Crisis of the Old Order - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 1

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Crisis of the Old Order
One of the great dramas of world politics over the last two hundred years has been the rise
of liberal democratic states to global dominance. This liberal ascendancy has involved the ex-
traordinary growth of the Western democracies—from weakness and minority status in the
late eighteenth century to wealth and predominance in the late twentieth century. This rise oc-
curred in fits and starts over the course of the modern era. In the nineteenth century, Great
Britain was the vanguard of the liberal ascendancy, becoming the leading industrial and naval
power of its day. In the twentieth century, the United States was transformed from inwardness
and isolation into the dominant world power. During these decades, world wars and geopol-
itical struggles pitted the liberal democracies against rival autocratic, fascist, and totalitarian
great powers. The Cold War was a grand struggle between alternative ideologies of rule and
pathways to modern development. With the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and the end
of the Cold War, the liberal ascendancy reached a worldwide crescendo. The United States and
a far-flung alliance of liberal democracies stood at the center of world politics—rich, power-
ful, and dominant.
The Western democracies did not just grow powerful and rich. They also made repeated ef-
forts to build liberal international order—that is, order that is relatively open, rule-based, and
progressive. Led by Great Britain and the United States, they championed free trade and took
steps to create multilateral rules and institutions of various sorts. Open markets, international
institutions, cooperative security, democratic community, progressive change, collective prob-
lem solving, shared sovereignty, the rule of law—all are aspects of the liberal vision that have
made appearances in various combinations and changing ways over the decades and centuries.