Some Might Have Taken For Granted The Liberal World Order of Postwar Decades. Until Donald Trump Trashed It

Some might have taken the liberal world order for granted until Donald Trump challenged it. The 2020 US election between two opposing views could decide the fate of the liberal world order. Historically, US elections have impacted global dynamics and the 2020 vote during a pandemic may be uniquely decisive for the international order.

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Some Might Have Taken For Granted The Liberal World Order of Postwar Decades. Until Donald Trump Trashed It

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Some might have taken for granted the liberal world order of postwar

decades. Until Donald Trump trashed it.

Valerio Alfonso Bruno

The pre-eminent theorist of liberal internationalism, from its origins to its
prospects, G John Ikenberry, recently wrote that spring 2020 might well be
considered by historians as the end of the ‘liberal world order’—the moment
‘when the United States and its allies, facing the gravest public health threat
and economic catastrophe of the postwar era, could not even agree on a
simple communiqué of common cause’. For Ikenberry, ‘the chaos of the
coronavirus pandemic engulfing the world these days is only exposing and
accelerating what was already happening for years. On public health, trade,
human rights, and the environment, governments seem to have lost faith in
the value of working together.’

Vittorio Emanuele Parsi

May November 2020 then represent the last call for the liberal world order? In
recent history, the elections of the president of the United States have
represented decisive moments, not only for the country but for the dynamics
of the international order tout court. Coming in the middle of a pandemic and
counterposing two incompatible Weltanschauungen, the 2020 election may be
of unprecedented decisiveness.
Long-term balance
The liberal world order was built around a set of principles and institutions
governing the international system in the aftermath of World War II. It was
based on US leadership and operated through five core institutions: the
United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World
Trade Organization and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

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For all its limits and weaknesses, during the cold war it granted economic
development and security to a significant part of the world. ‘Free-market’
societies, conditioned by strong welfare policies, produced a long-term, if
fragile, balance between economic competition and social cohesion.

The dynamic worked well until the 1980s. Thereafter, the foresight required to
preserve such a fragile balance—based on postwar hindsight—gradually
vanished. Liberal premises, such as equality of opportunity, and liberal
promises, of a more equal, peaceful and wealthy world, became subverted by
regressively ideological economics. A neoliberal world order has almost
replaced the liberal one.