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After the Liberal International Order

Jul 6, 2020 Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

If Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump in November, the question he will face is not whether to restore the liberal international order. It is whether the US can work with an inner core of allies to promote democracy and human rights while cooperating with a broader set of states to manage the rules-based international institutions needed to face transnational threats.

CAMBRIDGE – Many analysts argue that the liberal international order ended with the rise of China and the election of US President Donald Trump. But if Joe Biden defeats Trump in November’s election, should he try to revive it? Probably not, but he must replace it.

Critics correctly point out that the American order after 1945 was neither global nor always very liberal. It left out more than half the world (the Soviet bloc and China) and included many authoritarian states. American hegemony was always exaggerated. Nonetheless, the most powerful country must lead in creating global public goods, or they will not be provided – and Americans will suffer.

The current pandemic is a case in point. A realistic goal for a Biden administration should be to establish rules-based international institutions with different membership for different issues.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 30 Comments on this article

Janos Nagy Jul 13, 2020

Anyone thinks the solution is socialism needs to understand how the economic system works under the socialist communist elites.
The globalist left and right destroyed the economic rights and economic democracy of the people.
To fix it with socialism is just laughable.
But go ahead try it if you really want to know what is it to be poor .
Possible you will not have a country for long.
The democrats using the socialist left as a Trojan horse but as you know it will not be pretty when if they let the ones inside to go out and do what they only know how to do.
That is to take from one to give it to the one they can control and who will vote for them.
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Gary Borg Jul 12, 2020

Nye speaks as if economic decoupling is a bad thing. I doubt that. As for the internet, all the evidence we have over many years now indicates that its presence -- overall -- is having an enormously damaging effect on individual users, societies and nations. Its main purpose, greatly amplified by the inevitable algorithms that drive traffic, is to stir up unreasoning hatred and tribalism, building on the basic fact of human nature that we are most motivated by negative emotions. The urgently necessary thing to do at this point would be to ban general public access to the internet, which should be strictly confined to its original purpose linking research institutions.
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Andrés Galia Jul 12, 2020

It makes me laugh when I hear somebody defending the "liberal values" when in the name of those "values" the US has supported dictators like Marcos, Ströessner, Pinochet, EL Sissi, Banzer, Somoza, Batista and many others, just because they were functional to their interests, and entities like the United Fruit. Give me a break please!
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Meir Stieglitz Jul 9, 2020

How is “cooperating with a broader set of states to manage the rules-based international institutions needed to face transnational threats” to be managed:

In 1989, as part of constituting the historically-relevant principles of the Universalism system-of-thought, I defined Global Task so: a task is considered global when it fulfils four (and a half) necessary conditions:

1. Performing the task is necessary to confront and solve a situation which is posing a grave (potentially existential) danger and is recognized as common, and relatively equal, by the majority of the significant actors in world politics.

2. In the context of world order, the danger confronted must be recognized by all the relevant (necessary for the solution) actors as surpassing the Survival Predicament (as defined by the Realist World View).

3. The task cannot be performed and the problem can’t be solved by the actions of some actors against others.

4. The completion of the task will not result in a radically more privileged relative position for some of the main global actors.

5. Accommodating but not necessary: the completion of the task necessitates the (relative) participation of all the major actors. The chances of a stable and long-term solution are hindered if actions and contribution are limited to few of the major actors (“free-riders” problem).
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gamaliel enriquez Jul 7, 2020

“True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

I first met Joseph S. Nye Jr at the World Affairs Council in San Francisco in 2004, where I had been doing an internship. I heard him speak very eloquently about a book he had recently published called Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics. As a matter of fact, I still have my autographed copy in my bookshelf. His book as his article After the Liberal International Order has some great points. Yet for me the fundamental question is why would US allies work with the United States to “promote democracy and human rights'' or “manage the rules-based international institutions needed to face transnational threats” when Washington’s policies on all of these fronts has been intentionally hypocritical both domestically and internationally for decades and some would argue even since the birth of the United States? We live in an era where within the first three decades of the XXI the United States has lost a considerable amount of both the “hard power” and “soft power that Joseph S. Nye Jr references throughout his book since it was published in 2004.

At the international level, for example, during the first decade of the XXI under Bush II two fraudulent wars -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- were waged causing taxpayers trillions ( I won’t even mention the death of thousands and millions of Americans and Iraqis who continue to suffer to this day ). To say nothing of the half dozen or so additional wars waged under Obama which are also fraudulent in the Middle East and Africa. In fact, how many wars has the United States actually won since WWII and how many of those were not based on lies?

At the domestic level, as the first decade of the XXI came to a close the economic crash of 2008 caused by the deregulation of Wall Street starting with the repeal of the Glass Stegall Act under Clinton in the late 1990s essentially turned Wall Street into the Las Vegas Strip for the 1%; casinos where Goldman Sachs and friends could legally rape and pillage the Middle Class and future generations of Americans. When the world economy crashed because Wall Street had essentially turned into the Wild Wild West of finance both Bush II and Obama bailed out Wall Street and not Main Street. In other words, socialism for the wealthy and unfettered capitalism for the rest of us. The consequences of these consciousness decisions-- under a both Republican and Democratic administration -- was to virtually eliminate the Middle Class and thus create economic and political extremes which created fertile ground for Trump; America’s very own Neo Fascist President.

Vice President Joe Biden on both foreign and domestic policy has been nothing more than a salesperson for the top 1%. It was Joe Biden’s job to move forward a neoliberal agenda both abroad and at home which is nothing more that an agenda of rape, theft, destruction which overwhelmingly affects people of color and poor white folks in exchange for campaign funds from the top 1%. This neoliberal agenda is packaged and promoted as “democracy” and “human rights” that Joseph S. Nye Jr ( a different type of salesperson for the 1% ) references in his article.

On foreign policy not only did Biden vote for Iraq, he was Bush II’s partner in building the case to invade Iraq. And domestically with regard to civil rights in 1987, Joe Biden claimed he marched in the civil rights movement. According to Democracy Now! Senator Joe Biden said “when I was 17 years old, like many of you, I participated in sit-ins to desegregate the restaurants and movie houses of Wilmington, Delaware. … I came out of the civil rights movement. I was one of those guys that sat in and marched and all that stuff.” However, a few months later, Biden disavowed the claim, right before dropping out of the presidential race. Decades later, during the Obama era, and more recently on the campaign trail, he started making the same claims again.

Branko Marcetic, author of “Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden” says that:

“The other interesting thing about his, you know, kind of claim to civil rights activism and support from the black community is, in the '80s, Biden becomes the leading voice, or one of the leading voices. He tours with the Democratic Leadership Council, that corporate-funded, conservative group among the Democrats — it was later chaired by Bill Clinton — that is trying to push the party to the right, made up mostly of white, conservative, Southern men. And he joins them. You know, Delaware is a border state, and he has — he thinks that the U.S. — that the Democratic Party needs to move closer to where this white, conservative South is. And he starts touring around, and he says, you know, “The middle class is under attack. And the problem is that the middle class is not one of these special interests or one of these interest groups.” And what he means by that is not large corporations and their lobbyists and all the different people that are trying to push their interests in the halls of power. What he is referring to there is, you know, African Americans, Latinos, LGBTQ community, labor, to some extent, as well, poor people. He is saying that these traditional constituencies of the Democratic Party are not the thing that the Democrats need to cater to anymore. They need to try and win over that sort of imagined Reagan voter, the conservative voter. And, you know, he tours through the South saying this. In some cases, in Alabama, for example, he drops a line that he usually brings up about his civil rights activism and about Bull Connor brutalizing black protesters during the 1960s. He drops that line because he feels like it'll be — you know, probably won’t go down well in that audience.

And he even says, you know — at a time when Bernie Sanders, for example, was supporting the Rainbow Coalition and Jesse Jackson candidacy, Biden was expressly against that. He stood against it. He says at a 1986 NAACP convention, he says — and again, I’m paraphrasing — “You can try and put the Rainbow Coalition, African Americans, Hispanics, poor whites, gays, against the middle class.” And then, when he runs in 1987, he says, basically — at one point he rules Jesse Jackson out as running mate, which no one had done. It was a very unusual thing to do, unprecedented thing to do. But he saw Jesse Jackson similar to how Sanders is now this surging economic populist, really trying to repeat that Rainbow Coalition strategy. Biden viewed that as a threat to where he wanted the party to go.
So, it’s — yeah, it’s one of these historical ironies that despite a career of really taking black support for granted and really working against their interests — you know, we haven’t even talked about his attempts to cut Social Security and Medicare, programs that African Americans support in the highest numbers and that an overwhelming amount of African Americans rely on to live on past retirement, much more so than other demographic groups. But he really, despite taking black support for granted, the fact that he is still surviving and his primary actually thriving because of black support, I think, speaks to how frightened people are and how potent both this establishment consolidation that we’ve seen in the last few days has been, but also this media narrative of electability, which I think, and I argue in the book, is not true at all and is actually repeating the mistake of 2016...”

Which means that if Biden wins we will likely get four more years of a neoliberal agenda similar to Obama which is how we got Trump in the first place. So that means that if we do get Biden then Republicans will put forward someone that will want us to wish for Trump just as some wish for Bush. The whole political spectrum under neo-liberalism has shifted to the right and Vice President Joe Biden has led that shift for decades both domestically and internationally . How in the world then can Vice President Joe Biden be trusted by domestic or international allies to “promote democracy and human rights while cooperating with a broader set of states to manage the rules-based international institutions needed to face transnational threats'' when Joe Biden is the quintessential hypocritical face of the American Empire which is not significantly different from the raw face of American Empire epitomized by Trump's neo-fascist, racist, xenophobic, nationalist sales pitch to his base. At the end of the day both are salesmen for the 1 % without an honest bone in their body. Absolutely no moral courage. Two sides of the same political coin. The illusion of choice. The difference is in means not in ends. An unprecedented number of humanity at home and abroad is woke to this reality.
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Jack Frisch Jul 7, 2020

Another worthwhile international cause would be the elimination of tax havens and agreement on information-sharing regarding see-through capital ownership that enabled progressive capital taxes a la Piketty. Let’s not continue to ignore issues of wealth and income distribution.
- Andrés Galia Jul 12, 2020
  
  Oh no, that would go against the "liberal values"!
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- Mia Mikic Jul 12, 2020
  
  I think in terms of priorities an international agreement on tax to replace a century-old norms should take a much higher place.
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Michael Public Jul 7, 2020

'Liberal values' was often just a mask for strip mining other nations. Inside the borders, the US has mostly upheld liberal values - outside, it has acted more like a predator than anything - for example, the entire Enron business was built on bullying other nations into onerous energy contracts they did not want at prices they could not afford. This practice did not die with Enron - it just became harder to execute because the rest of the World wised up to the vicious practices of US corporations (often supported by the US army and government officials). The same has applied to the minerals and technology industries. This is a major reason why stronger countries like China and India have made it very, very difficult for foreign companies, from the US in particular, to operate within their borders.
- Andrés Galia Jul 12, 2020
  
  Well said, that is the real meaning of "liberal values".
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Michael Public Jul 7, 2020

"as with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014". A high 90% of the population of Crimea supported (and support) joining Russia. No force was used. If you are referring to 'a threat of force' then you enter the world of the hypothetical argument. This is a classical situation of 'liberal world order' overstepping it mark. Russia is a country with a lot wrong with it, and who regularly engages in empire building and dirty tricks, but Crimea does not appear to be one of those things.
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John Navas Jul 7, 2020

I disagree. Liberal democracies are desperate for the USA to return to sanity. The only real danger is that Biden will be too timid and slow. The last thing the world needs in another dithering Obama. What we need is a strong, can-do Secretary of State (and Ambassador to the U.N.). I think Susan Rice would be a great V.P., but I think she would otherwise be a great Secretary of State!
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j. von Hettlingen Jul 6, 2020

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. says if Joe Biden beats Trump in November, the pressing issue “he will face is not whether to restore the liberal international order,” which analysts maintain, came to an end with China’s rise and Trump’s election in 2016. So if Biden wins, he should not try to “revive” the order, but to “replace” it, by working “with an inner core of allies to promote democracy and human rights while cooperating with a broader set of states to manage the rules-based international institutions.”
The author joins the chorus of critics, who point out that the US-led post-war order “was neither global nor always very liberal. It left out more than half the world (the Soviet bloc and China) and included many authoritarian states.” He also says “American hegemony was always exaggerated,” which no doubt sparks an emotional debate at home. While Trump’s wrecking ball to the international order has made it easier for critics to argue the case, but America’s global standing as the world’s only military superpower, still holds true.
In this regard, “the most powerful country must lead in creating global public goods, or they will not be provided – and Americans will suffer.” According to the author, threats such as climate change, pandemics, cyber-attacks, terrorism, and economic instability, know no border. The whole world has to cooperate, because “no country can manage them alone.” This prompts nationalists to loathe “ecological interdependence,” because it poses “an insurmountable obstacle to sovereignty.”
Although “economic globalization” has suffered setbacks in recent years, “environmental globalization will continue, because it obeys the laws of biology and physics, not the logic of contemporary geopolitics.” With the international community coming together, soft power has a crucial role to play, because “it is not enough to think of exercising power over others. We must also think in terms of exercising power with others,” and get others to do what they otherwise would not.
It explains why it is important to ensure that multilateral agreements and international institutions – the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization – are being upheld.
According to the author, the US and China “have cooperated despite ideological differences,” since Richard Nixon met Mao Zedong in 1972. “The difficult question for Biden will be whether the US and China can cooperate in producing global public goods while competing in the traditional areas of great power rivalry.” Countries do not need to be “friends” to get meaningful things - as mentioned above - done. But the US-China strategic competition has become hostile, that its enmity is barely kept under control, which could disrupt the world and forestall the prospect of global responses to global threats.
Another crucial issue relates to cyberspace, whose governance is still under construction. What makes regulating the cyberspace difficult is the absence of a single forum or an international organisation that is responsible for regulating its activities. It is “partly transnational, but also subject to sovereign government controls. The Internet is already partly fragmented. Norms regarding free speech and privacy on the Internet can be developed among an inner circle of democracies, but will not be observed by authoritarian states.”
The author believes authoritarian regimes accept rules that bar “tampering with the Internet’s basic structure,” as suggested by the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace, because they want no disruption to “connectivity.” However if “they use proxies for information warfare or to interfere in elections….norms will have to be reinforced by rules such as those the US and the Soviet Union negotiated during the Cold War…. to limit the escalation of incidents at sea. The US and like-minded states will have to announce the norms they intend to uphold, and deterrence will be necessary.”
It does not hurt to insist on “liberal values in cyberspace,” nor does it constitute an “unilateral US disarmament.” If applied correctly, the US could use its “soft power of open persuasion and the hard power of covert information warfare, in which case it would retaliate.”
Although the author says “overt programs and broadcasts by Russia and China would be allowed, but that would not be true for covert coordinated behavior such as manipulation of social media.” The problem the West faces is that its open society is vulnerable to malign cyber activities by rogue actors. China and Russia had bolstered their Internet censorship powers. As a country that upholds the rule of law, the US honours constitutional rights of its citizens, who are more exposed to the world than Chinese and Russians do.
Ordinary Americans may be far weary, and the "public wants to avoid military interventions, but not to withdraw from alliances or multilateral cooperation. And the public still cares about values."
On these premises Joe Biden has a chance of bringing the US back to the international fold, with the blessing of his voters.
- Robert Wolff Jul 7, 2020
  
  Totally agree. I am an aficionado of Max Weber (conflict management for high level diplomats), but the conflict should NOT trend as it is today to become a War between Socialism and Capitalism as the best Ideologies for the 'Superiority of the State', only into an agreement-to-agree that each State is sovereign.
  
  The sovereignty of the State is an issue in the US and Russia and Iran and China, and many other nations, but none is negotiating a "Sovereignty Deal" with borders and respect for the sovereignty of the other nations. All are fighting for control over the international money system, to prefer benefit to their own citizens in accordance with the current "New World Order" controlled by Money.
  
  If the primary goal of both Chinese Elites and American Elites is to decisively rule, based on the superiority of their institutions and philosophy and ideology over the "other", then the 'Thucydides Trap' will become the precursor to War between the US and China.
  
  I am certainly not noticing any popular movement to stop the do-or-die confrontation between China and the US and Russia and Europe, including the survival of their respective production and currencies, like in the Bretton Woods Agreement.
  
  In fact, Populism in Europe and China and the US are all exacerbating the confrontation over socio-economic values, and none wants to negotiate the values of their State currencies/cultures to mollify the current economic warfare, or stop the confrontations from becoming "Hot Wars".
  
  "If we do not learn the lessons of history then we are bound to repeat them," stupid as that seems.
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Hayne Crum Jul 6, 2020

Since when does the US and Europe have the right to impose our ethical standards on the rest of the world? Are we still trying to colonize with our culture? I do believe in freedom and democracy, but if I were Chinese I would look at it as a new effort to take over their culture. The same is true if I were Russian or even from any of the Muslim dominated countries. They have different laws and different standards. Western civilizations standards do not fit.
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Robert Wolff Jul 6, 2020

What is clear to me is that Neoliberalism (profit-only motive for corporations per Milton Friedman) has destroyed the political and economic power of the Middle Class – therefore we have lost our [Capitalist] Democracy. We are controlled by a financial elite oligarchy, and the strongest contender against it is now the Left. The Middle is laid flat. The Middle Class is now weaker than both the socialist left and the elitist financial oligarchy (the criterion of Aristotle for the failure of Democracy).

We cannot blame China for the loss of American Democracy; it is clearly the result of Globalism/Neoliberalism which has recreated America as a Plutocratic Oligarchy. Only the Left Movement has a chance of upending this oligarchy. The most likely scenario appears to be a Left Socialist takeover. That’s the “Upcoming Ride”.

Don’t like it but it is the fault of a weak Middle Class that we tolerated Globalism/Neoliberalism for too long, and the Middle Class is now buried by it (politically and economically). I find it impossible, based on what I read, to conclude that this future is avoidable.
- lewis guignard Jul 7, 2020
  
  It is not capitalism which is the problem. Capitalism has brought the world's poor out of poverty. The problem, to the extent there is one, is rent-seeking. More and larger government will lead only to more and larger arrangements with corporations at the expense of the people. - An example would be H. Biden and Burisma. This case is an example of what happens. The reason it happens is twofold: lack of morality in individuals and governments which are too powerful.
  
  The article, and those agreeing with it, make the mistake, intentional or otherwise, of believing government will be benevolent in its actions, because they think it should. Hardly.
  
  We have government because people are not civilized enough to live without it. We fear government for the same reason.
  
  The US Constitution was an exercise in trying to limit government's power and reach. We should seek to return to that mindset.
  - Stephen Liebbe Jul 11, 2020
    
    The constitution was an effort to increase government's power and reach. Do not ignore the Confederation that came before.
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David Lentz Jul 6, 2020

“ whether the US can work with an inner core of allies to promote democracy and human rights "
How does George Floyd feel about human rights in America?
Of course could go on many books have been written
The American elite have the power and they say no accountability for the elite and no accountability for the police and military as they serve the elite
So all nice words aside America is an oligarchy like Russia or Ukraine
But have the reserve currency
But now the climate apocalypse is coming actually it’s already started
So enjoy the drama because it will be real
Words will be useless
And ironically the police and military too
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Godfree Roberts Jul 6, 2020

"whether the US can work with an inner core of allies to promote democracy and human rights "

Apart from rhetorical appeals, the US and its inner core of allies have done everything in their power to undermine democracy and human rights around the globe.

Why should sane human beings expect them to 'promote' the very values they have so thoroughly destroyed?
- Robert Wolff Jul 6, 2020
  
  The Great Destroyer of American Democracy is the export of US jobs to China for higher profits from cheaper labor. As long as "profits only" is the goal of US multinational corporations, they will not repatriate their manufacturing operations to the US from China.
  
  Trump's policy was to use the power of the Presidency to lure and extort multinationals to return their jobs to Americans. He used tax breaks and tariffs and still they will not come back for the good of American Democracy/Middle Class workers.
  
  When I voted for Trump I knew We were on the verge of Socialism. The alternative to Trump's policies (to save American Capitalism and Democracy) was to place excessive taxes on the rich who were making their profits off foreign production and those (banks and lenders of Dollars to encourage and make profits off foreign production/investments.
  
  Trump's policies have failed, as I knew they very well could, because of the power of the neoliberal financial elites in America to refuse his requests for the repatriation of their investments to America. They have refused, and our trade deficit with China and government deficits to subsidize Americans in lieu of domestic production are larger than they ever have been.
  
  My next vote, and I don't blame it on Trump for the failure of his policies, but on US international investors' failure to repatriate their investments to America to serve American workers, will be for Biden.
  
  Trump did his best. It is now time to give the Left Socialists power in America. The only way for Democracy in America to survive now is to tax overseas profits of US investors to subsidize the survival of the Democratic American Government.
  
  Sorry, but this is my only rational conclusion today.
  - lewis guignard Jul 7, 2020
    
    Dear Mr. Wolff, I'm sorry you feel that way about Trump. But a vote for Biden is a vote for the administrative state, of which the left is already the largest stockholder. It is also a vote for Obama, as he will control who Biden places in positions of power. Have no fear, a vote for Biden is a vote for the end of the US as it has been, and is instead a vote for a totalitarian future.
    - Robert Wolff Jul 7, 2020
      
      The practical realities of handling the current crises favor professionalism and expertise; demagoguery and incompetence are readily exposed.
      
      Our need for a competent administration and a functional administrative state in times of crisis was never more apparent than now.
      
      A competent administrative state is not necessarily totalitarian (repressive) - it can simply exhibit competence that actually resolves social, political and economic problems rather than causing them.
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  - Ryan Miller Jul 7, 2020
    
    For all your eloquence, Robert, it is mystifying that you voted for Trump because we were on the "verge of socialism" (which was true then and now) but because your desired result wasn't achieved in only 3.5 years you think it's time to hand the reins over to leftist socialists? Trump is the first President to even attempt the repatriation of overseas jobs back to the U.S., and much of his agenda has been stalled due to constant opposition and alternative developments. Ironically, coronavirus itself may nudge things in the direction you want, but if nothing else this further vindicates Trump's position so far. Democrats have never addressed your concern and they won't no matter how far left the party tilts. If you think high taxes will solve this issue then it's a wonder how you ever decided to deviate from socialist principles at all - you clearly are more aligned with leftist ideals. If I'm wrong, I urge you to think through the long-term consequences of an unfettered leftist agenda, including but not limited to the overseas jobs issue. There are, after all, many other issues with which to contend.
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