Liberalism is self-correcting and key to peace---alts are wors

The Resilient Order,” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2018-06-14/liberal-world

Modern liberalism holds that world politics requires new levels of political integration in response to relentlessly rising interdependence. But political orders do not arise spontaneously, and liberals argue that a world with more liberal democratic capitalist states will be more peaceful, prosperous, and respectful of human rights. It is not inevitable that history will end with the triumph of liberalism, but it is inevitable that a decent world order will be liberal.

The recent rise of illiberal forces and the apparent recession of the liberal international order may seem to call this school of thought into question. But despite some notable exceptions, states still mostly interact through well-worn institutions and in the spirit of self-interested, pragmatic accommodation.

Moreover, part of the reason liberalism may look unsuited to the times is that many of its critics assail a strawman version of the theory. Liberals are often portrayed as having overly optimistic—even utopian—assumptions about the path of human history. In reality, they have a much more conditional and tempered optimism that recognizes tragic tradeoffs, and they are keenly attentive to the possibilities for large-scale catastrophes. Like realists, they recognize that it is often human nature to seek power, which is why they advocate constitutional and legal restraints. But unlike realists, who see history as cyclical, liberals are heirs to the Enlightenment project of technological innovation, which opens new possibilities both for human progress and for disaster.

Liberalism is essentially pragmatic. Modern liberals embrace democratic governments, market-based economic systems, and international institutions not out of idealism but because they believe these arrangements are better suited to realizing human interests in the modern world than any alternatives. Indeed, in thinking about world order, the variable that matters most for liberal thinkers is interdependence. For the first time in history, global institutions are now necessary to realize basic human interests; intense forms of interdependence that were once present only on a smaller scale are now present on a global scale. For example, whereas environmental problems used to be contained largely within countries or regions, the cumulative effect of human activities on the planet’s biospheric life-support system has now been so great as to require a new geologic name for the current time period—the Anthropocene. Unlike its backward-looking nationalist and realist rivals, liberalism has a pragmatic adaptability and a penchant for institutional innovations that are vital for responding to such emerging challenges as artificial intelligence, cyberwarfare, and genetic engineering.

Overall, liberalism remains perennially and universally appealing because it rests on a commitment to the dignity and freedom of individuals. It enshrines the idea of tolerance, which will be needed in spades as the world becomes increasingly interactive and diverse. Although the ideology emerged in the West, its values have become universal, and its champions have extended to encompass Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Nelson Mandela. And even though imperialism, slavery, and racism have marred Western history, liberalism has always been at the forefront of efforts—both peaceful and militant—to reform and end these practices. To the extent that the long arc of history does bend toward justice, it does so thanks to the activism and moral commitment of liberals and their allies.

DEMOCRATIC DECLINE IN PERSPECTIVE

In many respects, today’s liberal democratic malaise is a byproduct of the liberal world order’s success. After the Cold War, that order became a global system, expanding beyond its birthplace in the West. But as free markets spread, problems began to crop up: economic inequality grew, old political bargains between capital and labor broke down, and social supports eroded. The benefits of globalization and economic expansion were distributed disproportionately to elites. Oligarchic power bloomed. A modulated form of capitalism morphed into winner-take-all casino capitalism. Many new democracies turned out to lack the traditions and habits necessary to sustain democratic institutions. And large flows of immigrants triggered a xenophobic backlash. Together, these developments have called into question the legitimacy of liberal democratic life and created openings for opportunistic demagogues.

Just as the causes of this malaise are clear, so is its solution: a return to the fundamentals of liberal democracy. Rather than deeply challenging the first principles of liberal democracy, the current problems call for reforms to better realize them. To reduce inequality, political leaders will need to return to the social democratic policies embodied in the New Deal, pass more progressive taxation, and invest in education and infrastructure. To foster a sense of liberal democratic identity, they will need to emphasize education as a catalyst for assimilation and promote national and public service. In other words, the remedy for the problems of liberal democracy is more liberal democracy; liberalism contains the seeds of its own salvation.

Indeed, liberal democracies have repeatedly recovered from crises resulting from their own excesses. In the 1930s, overproduction and the integration of financial markets brought about an economic depression, which triggered the rise of fascism. But it also triggered the New Deal and social democracy, leading to a more stable form of capitalism. In the 1950s, the success of the Manhattan Project, combined with the emerging U.S.-Soviet rivalry, created the novel threat of a worldwide nuclear holocaust. That threat gave rise to arms control pacts and agreements concerning the governance of global spaces, deals forged by the United States in collaboration with the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, rising middle-class consumption led to oil shortages, economic stagnation, and environmental decay. In response, the advanced industrial democracies established oil coordination agreements, invested in clean energy, and struck numerous international environmental accords aimed at reducing pollutants. The problems that liberal democracies face today, while great, are certainly not more challenging than those that they have faced and overcome in these historically recent decades. Of course, there is no guarantee that liberal democracies will successfully rise to the occasion, but to count them out would fly in the face of repeated historical experiences.