A post-Western world does not mean the end of liberal internationalism
A new article by Louise Riis Andersen suggests that the future will be post-Western, but that this does not necessarily imply that it will also be post-liberal. Zooming in on the United Nations, the article explores the past, present and potentially future role of liberal-minded small states and middle-powers in advancing a multilateral, rules-based world order. As such, the article provides a historically grounded corrective to the prevailing suggestion that without US leadership, ‘the jungle grows back’.
While one should not underestimate the role played by the US in firstly establishing and now undermining the institutions, values, and practices that have governed global politics since the Second World War, the article argues that a broader and more nuanced perspective is needed if we are to understand the dynamics that have brought the existing order into its current crisis, and, secondly, contemplate in which forms—and by whom—liberal elements of order may be sustained in the future. In such an analysis, the role of the United Nations is particularly interesting because of the troubled position that organization has held historically in the US-led order—serving in some sense as its foundational core, in others as a marginalized nuisance.
Reverting to a more old-fashioned, pragmatic, and compromise-seeking version of liberal internationalism may offer middle powers a strategy for stabilizing the transition from one form of order to another—ensuring that it proceeds in an orderly fashion, without provoking war between the great powers—while potentially elevating their own position in the future order.
The article forms part of a special issue of the International Journal, Canada's leading journal of global policy analysis, that is co-edited by professor Rita Abrahamsen, Ottowa University, research director Ole Jacob Sending, NUPI, and senior researcher Louise Riis Andersen
The special issue is the result of a two-day workshop funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada with the aim of investigating the future of liberal internationalism in an increasingly illiberal world.
