Sydney Williams: The Liberal World Order
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The liberal world order grew from the ashes of World War II, a war that killed almost four percent of the world’s population – that is one out of every twenty-five people. Look at your town, city, street or apartment building and consider the human cost! It is no surprise that Western leaders wanted to ensure that no such atrocity happened again. It was the United States that exited the War in a position of global strength, and thus became the guarantor of security and the principal provider of funds necessary to rebuild both its allies and its enemies. The U.S., in 1945 had about 50% of the world’s wealth, with only 6.5% of its population. Militarily, the U.S. was peerless and, until 1949, the only country with an Atomic weapon.
The liberal order was committed to democratic ideals and the free movements of goods and people. It was organized around nation states. The result has been seventy years of unprecedented prosperity. And, while genocides in subsequent years were experienced in Cambodia and Rwanda, Europe and Japan remained at peace. To help enforce that liberal order, supranational organizations were built, like the United Nations, NATO and the World Bank. However, because of transnational governance, those institutions threatened to override the laws of the sovereign states they were charged to uphold. As well, the impulse to impose progressive norms on all nations was a natural consequence of these organizations. They interfered with internal affairs, when autocracies threatened, and they spread progressive ideas, without regard to a country’s customs and traditions. As well, well-intentioned Presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush wanted to transform autocratic regimes into democratic ones, with the former’s National Endowment for Democracy and the latter’s “freedom agenda” – a task that proved insurmountable.
As early as February 1948, George Kennan said we must avoid “sentimentality” and deal in “straight power concepts” – a role played by the United States’ military, which was not always welcomed. In the same memo, Mr. Kennan was emphatically realistic: “We should cease to talk about such vague and unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization.” Yet the reach of humanitarian groups within the United Nations has expanded: The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the United Nations Department of Global Communications, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and UNICEF. These NGOs employ tens of thousands of people, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, with the U.S. being the principal benefactor. While purporting to further the “liberal order,” they, in fact, undermine it, at least according to the dictates of Mr. Kennan. Brock Chisholm, a Canadian and first Director- General of the World Health Organization and who died in 1971 was blunt: “To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas” – an Orwellian concept, the beginnings of which we see in Brussels today and in the words and deeds of those who put supranational organizations and treaties above the nation state.
Things change. The world today is different from the one in 1945. The Soviet Union recovered and fell. China rose. Theocracy appeared in Iran, which then became an exporter of terror, as did its neighbor Iraq. The 1970s oil embargo strengthened OPEC and enriched the elite in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Russia and other oil-rich nations. North Korea became an aggressor. Climate change became politicized. Today the United Nations Human Rights Council includes such non-democratic nations as Cuba, Afghanistan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A re-energized Russia invaded Georgia and Ukraine. China’s attempt at reform was set back by an autocratic Xi Jinping. On a relative basis, the United States position in the world declined. Today, with 4.4% of the world’s population, the U.S. produces 24% of the world’s GDP. Non-state terrorism, under the guise of Islamism, became a major threat, while nations like Iran and North Korea, footnotes in 1945, threaten the world with exported terrorism and are aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons. A resurgent Russia and China offer economic and societal alternatives to developing nations, from a West that has vacated its moral framework.
We are told by progressives that populism, nationalism and authoritarianism threaten the “liberal order” from within, while powers like Russia, China and Iran contest its hegemony and legitimacy Dartmouth professors Jennifer Lind and William Wohlforth wrote last January in Foreign Affairs: “Instead of expanding it to new places and new domains, the United States and its partners should consolidate the gains the order has reaped.” In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a few days before Donald Trump was sworn in as President, Vice President Joe Biden warned: “The liberal international world order is at risk of collapse.” His words were aimed at Russia and at the social instability he claimed was caused by the top one percent not paying their fair share of taxes. But there are other causes. A recent survey, taken by the Center for American Progress and quoted by David Brooks in a recent New York Times op-ed, suggested that Americans care most about terrorism and illegal immigration. What they care least about is promoting democracy. Mr. Brooks believes the U.S. is “withdrawing from the world.” I am not so sure. It is my sense we are re-ordering priorities after spending too much time on what George Kennan called “sentimentality and day-dreaming,” and not enough time on jobs and security.
The world changes, but the needs for order and freedom, remain. In World Order, Henry Kissinger wrote: “Order and freedom, sometimes described as opposite poles on the spectrum of experience, should instead be understood as interdependent.” We live in an information age, with the amount of data growing exponentially. We have an accumulated knowledge that exceeds our ability to consume and digest. But, have we gained wisdom? Listening to our politicians and pundits, one could only answer in the negative. Whatever direction our foreign policy goes, not all will be satisfied. But we should have one goal – the avoidance of nuclear devastation. There are those who recommend restraint and, while that sounds reasonable, restraint without a moral framework will not do the job – and it will not do the job unless one is militarily strong. We in the West, with our Judeo-Christian heritage and our traditions of families, churches and schools, should have the right moral impulse. A problem with globalism is it leads to multiculturalism and an absence of moral certitude. We do not have all the answers and are not always right, but thus far no other culture comes close to ours in terms of moral rectitude. Margaret Thatcher once wrote: “There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves.” Morality is not, as some globalists would have one believe, relative. It is absolute. There is good and there is evil. To prevail, we must remain militarily and morally strong.
Later, in “Choruses from the Rock,” T.S. Eliot goes on:
“The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all my years, one thing does not change,
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.”
Eliot is lamenting a world that has forsaken religion, first for Reason and then for money and power. The liberal world order was always an ideal. Though it worked well for Europe, it has separated from its moral anchor. Roger Scruton in Conservativism wrote, “…political communities, democracies included, are held together by something stronger than politics. There is a ‘first person plural,’ a pre-political loyalty, which causes neighbors who voted in opposing ways to treat each other as fellow citizens, for whom the government is not ‘mine’ or ‘yours,’ but ‘ours,’ whether we approve of it or not.” The liberal world order bemoaned by Vice President Biden is not possible unless Western Nations recognize the moral turpitude of practices that promote incivility and elevate identity politics over unity. We must remember that in the U.S., we are Americans; in Germany, Germans; in Italy, Italians; in Poland, Polish, etc. We have rights that must be honored. We have traditions that must be maintained. We have communities into which all, including immigrants, must be integrated. As for immigrants, the onus is on them to adapt to the standards and customs of the country to which they have emigrated. It cannot be otherwise. Within a nation, we cannot live segregated lives. We have laws that, until they are changed by the legislative process, must be obeyed. Personal responsibility and accountability are fundamental. Together, these elements create the foundation on which all else stands. It is the only way a civil society can persevere. It is the only way a liberal world order can prevail.
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