Where do you stand on the declining liberal order debate? More bad news for liberal international order

More on declining liberal international order I've dug up.

So if one guy can blow up the liberal international (institutional) order, than the order is not all that its cracked out to be. I've been making a similar argument in my book on Asian regional architecture, but from the angle that the liberal international order is more resilient precisely b/c it rests on norms and institutions.  Dan Drezner raises this point channeling a tweet presents the following.

As President Trump continues to wreak havoc, questions are being asked about the resiliency of the rules-based liberal order. Adam Elkus is a smart guy I follow on Twitter; maybe you should, too! But in response to much gnashing of teeth in the past week over this question, he tweeted the following: “If the Rules-Based Liberal Order can be blown up by one man within a 4-year time span then people can’t still unironically talk about institutions and the binding power of norms.”

If Elkus is correct, then it’s a pretty damaging blow to liberal institutionalists. It would turn out that all of the trappings of the postwar global order rested not on rules or norms, but on raw American power. Is he correct?

Foreign Affairs posted this interesting poll of foreign policy experts last year (May/June 2017) on whether they agreed/disagreed with the idea that the postwar liberal order is in "grave danger" The forecast looked gloomy. A year later, the prognosis is probably worse. There's a slew of new pieces discussing how Trump is destroying the liberal international order:

Dan Byman in Lawfare, stating that even if Trump exits after one term, the damage may not be easily reversible. In particular, the Trump years have signaled to the world the messiness of US domestic politics and the possibility that a substantial number of Americans may not want a liberal order.  As Byman argues, "A successor to Trump can try to renew these commitments but must do so with the world recognizing that a sizeable share of Americans oppose these traditional components of the world order and that a leader championing these Americans might again gain power." This was similar to Drezner's comments.

Robbert Kagan discusses the US as a rogue superpower that's not only rejected the liberal order, but is "milking it for narrow gain, rapidly destroying the trust and sense of common purpose that have held it together and prevented international chaos for seven decades."

Fareed Zakaria argued that the main headline of the US-North Korea summit last week was not the praise lavished onto Kim Jong Un, but the cancellation of military exercises and his allusion to reducing US troop commitment. China ended up being the big winner out of the summit.

In a CATO report, Patrick Porter finds policymakers nostalgic for the liberal order. Is it time to move on?

G7, Trade Disputes, and the Decline of Liberal Internationalism

“What worries me most is the fact that the rules-based international order is being challenged — quite surprisingly not by the usual suspects, but by its main architect and guarantor, the U.S.,” - European Council President Donald Tusk.

"When does a feud become a separation? A separation a divorce? When do arguments, sharp-tongued put-downs and perceived betrayal among allies become the collapse of the Western-dominated order that has ruled the world, under U.S. leadership, for the past seven decades?" - Karen DeYoung, Washington Post.

Washington Post June 10 2018 (Photo Credit: AFP)

These are the headlines underlining (or undermining) the 2018 G7 Summit in Canada,  capped by President Trump's early departure from the G7 and decision to withdraw US support joint statement. At the center of this debate is the Trump administration's threat to the international trade architecture as President Trump threatens to slap tariffs on goods - steel, aluminum, and automobiles in particular - of our closest allies in the name of national security. These allies include Canada, Germany, and Japan. Although there might be some "nuggets of truth" to Trump's claims on trade, most analysts believe the US will bear a significant economic cost in a trade war, translating into the loss of millions of jobs.  I don't have the economics or math background to prove to what extent Trump's trade policies would help or hurt the US economy, but if there's anything I learned from my IPE class in graduate school, it's that international trade always carries winners and losers. Steel and aluminum producers in the US may get their jobs back as Trump rises tariffs on foreign imported metals. But what about all the US manufacturers who rely on lower cost materials to make their products? What about the US pork and dairy farmer who will face retaliatory tariffs in Europe. The Washington Post had a great feature story on a sausage-making manufacturer in Ohio who will potentially lose millions of dollars b/c of Trumps steel tariffs. Here's an excerpt:

Bill Adler was invited last year to bid on a contract to make commercial sausage stuffers for a company that wanted to replace its Chinese supplier. The customer had just one non­negotiable demand: Match China’s price.

Adler, owner of metal-parts maker Stripmatic Products, thought he could. But even as he readied his proposal, talk of President Trump’s steel tariffs sent the price of Stripmatic’s main raw material soaring.

In April, with prices up nearly 50 percent from October and the first wave of tariffs in place, Adler’s bid failed. His costs were too high.

Today, instead of taking business from China, Adler worries about hanging onto the work he has. He hopes that the president’s tariffs are just a negotiating tactic.

Washing machines are another product in which trade tariffs, initially put in place to reduce competition from foreign competitors such as LG and Samsung, have backfired as those companies have continuously moved production to avoid tariffs, and ultimately moving production to the United States itself, complete with tax breaks and subsidies while creating US jobs. Here's a PBS video exploring if trade tariffs actually help US workers.

A looming trade war with China also stands to have the US losing billions, particular among US farmers as demonstrated in this clip from Vice News.

This is not only about trade. The rift at the G7 has broader implications for the liberal international order. The Trump administration has battled its allies on other issues including climate change (the US pulled out of the Paris Accords);  non-prolilferation (the US pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal). Some questioned whether Trump was looking after US or Russian interests as Trump called on the G7 to reinstate Russia as part of the G8. Max Boot headlined an article stating the US turned the G7 into the G6 vs. the G1.

In his PostEverything colum, Dan Drezner is circumspect about the possible long term damage of Trump's "bad-cop/bad-cop" approach to global affairs. Perhaps the most likely pathway linking Trump to a longer US withdrawal from the liberal order is increasing polarization in the US which promotes Trump's nationalist/anti-liberal policies. He ends the piece by stating. "Trump could get reelected. if that happens, the tombstone for the current order can safely be planted."

If there's any optimism, though, we need to remind ourselves that America has faced worse, and has tended to rebound from tumultuous periods (i.e. Civil War in the 1860s, the 1930s depression, riots of the 1960s). There is always recourse to head back to the political center - or return to some consensus. 

Strategic Narratives

I've been thinking a lot about foreign policy narratives - and in particular the rise of "restraint" and the decline of "liberal internationalism" as dominant narratives. Beyond U.S. foreign policy, however, one might consider global narratives. A piece in Foreign Affairs by Ian Bremmer and Joe Kennedy III gets at this:

Today, however, non-Western powers are gaining political and economic influence, and no longer feel that the global architecture created in the late 1940s fits their purposes and their ambitions. They’re right. But in response, the Trump administration seems content to let the old order collapse—and even help accelerate that process—while seeming unwilling to use American power to create a new and better one.

In a slightly different twist on how narratives influence foreign policy - more at the domestic than the grand strategy level -  CSBA published a piece on how authoritarian states have used information warfare as a means to alter narratives within domestic politics. The title is "Countering Comprehensive Coercion: Competitive Strategies Against Authoritarian Political Warfare."

And in a  piece by Aaron Friedberg on visions of international order, the author gives much more attention to ideas and ideology. Friedberg writes:

If they wish to respond effectively to these new realities, American and allied policymakers cannot afford to downplay the ideological dimension in their own strategy. Beijing’s obsessive desire to squelch dissent, block the inward flow of unfavourable news and discredit ‘so-called universal values’ bespeaks an insecurity that is, in itself, a form of strategic vulnerability. China’s rulers clearly believe the ideological realm to be a crucially important domain of competition, one that they would be only too happy to see the United States and the other Western nations ignore or abandon....


... Last but not least, the experience of the past century suggests that, if America’s leaders are serious about mobilising and sustaining the bureaucratic focus, domestic political support and economic resources necessary to wage a protracted strategic competition against a powerful and determined rival, they are going to have to cast the challenge, at least in part, in ideological terms. Geopolitical abstractions and economic statistics may be important, but historically what has moved and motivated the American people is a recognition that the principles on which their system is founded are under threat. There is an undeniable risk here of fear-mongering and overreaction, but at this point excessive caution and a continuing refusal to face facts may be an even greater danger. What is needed instead is a sober assessment of the challenge in all its dimensions, a clear articulation of the measures necessary to meet it, and leaders in Congress, the executive branch and the private sector who are capable of conveying both to the public.

The attention given to ideology leaves the door wide open for research on narratives.