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The False Promise of Liberal Order: Nostalgia, Delusion and the Rise of Trump
In an age of demagogues, hostile great powers and trade wars, foreign policy traditionalists dream of restoring liberal international order. This order, they claim, ushered in seventy years of peace and prosperity and saw post-war America domesticate the world to its values. The False Promise of Liberal Order exposes the flaws in this nostalgic vision. The world shaped by America came about as a result of coercion and, sometimes brutal, compromise. Liberal projects – to spread capitalist democracy – led inadvertently to illiberal results. To make peace, America made bargains with authoritarian forces. Even in the Pax Americana, the gentlest order yet, ordering was rough work. As its power grew, Washington came to believe that its order was exceptional and even permanent – a mentality that has led to spiralling deficits, permanent war and Trump. Romanticizing the liberal order makes it harder to adjust to today’s global disorder. Only by confronting the false promise of liberal order and adapting to current realities can the United States survive as a constitutional republic in a plural world.
224 pages, Paperback
Published June 29, 2020
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July 9, 2022
"Like great powers before it, the USA demands that its own sovereignty be respected even as it trespasses on that of others."
Patrick Porter convincingly argues that "liberal order" is a myth. He favors the political tradition of liberalism, while being very skeptical of liberal internationalism pursued by the US. The author points out that creating world orders is a very messy business that involves coercion and war. Porter argues that the conception of a liberal world is an illusion. Liberal orders end up having illiberal tendencies. The expansion "missionary project" of spreading democracty to places that do not desire democracy ends up stirring up and giving life to rival alternatives. Countries that reject free trade and alliances end up being threatened.
Because of the US desire to spread democracry to the far reaches of the globe, he sees that as weakening US democracy at home. The cosmopolitan push for a world without borders gave rise to powerful multinational corporations that pushed for major tax cuts and deregulations. They also outsourced and offshored many jobs. This hurt American industries and created many problems for working-classing wages. Corporations made fortunes and wealth drifted to the coastal cities, where a nexus of technology-finance-media-lobbying emerged. The interior cities and the rural parts of America were left with decaying infrastructure and a sense of injustice. With less tax revenue and a weakened industrial bases, America had to import goods and buy on credit the supplies and money necessary to fund the War on Terror.
Trump tapped into these pain points and promised to "Make American Great Again." He carefully targeted and called out many of these problems. And while he made few changes and actually made things worse in office, his campaign is a powerful testament to the strength of discontentment.
"[T]he target here is not the minimal 'baseline claim that an American-led order was better than the alternatives. It clearly was. It was better for the world that America became the dominant power, rather than its totalitarian competitors, even if the exercise of that dominance varied in wisdom."
"Hegemons are vain creatures. Having risen to power, they are easily afflicted with 'middle kingdom' syndrome, the fancy that they possess superior wisdom, standing at the centre of the cosmos with little to learn from others. Far from being an American peculiarity, self-centric worldviews are an ancient conceit, from Persia's Darius I, Spain's Philip II, China's Ming Dynasty, Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, to Napoleonic France. The assumption of their own specialness encourages hegemons to identify their interests with those of other states, to see success as the sign of the cosmos's favor and adversity as a test of faith. In turn, this loosens restraint and makes them war prone. They practice what medieval China called 'barbarian management', without suspecting themselves of being the source of belligerence. They give themselves permission to pick and choose among the rules in ways they would not tolerate from others, to stand outside their system the better to sustain it."
Porter calls for America to tone down its political ambitions and to pursue a strategy of restraint in international affairs. A more modest agenda would give America the flexibility to repair/restore democracy at home.
Patrick Porter convincingly argues that "liberal order" is a myth. He favors the political tradition of liberalism, while being very skeptical of liberal internationalism pursued by the US. The author points out that creating world orders is a very messy business that involves coercion and war. Porter argues that the conception of a liberal world is an illusion. Liberal orders end up having illiberal tendencies. The expansion "missionary project" of spreading democracty to places that do not desire democracy ends up stirring up and giving life to rival alternatives. Countries that reject free trade and alliances end up being threatened.
Because of the US desire to spread democracry to the far reaches of the globe, he sees that as weakening US democracy at home. The cosmopolitan push for a world without borders gave rise to powerful multinational corporations that pushed for major tax cuts and deregulations. They also outsourced and offshored many jobs. This hurt American industries and created many problems for working-classing wages. Corporations made fortunes and wealth drifted to the coastal cities, where a nexus of technology-finance-media-lobbying emerged. The interior cities and the rural parts of America were left with decaying infrastructure and a sense of injustice. With less tax revenue and a weakened industrial bases, America had to import goods and buy on credit the supplies and money necessary to fund the War on Terror.
Trump tapped into these pain points and promised to "Make American Great Again." He carefully targeted and called out many of these problems. And while he made few changes and actually made things worse in office, his campaign is a powerful testament to the strength of discontentment.
"[T]he target here is not the minimal 'baseline claim that an American-led order was better than the alternatives. It clearly was. It was better for the world that America became the dominant power, rather than its totalitarian competitors, even if the exercise of that dominance varied in wisdom."
"Hegemons are vain creatures. Having risen to power, they are easily afflicted with 'middle kingdom' syndrome, the fancy that they possess superior wisdom, standing at the centre of the cosmos with little to learn from others. Far from being an American peculiarity, self-centric worldviews are an ancient conceit, from Persia's Darius I, Spain's Philip II, China's Ming Dynasty, Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, to Napoleonic France. The assumption of their own specialness encourages hegemons to identify their interests with those of other states, to see success as the sign of the cosmos's favor and adversity as a test of faith. In turn, this loosens restraint and makes them war prone. They practice what medieval China called 'barbarian management', without suspecting themselves of being the source of belligerence. They give themselves permission to pick and choose among the rules in ways they would not tolerate from others, to stand outside their system the better to sustain it."
Porter calls for America to tone down its political ambitions and to pursue a strategy of restraint in international affairs. A more modest agenda would give America the flexibility to repair/restore democracy at home.
May 5, 2020
The False Promise of Liberal Order is much-needed corrective for the mix of nostalgia and amnesia that portrays a liberal, peaceful, and ordered world that never was. Plenty of empirical material and a sound theoretical argument that violence is not an accident. Ordering requires violence. I am less convinced by three issues.
One, the book correctly blames liberal and (former?) neoconservative scholars for whitewashing US history and painting it in too broad strokes that leave out important and often violent elements of US hegemony. However, the book (it seems to me) also tends to paint in broad strokes US administrations, assigning them equal levels of culpability. If all politics is evil - as the book implies in its classical realist approach indebted to Morgenthau and Machiavelli - some US administrations were more evil than others. Two, the book - again, to me - seems to imply too often that China and Russia are only reacting to US encroachment/aggression. While this is true in some cases, it isn't always the case. Three, (a minor point) the book tends to accept the argument that most of the excesses of US hegemony occurred mostly outside Europe. More, perhaps, could have been said of the violence and coercion within Europe (e.g. post-war France, post-war Italy). While not as deadly as conflicts outside Europe, the subjugation and paternalism towards Italy, for example, were far from orderly and/or liberal. From early CW massacre, to threats of regime change, and terrorism. Overall, an excellent book. Strongly recommended.
One, the book correctly blames liberal and (former?) neoconservative scholars for whitewashing US history and painting it in too broad strokes that leave out important and often violent elements of US hegemony. However, the book (it seems to me) also tends to paint in broad strokes US administrations, assigning them equal levels of culpability. If all politics is evil - as the book implies in its classical realist approach indebted to Morgenthau and Machiavelli - some US administrations were more evil than others. Two, the book - again, to me - seems to imply too often that China and Russia are only reacting to US encroachment/aggression. While this is true in some cases, it isn't always the case. Three, (a minor point) the book tends to accept the argument that most of the excesses of US hegemony occurred mostly outside Europe. More, perhaps, could have been said of the violence and coercion within Europe (e.g. post-war France, post-war Italy). While not as deadly as conflicts outside Europe, the subjugation and paternalism towards Italy, for example, were far from orderly and/or liberal. From early CW massacre, to threats of regime change, and terrorism. Overall, an excellent book. Strongly recommended.
December 8, 2023
I didn't agree with a lot in this book, but is effective, well-argued, and concise. PP is a leading realist IR theorist who in this book attacks both the theory and practice of liberal order. He makes a familiar restrainers' argument that the US has become massively overextended, provoked balancing against, destabilized many regions of the world, and that all of this has weakened democracy at home. This is all well and good, but it can be found in a number of books/articles.
His most unique and interesting argument, however, is that liberal order itself is a contradiction in terms. When you strip away the nice euphemistic language, he argues, ordering is effectively an imperial act that requires the orderer (or hegemon) to both enforce rules and exempt itself from the rules in order to defeat challenger and ensure one's own advantage. For all the talk of a rules-based order, the US violates its own rules all the time and usually submits to international law only when it fits its interests. The US talks of free trade but is actually quite protectionist in practice, while it uses free trade concepts to pry open overseas markets to US goods and investment. Ordering, PP argues pretty convincingly, is inherently in tension with liberalism's emphasis on consent, equality, and rights, especially when that ordering seeks hegemony (or the prevention of any kind of peer challenger-or even non-peer challengers like a united Vietnam). PP also argues that Trump's rise is in part a product or and response to a hegemonic foreign policy, especially the fruitless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is an important challenge to liberal IR theorists and to the euphemism-bound language and stale thinking of much of the foreign policy establishment. PP wants to replace the liberal hegemonic grand strategy with one of restraint, where the US focuses on preventing a Russia-China axis against us rather than on spreading democracy or surrounding great power rivals.
This makes a lot of sense to me. However, I have 2 substantive critiques of this argument. First, I think USFP is already shifting in this direction anyway. Trump was so incoherent that it's tough to tell what he was trying to do, but Biden has been pretty restrained overall, making the US into a distant backer of states like Russia falling victim to aggression and a supporter of balances of power in key regions like East Asia. In the conclusion PP recommends some very common sense approaches to balancing against RU and CH's rise without trying to compete with them at every level and in every place; that's great, but it seems a lot like what we are doing already.
My second critique extends to almost all realist criticisms of USFP as overextended and destabilizing. I agree that much of USFP fits this bill, especially the disastrous IRaq War. But it seems noteworthy that almost every country the modern US has ever been in a serious dispute with is an autocracy (or a totalitarian state) of some kind. US power and ideas just don't seem as dangerous to other democracies-they balanced with us against the Soviets, then post-Cold War they continued to align with the US in spite of its significant interventionism and overwhelming power. Iraq didn't change this all that much; only authoritarian states found it seriously threatening. I get why they did on one level (the US was arrogating itself a right to unilateral preventive regime change), but their fear of US power is clearly rooted in their being authoritarian regimes. In short, the US is the "dangerous nation," to borrow from Robert Kagan, mainly in regard to non-democratic regimes for whom our power and ideas are inherently threatening. That's part of why Russia sees a Western-leaning, democratic Ukraine as so dangerous to his own rule; ditto for China and Taiwan. Realism is based on the idea that all states behave essentially the same in an anarchic system; I think that's its biggest problem with explaining and critiquing US foreign policy.
There are two logics (or at least caveats) to liberal order that PP overlooks, I think. The first is that because they openly flout and seek to destroy "rules," authoritarian rivals to the US force the US to have to compromise with their own values, and sometimes break those rules, to combat them. The key for the US is figuring out when exactly we have to combat the expansion of these movements/rivals, as we have often fought them unnecessarily or in peripheral theaters (Iraq, Vietnam). But this is a tragic element of being a liberal orderer that I don't think the US can avoid: you can't fight bad actors with your hands clean.
Second, PP also downplays the many successes of liberal ordering, especially the creation of zones of democratic peace and prosperity in places like central Europe. In historical perspective, this is a HUGE accomplishment that probably wouldn't not have happened without the US security umbrella. I'm not sure if it's realistic for the US to actively spread these zones; that seems to be one of the flaws of a liberal hegemonic grand strategy. But defending them, including with an active onshore presence, is vital to our security, prosperity, and values, and when there are opportunities to help these zones form and expand, we should do so. The more of these zones that exist (and the more democratic, rule-of-law nations that exist) the less forceful ordering has to be done and the less compromising with our own values. I think PP would agree with some or maybe even most of this, although I'd be interested in seeing his thoughts.
I suppose I am a kind of conservative when it comes to my support for a form of liberal international order, in that I think this strategy (however inconstantly pursued and hypocritical) has actually been pretty good for the world compared to the most likely alternative systems and I'm hesitant to dramatically change it. We need to come down from our sense of messianism and value-universalism, which gets us into crusades and other nonsense. But there are still a lot of productive roles the US can and should play in the world. Anyways, if you are interested in these questions, this is a great book to check out.
His most unique and interesting argument, however, is that liberal order itself is a contradiction in terms. When you strip away the nice euphemistic language, he argues, ordering is effectively an imperial act that requires the orderer (or hegemon) to both enforce rules and exempt itself from the rules in order to defeat challenger and ensure one's own advantage. For all the talk of a rules-based order, the US violates its own rules all the time and usually submits to international law only when it fits its interests. The US talks of free trade but is actually quite protectionist in practice, while it uses free trade concepts to pry open overseas markets to US goods and investment. Ordering, PP argues pretty convincingly, is inherently in tension with liberalism's emphasis on consent, equality, and rights, especially when that ordering seeks hegemony (or the prevention of any kind of peer challenger-or even non-peer challengers like a united Vietnam). PP also argues that Trump's rise is in part a product or and response to a hegemonic foreign policy, especially the fruitless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is an important challenge to liberal IR theorists and to the euphemism-bound language and stale thinking of much of the foreign policy establishment. PP wants to replace the liberal hegemonic grand strategy with one of restraint, where the US focuses on preventing a Russia-China axis against us rather than on spreading democracy or surrounding great power rivals.
This makes a lot of sense to me. However, I have 2 substantive critiques of this argument. First, I think USFP is already shifting in this direction anyway. Trump was so incoherent that it's tough to tell what he was trying to do, but Biden has been pretty restrained overall, making the US into a distant backer of states like Russia falling victim to aggression and a supporter of balances of power in key regions like East Asia. In the conclusion PP recommends some very common sense approaches to balancing against RU and CH's rise without trying to compete with them at every level and in every place; that's great, but it seems a lot like what we are doing already.
My second critique extends to almost all realist criticisms of USFP as overextended and destabilizing. I agree that much of USFP fits this bill, especially the disastrous IRaq War. But it seems noteworthy that almost every country the modern US has ever been in a serious dispute with is an autocracy (or a totalitarian state) of some kind. US power and ideas just don't seem as dangerous to other democracies-they balanced with us against the Soviets, then post-Cold War they continued to align with the US in spite of its significant interventionism and overwhelming power. Iraq didn't change this all that much; only authoritarian states found it seriously threatening. I get why they did on one level (the US was arrogating itself a right to unilateral preventive regime change), but their fear of US power is clearly rooted in their being authoritarian regimes. In short, the US is the "dangerous nation," to borrow from Robert Kagan, mainly in regard to non-democratic regimes for whom our power and ideas are inherently threatening. That's part of why Russia sees a Western-leaning, democratic Ukraine as so dangerous to his own rule; ditto for China and Taiwan. Realism is based on the idea that all states behave essentially the same in an anarchic system; I think that's its biggest problem with explaining and critiquing US foreign policy.
There are two logics (or at least caveats) to liberal order that PP overlooks, I think. The first is that because they openly flout and seek to destroy "rules," authoritarian rivals to the US force the US to have to compromise with their own values, and sometimes break those rules, to combat them. The key for the US is figuring out when exactly we have to combat the expansion of these movements/rivals, as we have often fought them unnecessarily or in peripheral theaters (Iraq, Vietnam). But this is a tragic element of being a liberal orderer that I don't think the US can avoid: you can't fight bad actors with your hands clean.
Second, PP also downplays the many successes of liberal ordering, especially the creation of zones of democratic peace and prosperity in places like central Europe. In historical perspective, this is a HUGE accomplishment that probably wouldn't not have happened without the US security umbrella. I'm not sure if it's realistic for the US to actively spread these zones; that seems to be one of the flaws of a liberal hegemonic grand strategy. But defending them, including with an active onshore presence, is vital to our security, prosperity, and values, and when there are opportunities to help these zones form and expand, we should do so. The more of these zones that exist (and the more democratic, rule-of-law nations that exist) the less forceful ordering has to be done and the less compromising with our own values. I think PP would agree with some or maybe even most of this, although I'd be interested in seeing his thoughts.
I suppose I am a kind of conservative when it comes to my support for a form of liberal international order, in that I think this strategy (however inconstantly pursued and hypocritical) has actually been pretty good for the world compared to the most likely alternative systems and I'm hesitant to dramatically change it. We need to come down from our sense of messianism and value-universalism, which gets us into crusades and other nonsense. But there are still a lot of productive roles the US can and should play in the world. Anyways, if you are interested in these questions, this is a great book to check out.
January 20, 2022
Porters book is a direct challenge to John J. Mearsheimer paper prepared for presentation at Notre Dame International Security Center, September 11, 2018. {https://ndisc.nd.edu/assets/288231/ri...)
Porter’s book consists of six chapters, including introduction and afterword. Chapter 1 covers Porter’s hypothesis which is: ordering [the empire] is an imperial undertaken by dominating others’ policies including domestic ones (p. 29). Chapter 2 challenges the idea of Liberal International Order. he shows his findings in chapter 3. Chapter 4 argues that Trump’s presidency was not or is not the destruction of the order, but more a sign and symptom of a problem (p. 178). Porter wraps it all up with a proposed guide and a lecture to the academic community on how better to inform students on International relations. If you can get by the rhetoric, the book really offers nothing new. Frankly, I viewed this book as his attempt at the Bully Pulpit and although some of his ideas had merit the delivery was all wrong. Lastly, both Porter and Mearsheimer are wrong -Pax America is not about the crash and burn. Yes there may be some internal turbulence and social unrest, but Americans have been here before.
My advice? see if you can get a used copy for a few dollars but don't buy the new Kindle or book version because you will disappointed
.
Porter’s book consists of six chapters, including introduction and afterword. Chapter 1 covers Porter’s hypothesis which is: ordering [the empire] is an imperial undertaken by dominating others’ policies including domestic ones (p. 29). Chapter 2 challenges the idea of Liberal International Order. he shows his findings in chapter 3. Chapter 4 argues that Trump’s presidency was not or is not the destruction of the order, but more a sign and symptom of a problem (p. 178). Porter wraps it all up with a proposed guide and a lecture to the academic community on how better to inform students on International relations. If you can get by the rhetoric, the book really offers nothing new. Frankly, I viewed this book as his attempt at the Bully Pulpit and although some of his ideas had merit the delivery was all wrong. Lastly, both Porter and Mearsheimer are wrong -Pax America is not about the crash and burn. Yes there may be some internal turbulence and social unrest, but Americans have been here before.
My advice? see if you can get a used copy for a few dollars but don't buy the new Kindle or book version because you will disappointed
.
December 1, 2020
The book seems to echo the opening of Ecclesiastes: "vanity of vanities, all is vanity". Patrick Porter vividly illustrares the illusory nature of a liberal world order. Order requires policing. Since the second world war the USA has played the role of world police. Unfortunately, in spite of the best intentions, policing ventures by USA tend to fail dismally. The policing authority is unable to abide by its own liberal values. The republic tends to morph into an imperial power. The American people are confronted with hostility from people they seek to liberate. The burden of continuous war and the associated cost in blood and treasure has driven the USA to Trumpism!
Porter argues that a liberal world order is a mirage. Disappointment and failure are inevitable if the USA continues on its current trajectory. He offers the USA good advice - sit back look after the interests of your own people and let the rest of the world sought itself out. Good advice for the USA. I'm not sure where it leaves the rest of us.
Porter argues that a liberal world order is a mirage. Disappointment and failure are inevitable if the USA continues on its current trajectory. He offers the USA good advice - sit back look after the interests of your own people and let the rest of the world sought itself out. Good advice for the USA. I'm not sure where it leaves the rest of us.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 29, 2024
I have to say that this book is good and useful in explaining the current geopolitical happenings and Porter's critique of the Liberal International Order as a Classical Realist. I did have to read this for my International Political Economy Theory class, but I would still recommend this to other readers. The only big problem that I have with this book is that it picks and chooses sources that only support his argument, and the argument is pretty redundant. I do believe that Porter does provide a solid argument though, but is hypocritical in the sense that he offers solutions but says that solutions might not be that helpful. The book provides useful insights but should be critically looked at throughout the reading.
September 28, 2020
I applaud the general central idea but the execution is weaker than I would have preferred. Too many quotations instead of rephrasing and general assessments without reference. More like a compendium of the same thought in different wordings than a book with a readable and informative thesis. A more historical chronological analysis would have served to hammer the main point home better. It did get a lot better as the book progressed.
September 21, 2022
A good and refreshing book.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews