The Illiberalism of America’s Liberal Internationalism

• In Event: Retrenchment from the Global Order? US Foreign Policy Under Trump and Beyond

Abstract

Current debate about the decline of the liberal world order, and the role of the US in both the creation and destruction of that order, is an opportunity to correct the progressive bias in discussions of liberal internationalism. Much of the debate argues that illiberal norms and rules at the international level are the result of an incomplete commitment to liberalism, thus reproducing a dichotomy between (good) “liberal” and (bad) “illiberal” norms and rules. This paper challenges this dichotomous understanding of “liberal” and “illiberal” internationalism. Beyond pointing to the illiberal faces of American internationalism, this paper argues that America’s “liberal” and “illiberal” internationalism are i) mutually constituted and ii) causally related. The paper first outlines the two-step theoretical argument that liberal and illiberal norms are constitutively and causally related; it then applies an historical institutionalist approach to trace this idea at work in the development of US foreign policy over time. It traces the intertwined logics of liberalism and illiberalism from the emergence of American liberal internationalism in the early 20th Century through to the post-Cold War period in order to shed new light on US foreign policy decisions. The conclusion considers the relevance of the argument for current politics.

Author

• Lora Anne Viola, Free University of Berlin