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Abstract
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine constitutes a critical juncture for the trajectory of the liberal-international order. It has undermined the US-led order by widening geopolitical rifts between the West and the Global South, increasing pressure on liberal democracy on a global scale and weakening the neo-liberal economic paradigm that has anchored the economic order since the 1980s.
Notes
1 Scholz also said that the ‘world is facing a Zeitenwende: an epochal tectonic shift’. See Olaf Scholz, ‘The Global Zeitenwende’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 102, no. 1, January/February 2023, pp. 22–38.
2 See, for example, Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
3 Lucan A. Way, ‘The Rebirth of the Liberal World Order?’, Journal of Democracy, vol. 33, no. 2, April 2022, pp. 5–17.
4 Kori Schake, ‘Putin Accidentally Revitalized the West’s Liberal Order’, Atlantic, 28 February 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/02/vladimir-putin-ukraine-invasion-liberal-order/622950/.
5 White House, ‘Remarks by President Biden on the United Efforts of the Free World to Support the People of Ukraine’, 26 March 2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/26/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-united-efforts-of-the-free-world-to-support-the-people-of-ukraine/.
6 We focus on the post-Cold War liberal-international order in this article because that order ‘is a dynamic order exhibiting different features across time and space’. David A. Lake, Lisa L. Martin and Thomas Risse, ‘Challenges to the Liberal Order: Reflections on International Organization’, International Organization, vol. 75, no. 2, Spring 2021, pp. 225–57. In the economic realm, for example, ‘embedded liberalism’ with limited capital mobility and more extensive welfarestate policies was the predominant economic paradigm in the post-1945 Western order, but in the 1980s gave way to neo-liberalism, which expanded globally with the collapse of the Soviet Union. See John Gerard Ruggie, ‘International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order’, International Organization, vol. 36, no. 2, Spring 1982, pp. 379–415.
7 Chris Alden, ‘The Global South and Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine’, LSE Public Policy Review, vol. 3, no. 1, September 2023, pp. 1–8.
8 On conceptual debates concerning the key features of the liberalinternational order, see Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon, Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 18–53; and Lake, Martin and Risse, ‘Challenges to the Liberal Order’.
9 Quoted in Andy Bounds and Joe Leahy, ‘EU Trade Commissioner to Seek Relief from Export Barriers During China Visit’, Financial Times, 23 September 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/20e60f3a-53eb-46aa-bd92-f1dff61ebd7b.
10 Quoted in Kathrin Hille, ‘Xi Pursues Policy of “Pro-Russia Neutrality” Despite Ukraine War’, Financial Times, 27 February 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/bf930a62-6952-426b-b249-41097094318a.
11 Z. Darvas et al., ‘Russian Foreign Trade Tracker’, Bruegel Datasets, first published 10 October 2022 (accessed 14 October 2023), available at https://www.bruegel.org/dataset/russian-foreign-trade-tracker.
12 Quoted in James Kynge, ‘China Is Tightening Its Embrace with Russia as It Builds Bulwarks Against the West’, Financial Times, 24 March 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/bbaa4006-318e-4dbe-b7d4-3c21aa5e8887.
13 See Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, ‘China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis’, 24 February 2023, https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/zxxx_662805/202302/t20230224_11030713.html.
14 See Alden, ‘The Global South and Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine’, pp. 5–6.
15 See White House, ‘Remarks by President Biden at the Summit for Democracy Opening Session’, 9 December 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/12/09/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-summit-for-democracy-opening-session/.
16 By trying to maintain good relations with the US and Russia simultaneously, ‘India has hoped to run with the hare and hunt with the hound’, as the editors of the Financial Times put it. ‘India’s Disappointing Silence over Ukraine’, Financial Times, 13 March 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/9e8af1a9-da07-4fb4-ae0e-6f6986ea5b75.
17 Darvas et al., ‘Russian Foreign Trade Tracker’.
18 See Henry Foy, Samer Al-Atrush and Felicia Schwartz, ‘Saudi Seeks to Woo Developing Nations for Ukraine Peace Talks’, Financial Times, 29 July 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/5d69508a-e8c3-46b7-82cf-8c033499b445.
19 See Mustafa Kutlay and Ziya Öniş, ‘Turkish Foreign Policy in a PostWestern Order: Strategic Autonomy or New Forms of Dependence?’, International Affairs, vol. 97, no. 4, July 2021, pp. 1,085–104.
20 See Ziya Öniş and Mustafa Kutlay, ‘The New Age of Hybridity and Clash of Norms: China, BRICS, and Challenges of Global Governance in a Post-liberal International Order’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, vol. 45, no. 3, May 2020, pp. 123–42.
21 See Dani Rodrik, ‘Why Does Globalization Fuel Populism? Economics, Culture, and the Rise of Right-wing Populism’, Annual Review of Economics, vol. 13, August 2021, pp. 133–70.
22 America’s ‘liberal interventionism’ also weakened the legitimacy of the rules-based order.
23 See Jude Blanchette and Evan S. Medeiros, ‘Xi Jinping’s Third Term’, Survival, vol. 64, no. 5, October– November 2022, pp. 61–90.
24 See IMF, ‘World Economic Outlook: Navigating Global Divergences’, October 2023, https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/WEO/2023/October/English/text.ashx.
25 ‘Are Free Markets History?’, The Economist, 5 October 2023, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/10/05/are-free-markets-history.
26 Emmanuel Macron, ‘Europe Needs More Factories and Fewer Dependencies’, Financial Times, 12 May 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/7ff1123d-51b1-482c-ba86-b3a95a347df9. The EU’s attempt to boost its industrial capabilities (especially in defence) is related to its quest to become a more autonomous actor in global politics vis-à-vis other great powers. This has long been on the EU’s agenda, but progress has been limited. As Pierre Buhler points out, ‘many tools, procedures and institutions have been set up and concept papers written to allow the EU to become a more potent and capable actor in the international area … Yet little of substance has been achieved.’ Pierre Buhler, ‘About European Sovereignty’, Survival, vol. 65, no. 2, April–May 2023, p. 62.
27 See Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (London: Allen Lane, 2023); and Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, ‘Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion’, International Security, vol. 44, no. 1, Summer 2019, pp. 42–79.
28 Quoted in Bryan Harris and Joe Leahy, ‘Lula Vows Partnership with China to “Balance World Geopolitics”’, Financial Times, 15 April 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/766ed3aa-3f51-4035-8573-43254c9756d5.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Mustafa Kutlay
Mustafa Kutlay is a senior lecturer in the Department of International Politics at City, University of London.
Ziya Öniş
Ziya Öniş is a professor of international relations at Koç University in Istanbul.