Bem-vindos ao mundo das multicrises: trumpismo e seus efeitos na política mundial; Book-review: Chaos Reconsidered: The Liberal Order and the Future of International Politics

 

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Viola on Jervis and Goddard and Labrosse and Rovner and Fujii, 'Chaos Reconsidered: The Liberal Order and the Future of International Politics' [Review]

H-Net Reviews

Jervis, Robert; Goddard, Stacie E.; Labrosse, Diane N.; Rovner, Joshua; Fujii, George, eds..  Chaos Reconsidered: The Liberal Order and the Future of International Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2023. 544 pp. $140.00 (cloth), ISBN 9780231205986.$35.00 (paper), ISBN 9780231205993. 

Reviewed by Lora A. Viola (Freie Universität Berlin)
Published on H-Diplo (March, 2024)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach (Bronx Community College, The City University of New York)

Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=59776

Anticipating a repeat election showdown with former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden warned, “America, as we begin this election year, we must be clear: Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot.” Invoking the specter of a second Trump presidency, he admonished that “the alternative to democracy is dictatorship.”[1] The looming 2024 US presidential election—already destined to be unprecedented given the likely choice between the oldest president in United States history and the first candidate to run while accused of instigating insurrection and embroiled in numerous criminal legal proceedings—will also take place in a global context characterized by what commentators for some time now have been calling a “polycrisis” environment. The term, used by president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker in the momentous year 2016 and popularized by economic historian Adam Tooze in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, captures the confluence of disparate crises that interact in ways that increase uncertainty and instability.[2] Since “polycrisis” entered common usage to capture the complexity of simultaneously facing a global pandemic, climate catastrophes, and economic instability, several more international crises have unfolded, including Russia’s war against Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war and its potential spillover into a broader regional conflict. The institutions of the liberal international order (LIO), such as the United Nations, have appeared fragmented and weak in the face of these challenges, while the United States seems once again to have become an indispensable military and diplomatic leader. However, the United States’ domestic polarization and the uncertain outcome of the next election hold the potential to bring more, rather than less, instability to the world. The outcome of a Biden-Trump contest will be highly consequential both for the path the United States takes domestically and for how the world addresses the polycrises it faces.

Chaos Reconsidered: The Liberal Order and the Future of International Politics, provides invaluable insights for grasping what this political moment might portend for international politics. Although not directly referenced in the title, the book grapples with the legacy of Trump’s 2017-21 presidential term for US foreign policy and international relations. Edited by the late Robert Jervis, Diane N. Labrosse, Stacie E. Goddard, and Joshua Rovner, the book brings together around fifty scholars with a range of expertise and disciplinary backgrounds to consider how Trump’s nationalism, populism, and disregard for established norms affected the LIO, the United States’ relationships with its allies and adversaries, and its ability to be a global leader. The volume is a sequel to the 2018 book Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the Twenty-First Century, which emerged out of an H-Diplo/International Security Studies Forum organized in the immediate aftershock of Trump’s first presidential win to consider to what extent his politics and policies would constitute a radical departure from US foreign policy and US leadership of the LIO.[3] This book, in contrast, is primarily retrospective, leveraging the distance of several years to take stock of the origins and consequences of Trump’s politics, although it also briefly considers to what extent Biden’s presidency might reverse or repair some of those consequences. The chapters are concise (about ten pages each) but also original and analytical, drawing on insights from international relations (IR) scholars and historians in order to place the contemporary case within a larger theoretical and historical context. The book is divided into eight parts, beginning with an assessment of whether and how Trump’s presidency challenges IR theories and then covering more empirical topics, such as the historical context of Trump’s “America First” approach, his administration’s impact on international institutions, how his presidency affected the United States’ relations with a range of specific countries and regions, and how his politics have affected liberal internationalism. While most of the essays are critical of the Trump presidency and its consequences, Randall Schweller’s chapter offers a more favorable reading of what he sees as the strategic nature of Trump’s realist foreign policy in the context of changing structures of domestic and international power that together have made “Trumpism virtually impossible to dislodge” (p. 62).

Apart from these traditional foreign policy topics, part 5 of the volume is devoted to what the title refers to as “The Expanding Meaning of International Security,” including topics such as human rights, racial justice, economic inequality, climate change, and other forms of structural inequality in light of human security. Given that IR as a discipline has largely marginalized the legacies of structural racism in both US foreign policy and world order-making,[4] it is notable that this section includes four chapters that deal centrally with race in US foreign policy and international relations (e.g., those by William Hitchcock, Jason Ludwig and Rebecca Slayton, Nivi Manchanda, and Audie Klotz). Their treatment goes beyond merely pointing to the vulgar nature of Trump’s rhetoric and instead seeks to understand “the ways that race is woven into the structures of power through which the United States acts in the world” (Hitchcock, p. 294). Even more noteworthy is how the issue of race and racism is not limited to this devoted section but also cuts across many chapters in the volume (for instance, to point to a few, those by Michael Barnett, Deborah Avant, Ryan Irwin, Samuel Zipp, John Thompson, Christy Thornton, Joshua Busby, and Jonathan Monten) and is at least mentioned by almost all. It seems that one consequence of the Trump administration and Trumpism for the field of IR is to have made visible and explicit the all too often unseen intersection of race and international politics.

More generally, the book takes seriously the idea that “as the international system becomes more complex, the lines between domestic and foreign issues are blurred, as are the relations between cause and effect” (p. 8). In this context, the book considers the security rationales of issues often “sidelined” as primarily domestic in nature, such as migration, health, and climate policy (p. 329). Several contributions highlight how domestic vulnerabilities, including those resulting from structural inequalities, should be considered a priority for national security (e.g., the contributions by Deborah Avant and Ludwig and Slayton, among others). Sarah Snyder’s chapter considers how the Trump administration’s undermining of human rights commitments abroad went hand-in-hand with their erosion at home. While considering these “second image” issues, however, the book does seem to miss the opportunity to address the “second image reversed.” In particular, it does not consider how the development of the American national security state—primarily built to counter foreign threats—can become a threat to American democracy. With the rhetoric of political violence increasingly endorsed and legitimated by Trump, and at the very latest when Trump’s lawyers argued that using the US military for the assassination of a political rival would be protected under presidential immunity, there is urgency in considering how America’s military prowess abroad and political violence at home might be related or reinforcing.[5]

Taken as a whole, the volume aims to offer careful consideration of “whether Trump constituted a profound challenge to the order” (p. 4) and what, if anything, we can learn from those years for the future of international politics. However, there is considerable variation in whether the authors view Trump as an anomaly in the history of US foreign policy, as simply having lifted the veil on “the darker true self” (Irwin, p. 85) of US foreign policy, as the logical result of domestic polarization or ongoing structural changes in the global balance of power, or as the tip of the iceberg—a harbinger—of a radical shift in US domestic and foreign policy. Another way to address this question could have been to put Trump’s presidency not only in historical but also in international comparative context. In 2016, Trump may have appeared as an anomaly, but today he belongs to a recurring type of nationalist-populist leader that has appeared in several countries around the world, such as Brazil, Argentina, and Hungary. The common causes of this international phenomenon and the consequences of the international diffusion of populist leaders and ideas, certainly has implications for how we understand the past and future of the liberal international order, institutionalized cooperation, responses to conflicts and crises, and the defense of the rule of law.

The collection of various perspectives assembled here is without a doubt a rich and useful resource for academics, students, and the interested public. Yet, the book overall leaves the central question of how to situate the Trump presidency in the arc of history unresolved. To be fair, of course, this is too much to expect from either this book or our theories and, as Barnett wisely reminds us, “much of the meaning we give to this unsettling period will depend on what comes next” (p. 28). But given the current political moment and what might come next, the book may turn out to be too careful in its considerations. Indeed, there is no small likelihood that the current book will have to be revisited again, raising the possibility that the current double feature of the Chaosseries will soon become a trilogy. Seen in this light, then, one way to appreciate the significance of this book, along with its prequel, is as a documentation of how IR theorists and historians have been thinking about Trumpism as it has unfolded, providing valuable source material for how the field’s own thinking is evolving at a moment of uncertainty and polycrisis.

Notes

[1]. Joe Biden, “Remarks by President Biden on the Third Anniversary of the January 6th Attack and Defending the Sacred Cause of American Democracy,” Blue Bell, PA, January 5, 2024, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/01/05/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-third-anniversary-of-the-january-6th-attack-and-defending-the-sacred-cause-of-american-democracy-blue-bell-pa/.

[2]. Jean-Claude Juncker, “Speech at the Annual General Meeting of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises,” Athens, June 21, 2016, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-16-2293_en.htm; Adam Tooze, “Welcome to the World of the Polycrisis,” Financial Times, October 28, 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/498398e7-11b1-494b-9cd3-6d669dc3de33.

[3.] Robert Jervis, Francis J. Gavin, Joshua Rovner, and Diane Labrosse, eds., Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).

[4]. Robbie Shilliam, “Race and Racism in International Relations: Retrieving a Scholarly Inheritance,” International Politics Review 8 (2020): 152-95.

[5]. Adam Liptak, “Trump’s Boldest Argument Yet: Immunity from Prosecution for Assassinations,” New York Times, January 10, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/10/us/politics/trump-immunity-prosecution-assassination.html.

Citation: Lora A. Viola. Review of Jervis, Robert; Goddard, Stacie E.; Labrosse, Diane N.; Rovner, Joshua; Fujii, George, eds.. Chaos Reconsidered: The Liberal Order and the Future of International Politics. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. March, 2024.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=59776

The death of liberal world order - Richard Haas

Project Syndicate, Praga – 21.3.2018

Liberal World Order, R.I.P.

America’s decision to abandon the global system it helped build, and then preserve for more than seven decades, marks a turning point, because others lack either the interest or the means to sustain it. The result will be a world that is less free, less prosperous, and less peaceful, for Americans and others alike.

Richard N. Haas

New Delhi - After a run of nearly one thousand years, quipped the French philosopher and writer Voltaire, the fading Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. Today, some two and a half centuries later, the problem, to paraphrase Voltaire, is that the fading liberal world order is neither liberal nor worldwide nor orderly.

The United States, working closely with the United Kingdom and others, established the liberal world order in the wake of World War II. The goal was to ensure that the conditions that had led to two world wars in 30 years would never again arise.

To that end, the democratic countries set out to create an international system that was liberal in the sense that it was to be based on the rule of law and respect for countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity. Human rights were to be protected. All this was to be applied to the entire planet; at the same time, participation was open to all and voluntary. Institutions were built to promote peace (the United Nations), economic development (the World Bank) and trade and investment (the International Monetary Fund and what years later became the World Trade Organization).

All this and more was backed by the economic and military might of the US, a network of alliances across Europe and Asia, and nuclear weapons, which served to deter aggression. The liberal world order was thus based not just on ideals embraced by democracies, but also on hard power. None of this was lost on the decidedly illiberal Soviet Union, which had a fundamentally different notion of what constituted order in Europe and around the world.

The liberal world order appeared to be more robust than ever with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But today, a quarter-century later, its future is in doubt. Indeed, its three components – liberalism, universality, and the preservation of order itself – are being challenged as never before in its 70-year history.

Liberalism is in retreat. Democracies are feeling the effects of growing populism. Parties of the political extremes have gained ground in Europe. The vote in the United Kingdom in favor of leaving the EU attested to the loss of elite influence. Even the US is experiencing unprecedented attacks from its own president on the country’s media, courts, and law-enforcement institutions. Authoritarian systems, including China, Russia, and Turkey, have become even more top-heavy. Countries such as Hungary and Poland seem uninterested in the fate of their young democracies.

It is increasingly difficult to speak of the world as if it were whole. We are seeing the emergence of regional orders – or, most pronounced in the Middle East, disorders – each with its own characteristics. Attempts to build global frameworks are failing. Protectionism is on the rise; the latest round of global trade talks never came to fruition. There are few rules governing the use of cyberspace.

At the same time, great power rivalry is returning. Russia violated the most basic norm of international relations when it used armed force to change borders in Europe, and it violated US sovereignty through its efforts to influence the 2016 election. North Korea has flouted the strong international consensus against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The world has stood by as humanitarian nightmares play out in Syria and Yemen, doing little at the UN or elsewhere in response to the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons. Venezuela is a failing state. One in every hundred people in the world today is either a refugee or internally displaced.

There are several reasons why all this is happening, and why now. The rise of populism is in part a response to stagnating incomes and job loss, owing mostly to new technologies but widely attributed to imports and immigrants. Nationalism is a tool increasingly used by leaders to bolster their authority, especially amid difficult economic and political conditions. And global institutions have failed to adapt to new power balances and technologies.

But the weakening of the liberal world order is due, more than anything else, to the changed attitude of the US. Under President Donald Trump, the US decided against joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. It has threatened to leave the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. It has unilaterally introduced steel and aluminum tariffs, relying on a justification (national security) that others could use, in the process placing the world at risk of a trade war. It has raised questions about its commitment to NATO and other alliance relationships. And it rarely speaks about democracy or human rights. “America First” and the liberal world order seem incompatible.

My point is not to single out the US for criticism. Today’s other major powers, including the EU, Russia, China, India, and Japan, could be criticized for what they are doing, not doing, or both. But the US is not just another country. It was the principal architect of the liberal world order and its principal backer. It was also a principal beneficiary.

America’s decision to abandon the role it has played for more than seven decades thus marks a turning point. The liberal world order cannot survive on its own, because others lack either the interest or the means to sustain it. The result will be a world that is less free, less prosperous, and less peaceful, for Americans and others alike.

Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, previously served as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department (2001-2003), and was President George W. Bush's special envoy to Northern Ireland and Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. He is the author of A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order.