The Post-War Liberal Order Has Collapsed and The Nationalists Have Won

The post-war liberal order that has defined the world since 1945 is no longer a going concern. In fact, it's been dying for a while, and probably wasn't savable.

For those of us cosmopolitan elites who have come to cherish the peaceful, interconnected world that we often refer to as "the West", we need to accept the reality: the West has fallen. At least as a tightly-knit geopolitical grouping.

The re-election of Donald Trump to a second term is not the cause of this. But it is a wake-up call. Had Kamala Harris won the election, we could have kept the project in bankruptcy protection for a while longer, but the truth is, there was no saving it at this point.

The reasons for this state of affairs are numerous. But the ground truth of it just comes down to the fact that there is not a sufficient constituency in the United States, and increasingly in other Western countries, to maintain the project. If you live in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco or Chicago, you are likely the kind of person who will find this hard to accept. But here is the reality: outside your bubble, most Americans just don't see anything in it for them. For the half of the country that lives outside the cosmopolitan cultures of major urban centers, the sentiment "why the hell are we paying money to help defend Europe when I'm paying $7 for a pound of butter" is closer to the average sentiment. These people don't feel any connection to the benefits of the US-led international security architecture, other than a sense that the cosmopolitan elite value it more than they value them. They are probably not that far off when they think that, either.

If you're a cosmopolitan elite like myself — and I am a cosmopolitan elite — then you're more likely to have a good friend in London, Berlin or Paris, than you are to have a good friend in exurban or rural America. For a person like myself, who is emotionally-invested in the maintenance of this greater world, that my social status and wealth give me access to, it's plainly easy for me to see the consequences to my life as we slide further into a nationalist moment.

To be clear, this isn't an admission that I am wrong in my worldview. In fact, in spite of this more clear-eyed view of the social attitudes of the rising nationalism in our culture, I do happen to think cosmopolitan culture is a good thing. I think it makes the world safer and wealthier for America. I think it even has great benefits for rural America. But the point is, rural and exurban Americans don't feel those benefits. And the urban working-class, struggling with housing costs, don't feel them either, let alone understand them, or care to understand them. They are wondering why they are paying $7 for a pound of butter. Which is a completely reasonable thing to worry about, when you're raising a family and taking care of children. It's nothing to be sneered at or looked down upon. In fact, the onus really is on someone like me to make the argument as to why they should care about America's commitment to NATO or some high-minded concept like the rules-based international order.

This is ultimately why the West has collapsed. Not specifically because of Trump. He is, in fact, a wrecking ball which will hasten its demise. Which for the working class voter paying $7 for a pound of butter, seems like an abstract problem that has nothing to do with their life.

The cosmopolitan elite are, in fact, to blame for much of this. But not because of their insistence on the maintenance of the West — I happen to continue to believe they are correct to hold this stance. The reason they hold blame is they have convinced themselves that it goes without saying that this is the way things should be. They are indignant about the lack of care being shown to the post-war project of a strong and united West. It is beyond obvious to them — to me — that this world is worth preserving and even expanding. But because they live in their cosmopolitan bubbles, they are unable to even relate to someone who feels no connection to it. There is no compelling vision. Just a sense that this is the way things are, and how they should be.

Into this void have stepped those who see an opportunity in the collapse of the post-war order. They envision a new multi-polar world, where great powers such as China, Russia, and the United States each control their corners of the world, dominating their neighbors while staying out of each other's business. In this worldview, championed by foreign policy realists like John Mearsheimer, Eastern Europe naturally falls within Russia's "sphere of influence." It's considered unrealistic and even dangerous to imagine that Moscow or Beijing won't politically dominate their neighboring countries.

This perspective sees America's support for democracies on autocracies' doorsteps as an unnatural perversion of the international order. The argument goes that insisting on Ukrainian democracy means prioritizing the political freedom of 37 million Ukrainians over the risk of nuclear armageddon for the other 8.1 billion people on the planet — idealism over pragmatism. Silicon Valley figures like David Sacks argue that we must accept that powerful countries will bully their smaller neighbors. While it may be unfortunate that nations like Ukraine, Georgia, and perhaps even Japan and South Korea may need to submit to Moscow and Beijing's influence, they contend it's preferable to nuclear war.

In this view, those of us who resist this "reality" are naive idealists who refuse to accept the natural order: the strong dominate the weak, and it's in our interests to give China and Russia space to dominate their regions while we mind our own business. This argument has carried the day, much to my chagrin.

Yet for the working class person paying $7 for a pound of butter, these geopolitical debates might as well be happening on another planet. It's not that they necessarily agree or disagree with these arguments — they simply don't see how any of it affects their daily lives. These abstract concerns certainly won't influence their vote. They want 2019 prices back, and they hope Trump can deliver that.

So where does this leave us? In a precarious place. The tired political center has failed to champion the importance of these issues to constituencies outside the cosmopolitan bubble — while many elites are nonsensically pearl-clutching at identity politics to explain their dilemma. The result is insufficient political will within the electorate to continue the post-war project. An alliance like NATO cannot hang in the balance of every election. That's not an alliance at all.

This sets the stage for what comes next: an increasingly dangerous world, unmoored from the expanding liberal democratic values that dominated the post-Cold War period — an aberration in human history, really. Democratic decline appears locked in.

We must carefully consider whether the project ever had any chance of enduring success. Perhaps the polarity of the Cold War competition between liberalism and communism was the magic ingredient that undergirded the sense of justice and common interest that buttressed the now-broken rules-based international order. Perhaps our tribal minds as humans cannot focus on our collective interest without being focused by external threat. I don't know. I am hopeful this is not the case, and I certainly intend to spend my life trying to convince others that this need not be the case. But I must confess that I am not sure that I'm not deluding myself on this point.

As a general rule, I do not think the new multi-polar world will be safer or better, as the nationalist right and anti-war left believe. I think it's a more dangerous world that is far more likely to end in catastrophe. A world driven by regional interests and expansionist powers is a world where conflict becomes increasingly likely. The belief that the US is the primary source of global conflict, and that its withdrawal from the world stage will deliver peace, betrays the historical and political illiteracy of those making the argument. But in the political realm, I must concede, they have won the argument. There's no sugar-coating this.

Does this mean that I am beyond hope, and willing to take a knee? Hardly. I believe that the nationalists across the West will overreach. I believe that their miscalculations and their corruption will engender backlash. When that backlash comes — and it will — it will be incumbent upon those of us who care about these things to provide arguments and political infrastructure to capitalize on the discontent.

Our efforts will be frustrated by the counterproductive overreactions of the far-left, which we will need to distance ourselves from and take measures to limit their influence within the political opposition to rising illiberalism, since they themselves represent another form of illiberalism. Our goal must be to rebuild the center — a center that can communicate a compelling vision to a broad socioeconomic constituency. A center that feels connected to the political concerns of those who currently feel marginalized from it.

The center needs to push the reset button, and the sooner it realizes this, the better off we will be. This means developing concrete proposals that demonstrate how international engagement benefits working families, not just multinational corporations. It means showing how a rules-based order creates stability that keeps prices down and opportunities up. Most importantly, it means listening to and addressing the immediate economic concerns of voters who see little value in global cooperation.

But there's no sugarcoating what is to come. The next ten years will be a period of liberal decline, even in the best-case scenario. Our task is to ensure this decline doesn't become permanent — and to build a more inclusive and convincing case for international cooperation when the opportunity for renewal arrives.