Curb your enthusiasm: Middle-power liberal internationalism and the future of the United Nations
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702019833739 |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
Scholarly Essay
Curb your enthusiasm:
Middle-power liberal
internationalism and
the future of the
United Nations
Louise Riis Andersen
Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
The future looks post-Western. But will it also be post-liberal? To gauge how and by
whom liberal internationalism may be sustained in the coming order, the article provides
a critical and historically grounded analysis of the role of the United Nations in the
fading US-led order and the ordering potential and role of middle powers. The article
suggests that in the current interregnum of global governance the conventional distinc-
tion between traditional and emerging middle powers is increasingly unhelpful. What
matters is not their past history, but their present proclivity for seeking multilateral,
negotiated solutions. It is this pragmatic version of liberal internationalism that may have
a future in a post-Western world, and open up a more pluralist, inclusive approach to
global governance.
Keywords
United Nations, liberal order, post-Western, global governances, middle powers,
emerging powers, Global South, liberal internationalism, pragmatism
The world order is in flux. That much we know. The shape of things to come,
however, remains anybody’s guess. The emerging order could be multipolar or
bipolar, or end up taking on new and unforeseen forms of multi-order, multiplex,
networked arrangements that defy easy categorization.
1
A widely shared
International Journal
2019, Vol. 74(1) 47–64
!The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702019833739
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Corresponding author:
Louise Riis Andersen, Danish Institute for International Studies, Østbanegade 117, 2100 Kobenhavn,
Denmark.
Email: lan@diis.dk
1. Trine Flockhart, ‘‘The coming multi-order world,’’ Contemporary Security Policy 37, no. 1 (2016):
3–30; Franc¸ ois Heisbourg, ‘‘War and peace after the age of liberal globalisation,’’ Survival 60, no. 1
assumption is, however, that in some form or other the future order will be post-
Western.
2
But does this necessarily imply that it will also be post-liberal? To gauge
that question, this article looks at the United Nations (UN) and its troubled pos-
ition in the fading US-led order—serving in some sense as its foundational core, in
others as a marginalized nuisance.
Debating the future of the UN is interesting in its own right. Here it provides a
prism for understanding the crisis of liberal internationalism, including the sugges-
tion that the crisis has been brought upon liberals themselves through their own
post-Cold War triumphalism. The claim presented in this article is that the problem
is not as much liberal excess as it is liberal amnesia: liberal internationalists have
forgotten the pragmatic, even realist, roots of the rules-based world order that has
the UN at its centre.
3
If liberal internationalism is to be sustained in the coming
order, it must be in a revised form that brings out and revitalizes pragmatism and
the will to compromise as a key element in international affairs. Such a revision—if
it is to come—is most likely to emerge from middle powers who have the strength
and authority to act independently of the great powers, yet whose limited capabil-
ities and inability to dictate outcomes or decisions make them prone to favour
negotiated solutions over the use of force.
As pointed out by Ole Wæver, the crisis of the current order is mostly debated
on US terms.
4
Emphasis is placed on questions related to hegemonic decline,
imperial overreach, and the rise of rivalling global powers (notably China).
Somewhat paradoxically, the election of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth president
of the United States has served to reinforce this bias, including the implicit sug-
gestion that without US leadership, ‘‘the jungle grows back.’’
5
While one cannot
and should not underestimate the role played by the US in firstly establishing and
now undermining the post-1945 institutional order, a broader and more nuanced
perspective is needed if we are to, firstly, understand the dynamics that have
brought the existing order into its current crisis, and, secondly, contemplate in
which forms—and by whom—elements of liberal internationalism might be sus-
tained in a future order.
(2018): 211–228; Andrew Hurrell, ‘‘Beyond the BRICS: Power, pluralism, and the future of global
order,’’ Ethics & International Affairs 32, no. 1 (2018): 89–101; Amitav Acharya, ‘‘After liberal
hegemony: The advent of a multiplex world order,’’ Ethics & International Affairs, 8 September
2017, https://www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org/2017/multiplex-world-order/ (accessed 4
February 2019).
2. Simon Serfaty, ‘‘Moving into a post-Western world,’’ The Washington Quarterly 34, no. 2 (2011):
7–23.
3. Dan Plesch and Thomas G. Weiss, ‘‘1945’s forgotten insight: Multilateralism as realist necessity,’’
International Studies Perspectives 17, no. 1 (2016): 4–16. See also Vibeke Schou Tjalve, ed.,
Geopolitical Amnesia: The Rise of the Right and the Crisis of Liberal Memory (Montreal and
Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, forthcoming).
4. Ole Wæver, ‘‘A post-Western Europe: Strange identities in a less liberal world order,’’ Ethics &
International Affairs, 32, no. 1 (2018): 75.
5. Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and our Imperiled World (New York: Knopf,
2018).
48 International Journal 74(1)
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