In the opening chapter of his seminal 1994 work Diplomacy, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger describes the foreign policy shift from US President Theodore Roosevelt to that of President Woodrow Wilson.
Roosevelt advocated for a realist, spheres-of-influence approach, seeking order through the balance of power. His successor, President Woodrow Wilson, believed in liberal and moralistic leadership. He saw his country as a global force for peace through intervention, just in time to enter WWI.
This led to the establishment of the world order as we know it. For 80 years, international institutions, backed by the US, have sought - for better or worse- to spread liberal values and international law worldwide.
Despite some US missteps, this system has allowed for an era of relative peace and stability, especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall, if imperfect and easily influenced.
In later chapters, Kissinger ponders the fate of the post-Cold War international order emerging around him. Will it be upheld consciously through the now dominant US, international institutions, and international law, or a series of tests, ultimately withstanding the determination of powers to pursue their self-interest at the costs of others?
It seems today, that neither will be the case.
Those in the West of all political persuasions are stepping away from the international order. Some on the right see international affairs as secondary to domestic interests. Some further to the left are disillusioned with a system they see as neocolonial and hypocritical. U.S. interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya exacerbated instability, leaving these countries impoverished. While these interventions were framed as efforts to spread democracy, they contributed to regional instability, undermining the ideals they aimed to promote.
Few are satisfied with the current international order: imperfect, abused, and designed for US strategic benefit. But if the US returns to Roosevelt’s great power politics without an alternative to mediate global affairs, we risk a world where might makes right, and ordinary people pay the price.
The sense of late 19th-century great power politics never truly faded, however. After the relatively successful NATO interventions in Kosovo in the late 1990s, the US pursued Iraqi regime change in its 2003 invasion. This intervention, which bypassed allies and the UN, clearly demonstrated the US's willingness to act unilaterally in its own self-interest.
Russia has represented an even darker view of the world order. Russian President Vladimir Putin believes NATO has encroached on its sovereignty by uniting the former Warsaw Pact states into an American sphere of influence.
This belief has allowed him to justify intervention in Georgia and the spreading of Russian influence in Africa, much like it once did in the Cold War. He has also propped up authoritarian regimes, including the Assad regime in Syria.
While these actions are like those of the US previously discussed, the key difference is the ends, not the means. Furthermore, former Soviet states joined NATO and the EU voluntarily, fearing Russian aggression, a fear that has proven justified.
Russian operations are brutal and expansionist, and the regime is not much better at home. Freedom of expression is all but non-existent, with LGBTQ+ organisations considered extremist, dissenting media silenced, and opposition leaders murdered.
The conclusion of Russia’s three-year-old full-scale invasion of Ukraine may well be the final test of the liberal world order. Suppose Russia can claim victory in Ukraine without sufficient concessions. This would signal to Russia that the US no longer views the world through laws and rights, a marked shift in foreign policy.
China operates a similarly autocratic regime devoid of democracy, with designs to take Taiwan and its influence through its Belt and Road Initiative across Asia and Africa. Expansionism would be back in fashion.
It's undeniable that the US has made profound and costly strategic blunders. Acknowledging these mistakes is crucial to understanding why some believe the world order is not worth fighting for. While a realist world order correctly prescribes that ideal outcomes are rarely possible when interests clash, we cannot abandon the ideal of a peaceful world altogether.
President Donald Trump’s plan for peace hinges on trusting Putin to uphold any proposal, even without American security guarantees. Given Russia’s breaking of the Budapest Memorandum and dozens of agreements since 2014, this seems far-fetched.
Russia shows no signs of ending its invasion soon. Its goals of expansion and subjugating Ukraine remain unfulfilled. Given that Ukraine, even if backed up by the West, has no real prospect of success through fighting, Russia needs only to fight on and negotiate, boosted by Trump's concessions, from a position of strength. This will embolden other authoritarian regimes to pursue the aggressions they seek.
Authoritarian powers can pursue hegemony across their regions in a world without rules. The same applies to the US, with Trump mulling expansion into Greenland, Canada, and Panama. Such moves infringe on the sovereignty of nations and the agency of their citizens, placing them in the hands of the powerful to do as they please, and creating a great power free for all.
Roosevelt believed that the success of the balance of power rests on equilibrium, but should one power become too powerful, conflict is the only equaliser. For all its flaws, indifference to the international law and the wider world will not breed prosperity at home, it will only leave others at the mercy of unchecked power.
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