The Liberal International Order (LIO) is no more. The days of intervening in foreign lands to protect ‘democracy’ is almost over.
There is a difference between Isolationism and Realism. The philosopher Francis Fukuyama, after the 1989 velvet revolutions, maintained that the endearing appeal of liberal capitalism would herald in an era of peace between nations. It was the ‘end of history’ – that the eras of ideological divides and big bloc rivalries would unravel as nations sought solace in trade and commerce.
US foreign policy was, on the whole, consistent post the second world war. The ideological threat of communism that had occupied both Democrats and Republicans revolved around a common consensus of interventionism in the national interest, give or take the details in Vietnam.
With the dissolution of Marxism as a plausible ideology, there began an unravelling of this consensus.
Rather than an outbreak of love and goodwill, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and the Ukraine have seen unprecedented levels of power and scarcity conflict. The old dividing lines of Fascism, Marxism, and Liberalism have been consumed under ‘materialism’. They exist along a sliding scale between authoritarianism and democracy. The world is divided into blocs of strategic interest rather than along ideological lines.
The Democrats are the last US gate keepers of the LIO in a new era of realpolitik in foreign policy. The problem for liberalism is how to tackle what they perceive as ‘evil’. Most of the ‘evil’ stems from a good or evil conjecture. Also there is a seminal lack of understanding of other cultures.
Metternich, the Austro-Hungarian chancellor, was the first modern graduate of the Realist School. He convened the post-Napoleonic settlement of 1815, rearranging the chess pieces to preserve peace in Europe until Bismarck and the age of Teutonic war. Metternich’s successor in the school was Henry Kissinger, with the premise being to establish a cooperation of fear between nations to avoid conflict. Therefore Kissinger sought a detente with China to discourage the Soviet Union. Peace is achieved, according to Kissinger, by clever policy, not by adamant soundbites about justice or democracy. His policy for the Soviets was to contain and accept them. Consequently, battles were shadowboxing for the great powers conducted on the peripheral.
It is no longer feasible to be the guardian of liberalism and morality vis à vis the Democrats’ fixation on moral colonialism or things such as exporting their view of gender, etc to the world. Hence the current debate regarding intervention in Ukraine for the first time has seen a division of consensus inside a Republican party which favours ‘realism’ in foreign policy. Not that this means ‘isolationism’. The ‘New Right’ in American conservatism differ markedly from the previous conservative era of ‘fusionism’ – that of free market economy and interventionist foreign policy. The New Right and the Trump Republicans have recalibrated this and moved to a foreign policy of ‘realism’ and will take their lead more from Kissinger than Obama. Realist policy, vis à vis Trump and Vance, means accepting the authoritarian Putin.
Georg Löfflmann sees the essence of the policy shift as ‘away from the bipartisan consensus on liberal hegemony and towards a closer alignment between elite and public opinion’. This populist approach means more realism in foreign policy. Disorder for Realists, is a lot worse than injustice. Kissinger said that the ‘most fundamental problem of politics is not the control of wickedness but the limitation of righteousness’. Moral righteousness is of epidemic proportions in the Democrats’ US and it is considered exportable.
Hence the debate about the recent Ukrainian offensive into Kursk is centre frame. Zelensky must assume that a Trump victory could spell a cooling in US support, but it will also mean a bridge to reconciliation. The strategy so far is ‘defensive war’ in order to bring Russia to negotiation. It hasn’t worked and fails to see the long-term game of Putin. This is all part of the grand blocs reality outlined above. Philip Breedlove, Nato chief in Europe 2013-16, said this week in Newsweek that, ‘If we keep doing what we’re doing, Ukraine will eventually lose… Because right now […] we are purposely not giving Ukraine what they need to win.’ Yet fuelling the war is not the solution. It is time for the diplomats to take centre stage.
The non-escalatory Biden-Harris policy is the Schrodinger’s Cat of diplomacy. We are on board, then we are not. Zelensky sees the fallacy in this. The Kursk incursion and the lobbying to get the use of long-range ATACMS missiles would reduce damage to Ukrainian infrastructure but risks enraging the Kremlin. Also this week North Korea sent 13,000 container shipments of weapons to Russia. The assumption that Russia will bow out due to economic pressures or lack of weapons is not happening however, I am far from convinced even long-range missiles would change this scenario. The mousetrap of Ukrainian foreign policy was laid bare when the allies decided Ukraine’s entry into Nato was a good idea. This, to Kissinger, would have been beyond the pale, however much it may appear ‘fair’.
The dualism in US foreign policy is therefore on the one hand to placate Zelensky and uphold ‘democracy’ and sovereignty but is facing the arrival of the ‘Realist’ school of thought. Vance has already outlined that a ceding of some territory (the Donbas) will need to be considered and also the position of Ukraine’s ‘neutrality’. This realist position is far nearer to the realpolitik of war than liberal soundbites from the Biden-Harris axis. When the Congress readied a $61 billion tranche for Ukraine, Vance was quoted in Politico as saying: ‘The American people will not tolerate another endless war and neither will I.’
The new TurkStream pipeline will allow the Russians to sell its gas to Europe and bypass the Ukraine. Sanctions have not worked and there is no let up in Russian arms manufacturing. The Biden administration failed to get the global south on board and they are aligning themselves with a Chinese vision of the world. The soundbites of war have been replaced by Machiavellian realism. Excursions into Russian territory, such as the German Sixth Army in 1942, normally end in tears and entrapment. There may be a propaganda coup for Zelensky to break into Kursk but what are the military goals? Russia is playing the long game of attrition. The Ukraine is fluttering on the winds of change in Washington. Hans Morgenthau wrote in Vietnam and the United States (1965) that morality can never be a basis for foreign policy. The curtains are drawing for the denouement of moral foreign policy in the modern age.
Brian Patrick Bolger LSE, University of Liverpool. He has taught political philosophy and applied linguistics in universities across Europe. His articles have appeared in the US, the UK, Italy, Canada and Germany in magazines. His new book- ‘Nowhere Fast: Democracy and Identity in the Twenty First Century’ is published now by Ethics International Press. He is an adviser to several Think Tanks and Corporates on Geopolitical Issues.
