Robert Kagan: Misconceptions About the "Liberal World Order"

I also think that when those of us who use this sort of not very lovely phrase the liberal world order I wish I had a better phrase I have toyed with other phrases to describe what was created but I haven't really come up with a better one but I think that Americans have a number of misconceptions about this international system that the United States created after World War Two which in a way help undermine their support for it the first one I've already indicated which is the belief that this order was created in response to the Soviet Union and the onset of the Cold War I find even highly educated people like Graham Allison and Harvard saying that the cult that the liberal order was created as in response to the Cold War but as it happens that is historically inaccurate that really the the basic outlines and even some of the key elements of this liberal world order were created before anyone thought there was going to be a problem with the Soviet Union they the basic vision and some of the basic elements of this order were established during world war ii certainly Bretton Woods conference is 1944 the decision to start having bases around the world from which the United States could operate in both Europe and Asia those bases those strings of bases were being planned as early as 1943 by American strategic planners and so and the basic idea that the United States after World War two was going to have to play a entirely different role in the world than it had played prior to World War two was firmly fixed at a time when Uncle Joe Stalin was still our ally when people like Franklin Roosevelt and Dean Acheson and others thought that the post-war world would be one of cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union and the Cold War actually came as a kind of surprise and people sort of woke up in early 1946 or roughly roughly there about so that's one misconception and it's related to another misconception I think which is that I think a lot of people when they hear the phrase liberal world order or they hear people talk about this think that this order is based on some very idealistic notion of remaking the world in America's image you hear that all the time that it's a kind of Wilsonian project a kind of utopian idea of making a brand new world based on a very optimistic assessment of what can be accomplished in the world as a matter of fact the founders of this Liberal World Order were it was really based on a deep pessimism about both the international system and about human nature and a pessimism that was that was hard-earned for those for that generation that lived through World War one the 20s and then the 30s and then World War two and that really is the generation of Franklin Roosevelt and Dean Acheson and Harry Truman and others many people but most of whom were born in the latter part of the 19th century and went through that entire sort of history of disaster in which the worst acts of inhumanity that anyone could ever imagine took place and so they had a very I would say dark view of humanity I think they worked on the assumption that the natural tendency of the international system was toward chaos and conflict because that is what they had witnessed and I think that they had no illusions about human nature necessarily being a benevolent force in the world I think they were hopeful that it that a mayor that human beings sort of better angels could be appealed to but they built a system that was really designed to contain those other angels the the the not better angels the sort of darker forces and in this respect I think they were very much like the founders of the American Republic who also did not have did not base the American system on a sort of optimistic reading of human nature but really on on the assumption that human beings could be counted on to behave selfishly and to pursue their ambitions regardless of others and that so they created this famous system of checks and balances and other institutional structures in the hope of channeling these these other forces of human nature in a positive direction I think that's essentially what the founders of the liberal world order set up and I think that they probably in their wildest dreams did not imagine how successful this order that they set up would be I really do think they were trying to stave off the worst disasters they were you know like all statesmen they were focused on all statesmen focused on preventing what just happened from ever happening again they're very very infrequently of people looking that far ahead into the future and so the order they created was designed to prevent the things that they had already seen and just to think about what the basic elements of this order are and Joanne actually sort of laid out what they are but as they look back on the period leading up to world war two they saw that on the one hand protectionist sentiment and efforts by the various power blocks to create autarkic economic spheres in which they would be dominant and would not actually engage in trade with one another they this is something this was Hitler's ambition for Germany that he would create a European market which would not depend on anyone else it was certainly the Japanese goal with the Asian co-prosperity sphere which was to have a dominant to be dominant in its own economic bloc and then of course America played along for its own purposes with protectionist policies in the 1920s and then accelerating into the 1930s and I think you know the founders of the order so I look back on that and said that was a disaster that not only did it actually lead to you know bad economic consequences which created poverty which created radicalism and discontent but it also sort of drove a deeper wedge between nations and sort of took already existing geopolitical competition and making it and sort of exacerbating it by turning it as well into an economic competition and that's why they wanted to establish as much of a free trading open global economy as possible not again out of some idealistic belief that this would make all people behave better but because they'd seen what the consequences of not having that kind of system or and so I feel like just as this is just an example when you'd say to people today this is here's the problem with protectionism I don't think they're thinking about that problem I think all they're thinking about is well haven't we been too nice to all other powers and so this kind of you know there's the reason why we have this order has been forgotten you [Music]

Channel: Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

Views: 4,503

Keywords: Robert Kagan, Carnegie Council for EThics in International Affairs, Liberal World Order, Bretton woods, cold war, World War II, STalin, Roosevelt, FDR, Hitler, United Nations, post-war, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World, Brookings Institution, Dean Acheson, Bretton Woods Conference, UN, WTO, IMF

Id: lqP3vWE9Eyk

Length: 7min 57sec (477 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 05 2018