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ESSAY March/April 2019 Issue

The Future o the Liberal Order Is

Conservative
A Strategy to Save the System
By Jennifer Lind and William C. Wohlforth

T
he liberal world order is in peril. Seventy- ve years after the United
States helped found it, this global system o alliances, institutions, and
norms is under attack like never before. From within, the order is
contending with growing populism, nationalism, and authoritarianism.
Externally, it faces mounting pressure from a pugnacious Russia and a rising
China. At stake is the survival o not just the order itsel but also the
unprecedented economic prosperity and peace it has nurtured.
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The order is clearly worth saving, but the question is how. Keep calm and carry
on, some o its defenders argue; today’s di culties will pass, and the order is
resilient enough to survive them. Others appreciate the gravity o the crisis but
insist that the best response is to vigorously rea rm the order’s virtues and
confront its external challengers. Bold Churchillian moves—sending more
American troops to Syria, o ering Ukraine more help to kick out pro-Russian
forces—would help make the liberal international order great again. Only by
doubling down on the norms and institutions that made the liberal world order so
successful, they say, can that order be saved.

Such defenders o the order tend to portray the challenge as a struggle between
liberal countries trying to sustain the status quo and dissatis ed authoritarians
seeking to revise it. What they miss, however, is that for the past 25 years, the
international order crafted by and for liberal states has itsel been profoundly
revisionist, aggressively exporting democracy and expanding in both depth and
breadth. The scale o the current problems means that more o the same is not
viable; the best response is to make the liberal order more conservative. Instead of
expanding it to new places and new domains, the United States and its partners
should consolidate the gains the order has reaped.

The debate over U.S. grand strategy has traditionally been portrayed as a choice
between retrenchment and ambitious expansionism. Conservatism o ers a third
way: it is a prudent option

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