Never Again Should a Sole Superpower Anchor the Liberal International Order

We need a confederation of liberal democracies across continents to uphold a multilateral, rights-based global system

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I was recently at a convening in Europe on defending democracy where I was asked to make brief remarks on a panel titled, “Reimagining a Rules-Based International Order—The Way Forward and Considering a Rights-Based Order.” It was a tall order given that I had only five (OK, I stretched it to seven!) minutes to sketch out a complex issue. Below is a more fleshed out version of my remarks.

Shikha Dalmia
Editor-in-Chief

There are two assumptions in the topic of the panel: One, the multilateral international order that evolved in the wake of World War II is in trouble, and two, we shouldn’t try and hang on to it but imagine something better. In other words, our current disruptive moment also presents opportunities.

Those premises are correct.

The first step toward a new liberal international order is calling it not a rules-based—but a principles-based—liberal order. The semantic difference matters when trying to forge a coalition whose members could have different interests at any given moment. A rules-based order connotes that they must accept limits on advancing their interests based on pre-set rules. These rules might be agreed upon mutually, but they nevertheless signify restrictions. Principles, on the other hand, refer to one’s own independently chosen normative commitments. Entering arrangements that advance them therefore represents not a loss of autonomy but staying true to one’s own values. Interests can diverge based on time and circumstances—principles don’t.

To chart where we go from here, we need to understand the shambolic state of our existing rules-based order, to stick with the current vocabulary, and why it needs replacing. America was the architect and champion of this order, but its politics have fundamentally changed, and there is no going back to the status quo ante.

Trump’s Contempt for the Existing Order

For starters, it is clear that Trump has complete contempt for this order because it constrains America’s, and therefore his own, authority in world affairs. It commits the U.S. to consulting and seeking approval from international bodies before taking any military or economic action against another country. Before deploying coercion or force, he is supposed to try and resolve a dispute by reference to mutually-agreed upon rules and by obtaining buy-in before. In truth, America has always used its considerable clout to tilt these rules in its favor and enforced them selectively. Its veto power on the U.N. Security Council has meant that its allies, such as Israel, have faced no sanctions for violations. Even before Trump, America only selectively adhered to international law, such as the Geneva Conventions against torture. Less seriously, it has flouted adverse WTO rulings against its anti-dumping protectionist policies.

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Why Populism and Authoritarianism Go Hand in Hand

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But Trump has taken things to such a level that makes all this seem like small-time cheating. He is using America’s economic might to bend the world to his will just because he can—and not only to impose lopsided tariff demands but even to dictate other countries’ foreign policy and meddle in internal issues of governance. After strong-arming the European Union to agree to 15% tariffs, he just threatened to ditch a trade deal with Canada because it moved to recognize Palestine as a state. And he had previously imposed a special 50% tariff on Brazil to coerce it to back off from prosecuting Trump’s strongman buddy Jair Bolsonaro for attempting to steal the election.

To spell out the distinction, Trump is a:

• Presidentialist: a clumsy coinage, no doubt, that basically means that he does not care to secure domestic buy-in—from Congress or otherwise—for his foreign policy initiatives. He launched strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities without obtaining congressional authorization (let alone a formal declaration of war, which, to be fair, no president has done since 1942) or even extending so much as a courtesy FYI to congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle ahead of the strikes.

• Unilateralist: he has total contempt for any multilateral arrangements because that means consulting with U.S. allies and obtaining their blessing.

• Sovereigntist

The last point is the least understood aspect of Trump’s approach. He has been branded an isolationist because he is a nativist and protectionist and harbors a deep antipathy toward America’s allies abroad. But he does not seek to retreat into a non-interventionist shell. He relishes power and wants to exercise it freely without any meddling from lesser powers. He believes might makes right and has no use for concerns of fairness or a consensus-building process in which everyone, regardless of their place in the power hierarchy, has a voice. That’s why he thinks he should be able to take control over the Panama Canal, rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” buy Greenland, attack Mexico, and annex Canada.

Sovereigntism vs Isolationism

All of this, Rutgers University’s Jennifer Mittelstadt (who is one of the participants on our internationalism panel at our upcoming “Liberalism for the 21st Century” conference) has explained, is consistent with the sovereigntist movement that arose over 100 years ago:

[T]he world undertook a referendum of sorts on the surge in globalization that preceded World War I. Nations, increasingly interconnected, were rocked by the halt in trade and migration that followed the war’s conclusion. At the same time, empires collapsed and new nationalist movements emerged or flourished, with the result that some states died and altogether new ones were born.

Amid this dramatic change emerged a proposal for a novel form of supranational government—the League of Nations. As diplomats and lawyers hammered out guidelines, they prompted fierce debate over the purpose of nation states and sovereignty. …

Sovereigntist politics persisted and evolved as the features and scope of liberal and left-wing internationalism took new forms. In the 1930s, they helped lead the America First movement, which opposed entrance in World War II on the side of the Allies. Far from isolationism, sovereigntists openly championed the anti-internationalism of the fascists, supported Gen. Francisco Franco’s Nationalist rebellion in Spain, and accepted—even cheered—the regimes in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy that thumbed their noses at the collapsing League of Nations.

Interestingly, Mittlestadt points out, the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, the minister who married Trump and his first wife, Ivana, was part of this sovereignty movement—so there is reason to believe that, at the very least, Trump was exposed to its ideas.

Fundamentally, sovereigntism seeks to replace rules with force or might as the organizing principle in the world. Observing the awe and respect with which Trump has treated Vladimir Putin and Russia, The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum, who has written some of the most insightful accounts of the global rise of authoritarianism, has noted that under Trump, America has switched sides from the liberal-democratic axis to the authoritarian axis. But it is more complicated than that. Trump is on the side of the countries he regards as great powers. He respects their ambition to dominate their neighbors and countries in their sphere because that’s what he himself wishes to do. That explains his curious man-crush on Putin (at least till two days ago when Russia openly dissed his efforts to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war) and also his assistance to Israel in the strikes against Iran. Being on the side of great powers is a winning strategy and he wants to be a winner.

Now that Trump has reignited sovereigntism, the great foreign policy divide within MAGA going forward will no longer be between hawkish neocon national-builders and isolationists, as had been the case, but isolationists such as Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, on the one hand, and sovereigntists, on the other. It’s unclear who will pick up the sovereigntist mantle from Trump but Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton’s views combining national strength, independence, and control over borders and foreign policy are consistent with such a posture.

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Are There Better Foreign Policy Alternatives to Liberal Internationalism?

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So long as MAGA remains a potent political force, U.S. support for the existing liberal order will either wither or totally reverse. If the isolationist wing prevails, America will retreat inward and jealously guard its culture and border to keep outside influences at bay, while not worrying too much about maintaining its relationships with allies or rules of engagement with the outside world. If the sovereigntist side wins, it will engage with the outside world not in the spirit of exchange and cooperation but domination.

Toward a Modern Multipolarism

Even if a liberal-democratic internationalist wins the next election, America still can’t return to its position of leadership so long as another MAGA president—isolationist or sovereigntist—remains a live possibility four years hence.

This means, if the liberal international order is to survive, it needs not a new champion—but champions.

A state of affairs in which this order had only one champion was never a healthy one. A world with a single superpower or hegemon was inherently unstable even if the hegemon is a liberal democracy. In the absence of checks, a power inevitably becomes self-interested and overweening even when not led by a sociopath—which partly explains America’s ill-advised foreign policy adventurism in Iraq and elsewhere. Of course, a world in which the Soviet Union were the sole superpower would have been infinitely worse given that there wouldn’t even be a domestic democratic check to its imperialistic ambitions. Indeed, we are witnessing a mini version of how things would have played out in that scenario in Ukraine right now.

In a perfect world, we’d have multiple liberal-democratic powers in the Americas, Europe, Asia, as well as in Africa and the Middle East anchoring the liberal democracies in their regions. These powers would form alliances of equals to counter authoritarian dangers together. That does not mean that they couldn’t forge arrangements with non-liberal-democratic countries to avert wars or advance mutual interests. But there would be a distinct axis of like-minded liberal democracies committed to free enterprise—including the free flow of goods and people across borders, constitutional and accountable government, and, above all, the universal defense of individual liberty and human rights.

Let’s imagine what such a world might look like:

America would reject MAGA forces and re-embrace global internationalism. But it would anchor only the Americas or maybe just the American continent north of Colombia with another power anchoring liberal democracies in South America. (Javier Milei’s Argentina, anyone? I’m joking, but only partly. That country has a long way to go but it has made a great deal of headway in the last year in jettisoning its legacy of Peronism and restoring its economy to some semblance of health. Milei is a troubling figure given his bombastic, populist style and chumminess with reactionary regimes and social conservatism but he’s not a protectionist or nativist and appreciates economic openness and fiscal restraint.)

In Europe, the top candidates to pick up the mantle of liberal democracy are Germany, England, and France. The first thing they need to do is convincingly defeat the far-right virus infecting their own polities. But to be a great power, a country must have a strong economy and a strong defense.

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Europe Needs to Rise Swiftly to Counter Trump's Predatory Imperialism

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On the latter score, Trump might have done these countries a favor by demanding that they take more responsibility for their own defense. Even if Trump had never set foot in the White House, it was fanciful to think that America’s will to subsidize Europe’s defense would never flag. Trump may not care if NATO survives, but America’s support for NATO—both in terms of blood and treasure—was already becoming politically controversial. Building formidable defense systems within European liberal democracies themselves would strengthen the alliance and give it much more control in countering future aggression by future Putins rather than relying on a distant—and, as Trump has made unforgettably clear, unreliable—power that does not directly feel the threat.

But a strong defense needs to be built on the foundation of a strong economy and, on this front, the European Union has much work to do to become America’s co-equal.

As Eli Lehrer has noted here:

In 2008, the United States and the Eurozone as a whole had almost exactly the same GDP in current dollars: $14.2 trillion for the United States and $14.8 for Eurozone countries. Fast forward to 2023, and the gap has widened dramatically. The EU’s GDP has increased to only $17 trillion (an inflation adjusted decline on a per capita basis) or about $56,000 per capita while the U.S.’s GDP hit $27.94 trillion.

Middling economies cannot be great powers. The E.U. needs to seriously think about how Brussels can release the animal spirits of European entrepreneurs. As America impairs its economy through nativism and protectionism, the E.U.’s free trade and free movement policies will give it a definite edge, if it can convince its members to hang onto them. In addition, it needs to encourage its members to liberalize their rigid labor markets while curbing its own regulatory overreach that is thwarting innovation in cutting edge industries such as AI and biotech—while America and China gallop ahead.

In Asia, unless India, the region’s most populous liberal democracy, finds a way to overcome its virulent Hindu nationalism and clock 10% GDP growth annually, fully overcoming joblessness and poverty, the only other liberal democracy that is economically big and modern enough to anchor the continent’s liberal democracies is Japan. It has a history of strong defense, so it is not a stretch to think that it could emerge as a serious regional power if it relaxed its self-imposed World War II inhibition against arming itself. Given the revanchist ambitions of China’s authoritarian rulers, a serious liberal-democratic power in Asia capable of checking the Middle Kingdom may greatly aid the cause of world peace and freedom.

Multiple liberal-democratic powers, each championing their own sphere, would arguably create a race to the top for defending liberal institutions and values—not a race to the bottom as happened in the bipolar (pun intended!) world when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were locked in the Cold War. That rivalry spawned an arms race, proxy wars to install puppet regimes all over the world, and of course actual wars in Vietnam, Korea, and Afghanistan—not to mention the specter of a nuclear holocaust. Moreover, this rivalry did not make Soviet autocrats more friendly to freedom in their own country. Rather, it made American leaders less friendly to it in their own, triggering some of the worst abuses—such as McCarthyism and federal crackdowns on the Civil Rights Movement—in the name of defending the country from commies and lefties.

But multiple liberal-democratic power centers—a global federation of liberal democracies, if you will—would not only provide a more effective front against the authoritarian threat but also strengthen the norms and institutional structures against abusing civil liberties and human rights at home. Every power that delivers peace and prosperity to its people while respecting their rights will become a model for others. In such a world, there would also be many more pressure points to ensure fidelity to mutually held principles.

A liberal international order in which the whole world counted on a lone superpower to uphold multilateral arrangements was too riddled with contradictions. More powers that jointly share this responsibility would be much more sustainable. The question is how we get there from here, especially while fending off the authoritarian threat within.

© The UnPopulist, 2025

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