By Sumaira Manzoor
Unilateral U.S. decisions on the ceasefire in Ukraine have dealt a blow to the Western alliance, causing growing insecurity in Europe. In addition, far-right, reactionary and nationalist anti-liberal narratives are gaining popularity across Europe.
In the recent German elections, a far-right, populist and national-conservative political party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), surprisingly won 152 seats, securing the second position. It should be noted that in Germany, after Hitler’s defeat in 1945, it was decided that fascist and Nazi parties would be barred from entering parliament. However, despite opposition from all political parties and the media, this party outperformed several traditional German parties. Previously, in the 2022 Italian political election, Giorgia Meloni won on a nationalist platform, while in the UK in 2020 Brexit also had the support of anti-liberal forces.
Now, no matter how much liberals may scream and shout, the liberal order has collapsed and, once again, a global ideological debate has begun to seek alternatives. But what was this liberal order and how did it collapse so quickly? It is important for us to understand the objective conditions and social and political contradictions that underlie any ideological change.
According to American political scientist John Mearsheimer, the real foundations of the liberal order were laid in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time philosopher Francis Fukuyama declared that the defeat of socialism marked the end of ideological debates in history. Already the German philosopher Hegel had stated that history is the struggle of ideologies. Therefore, with the clear victory of liberal democracy, history itself had come to an end. This is the famous “end of history” thesis.
Mearsheimer asserted that the global order established in 1991 had three basic characteristics:
First, it was centered on a single country (the United States), making it a unipolar world in which military power was monopolized by a single nation.
The second aspect was the increasing intervention of the Western countries in other nations, mainly developing countries, under the pretext of promoting democracy and human rights.
The third aspect was the reorganization of economies based on the principles of “free markets,” which were deemed essential for democracy. Among these principles, the protection of capital’s needs was paramount, leading to the creation of institutions like the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and others. In 1980, a meeting between third-world countries and global financial institutions was held in Washington, where the solution to the growing economic crisis in the third world was identified as the implementation of privatization and free trade everywhere. This decision is remembered as the “Washington Consensus,” which played a pioneering role in spreading free markets worldwide.
However, internal contradictions in these three aspects have begun to weaken the global system. For example, the promotion of democracy and human rights has become a tool for the United States and its Western allies to justify external interventions. Indeed, countries such as Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and many others have been bombed under this pretext. Similarly, Cuba and North Korea, which have refused to accept American rule, have been labeled “dictatorships” and subjected to sanctions. Similarly, the Venezuelan people were punished with sanctions for making the “wrong decision” in the elections, that is, voting for Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, who opposed American interests.
On the other hand, the promotion of free markets has caused serious economic and social crises in both Third World and Western countries. According to a World Bank report, 44 percent of humanity lives below the poverty line, and former World Bank Vice President Joseph Stiglitz blamed the free market policies of the IMF and World Bank. In addition, globalization has led to the displacement of industries from Western countries to Eastern countries, resulting in increased unemployment in the West. From 2007 to 2009, there was a sharp decline in economic activity, with a sharp contraction of liquidity in global financial markets, and the ensuing financial crisis of 2008 gave rise to a severe global economic crisis centered in the United States.
Instead of providing aid to citizens to recover from the economic crisis, Western governments bailed out big banks with billions of dollars, further fueling public anger. According to former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, the capitalist system turned into “techno feudalism” in 2008. In other words, big banks and technology companies now dominate the economy as feudal lords once did, profiting from the labor of people all over the world. It can be said that the free market, instead of promoting competition in the economy, has handed over the entire global system to a few billionaire corporations, for whom democracy and human rights become insignificant in the face of their greed for profit.
Moreover, the rules and principles of global financial and trade institutions have increasingly limited the ability of states to challenge them, giving the impression that the system is run not by elected representatives but by bureaucrats in Brussels and Washington, aligned with the interests of big business.
This is why people associated with the leadership of the liberal system in Europe are now referred to with disdain as “globalist elites,” and institutions once seen as guarantors of the stability of the liberal order (such as the European Union, NATO, USAID, etc.) are now facing a wave of anger. From Brexit to the German elections, from Meloni in Italy to Trump in the United States, this anger is being expressed. At the same time, the greatest complication for the liberal order is the end of the U.S.-led unipolar order.
Changes in the world order have especially advantaged China, where the Chinese Communist Party has allowed private capital but kept the state firmly under its control. Not only did China become the most industrialized country in the world during the deindustrialization of Europe, it also lifted 850 million people out of poverty during the same period.
As a result of the U.S. disengagement in Ukraine, and likely subsequent weakening of the Atlantic Alliance, Europe will have to increase its security spending considerably, increasing the burden on its already declining economy.
Analysis of these conditions tells us that history progresses through the struggle of internal contradictions. The internal contradictions of the liberal system, which can be summarized as contradictions between democratic values and profit, are now declining globally. In the West, anger against these global elites is manifesting not only against international institutions, but also against immigrants, who are blamed for rising unemployment and “cultural change” in society. Surprisingly, this “revolution” is led by figures like Trump and Elon Musk, who have benefited greatly from the system and now criticize not the system itself but its symbols, such as liberal institutions and multiculturalism. In contrast, there are also forces (increasingly strong in France, Belgium and Germany) that criticize not only these liberal institutions but also the economic system (capitalism) itself, which these institutions were created to protect.
Even in Pakistan, the failure of political parties can be largely attributed to the submission of the economy to the IMF in 1988. In other words, the close relationship between democratic struggle, economic development and social justice that had existed since the 1960s was broken. The finance minister of every government was appointed by the international financial institutions, which continue to dictate policy today. I
Moreover, USAID funds have reduced the concept of democracy to individual rights, without addressing the meaning of democracy in a country where political decisions are made by the military and economic decisions by Washington bureaucrats. Today, history is once again becoming an ideological battleground, which means we need to move beyond the philosophy of personal or individual freedom and revive collective freedom.
Global conditions and the direction of history show us that the struggle for democracy must again be linked to economic freedom and justice, because in today’s world, without economic freedom, all other freedoms become meaningless. Therefore, it has become imperative to openly challenge the “experts” of the United States and international institutions, and their “sacred” principles, to which even the United States itself no longer adheres.
Author: Sumaira Manzoor – Lecturer in Political science, Higher Education Department Punjab, Pakistan.
(The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).
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