 Welcome, I'm delighted to welcome you all here today for this seminar asking does the liberal international order have a future with our guest today, Professor john I can vary. My name is Ben Tanra and I'm Professor of international relations at the School of Politics and international relations here at University College Dublin. Just a couple of housekeeping details to note before we kick off. The event is being recorded and is on the record. Professor I can very will speak for about 20 minutes, and the remainder of the hour will be devoted to our discussion, based on your comments and questions which you can submit at any time through the q amp a function on zoom. Please just don't forget to identify yourself and your professional affiliation when you submit your question or comment. You're also most welcome to share our conversation on social media using the at double I a handle. It is a real pleasure and honor for me today to welcome and introduce Professor I can vary. He is the Albert G Milbank Professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, and as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He's the author of eight books. Most recently, a world safer democracy liberal internationalism in a making of the modern world order, sorry, which was published in 2020 by a university press. This was a book which was deservedly judged as best of the year by the farm policy magazine. In that text he's asked some tough questions about the relationship between global order, democracy and unfettered economic globalization and their potential reconciliation and a couple of those themes I hope he hits on today. John is a world renowned theorist of international relations and perhaps the theorist on the nature and future of liberal order. He's a rare breed of scholar who moves seamlessly between advanced scholarship and public policy is public policy services extensive, having worked at the State Department's policy planning staff, and at a number of the US is leading think tanks from the Carnegie Endowment Woodrow Wilson Center the Brookings Institute, and now currently with the Council on farm relations. John, you are very welcome to our virtual double I a and Dublin. We're really looking forward to your contribution. The floor is yours. Thank you Ben and to the I a just thank you so much for hosting me it's a real pleasure to to be here here being virtual. Unfortunately, but saving in person meeting for another time it's at least great to see. See you on the screen and to have this chance to talk about world order liberal the liberal world order and its future. Start really by the observation that many of us share that that the world itself is in transition that the the old order that we've, we've seen over the last 75 years, clearly is under stress breaking down in crisis different more broadly across the world in the shadow of the pandemic and the shadow of global warming there seems to be a more general lost confidence and collective solutions to collective problems the, the multilateral mindset the the liberal internationalist mindset seems to to be on its back heels a sense that we aren't really performing at the level that we were in earlier eras. And there's a sense of a kind of world historical moment, not least by what's happened in the last year of the, the, the growing antagonism with great powers that are clearly ill liberal that do not wish the western oriented liberal oriented order well, Russia and China to start but Iran and and North Korea is making itself known again so there's a kind of encirclement of this troubled order. Basic questions are being asked as I try to pursue in my new book about what are the sources of order, can liberal democracy, make a comeback. Can capitalism and democracy be brought back into balance in the context of inequality and dysfunction and dislocation. This is the future of liberal internationalism as a, as a as a mode of organizing the world a cooperative organization of the global system. And so that that really is the set of questions that we're debating today. In my work, this recent work, I've, I've tried to take the long view to kind of go back and try to put moment to moment the tick tock of today in broader historical context. And so, drawing the observation that the liberal international order did not begin in 1989, nor really in 1945. It's been a longer struggle by, by liberal democratic states and partners over at least 200 years to, to work towards building a global order that would be congenial for for these emerging polities liberal liberal democracies, there have been extraordinary moments of, of good times and bad times golden eras and crises, close run things, think of the 1930s. And in many ways, if you look over the longer period 1989 in the 90s, the unipolar liberal moment looks more anomalous that the longer period is one of, of great contestation, a kind of agonistic story of challenge of conflict of adaptation. Think about the 1930s and 40s which I have gone back to in my current focus. The last time there was this great disruption, disruption or dis dis dis dis juncture in the global system. In the sense that liberal democracy as a way of life was was was really at a kind of extinction moment. Think about the generation of 1945. In their own professional lifetimes, they were trying to make sense of a world that had just seen the Great Depression, the rise of total war, the rise of fascism, the rise of totalitarianism, the Holocaust, and the dropping of the atomic bomb, all within a very small part of world history. And yet, and yet that generation of liberals, Ira Katz Nelson's brilliant book, Desolation and Enlightenment tells the story of this generation of policy liberals who who wanted to rebuild open societies. And that was their, their task and indeed they did it and so we can take some lesson drawing from that period a usable past from the way liberal democracies have struggled in the past and found solutions. My book really tries to do a number of different things that I want to talk about very briefly in the next while. First of all, to try to convince you that there is something called liberal internationalism as a way of thinking about the world ideas and projects and the history. Secondly, to be honest about its successes and failures it has been a mixed record for certain, and there's a lot of criticism that's well deserved. And then thirdly to try to chart a path to how can we go forward and there, all in my remarks really saying a few words about the Biden administration, which in many ways is the embodiment of what a earnest well meaning American administration that that wishes the liberal order well what it's doing so we can draw some diagnostic conclusions from how it's going. But what is liberal internationalism well the first move in my book really is to try to reorient what that means the most famous phrase to embody that that idea is is Wilson's Woodrow Wilson's a world safer democracy, and it's typically meant and it's been passed down as a kind of slogan that entails a program of spreading democracy worldwide. And what I argue in my book is that's not the best reading that in fact you can read that phrase, literally, as to make the world safe for liberal democracy to survive so safety is the is the key word to a kind of environment, an ecosystem, a geopolitical setting for liberal democracies to do things to survive and, and that is my major intellectual contribution I think to to think about the global order as not the global order as the whole but as a subset of that order which is a kind of ecosystem in which liberal democracies and various kinds of hybrid regimes are working to create rules and institutions to manage their mutual vulnerabilities. And liberal democracies are incredibly complicated. In some sense designed to miss function. Think about liberal democracies as as being built around principles that are inconsistent, liberty and equality individualism and community sovereignty and interdependence. The flaws are built into the system and indeed celebrated because we want, we want multiple things that are in some sense intention, and part of the liberal order is creating an environment and ecosystem, where these inequalities can can engage in that never ending balancing and trade off at exercise and to aggregate their power for dealing with larger environmental crises geopolitical and otherwise in their their periphery. So I try to recast liberal internationalism as a pragmatic opportunistic problem solving tradition and and then think more specifically about what this means. And let me just say that the next point I want to make is really that I acknowledge the, the difficult times that those of us who, who fly the banner of liberal internationalism who think this is there's something here that shouldn't be shouldn't be ignored. There's a sense that there has been a troubled recent period and I would identify three moments or, or, or events you might say that that have put liberal internationalism on the defensive raised questions about its, its viability. One is the Iraq war which in many ways was a war that came out of liberal unipolar America. And so the failure of that war in many ways discredited, at least part of the internationalist elites and in Washington, certainly on the, the, the, the Republican side, the 2008 financial crisis in many ways did the same for internationalist elites on the Democratic side, a kind of twin crises that that's that weakened the ability of our leaders to stand up and say, we should think of our national interests in global and internationalist terms. And then the, the liberal bet on China that we could use liberal strategies of inclusion and corporation inviting and indeed welcoming China into the liberal order, and, and by doing so we would, we would see China make a decision it didn't happen. And so we have a before us a mixed record, I spend a lot of time trying to say okay, what has worked, what has been the record is there's something here that we should, we should learn from and preserve. And I think there is, I think that the liberal order has been a great world historical success, creating over decades with states across the Atlantic and then even further afield across the Pacific around the world creating a kind of liberal order, kind of platform with lots of layers, lots of institutions, economic security, political, environmental, and creating capacities for problem solving through integration and, and various kinds of collaboration. So the big six, the six great accomplishments of the liberal order, the reopening the world economy after World War two, creating a framework for Germany and, and Japan to, to reorient their great power status as civilian great powers, even today Germany is than the other traditional great powers and so to Japan. That's good in many respects. And it's only possible because of this framework that I've been describing Germany and France were able to overcome their historic differences and starting with the, the colon steel community and, and create a foundation for the launching of the European Union trilateral cooperation took root during and after the Cold War the so called G seven countries, and fifth the, the platform that I've been describing creating a kind of welcome home for states that are making transitions. Think of South Korea think of other countries in East Asia in East Eastern Europe Central Europe, Latin America Southern Europe countries that have over the course of the 80s and 90s. The number of democracies doubled, and they found a docking station they found a place to go where they could get assistance security economic and so forth. And then finally, China has had its best decades into millennia, under the auspices of what we used to call packs Americana. So even China, in ways we may want to describe has seen this as as a framework that has lifted boats and created opportunity. So what went wrong so very quickly moving to the next kind of looking at the critique and then what happens going forward. My own view is that it's a kind of failure of success or problems of success. During the Cold War, we often forget that the liberal order. The, the free world as it used to be called was really a world, a subset, a kind of club of countries that were inside of a bipolar order. And that ordering larger ordering environment created incentives and capacities within the, the, this coalition of states to do things. It was kind of a mutual aid society. It created opportunities capacities intergovernmental relations to manage interdependence, obviously security for sure through the alliance system. And so there was this kind of club club character to liberal order, the countries knew who was in and who was out, and what it meant to be in, and how to get in. After the Cold War ended that club started to break down. And as I argue in the later part of my book. The liberal order became more like a shopping mall, where you could wander in and go to the Apple store or what have you and, and do very specific things get things from the complex of institutions, but not buy into what I would call a suite of rights and responsibilities. China, of course, is an example of this where, and this is my international relations theory point for the day. I've been fairly light on on theory, the logic of conditionality, the logic of conditionality, I think is something that we have to reckon with as a feature that was part of the success of the liberal order and that logic of conditionality has, has broken down as countries can kind of come and go pick and choose a buffet of possibilities. And so there isn't a kind of disciplining logic at work today so just to kind of move towards what next. I think what the burden of my argument is that that we need to, if the liberal order, as I've defined it is to survive and reinvent itself for the next era, it will, some sort of club like quality is going to have to be rebuilt. And of course this is why I'm actually quite bullish and happy to see Biden talking about democracies, thinking about the world in part as a, as as as organized around a coalition of liberal democracies that drive the reform agenda. It's not anything blockish, like the Cold War, but, but the ability of countries to work together the future of world order and this will be my most sweeping statement today will be defined by which group of states can build these partnerships, alignments groupings that have a certain robustness to them, and that can move, move things, if not mountains at least move, move movements and politics in directions they want to go. Now, I think that has to be at least a two level game, you have to work to build relations with like minded states while you simultaneously simultaneously reach out to, to other states including Russia and China, this is not a narrow zero sum world it's a mixed sum world with lots of, of front relations and things that have to be done together even if we don't agree on on values and so forth. So let me just end by talking a little bit about, about the first year of the Biden administration it's been a very challenging year partly by because of missteps, but, but larger reasons as well. Russia poised for a military intervention in Ukraine, contesting the security order in Europe, Iran, breaking out of of a nuclear deal that the United States, unfortunately walked away from very, very bad mistake on America's part. The growing, growing aggressiveness, intimidating Taiwan, cracking down on democracy in Hong Kong, the Uyghurs in the West, it's not a, it's not a liberal story. And it's one that we would have to worry about as the potential, potentially the largest economy in the world. And Korea, of course, is not going away either. So there, the inbox, you might say, is full and getting full, fuller, and, and indeed, as some say, the inbox may be on fire. I do think that Biden has has the instincts that are constructive from both an American and a global perspective, returning to the Paris Accords, rejoining the WHO, putting arms control back on the agenda, the US, disasterously, I think, has walked away from, from, from arms control, Cold War, your arms control that really provided a kind of architecture of restraint. The Afghan withdrawal was, was clearly a mistake, or at least the methodology of withdrawal was a mistake, but I would say that the there is the good news is there really is a vision here I do think that that Biden has a, at least a game game plan, if not a grand strategy. And I think it's a threefold, threefold game plan. One is to rebuild the, the political capital of the United States, creating partnerships and capacities to deal with global problems in some sense, capacity building creating social capacity. From what may, in other words, it's the creating partnerships and working relations. Without regard to what the specific problems are just re weaving the, the, the relationship so that we can put ourselves on a firmer footing to deal with whatever comes down the road. Diplomacy. George Schultz, one of my favorite American secretaries of state who I use a Princetonian undergraduate, and I met him several times back when he was at Stanford in his last years. He talked about diplomacy as gardening, and others have done that as well that metaphor is widely used. The gardener, I think, and not always a droid but I think Tony Blinken feels that even more so he, he was during the Obama years, deeply involved in creating partnerships on on Afghanistan and other thorny issues so building a Rolodex and it's not surprising that Biden in his UN speech in early October mentioned the term partnership 16 times and alliance eight times. So that's the, the language I think it reflects a strategy of, of, of building this, this coalition. Secondly, I think there's a deeply felt, felt sense that liberal democracy really is in trouble that and not least in the United States that we could see a real retro aggression that we've already seen a preview of happen again, and Trump restoration, or, or something that would lead to to an even more kind of dysfunctional and quasi authoritarian system I think there's a great deal of worry and a sense that we've got to show that democracy works before the, the, the opposite forces gather their that regather their strength so democracy is is integral to the success of the international order in that sense we really are like the period of FDR Franklin Roosevelt when everything was tied together. The struggle against what FDR called the gangster regimes that were at war in the 40s was in part to bring like my states together to secure our own beloved institutions that we feel deeply deeply passionate about open societies with the rights and freedoms that I don't know how we get to the end of the 21st century if there isn't some modicum of those kind of constitutional rights and protections of open information free free association. So that's number two and then finally, there is a kind of focus on China. The hawkish policy towards China, it is a policy of strategic competition, seen China as a strategic rival, or what what some would call and indeed some Europeans have been calling a systemic rival, because it's not just a military competition, it's not primarily a military competition it's a comprehensive competition of ideas of what what what I would call modernity projects, certainly also a competition for for technology supremacy, whether our institutions will be friendly to liberal democracy or friendly to autocracy and the CCP multilateralism and institutions are not value neutral. They're not value neutral so it, there is a struggle over. It doesn't sound as heroic as World War two but it's a struggle over principles and rules for next generation technology for for these sorts of issues and it matters. Coalition partners because it matters if you have critical mass, if you have platforms, if you're a first mover, if you can establish network externalities that created advantages. So this is the world we're in. And I think it's ironically good for the liberal democracies to see that there is something else out there that could replace them. It's a kind of sobering moment so in an ironic way China is doing a favor to the liberal democracies by by articulating a different path that while the contest goes on we can clarify our own choices in that context. So I don't think we're we're at inevitable. It's inevitable that that we will re re enter a cold war. But I do because I think we're so much more interdependent than the US and the Soviets were in that earlier period. And we do need to to ultimately find a way to work on global warming which will sink all of us literally. If we don't find a common solution, and pandemics are not going to go away even if this one does. So there is a global agenda that has to be pursued while simultaneously, we find ways to preserve our institutions that are so important to us. So I think that's the, that's the message of my book I think there's there's a lot of there's there's actually a kind of possibility for an optimistic ending to this story but but we're going to have to work hard and pull a roll up our sleeves, if we're going to move in that direction. So then that's that's what I'll say for today and look forward to questions and comments.