Introduction: progress for whom?
More trade, stronger institutions and growing wealth can look like evidence that humanity is moving forward. But material success does not automatically produce compassion, fairness or a deeper sense of belonging. The paper International Progress, International Order, and the Liberal International Order asks us to examine that gap: can an international system claim to represent progress if its moral foundations are weakening?
Its central argument challenges a familiar explanation. The difficulties facing the liberal international order may not come only from rival powers, nationalism or economic disruption. They may also grow from within liberalism itself, especially when individual freedom becomes detached from responsibility towards others.
What is the liberal international order?
The term generally describes an international framework associated with liberal principles, including individual rights, relatively open markets and cooperation through institutions. The paper traces how a US-led Western order developed after the Second World War and expanded after the Cold War.
There is an important distinction between those ideals and their historical practice. Empire, racial exclusion and selective respect for human rights complicate any simple story of steady improvement. The question is not just whether institutions exist, but whether people regard their rules and outcomes as legitimate.
When individualism weakens shared humanity
Individual liberty matters: it protects people from arbitrary authority and allows them to think, speak and create. The paper’s concern is not freedom itself, but a form of hyper-individualism that treats society mainly as a means of satisfying personal interests.
When every difficulty becomes an individual failure, mutual obligations can disappear from view. A community becomes a collection of transactions rather than a network of people who support one another. Economic growth may continue while the willingness to help vulnerable people, including distant strangers, declines. This is the author’s interpretation, not an uncontested verdict on every form of liberalism.
Cosmopolitanism and the moral economy
Cosmopolitanism begins with the idea that every human being has equal moral worth, regardless of nationality or birthplace. It need not erase local identities; it asks whether our concern for others should stop at a border.
The related idea of a moral economy asks what a society owes people during hardship. Should access to essentials depend entirely on purchasing power, or should reciprocal duties and public protection also matter? Writing in the context of COVID-19, the paper treats assistance and vaccine distribution as tests of whether declarations of shared humanity translate into action.
What might replace the current order?
Alternatives can include more nationalist, protectionist or power-centred arrangements, where powerful states prioritise spheres of influence and transactional deals. But there is no single opposite to liberal order. A multipolar world simply has several major centres of power; it is not automatically authoritarian, nor does it necessarily exclude cooperation.
The deeper issue is what any order serves. Rules alone cannot settle it: rules can protect dignity or entrench domination. Leadership deserves scrutiny through its treatment of vulnerable people, not merely its claims to morality.
Why this belongs in Cornerstones
For Get Out Rat Race, this opens a question beyond personal success: what would a world that genuinely enables human flourishing look like? Freedom and prosperity remain valuable, but neither makes compassion optional. Progress should also mean less preventable suffering, greater dignity and institutions people can trust.
Continue with Wisdom vs Power, The Freedom We Inherited and How to Disagree Without Creating Division.
Read the original research
Source: Michael Barnett, International Progress, International Order, and the Liberal International Order, published in The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Volume 14, Issue 1, on 16 March 2021. DOI: 10.1093/cjip/poaa019.
This post is an original summary and reflection, rather than a reproduction of Barnett’s text. His argument is a theoretical interpretation, not a settled measurement of international decline, and its pandemic examples reflect its 2021 publication context. Read the full paper on PubMed Central for the argument and references.