likely to be less stable and more perilous for those involved. As such, this paper presents the argument that the most urgent issue to solve in order to ‘save’ the LIO is to address the challenges that confront liberal institutions and multilateral rules. In such context, this paper presents a question: “Why must the world ensure the continuation of the LIO through updating its established rules for multilateral cooperation?” There are at least four rationales for changing multilateral rules: i) to make them more encompassing, which allows for the accommodation of the transition from a hegemonic world order to a world of power distribution; ii) to establish effective foreign policies that can resists illiberal autocracies while assimilating rising powers into the LIO; iii) to make such powers more admissible to the current hegemonic state, i.e. the U.S., whose policies in the Trump era are becoming to a greater extent Amerocentric if not ‘America only,’ and increasingly inclined to act unilaterally; and iv) finally to invest in education, as a catalyst for integration, to nurture liberal democratic identity and citizenship.