{"id":35446,"date":"2017-11-13T06:00:11","date_gmt":"2017-11-12T19:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=35446"},"modified":"2018-03-22T14:32:18","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T03:32:18","slug":"liberal-internationalism-hard-days-hazy-daze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/liberal-internationalism-hard-days-hazy-daze\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal internationalism: hard days, hazy daze"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The core belief system of Australia\u2019s approach to international affairs for 75 years is the cause that can barely speak its own name.<\/p>\n

Whisper it softly: \u2018liberal internationalism\u2019, an aspiration big enough to encompass democracy and rule of law, open markets and free trade, individual liberty and human rights.<\/p>\n

The Turnbull government\u2019s imminent foreign policy white paper will have liberal internationalist molecules throughout its DNA. Yet the arguments the white paper has with itself about the state of the world will reflect the troubles afflicting liberal internationalism.<\/p>\n

Labels and understandings drive what matters, and this vital two-word label is suffering.<\/p>\n

Internationalism stands in the dock with its mate globalisation, assailed by nationalism and mercantilism and all the opportunities\u2014masquerading as troubles\u2014of a world growing ever closer.<\/p>\n

The liberal label is beset by hostile fire from the right and left wings and a less-than-convinced centre. US Republicans love liberty but disdain liberals as soft socialists and European cheese\u2013eating surrender monkeys. To dodge such smears, US Democrats won\u2019t own to being liberals.<\/p>\n

Liberal internationalism stands condemned because of its supposed association with economic neoliberalism. Neolib nostrums that dominated the final quarter of the 20th century\u2014deregulation, privatisation and market forces\u2014are derided as failed bizonomics. Neoliberalism is rendered in Oz-speak as \u2018economic rationalism\u2019, and its great Australian champion, the Productivity Commission, has run up the white flag on all things neo<\/a> with its Shifting the dial<\/em><\/a> review, arguing that without equity and fairness there can\u2019t be economic efficiency<\/a>. Fancy that\u2014markets mediated by politics.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s affection for liberal internationalism began at that moment of existential crisis in 1942 when we abandoned Pax Britannica and went looking for new ways. That arc is a theme in the latest (12th) volume of the Oz-in-the-world series from the Australian Institute of International Affairs; the book\u2019s title, Navigating the new international disorder<\/a><\/em>, can do double duty as the unofficial title of the foreign policy white paper. A fine chapter by Andrew Phillips offers three phases of the arc:<\/p>\n

Liberal internationalism Mark I, 1942\u201372: Embracing the US (and its values) as the security patron, while Australia joined efforts to create a new global order at the United Nations. Australia argued for the right of states to deliver full employment\u2014and to ensure social stability through White Australia. Phillips comments, \u2018Australia\u2019s moral universalism remained limited by its dedication to a domestic political order that presupposed racial homogeneity as a prerequisite for social harmony and national security.\u2019<\/p>\n

Liberal internationalism Mark II, 1972\u20132001: Human rights norms erased the last vestiges of colonialism, while the old economic order of \u2018embedded liberalism\u2019 gave way to neoliberal globalisation. The Australian response was two \u2018master shifts\u2019 to multiculturalism and our neolib version, economic rationalism.<\/p>\n

Liberal internationalism in crisis, 2001\u2013present: Rapid changes in the security and economic spheres feed into \u2018a broader ideological crisis of liberal internationalism\u2019. Phillips judges: \u2018Neither jihadism nor authoritarian nationalism stand as credible competitors to liberal internationalism in offering an alternative foundation for global order. Nevertheless, the persistence and even intensification of these challenges equally confirms the return of ideological contestation as a central feature of world politics.\u2019<\/p>\n

The crisis of liberal internationalism translates into Canberra\u2019s talk of uncertain and dangerous times; this says more about Oz uncertainty than about the state of the world. We\u2019ve lived through vastly more dangerous times. The Canberra perception, though, isn\u2019t just the tyranny of the present\u2014it\u2019s the frightening sight of Australia\u2019s conceptual framework shaking and shedding bits.<\/p>\n

The Canberra sense of hard days peering through a hazy daze was striking in last year\u2019s defence white paper, fretting loudly about the need for international rules. The policy document used the word \u2018rules\u2019 64 times<\/a>\u201448 of those in the formulation \u2018rules-based global order\u2019.<\/p>\n

The word that didn\u2019t appear once in the defence white paper was \u2018liberal\u2019\u2014quite an omission for a Liberal government. The defence hardheads understand that China is all for a rules-based order, but Beijing isn\u2019t interested in an American-designed liberal order.<\/p>\n

Other parts of Canberra do push back on the need to preserve and defend the liberal order. Hence, the proposition from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop that China can\u2019t rule because it\u2019s not a democracy: \u2018The importance of liberal values and institutions should not be underestimated or ignored. While non-democracies such as China can thrive when participating in the present system, an essential pillar of our preferred order is democratic community.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ah, the ordeal of ordering orders. What we prefer and what we get …<\/p>\n

Be amazed if the foreign policy white paper says much about the China\u2013democracy equation. Still, it\u2019ll want liberal rules\u2014this is the diplomats\u2019 take on our policy DNA, not the defenceniks.<\/p>\n

The sense of uncertainty ran through Malcolm Turnbull\u2019s Asia\u2013Pacific speech<\/a> before he headed to the Asia summits:<\/p>\n