The view from MARS: US paleoconservatism and ideological challenges to the liberal world order
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
| Author | Jean-Francois Drolet,Michael Williams |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702019834716 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essays |
Scholarly Essay
The view from MARS:
US paleoconservatism
and ideological
challenges to the liberal
world order
Jean-Francois Drolet
School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary
University of London, London, UK
Michael Williams
Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of
Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Abstract
Challenges to the liberal international order have tended to focus on the politics
of populism most often traced to reactions against economic dislocation and mass
migration. Parts of this portrait are undoubtedly true, but it also risks being deeply
misleading. To fully understand the nature and depth of contemporary far-right move-
ments, we need to examine more closely the distinctive ideological movements that
inform and animate them. This article explores one specific articulation of these move-
ments: US paleoconservatism. Although relatively unknown in the mainstream media,
this anti-establishment strain of radical conservatism has provided intellectual ammuni-
tion to a wide range of agents and ideological forces challenging the prevailing liberal
order nationally and internationally, including important parts of the anti-liberal politics
of foreign policy under President Donald Trump.
Keywords
Radical conservatism, paleoconservatism, Donald Trump, liberalism, liberal international
order, Sam Francis, US foreign policy, populism, ideology
In a world increasingly riven by dissensus, one theme seems to generate widespread
agreement: the liberal international order as we have known it for several decades is
International Journal
2019, Vol. 74(1) 15–31
!The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702019834716
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Corresponding author:
Michael Williams, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, 120 University
Private, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5, Canada.
Email: michael.williams@uottawa.ca
in serious trouble. To an important extent, this challenge comes from rising or
revisionist powers—China and Russia, pre-eminently—that reject or seek to fun-
damentally revise the principles and practices of a liberal international system
which not so long ago they were believed to be moving inexorably toward. More
surprisingly, and perhaps more disconcertingly, the challenges also originate in the
‘‘core’’ of the liberal order itself. Both France and Germany have in recent years
witnessed the rise of strikingly anti-liberal parties and movements, as have many of
the ‘‘middle powers’’—Denmark, Norway, and Sweden—generally considered stal-
wart defenders of the liberal order. Yet, th ere is little doubt that it is in the US t hat
this challenge is moststrikingly apparent. The election and politics of Donald Trump
seem to call into questionthe very idea of the United States as a ‘‘liberal Leviathan’’
1
willing to support the longstanding multilateral arrangements that it helped institu-
tionalise during the Cold War, and from which ‘‘middle powers’’ derive much of
their status and ability to wield influence in regional and global politics.
Explaining these challenges to the liberal international order from within some
of its traditional ‘‘core’’ states is one of the most complex and pressing issues for
thinking about the future of that order. Most widely, it is captured under the rubric
of ‘‘populism,’’ a label whose popularity often seems to derive from its generality
rather than its insights, although accounts of its origins abound: economic equality
is usually foremost, with xenophobic or reactionary nativism generally entwined or
not far behind. Populism, we are told, is a cry of rage, pain, or resentment rather
than a systematic ideological vision. A splenetic response of the ‘‘left-behinds’’ to
the impact of economic globalisation and migration, it represents a form of zombie
politics as the losers of the millennium rise up to attack the system that has margin-
alised them.
2
This picture is not necessarily inaccurate, but it is incomplete and risks being
significantly misleading. To fully understand the nature and depth of contemporary
anti-liberal movements, we need to examine more closely the distinctive ideological
currents that inform and animate them. This article explores one specific and sur-
prisingly understudied articulation of these movements: US paleoconservatism.
3
A closer examination of paleoconservatism reveals a longstanding attempt by
thinkers on the political right to provide philosophical and sociological analyses
1. John Ikenberry, The Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American
World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).
2. For a typical example, see Francis Fukuyama, ‘‘US against the world? Trump’s American and the
new global order,’’ Financial Times, 11 November 2016. Attempts to move beyond this include Cas
Mudde, ed., The Populist Radical Right (London: Routledge, 2016); Jan-Werner Mu
¨ller, What is
Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); Ronald Inglehart and Pippa
Norris, ‘‘Trump, Brexit, and the rise of populism: Economic have-nots and cultural backlash,’’
HKS Working Paper RWP16–026, Harvard University, 2016. https://www.ft.com/content/
6a43cf54-a75d-11e6-8b69-02899e8bd9d1.
3. For rare overviews, see Joseph Scotchie, The Paleoconservatives: New Voices of the Old Right
(New York: Transaction Publishers, 1999); Edward Ashbee, ‘‘Politics of paleoconservatism,’’
Culture and Society, March/April 2000, 75–84.
16 International Journal 74(1)
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