Why Liberals Should Embrace the Demise of the ‘Liberal International Order’

Abstract

The decline of the Liberal International Order is increasingly acknowledged by observers of international relations. This decline has left liberals struggling to respond to the rise of a more realist “might is right” world order. For liberal value pluralists, the Liberal International Order which emerged from Enlightenment rationalism was inherently flawed. This is because it is a monist doctrine—according to which every question only has one true answer which attempts to impose itself on human affairs. Isaiah Berlin argued that monism was likely to be ruinous for a society, hence, the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment taught humanity an important lesson—the necessity of preserving an imperfect equilibrium in human affairs. Berlin’s value pluralism can potentially provide liberals with an alternative normative theory of international relations from which it is possible to derive three important principles of foreign policy. These principles include national security, state-to-state relations, and international trade. As liberal democracies are increasingly threatened across the world, the search for a new theoretical framework to safeguard freedom appears to be increasingly relevant.