The Liberal Imperium is Dead

Philip Pilkington examines why the unipolar liberal-internationalist can no longer open the doors, and shows why Secretary of State Marco Rubio sees a new way through our new multi-polar reality.

When a magician reveals how his trick his done, that trick instantly ceases to hold its original power of fascination. This is why magicians guard their secrets so closely, to the extent that they formed secret societies like The Magic Circle and the52. Why would a magician break with his colleagues and reveal some of his tricks? One can only think that he would engage in such heresy only when he feared that the public was losing interest in the illusions that he was peddling. If the public refuses to buy tickets to a magic show, maybe they will fork over a few bucks to see how the tricks are done.

Something similar seems to be happening in so-called liberal internationalist circles. Faced with global chaos, rising non-Western multilateralisms like BRICS, and a second term for President Trump – all phenomena that their own failed policies played a large role in creating – they are inviting the public to line up and watch how the old tricks were done. The most standout example of this is an essay entitled ‘Trump’s Antiliberal Order’ published in Foreign Affairs by political scientists Alexander Cooley and David Nexon.

Cooley and Nexon effectively argue that the liberal internationalism was merely the packaging for pragmatic policies aimed at preserving a globalist order that operated in America’s self-interest. They seem to be arguing that this order can be stripped of its liberal form, but its practicalcontent should be allowed to remain intact. So, presumably, an enlightened Trumpist bureaucrat, after reading Cooley and Nexon’s essay, would remove the word “liberal” from a variety of institutions and let them carry on their work in the service of the American people. The problem, however, is that liberal internationalism is all form and no content.