This past Friday, Niall Ferguson debated Fareed Zakaria over the destiny of the post-WWII set of international institutions; deemed the “liberal international order” (LIO). Ferguson took the position that the LIO was fated to collapse, with Zakaria arguing that the LIO would endure.
Hosted by Munk Debates in Toronto, the debated resolution read as follows: “Be it resolved, the liberal international order is over …”
Munk Debates added the following contextual description to its motion:
Since the end of World War II, global affairs have been shaped by the increasing free movement of people and goods, international rules setting, and a broad appreciation of the mutual benefits of a more interdependent world. Together these factors defined the liberal international order and sustained an era of rising global prosperity and declining international conflict. But now, for the first time in a generation, the pillars of the liberal internationalism are being shaken to their core by the reassertion of national borders, national interests, and nationalist politics across the globe. Can liberal internationalism survive these challenges and remain the defining rules-based system of the future? Or, are we witnessing the beginning of the end of the liberal international order?
To engage with the geopolitical issue of our time, the Spring 2017 Munk Debate will move the motion: be it resolved, the liberal international order is over…
Ferguson challenged the description of the Bretton Woods system and its progeny as a “liberal international order,” describing the series of international institutions as illiberal, not particularly international, and disorderly.
Seemingly heralding nation-states as the preeminent contemporary institutions of political organization and worthy of preservation, Ferguson claimed that the LIO erodes national sovereignty via increasing the distance between governors and the governed.
Zakaria credited the LIO with having ushered in greater global prosperity across the 20th and 21st centuries, with the largest beneficiaries being formerly impoverished cohorts in lesser developed societies and states. He also credited the LIO with thus far having averted a third global war.
International and supranational institutions, said Ferguson, had failed to fulfill their most basic duties and promises:
“At every level, the most basic roles that we expect a state to perform — from economic management to the defense of borders — were flunked comprehensively by the European Union over the last ten years, and the British response was, ‘We need to take back control.’ That’s a really important idea, here. Because control by sovereign states is vital if they are to retain legitimacy.”
At no point did Zakaria use the words “sovereign” or “sovereignty.” He made no acknowledgment of the erosion of national state sovereignty via increasing centralization of political power within supranational institutions.
Zakaria alleged that resistance to the status quo of globalization — particularly with respect to population flows and resulting demographic changes across the West — was partly motivated by racism, xenophobia, and assorted bigotries.
Zakaria omitted any mention of the stultification of commerce wrought by expanding regulations and taxation flowing from the LIO’s institutions. He argued that institutions such as the European Union (EU) had expanded prosperity and facilitated more rapid economic growth across Europe than would have been the case in the absence of such a political union.
Ferguson exposited on what he described as the EU’s hindering of free markets via its bureaucratic economic management:
“Calling [the European Union] a free trade area is a stretch, Fareed. Because what the European Union has become, and this has been true since the Treaty of Maastricht, is an endeavor to create a quasi-federal system, What Angela Merkl calls the Federal Republic of Europe … Meet the people who run it, they live very good lives. You know, Eurocrats don’t even pay tax … It’s extremely bureaucratic, highly centralized … It’s predicated on an extraordinarily complex system of regulation … Those people who run it have become almost completely disconnected from the ordinary people in what I’ll call ‘Provincial Europe.'”
Watch the debate below.
The debate’s audience found Zakaria’s arguments more compelling, with 71% voting in agreement with his position.
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