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Liberal order is not embodied in a fixed set of principles or practices. Instead, aspects of the liberal vision have made appearances in various combinations and changing ways over the last century. This chapter argues that it is possible to identify three versions of liberal order. The first is associated with the ideas of Woodrow Wilson; the second is the liberal internationalism of the post-1945 decades; and the third version is a sort of post-hegemonic liberal internationalism that has only partially appeared and whose full shape and logic is still uncertain. The chapter develops a set of dimensions that allow for identifying different logics of liberal order and identify variables that will shape the movement from liberal internationalism 2.0 to 3.0.

The current liberal order is fading and has failed to deliver on some of its most fundamental promises. Yet, rather than taking flight from liberal order, this book suggests that liberal orders in the past always have been historically constituted and institutionally contested. Although liberal order's current crisis is not disputed, it suggests that the crisis has partly been constituted by the specific account of liberal order offered by ‘new liberalism’, which in its quest for a scientific method has shorn liberalism — and with it liberal order — of its critical and normative potential. The observation places liberal order's alleged crisis in a new light, where attention to liberal values and ordering practices invite consideration of those aspects of liberal order that are resilient and enduring.

This chapter focuses on the integrative force of resilient liberal practices. It acknowledges that liberal order is in crisis, but asserts that liberal internationalism's permanent crisis is a source of renewal and transformation in liberal order. A definition of liberal internationalism is put forward that carefully avoids constructing reified notions of liberal internationalism associated with American power. The chapter points to the need to focus on social practices to see the potential of liberal order's adaptation and renewal, and suggests that, although the decline of American power indeed may be seen from a narrow perspective to threaten liberal order, from a wider and deeper conceptual historical perspective, liberal practices may be why the order has not yet been replaced.

One of the distinctive features of the idea of an Anglosphere has been a particular view of world order, based on liberal principles of free movement of goods, capital and people, representative government, and the rule of law, which requires a powerful state or coalition of states to uphold and enforce them. This chapter charts the roots as well as the limits of this conception in the period of British ascendancy in the nineteenth century, and how significant elements of the political class in both Britain and the United States in the twentieth century came to see the desirability of cooperation between the English-speaking nations to preserve that order against challengers. This cooperation was most clearly realised in the Second World War. The post-war construction of a new liberal world order was achieved under the leadership of the United States, with Britain playing a largely supportive but secondary role. Cooperation between Britain and the US flourished during the Cold War, particularly in the military and intelligence fields, and this became the institutional core of the ‘special relationship’. The period since the end of the Cold War has seen new challenges emerge both externally and internally to the Anglo-American worldview.

This chapter examines Woodrow Wilson's comprehensive program for world order that came to constitute the foundation of liberal democratic internationalism, also known as Wilsonianism. Wilson's policy, designed “to make the world safe for democracy,” was not a radical departure from traditional American national security policy. His proposals to restructure world politics on the basis of a liberal world order were consistent with basic propositions of past American foreign policy. The chapter first considers the theory and practice underlying Wilsonianism before discussing the dilemma of Wilson's policy in Europe. It also explores the virtues of Wilsonianism for the postwar world, such as its acknowledgment of the fundamental political importance of nationalism. Finally, it emphasizes the resurgence of Wilsonianism in American foreign policy in the aftermath of World War II.

This chapter examines Franklin D. Roosevelt's liberal democratic internationalism and his efforts to assure American national security by constructing a stable world order based on the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which the United States sought to globalize in the aftermath of the Axis defeat in World War II. It first considers how FDR infused American liberalism with a healthy dose of realism about the appropriateness of democracy for other countries in the aftermath of World War II before discussing anti-imperialism as a component of American foreign policy. It also explores the United States's promotion of democracy and pursuit of a liberal world order as a means of countering Soviet imperialism. It argues that liberal democratic internationalism has been the American way of practicing balance-of-power politics in world affairs, and that the dominant logic of American foreign policy was dictated by concerns for national security.

This chapter considers various accounts offered for the challenges confronting liberal international order today, and finds them wanting. It is argued that the most militarily aggressive and revisionist states over the thirty years since the end of the Cold War have been the status quo states of the West, not ‘emerging powers’ such as Russia or China. It is Western states that have repeatedly used force to reshape the international order as well as adapting international organisation to suit their new humanitarian outlook. This cuts against the expectations of International Relations theory regarding the origin of revisionist challenges to international order, and requires explanation. As this new form of liberal revisionism arises from the status quo states rather than outside them, this type of behaviour is called ‘inverted revisionism’.

The second historical case revisits Britain's role in the nineteenth century. While conventionally Pax Britannica has been presented as one of the cases of hegemonic stability, this view has been strongly challenged. The chapter suggests that Britain can be considered a case of singular hegemony, but of a distinctive type: it depended as much on British weaknesses as on its strengths. This was especially so in its inability to control the European balance, as also in its increasingly exposed position in the Empire. Rather than rehearse the material dimensions of British economic power, the chapter turns instead to the followers, and asks to what extent Britain was viewed as a model for emulation, or encouraged a liberal order. These issues are explored in the contexts of free trade, and the roles of sterling and the gold standard.

This chapter examines Carl Schmitt’s theory of international relations and applies it to Russian foreign policy. It outlines the emergence of Schmitt’s thinking about the ‘Grand Space’ or the Großraum as the most important unit of analysis in international relations. This understanding of the world as divided into macroregions centred on great powers became widespread in Russian foreign policy thinking after 2012. The chapter explores different features of Russia’s regional policy in Eurasia and its sphere of influence politics through the prism of Großraum theory, including its spatial challenge to the universalism of the liberal international order.

This chapter starts with a discussion about international relations (IR) theory’s understandings of peace as well as the relationship between peace and feminist IR, pointing at the need both to be concerned about peace and to revisit its relationship to feminism. It highlights the importance of analyzing women’s peace activism to draw lessons for IR and feminism as well as the uniqueness of WILPF for this type of project. This is followed by historical background on WILPF, from its origins to the end of the Second World War. Finally, it locates the organization in the context of the post–WWII international liberal order as it was being shaped by the United States and its allies.

Nearly every recent National Security Strategy of the United States takes for granted that the United States is a hegemonic power, that it constructed a liberal international order after World War II, and that it expanded that order from the 1990s onward. This chapter looks closely at these assumptions. What is international liberalism? What is hegemony? What is international order? How does world history look through the lens of theories of hegemony and hegemonic ordering? We argue that international orders have architectures—norms, rules, and principles—and infrastructures—the interactions, practices, and relationships that undergird them. Overall, international order resembles a dynamic ecosystem, one that structures the behavior of the states and other actors that constitute it. This helps explain not only why post–Cold War liberal enlargement faltered but also how it created conditions for its own unraveling.

This concluding chapter addresses how the distributive ideological framework helps one think through questions regarding the future of the Western liberal order. The potential demise of the Western liberal institutional order preoccupies scholars of international institutions. The concerns are twofold. First, nonliberal and/or non-Western states are becoming more powerful and are attempting to change existing institutions and create institutions that better fit their interests and worldviews. Second, populist and antiglobalization movements challenge the commitment of democratically elected Western governments to the liberal international order, most notably the United States. The chapter then contends that a world that moves away from multilateralism would be a world preoccupied with short-term coalitions and conflicts rather than long-term alliances and institutions.

This chapter situates the book in the broader literature examining China as a rising power and defines the terms used throughout the book, including international order. It introduces the methodological approach of the book of exploring the degree to which China competes or cooperates with the United States and how its behavior diverges from or converges with elements of the liberal international order.

This chapter challenges the liberal treatment of security and liberty. Rather than a mythical liberal ‘balance’ between security and liberty, the chapter argues that liberalism has in fact always prioritised security over liberty. It has done so through the logic of ‘emergency’ and ‘prerogative’, which allow for liberties which are supposedly fundamental to be suspended in the name of security. The chapter thus offers a critique of the liberal tradition, by arguing that liberalism's driving principle is security, and that security has been central to liberal order-building.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's argument that much, though not all, distributive conflict over multilateral institutions takes place in a low-dimensional ideological space. Even if distributive conflict over institutions is not always about ideology, the geopolitical implications often are. The point of this book is not just to argue that ideological contestation matters but also to offer measures, a modeling framework, and empirical illustrations. The theoretical framework helps in better understanding how institutional commitments hang together and may unravel together as challenges to the liberal institutional order mount. If multilateralism is distinct because it advances general principles, then one must understand challenges to the multilateral order in terms of domestic and international challenges to those principles. The chapter then presents a brief illustration of the World Trade Organization.

This chapter argues that conservatism is better positioned than liberal philosophy. A just liberal society is characterized by moral homogeneity about justice. If liberalism, or a liberal order, is identified with a specific “theory of justice” in this way, it must set itself up in opposition to competing “political theories” such as conservatism. A successful, triumphant, just liberal order has no place for conservatism as a popular political program, for the conservative rejects “the liberal theory of justice” and so cannot be a part of a well-ordered society based on it. The existence of a viable conservative party must indicate an incomplete or imperfect “collective commitment to justice.”