{"id":18751,"date":"2023-01-16T10:58:56","date_gmt":"2023-01-16T10:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/?p=18751"},"modified":"2023-01-17T06:53:26","modified_gmt":"2023-01-17T06:53:26","slug":"liberal-international-order-can-it-be-saved-in-todays-non-hegemonic-world-vladimir-v-makei-late","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/liberal-international-order-can-it-be-saved-in-todays-non-hegemonic-world-vladimir-v-makei-late\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal International Order: Can It Be Saved in Today\u2019s Non-Hegemonic World? Vladimir V. Makei (Late)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\"\"Vladimir V. Makei<\/strong><\/em> \/1958 \u2013\u00a0 2022<\/em><\/h5>\n
\n
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus from\u00a0 August 2012 to November 2022<\/h5>\n
\n
Abstract<\/strong><\/em><\/h5>\n
It is commonly known that the Liberal International Order (LIO) emerged after World War II and reached its pinnacle in the 1990s when its key proponent\u2015the United States\u2015enjoyed a hegemonic position on the global scene. However, the LIO\u2019s true roots should be traced to much earlier times, to the late 18th century, when two distinct tracks, economic and political, emerged in European politics. Observers tend to overlook the LIO\u2019s dual nature formed by these two tracks, thereby missing its key inherent problem. While the LIO\u2019s economic track may be acceptable to all, its political track, embodied in the Democratic Peace concept, serves only to polarize the world. Importantly, the current discourse on the LIO is taking place at a post-hegemonic time. So, those who keep insisting on the possibility of saving the LIO, which was relevant for a short liberal hegemonic era, miss the point that the current diverse world requires a new kind of international order.<\/em><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
\n
For citation, please use:<\/strong>
\nMakei, V.V., 2023. Liberal International Order: Can It Be Saved in Today\u2019s Non-Hegemonic World? Russia in Global Affairs,<\/em> 21(1), pp. 114-130. DOI: 10.31278\/1810-6374-2023-21-1-114-130<\/h5>\n
The past decade has seen a gradually increasing interest in the topic of the so-called Liberal International Order, especially in the Western academic community. The primary driver behind this general trend appears to be China\u2019s ineluctable rise and the United States\u2019 increasingly evident decline. Many pundits argue that China\u2019s ascendance poses a long-term existential threat to the LIO, which was built after World War II on the values and interests of the United States\u2015the dominant power of that time. According to this line of argument, as China becomes a dominant power on the world stage it is destined to replace the liberal order with an international order that would better fit its domestic political and economic system. So, an \u201cauthoritarian\u201d international order is in the making. Consequently, the Western academia has generally been rather pessimistic about the LIO\u2019s prospects.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
The debate on the LIO became particularly poignant in 2016-1017 against the background of Donald Trump\u2019s election as President of the United States, Britain\u2019s Brexit from the European Union, the mass migration to Europe from the Middle East, and the rising populism and right-wing nationalism in some Western European countries. Very indicative of this trend was the title of the January-February 2017 issue of Foreign Affairs<\/em>\u2015\u201cOut of Order: The Future of the International System,<\/em>\u201d which contained very enlightening pieces by acclaimed Western experts.<\/h5>\n
Also, a most interesting intellectual debate on the LIO\u2019s future took place between two renowned Western political pundits\u2015Niall Ferguson of Britain and Fareed Zakaria of the United States (The Bridgehead, 2017). For nearly two hours, they contested in a TV program, trying to answer the question: \u201cIs the Liberal International Order Over?\u201d, with Ferguson arguing in favor of its close end and Zakaria against it. Most of the audience voted in support of Ferguson\u2019s pessimistic view about the LIO\u2019s future.<\/h5>\n
The latest interest in the LIO emerged in the context of Russia\u2019s special military operation in Ukraine launched on February 24, 2022. Once again, the debate appeared to be stronger in the Western media. The general narrative by the West is that Russia\u2019s action in Ukraine has actually dealt a mortal blow to the LIO that has already been damaged by China\u2019s economic rise and its increasingly assertive foreign policy, as well as by some persistent transnational challenges, such as climate change, public health, and many others. According to this line of thought, there is no hope for reviving the LIO.<\/h5>\n
Non-Western policymakers and political scientists have also been involved in the debate on the LIO for nearly a decade now, although seemingly on a smaller scale. For example, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke his mind on the issue in an interview with The<\/em> Financial Times<\/em> in June 2019, arguing that the liberal idea had outlived its purpose, and that the LIO had become obsolete as it had come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of people [in the world] (Financial Times, 2019). Also, Russia in Global Affairs<\/em> has contributed to the debate on a regular basis.<\/h5>\n
The debate on the LIO has pitted the so-called \u201cdemocracies\u201d against \u201cautocracies\u201d insofar as the LIO is associated with the former while the threat to it purportedly comes from the latter. One would never find universally agreed definitions for these terms. Nonetheless, we all well understand what they stand for. In broad strokes, under \u2018democracy\u2019 we understand a form of governance in which power is decentralized and shared more or less equally among its various branches, whereas \u2018autocracy\u2019 is a form of governance in which power is centralized and where the role of the executive is rather pronounced. For instance, an autocrat in power would never concur with United States President Ronald Reagan\u2019s famous saying, \u201cGovernment is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem<\/em>\u201d (Reagan, 1981). Any \u201cautocrat\u201d would surely vouch for the opposite.<\/h5>\n
This article is an attempt to make a humble contribution to the debate on the LIO from the perspective of an \u201cautocratic\u201d state\u2015Belarus, as it has been assigned to this category by the West and as the author of this article happens to be Belarusian Foreign Minister. In this attempt I certainly do not claim to present the view of all \u201cautocracies\u201d; rather I offer my own vision based on the long experience of service as a senior public official in an \u201cautocratic\u201d country. Importantly, I do not attach any pejorative meaning to the terms \u2018democracy\u2019 and \u2018autocracy\u2019; they are used in this paper for convenience, simply to follow their wide use in foreign policy discourse.<\/em><\/h5>\n
https:\/\/www.mfa.gov.by\/en\/press\/smi\/b15977784d8c986d.html<\/strong><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vladimir V. Makei \/1958 \u2013\u00a0 2022 Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus from\u00a0 August 2012 to November 2022 Abstract It is commonly known that the Liberal International Order (LIO) emerged after World War II and reached its pinnacle in the 1990s when its key proponent\u2015the United States\u2015enjoyed a hegemonic position on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[863,472,3171,3170,3169,691,2520,408,43],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18751"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18751"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18762,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18751\/revisions\/18762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}