... or dissent.
Liberal world order: a political oxymoron?
Andrey Kortunov:
Seven Debates over the Fourteen Points
In the American intellectual tradition, the phrase “rule-based order” is, strictly speaking, synonymous of “liberal world order.” Liberalism as the basis of the ideological and political vision shared by Americans goes back to the first European colonists migrating to America. These were the bearers of bourgeois ideology, the ideas of human freedom, equality, the right to private ...
... of assuming that it is precisely due to its logical integrity that the realist approach has fewer obvious prospects of further development than the liberal approach as it remains more of an outline for a new theory than a theory as such. In general, liberalism is more sensitive to changes in the international environment and to the fluctuations in the “currency basket” of global influence. This is precisely why it is so hard for liberalism to shape into a full-fledged theory.
The structural liberalism ...
Today, the relations between Russia and the United States are abnormal, irrational, lacking in systemic thinking, clear goal-setting, and acceptable practices
It is clear why the Russia—U.S. Presidential summit is in the limelight of the world community. In the history of international relations, high-level meetings often become significant events that change the paradigm of bilateral and multilateral contacts. However, this happens when the accompanying factors—necessary for a reverse, revision...
Like Asgard, Armenia is not a place, it is a people
The relatively recent (2017) Hollywood blockbuster Thor: Ragnarok has a memorable scene of the heavenly kingdom of Asgard collapsing. A happenstance witness to and participant in
Ragnarok
, the last battle between the good and the evil, King of Asgard and God Thor, finds himself unable to avert this disaster. Suddenly, when everything seems hopelessly lost, he has a revelation: “Asgard’s not a place, it’s a people.” And he sets about evacuating...
... not the people themselves, but the system as such!
Back to the Roots!
The third line of defence is the willingness to acknowledge the serious systemic imperfections of modern capitalism without touching upon the fundamental principles of political liberalism. In this case, it is not so much Donald Trump and Boris Johnson who are to blame, but rather Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The argument here is that many Western countries made the fatal mistake in the late 1970s and early 1980s of privatizing ...
... rights, advocates for international cooperation and lives by the rules of the market economy. This formula is known to everybody. One used to take it for granted. Although I, for example, cannot fully understand where to pinpoint the countries in which liberalism has not been very popular. In Europe there are many. For example, are social democratic systems liberal democracies? This remains a big question. But there is another side.
Democracy and human rights, for all the importance of both phenomena,...
... further widens the gap between the way the economic and political domains react to globalization and related events.
5. Universalism or Pluralism?
Igor Ivanov:
Why Should We Be Grateful to Donald Trump?
The global triumph of political and economic liberalism was accompanied by the rise in interest in the phenomenon of globalization. During the 1990s, “liberal globalization” and “globalized liberalism” were perceived as inextricably linked concepts, if not as synonyms. That entails that ...
... however, has largely come under suspicion at the suggestion of the Anglo-Saxon nations. That turned the crisis into a protracted and irresolvable (French sans issu is closer to the Russian original) affair, all the more so that the elites espousing neoliberalism wouldn’t admit to its contemporary Weimar origins.
The US and Britain bet on further tightening neo-liberal screws, which includes cutting taxes and taxes on business among others. This is how Brexit makes sense as a mobilization project ...
... system of thought. It would be inadequate to rely solely on the Primakovian perspective, and the larger matrix of Russian Realism must be rediscovered and revived as the paradigm of world politics today.
Russian realists tend to blame a dilettantish liberalism for the deviation from the great tradition of Western Realism, from Kennan to Kissinger, which they are familiar with. Russian thinking, while understandably rejecting the liberal idealism of Fukuyama et al, has tightly embraced an American ...
... prepared by a team of German foreign policy experts stating that the actions of President Donald Trump have put the “liberal world order” in danger. According to the experts, Trump’s victory dealt a heavy blow to the normative foundations of Western liberalism. The “manifesto” notes the importance of liberal values and institutes for Germany’s prosperity and insists on aligning the country’s participation in transatlantic
relations
against the European context.
In his
critical analysis
...
