How did the liberal international order crumble? Like Hemingway’s famous description of bankruptcy: gradually, then suddenly.
Since the early 2000s, observers, analysts and practitioners of global politics have been speaking of U.S. and Western relative decline in the face of the “Rise of the Rest.” That seemingly inexorable process was accelerated by Washington’s costly and lengthy forever wars, the U.S.-spawned global financial crisis and Europe’s subsequent debt crisis. All of these disruptions took place against a backdrop of growing political polarization and paralysis, driving ideological momentum and power to the extremes, mainly on the right.
As the West squandered its deep reserves of political, economic and military might—and with them much of its legitimacy—the so-called Rest continued their steadfast and determined rise. In this new world order, trade, not aid, drove economic development, based on liberalized tariff regimes and tightly interwoven supply chains that used raw materials sourced mainly in the Americas and Africa, and lower-wage labor located mainly in Asia, to provide mainly Western service economies with cheap consumer goods.