Reassessing the cold war and the far-right: Fascist legacies and the making of the liberal international order after 1945

Abstract

This article intervenes in IR debates on the origins and character of the postwar liberal international order. Dominant theorizations of the US-led Western order rest on a shared assumption of its essentially post-fascist character based on the liberal-democratic properties of its constitutive members. This article challenges this prevailing view. It does so through a critical historical and theoretical exploration of the role of far-right ideopolitical forces in the development of the liberal international order during the early Cold War period. Drawing on the concepts of "uneven and combined development"and "passive revolution"as alternative theoretical frames, the article focuses particular attention on the significance of former fascists in the workings and institutional fabric of a number of West European states and the relationship between the United States and NATO in far-right coup-plotting and violence that punctuated their national histories. Demonstrating these far-right "contributions"to the making and evolution of the Cold War order, the article offers a reconceptualization of liberal order construction and US hegemony that not only problematizes existing accounts of Cold War geopolitics but also demonstrates the structural interconnections between the far-right and liberal order-building projects that goes beyond the Cold War era.