Vacuum at the top of the global liberal order

“I’m not fully re-assured,” chairman of the Munich Security Conference Wolfgang Isghinger said in his closing remarks at what’s often billed as the biggest foreign policy discussion platform of its kind. The two-day event, which ran from February 16 through 18 this year, was themed “To the Brink — And Back?”

Conceived of as a forum for promoting transatlantic relations in 1963, the high-level participants at this year’s conference found themselves asking the question—who could assume the baton of upholding liberalism in the age of Donald Trump. The 1960s were a time when the US helmed the so-called global liberal order and led an international effort to heal the wounds of the Second World War.

The rise of nationalism across the world, worsening bilateral tensions between major players, ever-increasing spending on defence purchases and the unravelling of international treaties featured prominently in the speeches and discussions this year.

Everyone recognised one thing – Donald Trump’s US is no longer the messiah that junior American allies want it to be. His aversion to propping up democratic leaders facing existential crises from their domestic authoritarian opponents is now well-known. The US, under Trump, is perceived as withdrawing from crucial arms’ control accords, environmental treaties and multilateral alliances that have served the world well over the years.

Nobody, perhaps, sums up America’s emerging strategy as frankly as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who remarked that promoting values was too often an “obstacle” in advancing US interests.

“The world, it seems, is becoming less liberal, less international, and less orderly,” said the Munich Security Report (MSR) 2018, the 88-page document that spelt out the agenda of the conference in its lead-up.

The signs of chaos in the absence of a leader of the liberal world were there for the world to see. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put on a dramatic display as he brought along a piece of an Iranian spy drone that was shot down by Israeli security forces. “Do you recognise this? You should. It’s yours. You can take it back with a message to the tyrants of Tehran: Do not test Israel’s resolve,” Netanyahu thundered during his speech, which was later billed as “cartoonish” by Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif.

Besides Iran, Russia and North Korea found themselves in the firing line of the world leaders and other high-level dignitaries that had gathered to contemplate on the future of the liberal order. China, which was represented at the conference by former top diplomat Fu Ying, however, recognised that it was the unnamed adversary in the room.

“Will we turn each other into rivals, as certain American documents suggest?” Ying asked participants during her address, referring to the National Security Strategy (NSS) that dubs Beijing as America’s major contemporary rival.

As Donald Trump backtracks the US from its age-old commitments, there don’t seem to viable contenders who could fill the vacuum.

China, for one, is as much authoritarian as it is capitalist, the MSR 2018 says. Russia, which under its current leader Vladimir Putin, has been accused of carrying out unilateral aggression in Ukraine and Crimea, besides bullying its smaller neighbours, is not up to scratch either, declares the flagship report.

For those who see India as the next credible alternative, the report crows, “In India, the risk is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi could use Hindu nationalism to consolidate support ahead of the 2019 elections.”

(The article first appeared in this week’s print edition of National Herald on Sunday).