Saw this in the Afghan thread - thought it might be of interest if only to the odd Foggy Bottom spotter?
@RoryStewartUK
Retweeted
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My article on "The Myth of the Liberal Order" is out in the new issue of@ForeignAffairs. I hope you'll give it a read. Look forward to what I'm sure will be a lively debate!
Anyway the original source is here The Myth of the Liberal Order
By Graham Allison
( some old Hahvahd hand )
--------------------- begins ----------------------------------------
Among the debates that have swept the U.S. foreign policy community since the beginning of the Trump administration, alarm about the fate of the liberal international rules-based order has emerged as one of the few fixed points.
From the international relations scholar G. John Ikenberry’s claim that “for seven decades the world has been dominated by a western liberal order” to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s call in the final days of the Obama administration to “act urgently to defend the liberal international order,” this banner waves atop most discussions of the United States’ role in the world.
About this order, the reigning consensus makes three core claims. First, that the liberal order has been the principal cause of the so-called long peace among great powers for the past seven decades. Second, that constructing this order has been the main driver of U.S. engagement in the world over that period. And third, that U.S. President Donald Trump is the primary threat to the liberal order—and thus to world peace. The political scientist Joseph Nye, for example, has written, “The demonstrable success of the order in helping secure and stabilize the world over the past seven decades has led to a strong consensus that defending, deepening, and extending this system has been and continues to be the central task of U.S. foreign policy.” Nye has gone so far as to assert: “I am not worried by the rise of China. I am more worried by the rise of Trump.”
----------------------- snip ------------------------
While I was on a recent trip to Beijing, a high-level Chinese official posed an uncomfortable question to me.
Imagine, he said, that as much of the American elite believes, Trump’s character and experience make him unfit to serve as the leader of a great nation. Who would be to blame for his being president? Trump, for his opportunism in seizing victory, or the political system that allowed him to do so?
No one denies that in its current form, the U.S. government is failing. Long before Trump, the political class that brought unending, unsuccessful wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, as well as the financial crisis and Great Recession, had discredited itself. These disasters have done more to diminish confidence in liberal self-government than Trump could do in his critics’ wildest imaginings, short of a mistake that leads to a catastrophic war. The overriding challenge for American believers in democratic governance is thus nothing less than to reconstruct a working democracy at home.
Fortunately, that does not require converting the Chinese, the Russians, or anyone else to American beliefs about liberty. Nor does it necessitate changing foreign regimes into democracies.
Instead, as Kennedy put it in his American University commencement speech, in 1963, it will be enough to sustain a world order “safe for diversity”—liberal and illiberal alike.
That will mean adapting U.S. efforts abroad to the reality that other countries have contrary views about governance and seek to establish their own international orders governed by their own rules.
Achieving even a minimal order that can accommodate that diversity will take a surge of strategic imagination as far beyond the current conventional wisdom as the Cold War strategy that emerged over the four years after [George] Kennan’s Long Telegram was from the Washington consensus in 1946.
----------------------------------- endit --------------------------------
For those who may not be aware the Long Telegram referred to is here: George Kennan's "Long Telegram"
It formed the underlying philosophy for the U.S policy of ' Containment' of the Soviet Union for forty years.
This think-piece seems to advocate not so much Isolationism as a more thoughtful, nuanced approach to 'foreign entanglements' ?
@RoryStewartUK
Retweeted
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/878285558849703941/CR25zbT6_bigger.jpg Jun 14
My article on "The Myth of the Liberal Order" is out in the new issue of
Anyway the original source is here The Myth of the Liberal Order
By Graham Allison
( some old Hahvahd hand )
--------------------- begins ----------------------------------------
Among the debates that have swept the U.S. foreign policy community since the beginning of the Trump administration, alarm about the fate of the liberal international rules-based order has emerged as one of the few fixed points.
From the international relations scholar G. John Ikenberry’s claim that “for seven decades the world has been dominated by a western liberal order” to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s call in the final days of the Obama administration to “act urgently to defend the liberal international order,” this banner waves atop most discussions of the United States’ role in the world.
About this order, the reigning consensus makes three core claims. First, that the liberal order has been the principal cause of the so-called long peace among great powers for the past seven decades. Second, that constructing this order has been the main driver of U.S. engagement in the world over that period. And third, that U.S. President Donald Trump is the primary threat to the liberal order—and thus to world peace. The political scientist Joseph Nye, for example, has written, “The demonstrable success of the order in helping secure and stabilize the world over the past seven decades has led to a strong consensus that defending, deepening, and extending this system has been and continues to be the central task of U.S. foreign policy.” Nye has gone so far as to assert: “I am not worried by the rise of China. I am more worried by the rise of Trump.”
----------------------- snip ------------------------
While I was on a recent trip to Beijing, a high-level Chinese official posed an uncomfortable question to me.
Imagine, he said, that as much of the American elite believes, Trump’s character and experience make him unfit to serve as the leader of a great nation. Who would be to blame for his being president? Trump, for his opportunism in seizing victory, or the political system that allowed him to do so?
No one denies that in its current form, the U.S. government is failing. Long before Trump, the political class that brought unending, unsuccessful wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, as well as the financial crisis and Great Recession, had discredited itself. These disasters have done more to diminish confidence in liberal self-government than Trump could do in his critics’ wildest imaginings, short of a mistake that leads to a catastrophic war. The overriding challenge for American believers in democratic governance is thus nothing less than to reconstruct a working democracy at home.
Fortunately, that does not require converting the Chinese, the Russians, or anyone else to American beliefs about liberty. Nor does it necessitate changing foreign regimes into democracies.
Instead, as Kennedy put it in his American University commencement speech, in 1963, it will be enough to sustain a world order “safe for diversity”—liberal and illiberal alike.
That will mean adapting U.S. efforts abroad to the reality that other countries have contrary views about governance and seek to establish their own international orders governed by their own rules.
Achieving even a minimal order that can accommodate that diversity will take a surge of strategic imagination as far beyond the current conventional wisdom as the Cold War strategy that emerged over the four years after [George] Kennan’s Long Telegram was from the Washington consensus in 1946.
----------------------------------- endit --------------------------------
For those who may not be aware the Long Telegram referred to is here: George Kennan's "Long Telegram"
It formed the underlying philosophy for the U.S policy of ' Containment' of the Soviet Union for forty years.
This think-piece seems to advocate not so much Isolationism as a more thoughtful, nuanced approach to 'foreign entanglements' ?
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- and it's not even Friday.
