No impact to its collapse, countless other factors and incentives both explain and solve better

Charles Glaser, “A Flawed Framework: Why the Liberal International Order Concept Is Misguided,” International Security, Vol 43, Spring 2019, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00343

In this article, I show that the LIO concept suffers from theoretical weaknesses that render it unable to explain much about the interaction of the United States with its adversaries or its allies. Worse yet, framing U.S. policy in terms of the LIO is potentially dangerous; by exaggerating the threat posed by small changes to the political status quo and implicitly rejecting adaptation to the new balance of power in East Asia, the LIO lens could encourage the United States to adopt overly competitive policies.

The LIO concept suffers from two main problems. First, and most basic, the LIO concept is inward looking; it focuses on interactions between states that are members of the liberal international order, not on interactions between states that belong to the LIO and those that do not. This is a serious limitation, because the LIO is a partial order; it does not (and did not) include key major powers. During the Cold War, for example, the LIO did not include the Soviet Union; today, neither China nor Russia is fully included. Consequently, the LIO concept can shed little light on the most important issues in international politics—specifically, the prospects for peace and cooperation between the United States and its allies, on the one hand, and its adversaries and competitors, on the other.

Second, key strands of the LIO concept suffer serious theoretical weaknesses. For example, one strand argues that a powerful state can bind itself to institutions, thereby reassuring weaker partners that it will meet its alliance commitments, neither abandoning its allies nor using force coercively against them; such reassurance was essential to NATO’s success during the Cold War. A powerful state, however, cannot effectively constrain its ability to use its power/military force when the stakes are sufficiently high. Another strand of the LIO concept holds that hierarchy built on legitimate authority, granted by subordinate (i.e., weaker) states to the dominant (i.e., stronger) state, is essential to explaining cooperation under anarchy. According to this argument, hierarchy plays a central role in explaining cooperation among NATO’s member states. I show, however, that this has not been the case and that established theories of alliance cooperation explain cooperation within NATO quite well. Given these theoretical weaknesses, the LIO concept cannot support claims that the LIO’s institutions have been more effective or better able to weather shocks from the international system than they would have been otherwise.

I argue that other well-established theories—in particular, defensive realism/rationalist structural theories, which are based on a combination of power, interest, and information-based arguments—are able to explain the major historical events that scholars and commentators have credited to the LIO. Thus, the LIO concept’s inward focus and theoretical weakness do not leave scholars with a significant explanatory gap. For example, balance of threat theory does an excellent job of explaining the basics of NATO’s Cold War cohesion and effectiveness. Explaining more nuanced features of NATO requires other theories, including bargaining theory and neo-institutional theories. Similarly, a variety of structural arguments can explain the Cold War peace, including the defense advantage created by nuclear weapons, NATO’s effective deterrent capabilities, and the relative simplicity of balancing in bipolarity.

Despite these problems with the LIO concept, the LIO might prove valuable if its components produce more jointly than they would individually—that is, if the whole of the LIO were greater than the sum of its parts. For example, a variety of theories have identified positive interactions between U.S. alliances and the open economic system. Available research indicates, however, that the size of these interactions is hard to estimate—experts disagree on their magnitude, with some finding that the benefits are insignificant. Thus, the possibility of interactive benefits fails to provide a strong case for envisioning the LIO as an integrated entity. More central to my critique, the mechanisms that drive these interactions are not included in the LIO concept and therefore lie largely outside the LIO lens.

In light of all of these shortcomings, I conclude that scholars, policy analysts, and practitioners should stop framing their analyses of U.S. international policy in terms of the LIO. In addition to lacking analytic value, framing discussions of U.S. international policy in terms of the LIO tends to build in a status quo bias: the vast majority of such discussions start from the premise that preserving the LIO deserves top priority. With China’s rise generating a dramatic shift in the global balance of power, however, the United States needs to engage in a more fundamental evaluation of its interests and the best means for achieving them. I argue, therefore, that the United States should analyze the broad outlines of its international policy from the perspective of grand strategy. By adopting a grand-strategic framework, analysts can correct the LIO’s status quo bias, make theoretical debates more explicit, and ensure that a wider array of foreign policy options receive due consideration.