>Do critics of the liberal international order have any alternatives in mind?
Yes, it's called "not dying in a nuclear apocalypse so Ukraine can have a puppet government taking orders from Washington instead of Moscow. Details are kinda unimportant when dealing with an existential threat of that scale.
“NATO rapidly expanded throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Walt, Mearsheimer, Chomsky, and Robinson regard this as a ‘fateful mistake’.”
They’re in good company:
“[B]luntly stated…expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking … ” - George F. Kennan, “A Fateful Error,” New York Times, 05 Feb 1997.
His was hardly the only warning. US and NATO leaders were warned repeatedly by their own advisors and experts that their expansion plans would be perceived as an existential threat to Russia, but that didn’t stop them. NATO expansion hasn’t made the world or even Europe more secure; it’s only moved us closer to another World War. The liberal West knew full well it was provoking an inevitable Russian response, and that illustrates the problem with the liberal or rules-based order: despite claims to the contrary, security isn’t its primary concern.
. . .without offering a rebuttal to his prescient ‘realist’ warning. NATO expansion - particularly the threat of Ukraine’s accession - was an avoidable provocation; the war that followed has damaged and may have even doomed the liberal international order. It’s not the realists who are bringing down the liberal international order; the liberalists are doing it themselves.
"Ukraine wants to be part of the West, and Putin won’t allow it. This is because he knows his kleptocratic petro-dictatorship isn’t a political or economic model that any free people want to emulate. The only way for Russia to retain its sphere of influence—and for Putin to suppress any domestic opposition—is through force."
The idea that someone could look at the West today and think to themselves, "ah yes, these societies are doing so well and are so magnetically attractive that their mere existence (without any explicit policy or action) is an existential threat to rivals" is just wild to me.
As for the case of Ukraine specifically, even Russia's opposition was not okay, at all, with Ukraine joining NATO. Also, when Clinton started the road to NATO expansion, tons of old hand Cold War foreign policy people protested and said that it would cause something exactly like this.
The moment you see statement like “<country> wants <this>” you know you’re being manipulated and lied to. There is no single will anywhere and especially in Ukraine, a patchwork of different nationalities, customs and languages. Part of the Ukraine wants this, another that, and the third - something else. This whole essay fits Atlantic or Foreign Affairs magazine - reinforcement of narrative regardless of the reality. Urgh, just want to vomit from all this tedious crap.
All those death squads trained by the Great ole US of A were clearly in the altruistic interests of world peace. Just because you write a few hundred words doesn't mean you've written anything of value.
I think it’s worthwhile to understand a perspective even if we don’t agree with it. And I think it’s reasonable to address the question Matt asks,
“Do critics of the liberal international order have any alternatives in mind?”
We did: don’t provoke potential adversaries or threaten their security. The collective west did just the opposite and broke the liberal international order. It’s a bit silly to be asking for alternatives to breaking that which you’ve already broken.
I don’t know what the future holds, but I think the liberal international order may be ending, and I think it’s the collective west that may be ending it.
"As the United States withdraws from institutions like NATO and diminishes its role in global security arrangements, we’ll see if the result is a safer, freer, and more stable world." It's not going to be a freer, safer more stable world. It's not the US withdrawing from 'security arrangements' that's the problem. It's that the very institutions and conventions that were developed to assure a safer world are being ignored and weakened. With the US leading the dismantling of them.
An excellent essay.
The likes of Mearsheimer and Chomsky excuse "great power" aggression by Russia, whatever their platitudes.
>Do critics of the liberal international order have any alternatives in mind?
Yes, it's called "not dying in a nuclear apocalypse so Ukraine can have a puppet government taking orders from Washington instead of Moscow. Details are kinda unimportant when dealing with an existential threat of that scale.
“NATO rapidly expanded throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Walt, Mearsheimer, Chomsky, and Robinson regard this as a ‘fateful mistake’.”
They’re in good company:
“[B]luntly stated…expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking … ” - George F. Kennan, “A Fateful Error,” New York Times, 05 Feb 1997.
His was hardly the only warning. US and NATO leaders were warned repeatedly by their own advisors and experts that their expansion plans would be perceived as an existential threat to Russia, but that didn’t stop them. NATO expansion hasn’t made the world or even Europe more secure; it’s only moved us closer to another World War. The liberal West knew full well it was provoking an inevitable Russian response, and that illustrates the problem with the liberal or rules-based order: despite claims to the contrary, security isn’t its primary concern.
I was quoting Kennan (see the footnote).
. . .without offering a rebuttal to his prescient ‘realist’ warning. NATO expansion - particularly the threat of Ukraine’s accession - was an avoidable provocation; the war that followed has damaged and may have even doomed the liberal international order. It’s not the realists who are bringing down the liberal international order; the liberalists are doing it themselves.
"Ukraine wants to be part of the West, and Putin won’t allow it. This is because he knows his kleptocratic petro-dictatorship isn’t a political or economic model that any free people want to emulate. The only way for Russia to retain its sphere of influence—and for Putin to suppress any domestic opposition—is through force."
The idea that someone could look at the West today and think to themselves, "ah yes, these societies are doing so well and are so magnetically attractive that their mere existence (without any explicit policy or action) is an existential threat to rivals" is just wild to me.
As for the case of Ukraine specifically, even Russia's opposition was not okay, at all, with Ukraine joining NATO. Also, when Clinton started the road to NATO expansion, tons of old hand Cold War foreign policy people protested and said that it would cause something exactly like this.
The moment you see statement like “<country> wants <this>” you know you’re being manipulated and lied to. There is no single will anywhere and especially in Ukraine, a patchwork of different nationalities, customs and languages. Part of the Ukraine wants this, another that, and the third - something else. This whole essay fits Atlantic or Foreign Affairs magazine - reinforcement of narrative regardless of the reality. Urgh, just want to vomit from all this tedious crap.
All those death squads trained by the Great ole US of A were clearly in the altruistic interests of world peace. Just because you write a few hundred words doesn't mean you've written anything of value.
I think it’s worthwhile to understand a perspective even if we don’t agree with it. And I think it’s reasonable to address the question Matt asks,
“Do critics of the liberal international order have any alternatives in mind?”
We did: don’t provoke potential adversaries or threaten their security. The collective west did just the opposite and broke the liberal international order. It’s a bit silly to be asking for alternatives to breaking that which you’ve already broken.
I don’t know what the future holds, but I think the liberal international order may be ending, and I think it’s the collective west that may be ending it.
"As the United States withdraws from institutions like NATO and diminishes its role in global security arrangements, we’ll see if the result is a safer, freer, and more stable world." It's not going to be a freer, safer more stable world. It's not the US withdrawing from 'security arrangements' that's the problem. It's that the very institutions and conventions that were developed to assure a safer world are being ignored and weakened. With the US leading the dismantling of them.