One challenge in navigating the debate over the future of the liberal world order is that American power has been the primary source of that order, but the United States is an imperfect practitioner of its own grand strategy of promoting a rules-based global system. Criticism of the liberal international order often defaults into criticism of American foreign policy, or of American political leadership past and present. Or it turns into an Alice-in-Wonderland fantasy of what the world could be like if only power was shared democratically, if only multilateral institutions were not governed by great powers, or if only …read more
The Liberal International Order Cannot Survive the Absence of American Power
