In The Twenty-years Crisis, E. H. Carr argues that the crisis of the late 1930s that led to the onset of the Second World War was brought about by a collapse of the edifice of ‘liberal-idealist’ thinking which had dominated international affairs in the inter-war period (Carr 1939, p. 62). The period from 1945 to 1989, by contrast, is generally regarded as being dominated by realism, which holds that states are the dominant actors in an anarchic system, and that power*/in particular, the quest for security*/is the central feature of interstate relation- ships. The period from 1989 to 2001, it could be argued, saw a shift back towards what came to be known not as ‘idealism’ (something clearly to be avoided in international politics) but ‘liberal internationalism’. There is no doubt that the end of the Cold War ushered in a period of rhetorical and policy commitment to the values of liberalism, including a strong belief in the possibility of achieving reform in the direction of something that might be called ‘global liberalism’. Fukuyama’s The End of History (1992) was a credo for the 1990s in the West, inspiring confidence in decisive interventions in the name of pursuing and achieving pro-liberalization policies around the world. From the Gulf War of 1990􏰀/91, to the even more decisive war of NATO with Yugoslavia over the fate of Kosovo, these events are held up as examples of ‘liberal’s wars’: that is, wars fought ‘predominantly in response to gross human rights violations and threats of genocide’ (Brown 1999, p. 49). In the 1990s, these decisive victories were seen to reinforce the claim that, as Chris Brown puts it, ‘[t]here is no viable form of emancipatory politics except that which takes place within the basic liberal model’ (Brown 1999, p. 51). The post-Cold War linking of development and security, moreover, served to reinforce the moral rectitude of these interventions, and to entrench the alleged necessity of a liberal international politics that was universal in scope. While the events of September 2001 called other aspects of the liberal project into question, this linkage has been strengthened, rather than weakened, by the War on Terror. Development programs and initiatives are now routinely justified on the basis that they will help to mitigate exclusion and alienation, thereby delivering greater stability not only to the nation-state or region in question but also to the world as a whole (see Duffield 2007). While these apparent sea changes from utopianism to realism to liberal internationalism do correspond at some level to the changing nature of international politics, they also serve to belie the continuity of the principles that have governed world politics since the beginning of the ‘short’ twentieth century. In other words, in emphasizing shifts from utopianism to realism back to liberalism (and, since 2001, back to realism) we obfuscate the extent to which liberal ideas of individual (state) autonomy, agency and contractarianism have always been at the heart of both the contemporary international system and the theories through which it is constituted. Thus, while some international relations theorists use ‘liberalism’ to refer simply to a belief in the ability of international institutions to promote cooperation and collectively manage conflict, a return to the foundational principles of liberalism allows us to see clearly how they underwrite not only the global political economy but also the legal and normative order upon which the international system rests. The UN Charter rests on the idea of the sovereign equality of states based on the notions of territorial integrity and political autonomy. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights rests on the notion of the fundamental equality of all persons based on the idea of human dignity which, in turn, rests on the idea of individual autonomy. While it is indeed the case that these two documents display the tensions surrounding the doctrines of state sovereignty and individual rights, it could similarly be argued that these two ideas are mutually constitutive and reinforcing, especially in the so-called ‘human rights era’ since 1945 (see Reus-Smit 2001). Seen in this way, it would seem that despite the apparent end of the liberal moment as displayed in events and trends internationally since 2001, the ontological and normative categories of liberalism are remarkably persistent. Challenging the dominance of liberalism will require that we reflect critically on our most basic ideas about subjectivity, personhood and equality that form the basis of the dominant understandings of the nature of politics, and what counts as politics, both within and beyond states. Liberalism has successfully constructed a series of dichotomies at both the domestic and the international levels that shape these definitions. While the most enduring and prevalent of these is the ‘public/private’ dichotomy, other, related dichotomies include ‘autonomy and dependence’, ‘sovereignty and intervention’, ‘self-determination and imperialism’. These dichotomies both shape the direction of world politics and limit our vision in the search for solutions to endemic suffering and violence around the globe.
The period from 1989 to 2001, it could be argued, saw a shift back towards what came to be known not as ‘idealism’ (something clearly to be avoided in international politics) but ‘liberal internationalism’. There is no doubt that the end of the Cold War ushered in a period of rhetorical and policy commitment to the values of liberalism, including a strong belief in the possibility of achieving reform in the direction of something that might be called ‘global liberalism’. While the events of September 2001 called other aspects of the liberal project into question, this linkage has been strengthened, rather than weakened, by the War on Terror. Development programs and initiatives are now routinely justified on the basis that they will help to mitigate exclusion and alienation, thereby delivering greater stability not only to the nation-state or region in question but also to the world as a whole (see Duffield 2007). While these apparent sea changes from utopianism to realism to liberal internationalism do correspond at some level to the changing nature of international politics, they also serve to belie the continuity of the principles that have governed world politics since the beginning of the ‘short’ twentieth century. In other words, in emphasizing shifts from utopianism to realism back to liberalism (and, since 2001, back to realism) we obfuscate the extent to which liberal ideas of individual (state) autonomy, agency and contractarianism have always been at the heart of both the contemporary international system and the theories through which it is constituted. Thus, while some international relations theorists use ‘liberalism’ to refer simply to a belief in the ability of international institutions to promote cooperation and collectively manage conflict, a return to the foundational principles of liberalism allows us to see clearly how they underwrite not only the global political economy but also the legal and normative order upon which the international system rests Seen in this way, it would seem that despite the apparent end of the liberal moment as displayed in events and trends internationally since 2001, the ontological and normative categories of liberalism are remarkably persistent. Challenging the dominance of liberalism will require that we reflect critically on our most basic ideas about subjectivity, personhood and equality that form the basis of the dominant understandings of the nature of politics, and what counts as politics, both within and beyond states. Liberalism has successfully constructed a series of dichotomies at both the domestic and the international levels that shape these definitions. While the most enduring and prevalent of these is the ‘public/private’ dichotomy, other, related dichotomies include ‘autonomy and dependence’, ‘sovereignty and intervention’, ‘self-determination and imperialism’. These dichotomies both shape the direction of world politics and limit our vision in the search for solutions to endemic suffering and violence around the globe.