User:Jaydavidmartin/Liberal international order

History

Background

In the 19th century, European powers ruled over vast empires and pursued imperialistic foreign policies. Economic nationalism was the standard—the United States maintained high tariffs to favor domestic industries, European empires practiced versions of imperial isolationism, prioritizing trade within their expansive empires, and . The first half of the 20th century saw borders harden in the lead up to World War II, as the British Empire essentially shut off its empire to trade outside of the Commonwealth and the Axis Powers erected discriminatory trade barriers.

Origins

The antecedents to the liberal international order come from the World War I, when United States President Woodrow Wilson outlined his Fourteen Points for peace. These included equal trade conditions between nations, greater free trade, arms reduction, national sovereignty for former colonies of Europe’s weakening empires, and, most importantly, the creation of the League of Nations, an international decision-making body that served as the precursor to the United Nations. However, with competing interests among the victorious Allies, Wilson compromised on many of his fourteen points when hammering out the Treaty of Versailles in order to ensure the creation of the League; yet, facing a polity that had long preferred a mixture of non-interventionism and unilateralism and opposition in the Senate to the collective security requirement in the League Covenant (which they worried would obligate the United States to intervene in conflicts it had no stake in and contravene both national sovereignty over war decisions and Congress's constitutional monopoly on declaring war), as well as several acts of uncompromising stubbornness on the part of Wilson himself, he was unable to convince the Senate to join the League of Nations, depriving it not just of a major power but the very power whose president had championed it. With a weakened League and an America that would become increasingly isolationist during the Interwar years, Europe ultimately returned to great power rivalry and imperialist foreign policies. Fatefully, the incipient Wilsonian international order collapsed when the world descended once again into world war.

But it was during World War II that the liberal international order, inspired by Wilson's liberal internationalism, was constructed. Plied by an emergent elite (particularly the influential Council on Foreign Relations) favoring greater American international influence, and led by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the United States used it growing economic heft to commit foreign countries to a multilateral order at the conclusion of the war. Perhaps most important during this period was the signing of the Atlantic Charter by the United States and United Kingdom in 1941. The Charter "became a statement of allied war aims" and, importantly, laid the groundwork for a Wilsonian-style multilateral postwar order based on freer trade, self-determination, disarmament (though this quickly gave way to a Cold War arms race), and collective security. As the war waged, America advocated for this new, liberal world order. As Stewart Patrick, a political scientist at the Council on Foreign Relations, put it:

The goal of this effort was to create an open world—a rules-based global order in which peace-loving countries could cooperate to advance their common purposes within international institutions. American officials believed that such a world would rest on three pillars: collective security, economic multilateralism, and political self-determination. Balance of powers, sphere of influences, and secret alliances would give way to a universal organization for peace and security, grounded in international law and supervised by a concert of great powers. Disastrous policies of economic nationalism, bilateralism, and imperial preference would yield to a liberal, non-discriminatory system of trade and payments in which all countries would engage in commerce on equal terms. A world of empires would evolve into one of independent, self-governing nations, as the European powers would emancipate their colonies as soon as possible.

The most important institution to arise from this effort was the United Nations. At the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington D.C., meeting from 21 September 1944 to 7 October 1944, ...

The United Nations would also be the base of international security.

In the economic realm, wartime negotiations produced a consensus for a postwar international economic order, dubbed "embedded liberalism", that would mix free trade among nations (underpinned by multilateral agreements and institutions) with moderate state intervention in the domestic economy—"Smith abroad and Keynes at home", in a sense. As the United States was the preeminent economic power by 1945, accounting for half of the world's gross domestic product and its largest share of exports, it became the leading force in constructing the postwar economic order known as the Bretton Woods System (though not without significant bargaining with other nations, particularly the United Kingdom). As Stewart Patrick has outlined, the United States "sought a global economic order that would be open—discouraging the formation of closed blocs; non-discriminatory—according participants equal access to markets, raw materials, and fields of investment; liberal—minimizing state barrier to trade and payments; private—dominated by private rather than state-owned enterprise; cooperative—emphasizing collaboration rather than economic nationalism; rule-bound—delineating normative prescriptions for conduct; and governed—by international institutions embodying and enforcing shared rules". These beliefs were underpinned by an ideology that viewed protectionism and economic nationalism as harmful to economic wellbeing and conducive to antagonism between nations while economic cooperation and open markets promote peace and increase standards of living.

The US Department of State (and particularly Secretary of State Cordell Hull) took the lead in constructing of a series of multilateral trade agreements, principally the International Trade Organization (ITO) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), while the US Treasury led the creation of a number of international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, more commonly known as the World Bank). GATT enshrined liberal economic principles of trade liberalization, nondiscrimination in trade under the most-favored-nation principle, preferential access in developed markets to products from the Global South, and "national treatment" of foreign enterprises (that is, treating foreign firms the same as domestic firms). The Treasury, on the other hand, saw a greater role for international intervention, preferring to carve out a place for a system of international institutions to act as a guiding hand in international trade rather than leave global commerce solely in the hands of the market. Guided by this view, and nudged by British desires for greater domestic control over national economies, a plan emerged for a fund that would regulate currencies (which had been highly volatile during World War II) and a bank that would promote reconstruction, particularly in countries ravaged by World War II. Meeting at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944 (about a year before the conclusion of World War II), these plans were formalized: representatives from 45 allied nations agreed to the creation of the International Monetary Fund, which would regulate currency rates (initially by fixing exchange rates, which would be guaranteed by the United States in the form of the gold standard), and the World Bank, which would encourage economic growth in war-ravaged and developing countries.

The Cold War

Further information: The Cold War

Despite lofty goals of a universal international order, the Cold War in large part split the world into two competing spheres of power—one led by the United States and the other the Soviet Union. The burgeoning liberal international order was in many ways overshadowed by this conflict; during this period the United Nations was largely ineffective at mediating disputes, US foreign policy was dominated by a strategy of "containment" towards the Soviet Union (including unilateral military and covert intervention in nations with significant communist presences), and the Soviet Union exerted heavy-handed influence over the Eastern Bloc. As political scientist Stewart Patrick has put it: "Washington responded [to the Cold War] by abandoning the wartime objective of universal collective security through the United Nations in favor of assembling a broad 'free world' coalition that included both multilateral alliances and bilateral security arrangements...[meanwhile] postwar trends portended to Washington the fragmentation of the global economy into exclusive economic blocs...while [it held out on] saving the prospect of an open system of international commerce" through foreign assistance programs like the Marshall Plan. In one sense, this bolstered multilateralism, as the United States sought more active cooperation with its allies; but in another, it led to a circumscription of the world-spanning order that had been envisioned during World War II into a narrower one of US-allied countries, while also often proroguing multilateral efforts when they conflicted with anticommunism efforts.

In the security arena, throughout the Cold War the United States focused less on the collective security apparatus within the United Nations—which had authorized the Korean War but was for the most part gridlocked as both the United States and the Soviet Union had veto power within the Security Council—and shifted towards advancing collective defense treaties among allied nations. It was over this period that the expansive US military presence underpinning the liberal international order arose. Perhaps the most consequential institution created within this narrower US-led order was NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), established in 1949 as a collective defense alliance between the United States, Canada, and much of western Europe, which is today considered the most powerful and most influential military alliance (see List of NATO operations). While NATO did not engage in any direct military actions during the Cold War (even while the United States did), it acted as the military bulwark to the Warsaw Pact. Another important but less consequential multilateral defense treaty signed during the Cold War was the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, creating a "hemispheric defense" doctrine in the western hemisphere, bringing most of Latin America into the US-led international security order. Multilateralism was not uniformly applied throughout the Cold War, however. In East Asia, for instance, the United States pursued a number of bilateral defense treaties collectively known as the "hub and spokes" framework (also called the San Francisco System), centering itself as the 'hub' while Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Australia acted as the 'spokes'. Multilateralism also often took a backseat to anti-Soviet and anticommunism efforts. Throughout the Cold War the United States engaged in a number of unilateral military and covert interventions in countries with strong communist presences, often reneging on liberal values of democracy and national sovereignty when they conflicted with anticommunism efforts (for instance, the US installed or supported right-wing dictatorships in Guatemala, Brazil, and Indonesia). Most notably, the US waged the destructive and controversial Vietnam War.

In the economic realm, the United States leveraged its unrivaled economic power (by 1945 it accounted for half of the world's gross domestic product, was the world's largest exporter, produced the majority of scientific and technological advancements, and saw the dollar become the world's most important currency) to pursue its interests and exert significant influence over the economic institutions of the liberal international order. Over this period, the World Bank shifted its focus from post-World War II reconstruction to promoting development in developing countries (by, for example, funding infrastructure projects). Rounds of negotiation spanning decades on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade led to significant tariff reductions, made trade more favorable to developing countries, and expanded the treaty to cover new items like intellectual property and agriculture.

In sum, the Cold War had the effect of creating a US-led international order, based in large part on liberal internationalism but not averse to compromising on its its values—sometimes gravely—in the name of anticommunism. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, the liberal order would finally accomplish the early goals of its founders by expanding to encompass most of the world. The world-spanning liberal international order that persists today arose out of the narrower US-led international system, while institutions like the United Nations became more prominent after the Cold War. By the end of the Cold War the liberal international order and its associated values were deeply entrenched across much of the world, leading some to even proclaim the "end of history" as the world seemed destined towards the universal adoption of Western liberal democracy.

Globalization

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the breakdown of its sphere of influence at the end of Cold War, most the world came under the purview of the US-led liberal international order. As political scientists Alexander Cooley and Daniel H. Nexon have stated in Foreign Affairs, "By the middle of the 1990s, there existed only one dominant framework for international norms and rules: the liberal international system of alliances and institutions anchored in Washington". This heralded an era of globalization, seeing the world economy become much more deeply integrated.

Though the undisputed international order, the liberal international order did not enter a period of stasis; rather, significant changes manifested throughout the decades following the Cold War—particularly in the realm of economics. International economic institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank took on a neoliberal ideological bent. This had a significant impact on the world economy, as they advanced a set of free market principles collectively known as the Washington Consensus that resulted in the global expansion of laissez-faire economic principles. The IMF, for instance, broadened its mandate from addressing short-term balance of payments issues to advancing free-market economic reforms through the use of structural adjustment (reform conditions attached to loans), while the World Bank shifted to a greater encouragement of private sector involvement in its development initiatives. Additionally, the gold standard, which had guaranteed the currency exchange rates regulated by the International Monetary Fund, came to an end in 1972; this led to a system of floating exchange rates. New institutions also arose during the period, with the World Trade Organization (WTO) being perhaps the most consequential. Established in 1995 as a replacement to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the WTO expanded upon the GATT by creating a regulatory framework for negotiating trade agreements (the Trade Policy Review Mechanism) and resolving trade disputes (the Dispute Settlement Body). The WTO has since contributed significantly to the advancement of open market principles by prohibiting discrimination between trading partners (with some exceptions) and promoting reductions to trade barriers like tariffs.

A particularly important development in the globalization of the liberal international order was China's expanded integration into it. While China had long held some level of incorporation in the liberal world order (for example, it is one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council), the 1990s and the decades that followed saw a deeper integration of China into the liberal world order. This occurred at the same time that China, a massive nation of over one billion people and a nominally communist state since the Communist Party's takeover in 1949, was liberalizing its economy and fast becoming a major world power. Of particular importance was China's admission to the World Trade Organization in 2001, which followed closely behind the normalization of trade relations between China and the United States in 2000. This had a number of significant effects: as a requirement of admission, China had to implement a number of open market reforms like tariff reduction and opening up previously restricted industries to foreign investment; increased trade and an environment more permissive to foreign investment contributed to China's transformation into the center of worldwide manufacturing; greater trade contributed to China's rapid economic growth since the 1990s; China's integration into the world market also had significant effects on countries outside China (in the United States, for example, prices for consumer goods decreased in part due to the introduction of Chinese goods while a significant number of manufacturing jobs were offshored to China). The rise of China has also led some scholars to ask whether the liberal international order will persist into the future, or whether geopolitics will instead come to be shaped by great power competition (see Debate section).

Debate

Democratic backsliding, the diminishing power of the United States relative to other nations, and the increasing power of a number of illiberal nations (particularly China) have led scholars to question the influence and survivability of the liberal international order. Walter Russell Mead, for instance, views growing digital authoritarianism and a broader ideology-fused geopolitics, consisting not only of China but of other great powers like Russia and a consortium of smaller powers like Iran, as a significant threat to the liberal order. He argues that, after years of democratic expansion, many countries are moving away from liberal democracy, and that actions by increasingly powerful ideologically-opposed countries (for example, China's claims over the South China Sea, Russian and Iranian military support for the Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad, and the increasing power of anti-liberal nations in the United Nations), indicate that the power of the liberal order is fading.

The presidency of Donald Trump has also called into question the United States' commitment to the liberal international order. Traditionally the driving force behind multilateralism and the liberal international order, under Donald Trump the United States engaged in an "America First" foreign policy agenda, pulling out of of a number of multilateral treaties like the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Paris Climate Agreement (since rejoined under President Joe Biden), erecting large protective tariffs, withdrawing from international organizations like the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council (both since rejoined), as well as threatening to pull out of the World Trade Organization and NATO, and . As political scientist Jonathan Kirshner has observed, "the center of political gravity in the United States has shifted away from the engaged internationalism that characterized the previous 75 years before Trump and towards something closer to isolationism".

China

The integration of China has also had significant political effects. China's growing economic, military, and technological prowess has enabled it to become far more internationally assertive, leading to increasing numbers of disputes between China and the United States. Some scholars even wonder whether the world is returning to great power competition or falling into a Second Cold War. There is particular concern among supporters of the liberal international order that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the decoupling of the United States and China and has furthered distrust in multilateral institutions. Scholars have also debated whether China is projecting an alternative "China model" or constructing an alternative global system to the liberal international order. Particular focus has been given to the creation of alternative international organizations to existing liberal institutions, such as BRICS, the New Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as well as Chinese initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative. These matters, however, are controversial and currently the subject of significant scholarly debate. Fareed Zakaria, for instance, has argued that China is not subverting the international order but rather is bolstering it, pointing to the significant funds China provides to the United Nations (UN), the large numbers of peacekeeping troops it dedicates to the UN, its conciliatory recent history in the UN Security Council, and the ways in which its economy has liberalized.

Believe that the West is in irreversible decline.

America's role

Early history

The liberal international order was constructed in large part by the United States. Yet, prior to World War II, the United States had largely eschewed military alliances and international institutions, pursuing instead a mixture of non-interventionism and unilateralism. Early American political leaders were highly averse to foreign entanglements (John Quincy Adams, for instance, asserted that America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy") and consequently largely declined to interfere in the affairs of other nations. The apparent exception to this was forthright expansion further into the North American continent, which was populated by a significant number of Native American tribes; Americans, however, did not consider the rest of the continent to be foreign, viewing it rather as falling under their natural purview. As a result, early American foreign policy simultaneously eschewed "foreign" entanglements while also engaging significantly with natives in its often bloody conquest of the continent. Still, on-the-whole it can be said that America avoided engaging significantly with most of the world, confining itself to expansion within the continent.

It was not until the late 19th century, after American economic power had expanded significantly, that the United States began to take a more authoritative role in international affairs. While it did enact a few consequential unilateral policies in the early and mid 19th century (e.g. the Monroe Doctrine), it was not until the Spanish–American War at the tail-end of the 19th century that America started along its path of a far more assertive foreign policy (political scientist Stewart Patrick has called American foreign policy in 19th century "isolationism with a unilateralist thrust"). The war had two significant consequences: it established the power of the American military and it ushered into power the war veteran and internationally bellicose Theodore Roosevelt. During this period America expanded its international role significantly, for instance waging the Philippine–American War and constructing the Panama Canal. As this relates to the liberal international order, the relevant point is that the era was defined not by multilateralism but by unilateralism, wherein the United States pursued international interests without the consent or cooperation of other nations. It would not be until the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, which oversaw the country's eventual involvement in World War I, that there was a significant political push for multilateralism.

America after World War I

Witnessing the disastrous consequences of World War I, which took at least 17 million lives and destroyed the economies of Europe, Wilson believed a world of significantly expanded international cooperation would prevent the outbreak of another such conflict. He laid out his highly influential Fourteen Points for peace after the war, including the creation of the League of Nations—the most expansive international institution in history and the precursor to the United Nations—as well as policies of equal trade conditions, arms reduction, and national sovereignty for former colonies of Europe’s empires. Wilson, among the most consequential world leaders in hammering out the Treaty of Versailles (the peace treaty concluding World War I), was able to enshrine many of the Fourteen Points into the document, though sacrificed on others to ensure the inclusion of the League of Nations. Yet, domestically, the effects of World War I had the opposite effect on many in the American public and in the United States Congress as they had on Wilson, viewing instead a policy of isolationism as the most effective way to prevent the country from being dragged back into another calamitous war. Wilson would obstinately push the Senate to ratify the treaty in its full form, including the controversial Article 10 which obliged member nations to intervene when any member was threatened by external aggression, but the Senate ultimately declined to join the League of Nations and the country would ultimately sink into a period of increased isolation.

Multilateralism was left weakened during the Interwar Period, with Europe returning to great power rivalry and imperialistic foreign policies. Fatefully, Wilson's weakened League of Nations failed at its central task of preventing another world war, as World War II broke out a mere two decades after its creation. Ultimately, Wilson was able to lay out the principles for an international order to the world, but his own country shrank into isolation and the international institutions he was monumental in establishing were weak, often ineffectual, and ultimately fell at the outbreak of World War II. Yet, a Wilsonian-style world order would be revived in World War II by the Allied nations, and principally the United States.

America builds the liberal international order

It was during World War II that the United States turned back towards a version of the multilateralism advocated by Woodrow Wilson, ultimately constructing the current liberal international order. In this chaotic era, characterized by the Great Depression, world war, and the political rise of ideologies like communism and fascism, American academics and politicians were swept into a significant rethinking of the country's political orthodoxies. In international relations, with the the justifications for isolationism damaged by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Empire, which swept America into another world war that two decades of isolationism had meant to prevent, this meant a turn to multilateralism.

Still, this was not an immediate turn to multilateralism. During the first two terms of his presidency, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) was concerned primarily with combating the Great Depression through domestic measures and appeared to support US isolation—even proving uncooperative in international conferences like the London Economic Conference in 1933, which sought to stabilize the values of various currencies. He did, however, begin laying the ground for the American-led free trade order by advocating for and ultimately signing into law the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, which enabled the President to negotiate reductions in tariffs on US goods in return for reciprocal reductions (prior to the bill, tariff reductions required a 2/3 vote in the Senate); this led to significant tariff reductions with Latin American countries, establishing an unprecedented level of market openness. But the US public remained deeply isolationist even at the outbreak of World War II, remaining neutral until . The outbreak of war, however, had a different effect on FDR. He quickly became committed to assisting the allied powers and was able push through the Lend Lease Act after the fall of France to Nazi Germany in 1940, supplying the United Kingdom and other allies with food, oil, war planes, warships, and other materials, while also securing greatly increased defense spending. He also quickly became committed to a multilateral order, even creating an Advisory Committee on Problems of Foreign Relations as early as 1939 to "survey the basic principles that should underlie a a desirable world order to be evolved after the termination of present hostilities". FDR embarked on a campaign to push for greater multilateralism, culminating with the 1941 Atlantic Charter, a statement issued by the United States and the United Kingdom advancing a Wilsonian-style postwar order based on multilateral principles which "became a statement of allied war aims".

FDR continued to emphasize to the public, especially through his radio fireside chats, that isolationism could no longer heed off the threats posed by foreign wars to national security. Still, it would not be until late 1941 when the Japanese Empire surprise attacked a US military base at Pearl Harbor that public opinion and Congress (which is the only government body vested with the power to declare war) assented to entering the war. Now with overwhelming support for the war effort, and hence support for a vastly expanded US presence in international affairs, the FDR administration began to seriously construct the basis for the post-war order.

However, the multilateralism advocated by FDR was not a completely faithful rendition of the multilateral order Wilson had envisioned three decades prior. Rather, it was a synthesis of Wilson's multilateralism with great power internationalism; that is, the administration envisioned a universal system of international cooperation and collective security that, crucially, was underpinned by the power of the United States. Centering its role in the multilateral order, the administration began sponsoring a number of highly consequential wartime conferences among the allied nations, including the Food and Agricultural Conference (1943), the first real multilateral meeting of the time; the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Conference (1943); the Bretton Woods Conference (1944), which devised the Bretton Woods monetary system and established the International Monetary Fund and World Bank; and the Dumbarton Oaks Conference (1944), which established the United Nations. Central among these was the United Nations, based in New York City and... In light of the thrust for great power internationalism within a multilateral framework, a core aspect of the United Nations was the Security Council, which would feature five permanent members, each with veto power: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, and the Soviet Union (later Russia, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union).

America in the Cold War

"To meet the challenges of our time, destiny has laid upon [the United States] the responsibility of the free world's leadership."

—Dwight D. Eisenhower

Multilateralism also often took a backseat to US anti-Soviet and anticommunism efforts. While the United States and western Europe had constructed a multilateral defense organization in NATO, in Asia the US instead pursued a number of bilateral alliances collectively known as the "hub and spokes" framework (also known as the San Francisco System). This system featured the United States as the "hub" with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan (Nationalist China), and Australia as the "spokes"; that is, the United States sat at the center of a series of disconnected alliances. The United States also frequently reneged on its proclaimed value of promoting national sovereignty when it conflicted with anticommunism efforts, backing a number of right-wing dictators who opposed communist governments and uprisings.

Institutions

United Nations

Member countries of the United Nations

Main article: United Nations

The United Nations is the world's most expansive and powerful intergovernmental organization and is considered to be the centerpiece of the liberal international order. It counts nearly every country as a member and seeks to advance international peace, the expansion of human rights, economic development, and humanitarian assistance.

International Monetary Fund

Main article: International Monetary Fund

World Bank

Main article: World Bank

World Trade Organization

  Members

  Members, dually represented by the European Union

  Observers

  Non-participant states

Main article: World Trade Organization

NATO

Main article: NATO