The Crisis of the Liberal World Order and Turkey's Resistance.

• Author: Duran, Burhanettin
• Position: COMMENTARY

History books will possibly say that 2018 was the year when the "collapse" of the liberal world order was discussed more frequently than any other time before. U.S. President Donald Trump's first two years at the White House raised questions about Washington's global role, and fueled debate on the dissolution of the Atlantic Alliance. Interest in those issues was not limited to the media or the academia. It also made its mark on international summits that brought together heads of states. One such event was the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina. On the agenda of participating leaders, who were preoccupied with implementing reforms to prevent an other global economic crisis, were the rise of protectionism, a brewing trade war between the United States and China, the Ukraine crisis, the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and the Iran sanctions. The Buenos Aires summit set the stage for speeches demonstrating the growing prominence of bilateral relations at the expense of multilateralism.

The multidimensional turmoil, which the international order experiences today is primarily fueled by the efforts of the United States to exploit its hegemony and to further its economic interests at the detriment of others' economic growth. Embodied by the campaign slogan, America First, the Trump administrations unilateralism strengthens this trend.

Long gone are the days when political scientists celebrated the "triumph of liberal democracy," and the "end of history." The once-indisputable self-confidence of liberals has since been replaced by fear. Today experts are trying to answer a new set of questions: Are Western liberal democracies at risk? Will Europe surrender to this authoritarianism? Will the rise of populism and right-wing nationalism spell the death of the European Union? Is democracy dying in the United States?

Alarm bells ring as Chinese economic expansionism gains momentum, Russia's cyber meddling in Western elections continues, authoritarian leaders rise in Eastern Europe, and populism challenges mainstream politics in Western Europe. It becomes easier to fully appreciate the gravity of the situation when one takes into account Americas tendency to abdicate its global responsibilities. There is already a sizeable body of literature on "the death of democracies." Books have been published claiming that young people in consolidated democracies are more inclined than older citizens to support military governments. At the same time, nationalism emerged as a popular subject for American publishers in light of Donald Trumps victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Liberal thinkers, who assume that norms govern the international order, find this trend very dangerous. To be fair, it never made sense to argue that the liberal world order functioned thanks to a set of norms, which were binding on the United States, and through international organizations. When it came to exercising hard power, the United States repeatedly ignored the United Nations and its allies. Although claims regarding Afghanistan and Iraq proved inaccurate, U.S. interventions in those countries, which meant the death or displacement of millions of people, have never been questioned. The novel developments, however, relate to Washington's change of heart about its own global role and European democracies, fearing immigrants, are being dragged into the maelstrom of populism and Islamophobia.

The West's Slide Away from Liberalism

Washington's unwillingness to uphold the liberal order began during the Obama presidency and has become increasingly salient under the Trump administration. Various experts have advocated this change on a theoretical level. Realists like Barry Posen and John Mearsheimer, who urge the United States to acknowledge the limits of its power, describe the idea of a liberal order as an "illusion." Calling on Washington to accept the world as it is, they maintain that the United States must limit its costly commitments in Asia and Europe and gradually withdraw from the Middle East. According to Mearsheimer, who sees China's rise as the most significant challenge to American primacy, even though liberalism was a force for good domestically, "liberal hegemony" has proved unsuccessful for the United States. Criticizing NATO's enlargement at Russia's expense, he argues that Washington must remain in East Asia, Europe, and the Gulf. (2)

Scholars who oppose the view that the United States must abandon liberal hegemony discuss what 'the real world' actually is and warn against the heavy price of American retreat. According to Robert Kagan, who highlights the difficulty of creating a new balance of power, the post-World War II liberal order was an anomaly in the first place. (3) It was upheld by the United States, whose national ideology was based on liberal principles. By contrast, Kagan says, the world is turning into a jungle with its own laws once again due to the abdication of its global responsibilities by the United States, which created the current order. In his view, the American violation of a core principle -that it would not use its strategic hegemony to prevent the economic growth of other powers -had undermined the liberal order. (4) In other words, it was Trump's move to exploit Washington's hegemonic position to further American economic interests.

Trade wars, protectionism, efforts to renegotiate multilateral agreements, and the excessive use of economic sanctions represent Washington's disregard for the rules that it established in the first place. At the heart of those violations is American discontent with globalization and the advances in communication technology making new resources available to other powers.

Washington's slide towards an increasingly rigid form of nationalism and the related rise of populism in Europe strengthens the phenomenon of "illiberal democracy" in the Western world. In the struggle between liberalism and nationalism, consolidated democracies are increasingly siding with the latter. This trend, in turn, deepens the gap between liberalism and democracy -which translates into the rise of a majoritarian populism, with no respect for the rights of minorities, in the United States and Europe.

Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Harvard University, is among the academics highlighting the decoupling of liberalism and democracy. He believes that Trump's victory in the U.S. presidential election remains at the heart of this trend. Supporters of military governments are on the rise in the United States as well as Britain, India, Germany, and other consolidated democracies. According to Mounk, the masses are right to accuse the elites of moving away from working in the interest of the common people -as the wave carrying Trump demonstrates. (5) Yet the exclusion of minorities, anti-immigrant sentiments, and xenophobia threaten the idea of peaceful coexistence within Western societies.

Among the majority's populist demands, those related to the economy seem easier to meet. The demands based on...