Declining US hegemony has opened the door for a new, more ethical LIO.

World order refers to the broad interplay of power, ideas, institutions and interaction patterns that characterizes a significant portion of the world at a given time. Since World War II, one influential conception of world order in the West has been known as the Liberal International Order—a system of rules, institutions and managerial practices underpinned by the power and purpose of the United States and its Western military allies.

That order is fraying now, rapidly and significantly. Although the crisis of the Liberal International Order predated the 2016 US presidential election and had been foretold, most Western pundits ignored the signs and woke up collectively to the possibility of its collapse with the victory of Donald Trump as the US President.1 However, forces contributing to the decline of the Liberal International Order were triggered by long-term structural factors such as the global redistribution of wealth and power, which also fed into a backlash against globalization and the rise of populism, mainly in the West. While Trump’s presidential campaign exploited these factors to win in 2016, he should be regarded as the consequence rather than the cause of the Liberal Order’s crisis.

Much of the concern about the decline of the Liberal International Order has focused on the rise of conflicts and disorder. Terms like “world on fire” or “world in disarray” (to quote the Council on Foreign Relations President [End Page 5] Richard Haass) capture the typical refrain of Western liberal establishment, but a more serious implication has to do with the erosion of liberal ethics and values, especially the threat to liberal democracy and liberal internationalism.2 Does Trumpism spell the end of ethics and morality in international affairs?

In this essay, I argue that it does not. One should not see the crisis of the Liberal International Order as the end of international ethics but rather as an opportunity to reaffirm, redefine, and broaden it. The system of universal morality associated with the liberal order (also known as liberal hegemony) was selective, exclusionary, and self-serving for the West. It was underpinned by the power and interests of the leading Western nations and gave scant recognition to the ethical and moral claims and contributions of other cultures and civilizations. This structure needs to change. The world should develop a more universal system of ethics, requiring a pathway quite different from the global spread of the ethics of the Liberal International Order. While the ethics of the West were spread through religious proselytizing (often justifying and accompanying imperial military conquests and use of coercion), new global ethics can only be achieved through dialogue and mutual construction. To undertake such a process of dialogue, one needs to reexamine the historical association between liberal political philosophy, Liberal International Order, and the system of international ethics prevailing to date.

“Ethics are a system of moral principles…which defines what is good for individuals and society.”3 The definition of ethics is inherently broad and abstract. However, its key referent objects, insofar as the current international order is concerned, include human rights, humanitarian law, transitional justice, multilateralism (including the equity of representation and participation in international institutions), human security, and economic equality (including poverty elimination). I will return to some of these principles when I discuss how the crisis in the Liberal International Order might affect some of these principles later in this essay.

First, let me briefly examine the two most widely discussed scenarios in the West about the future of world order. The first and most common of these is a return to “multipolarity,” similar to the system that existed before World War II. A multipolar order is viewed with apprehension by those who associate European rivalries with the period prior to the two world wars.

Comparing Europe’s pre-World War II past with the world’s 21st century present is misleading. Zaki Laïdi, a political scientist from France, defines multipolarity as “a system in which power is distributed at least among three significant poles concentrating wealth and/or military capabilities” and in which each of these poles is “capable of producing order or generating disorder [to] influence…global outcomes beyond its own borders.”4 However, there are several [End Page 6] major differences between pre-war multipolarity and the emerging 21st century world order (which I term as multiplexity, as opposed to multipolarity). First, pre-war multipolarity was anchored within a world of empires and colonies.5 The major actors in world politics were the great powers, mainly European, with the United States and Japan joining the club in the latter part of the 19th century. By contrast, the contemporary world is marked by a multiplicity of actors that matter. These are not only great powers, or even just states, but also international and regional institutions, multinational corporations, transnational non-governmental organizations and social movements, transnational criminal and terrorist groups, and so on. Second, the nature of economic interdependence today is denser, consisting of trade, finance, and global production networks and supply chains, whereas pre-war multipolarity was mainly trade-based. Third, contemporary economic interdependence is more global, compared to the 19th century, when it was mostly intra-European, with the rest of the world being in a situation of dependence with European empires. Fourth, there is a far greater density of relatively durable international and regional institutions today, whereas pre-World War I Europe had mainly the European Concert of Powers, and the inter-war period had the short-lived League of Nations.

The second scenario foresees a revival of the US-led order, albeit in a somewhat modified form, but this may be somewhat wistful thinking. At least three significant differences between the Liberal International Order and the emerging world order may be noted.

Whereas the Liberal International Order was a hegemonic order, the emerging world order is likely to be pluralistic, featuring a few great powers and other consequential actors. The reason for this has to do with the second major difference between the old and new orders: while the Liberal International Order was shaped by a world economy whose principal economic contributors were Western, the emerging world order will be shaped by the rise and role of non-Western economies. Consider the following. The US share of global GDP declined from a peak of 50 percent in 1945 to 32.1 percent in 2001 and 22.3 percent in 2014.6 China’s share of global GDP grew from 4 percent in 2001 to 13.4 percent in 2014.7 By 2050, according to one estimate, out of thirty-two leading economies in the world by purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, twenty-one (including Japan) will be from the non-Western world, including seven of the top ten economies of the world.8 While much can happen to upset these projections, the general trend toward a global economic shift toward Asia is hard to dismiss. It is likely to continue to an extent that would have profound consequences for world order.

Third, while as the institutional architecture of the Liberal International Order was dominated by large multilateral institutions, especially the UN system, today’s multilateralism is more complex, varied, and fragmented, with the proliferation of regional and plurilateral arrangements, initiatives led by the private sector transnational social movements, and various forms of partnership involving government, private, and civil society actors.9 Their effects are especially felt on the prominence, authority, and legitimacy of the global multilateral institutions that have been the bedrock of the post-war global [End Page 7] governance system. This has produced confusion, uncertainty, and anxiety over the future of global governance among its traditional advocates.