(CHATHAM HOUSE çatısı altında gerçekleştirilen "uluslararası liberal düzenin kırılması"konulu çalışmada 11 ülkenin politikaları ve yönelimleri, davet edilen bilim insanlarınca incelenmiştir. İlk olarak, çalışmanın (research paper) önsözünü ve 'ABD liderliğindeki uluslararası liberal düzenin kırılması' başlıklı, Dr. Leslie Vinjamuri'nin kaleme aldığı incelemeyi sunuyorum. Bunu takiben, inceleme konusu 11 ülkenin her biri için gerçekleştirilen çalışmalar ayrı ayrı blog hesabımdan izlenebilecektir. )
CHATHAM HOUSE
Competing visions of international order
Responses to US power in a fracturing world
Research paper
Published 27 March 2025
Updated 28 March 2025
ISBN: 978 1 78413 638 3
DOI: 10.55317/9781784136383
Photo of UN General Assembly vote
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The ‘liberal international order’ that has been predominant, if often controversial, since 1945 is being challenged as never before. This reflects factors both long-standing and recent: the rise of China; the frustrations and ambitions of countries – including many in the Global South – that associate the US-led liberal international order with deep hypocrisy; inequality within liberal democracies that has given rise to populism; Russian revanchism; and perhaps above all, the US’s more nationalist outlook and disruptive foreign policy since Donald Trump took office for the second time in early 2025.
This paper takes stock of these developments, examines the US’s changing role and ambitions as a global power, and explores how 11 other key states are adapting. It examines how states are positioning themselves in this more fractured world, and how some are seeking to disrupt or even undermine the existing order. The paper, based originally on research for the US National Intelligence Council but revised and updated in this public version, considers how adversaries of the US seek to exploit what they see as the US’s declining global power, or to promote alternative visions. It also examines the challenges for US allies such as France, Germany and Japan, which have long been pillars of cooperative multilateralism but need to develop new ways to protect their interests and project power. And it explores how rising or middle powers, from Brazil to Saudi Arabia to India, are pursuing visions of international order that include elements of non-alignment, strategic autonomy, and selective or transactional cooperation with the current order.
Image — Results of votes on a draft resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are displayed during a UN General Assembly meeting on 24 February 2025. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images.
Topics
America’s international role
Regions
China - France - Germany - India - Iran - Japan - Russia - Turkey - United States of America
Departments
US and the Americas Programme
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Preface
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Preface
01 The fracturing of the US-led liberal international order
02 China: Balancing the US, increasing global influence
03 Russia stakes global ambitions on regional dominance
04 Resistance: the mantra behind Iran’s worldview
05 India: A non-Western, not anti-Western, worldview
06 Brazil sees opportunity in a multipolar order
07 Saudi Arabia’s goals rest on managing multipolarity
08 Continuity and non-alignment shape Indonesia’s worldview
09 Turkey seeks a vision fit for a multipolar world
10 Germany: An internationalist vision in crisis
11 French global status rests on averting bloc geopolitics
12 Is Japan’s model the future of the liberal order?
13 Envisioning the future international order
About the authors
Acknowledgments
Preface
An earlier version of this research paper was prepared for the US National Intelligence Council as part of a project entitled ‘Competing Visions for International Order’. The project looked at how national leaders and foreign policy elites in a carefully selected group of states across Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America viewed the United States and its international role. Our research took a special interest in how these elite perceptions of the US have affected the ambitions and strategies of some of the most important allies and partners of the US, but also of several of its adversaries.
Over the course of several months, our authors held a series of individual meetings, and convened for a research workshop at Chatham House to consider the future international order, and how each of these states seeks to establish its own position in this order. In our authors’ workshop, contributors asked whether states were content with the status quo, or whether they sought to adapt, disrupt or even undermine the existing international order. The brief was also to consider the presence (or absence) of a consensus around their state’s vision of international order, the implications of US–China rivalry, and, especially, the changing US international role and the significance of the 2024 US elections.
The prospect of a possible second Donald Trump presidency was surprisingly muted in much of the original analysis. Several authors identified a long-term trend in the US towards a more assertive international position. Trump’s subsequent election victory in November 2024 and the initial two months of his second term in 2025 have been received very differently in different regions of the world. For Europe, foreign policy elites have been transfixed by the US’s abandonment of its commitments to sovereignty, multilateralism and the defence of Ukraine. The chapters in this paper, although conceived and first written in 2024, have been developed and updated to take into account the return of President Trump to the White House.
The paper has deliberately aimed to be selective rather than comprehensive. The states we have studied are actively seeking to manage the challenge presented by a changing US position. Some are more ambitious and seek to adapt or revise the international order, while others are intent on undermining it. The selection of states also reflects the necessary constraints of time and resource and our effort to balance this paper with multiple other initiatives at Chatham House that have addressed, for example, the international ambitions of the UK, or the role of Africa on the global stage. The discussions that have continued since the initial drafts were circulated, together with the comments of several excellent peer reviewers, have helped the authors further develop their chapters. Our aim is to present a carefully considered look at the medium- and longer-term factors that are shaping states’ visions of international order.
Photo of UN General Assembly vote
Show authors
The ‘liberal international order’ that has been predominant, if often controversial, since 1945 is being challenged as never before. This reflects factors both long-standing and recent: the rise of China; the frustrations and ambitions of countries – including many in the Global South – that associate the US-led liberal international order with deep hypocrisy; inequality within liberal democracies that has given rise to populism; Russian revanchism; and perhaps above all, the US’s more nationalist outlook and disruptive foreign policy since Donald Trump took office for the second time in early 2025.
This paper takes stock of these developments, examines the US’s changing role and ambitions as a global power, and explores how 11 other key states are adapting. It examines how states are positioning themselves in this more fractured world, and how some are seeking to disrupt or even undermine the existing order. The paper, based originally on research for the US National Intelligence Council but revised and updated in this public version, considers how adversaries of the US seek to exploit what they see as the US’s declining global power, or to promote alternative visions. It also examines the challenges for US allies such as France, Germany and Japan, which have long been pillars of cooperative multilateralism but need to develop new ways to protect their interests and project power. And it explores how rising or middle powers, from Brazil to Saudi Arabia to India, are pursuing visions of international order that include elements of non-alignment, strategic autonomy, and selective or transactional cooperation with the current order.
Image — Results of votes on a draft resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are displayed during a UN General Assembly meeting on 24 February 2025. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images.
Topics
America’s international role
Regions
China France Germany India Iran Japan Russia Turkey United States of America
Departments
US and the Americas Programme
Download PDF
01 The fracturing of the US-led liberal international order
Hide contents
Preface
01 The fracturing of the US-led liberal international order
02 China: Balancing the US, increasing global influence
03 Russia stakes global ambitions on regional dominance
04 Resistance: the mantra behind Iran’s worldview
05 India: A non-Western, not anti-Western, worldview
06 Brazil sees opportunity in a multipolar order
07 Saudi Arabia’s goals rest on managing multipolarity
08 Continuity and non-alignment shape Indonesia’s worldview
09 Turkey seeks a vision fit for a multipolar world
10 Germany: An internationalist vision in crisis
11 French global status rests on averting bloc geopolitics
12 Is Japan’s model the future of the liberal order?
13 Envisioning the future international order
About the authors
Acknowledgments
01- The fracturing of the US-led liberal international order
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01 The fracturing of the US-led liberal international order
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri
Director, US and the Americas Programme
Email Leslie
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After decades of strong support but growing ambivalence, the United States is turning against the liberal international order that it once forged. Where does this changed stance leave the rest of the world?
The liberal international order is more fractured now than at any point since the end of the Cold War. The challenge to this order comes from within the leading democracies, and also from adversaries of the West. It reflects in part a structural shift in the international distribution of power.1
Illiberal leaders have escalated their attacks on the values and norms that are the bedrock of liberal internationalism. Collective solutions are needed to address the very real problems of war, economic inequality, stagnating growth, climate change, pandemic prevention and developing-country debt. But many leaders have instead weaponized legitimate grievances and spread disinformation in a bid to mobilize voters around an anti-elite, anti-immigrant and anti-liberal-establishment platform. The backlash against the liberal international order has also included a broader group of critics who argue, albeit in less inflammatory tone, that multilateral and regional agreements have overreached, encroaching on state sovereignty around vital issues of trade, human rights and international justice.
Competition and rivalry between the world’s two most powerful states, the United States and China, provide the backdrop against which these divisive politics have been unfolding. And now, more than three years of a deadly and destructive war – between Russia and Ukraine – have revealed the weakness of the international order in the face of the outright violation of state sovereignty. In Ukraine, but also in Gaza and Sudan, international humanitarian law has proved ineffectual as mass atrocities have mounted.
In all of this, nationalism is proving to be a more enduring, motivating and powerful force than globalism. The US was once the primary architect of the liberal international order. That order was defined by three principles shared among its members: a commitment to democracy and the rule of law; a commitment to open trade; and a commitment to institutionalized multilateralism as the main form of cooperation. Today, the US seeks to adapt, disrupt and, in some cases, reject outright the most essential tenets of the very system it helped to forge from the ashes of the Second World War. The 2024 election of Donald Trump has returned to the White House a leader whose rhetorical disregard for the sovereignty of other states is on full display, along with his disdain for multilateralism. President Trump has energized a narrative of grievance in the US Republican Party and among its supporters, one that positions the US as a victim of unfair treatment by allies and adversaries alike. At first gradually, but now abruptly, the US commitment to the liberal international order is eroding.
Today, the US seeks to adapt, disrupt and, in some cases, reject outright the most essential tenets of the very system it helped to forge from the ashes of the Second World War.
The sources of this changed US posture are complex. The challenge the US faces from an increasingly prosperous and assertive China has been met by a new consensus in the US that China’s integration into the liberal international order has yielded uneven returns, that this integration has benefited China more than the US, and that China has failed to play by the rules. The 2022 US National Security Strategy stated that the People’s Republic of China was the ‘only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it’.2
Emerging and middle powers, too, have complicated the outlook. They have expanded their influence intra-regionally, creating opportunity but also uncertainty. Brazil, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa are chief among these ambitious players. Some have extended their influence beyond their respective regions, working to shape international norms and reform international institutions. The attempt by these states to maintain their autonomy, in part by leveraging bilateral relationships with the US, China and Russia, is creating a world of multiple alignments. While this has created options and also opportunity for many states, it has also led to greater unpredictability.
In a world shaped by geopolitical competition, rapid technological change and emerging-power ambition, the US nonetheless remains dominant. It accounts for 26 per cent of global GDP,3 still spends over $800 billion a year on defence,4 and holds a structural advantage in the major multilateral institutions. The US dollar continues to be the world’s reserve currency, conferring on the US an exorbitant privilege in the global financial system and an unparalleled power to sanction other states. In the most competitive technological domain, artificial intelligence (AI), the US continues to have the edge even as China makes rapid advances. All this has given the US a strong ability to shape the international order to its own advantage, but also to the advantage of its partners and allies.
US steps back from the liberal international order it forged
For more than seven decades, the US was pivotal to the development and maintenance of the liberal international order. After the Cold War, the US supported the expansion of NATO and the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as multiple institutional initiatives that included new members and extended to new areas of economic engagement, human rights and humanitarianism. The US was a proponent, if an ambivalent one, of deepening the liberal international order to include greater enforcement mechanisms, even though it fiercely guarded its own sovereignty. The US’s role as a guarantor of the liberal international order was always accompanied by its self-understanding that the US was an exceptional power and that multilateral institutions needed to reflect this.
Today, this ambivalence has transformed into outright rejection of the very order the US created and underwrote. The US has begun to substitute nationalism for globalism, replace multilateralism with unilateralism, and abandon essential components of its soft power. President Trump’s threats to annex Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal have undermined global confidence in the US as a guarantor of sovereignty. His attacks on the US’s European allies and move to exclude them from peace talks with Russia over the future of Ukraine have undermined the transatlantic partnership, a partnership that has anchored the liberal international order for more than seven decades. Interventions in Europe’s domestic politics by Vice-President J. D. Vance and Elon Musk have also cast doubt on the US role as a proponent of sovereignty and liberal democracy. The announcement that the US would withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change and the World Health Organization were early indicators of the US rejection of multilateralism. Within days of taking office, President Trump undercut US soft power, freezing all foreign assistance for 90 days, and effectively shuttering the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
But the seeds of US ambivalence towards the liberal international order were sown long before even the first election in 2016 of President Trump. Two factors played an outsized role in weakening the bipartisan consensus in the US that for decades had anchored the American commitment to the post-war liberal international order. One was the growing perception among US foreign policy elites, but also among the American public, that the US was overextended and that its military interventions – and especially its subsequent troop presences in Afghanistan and Iraq – were costly ‘wars of choice’ that were not justified by a clear US national interest.
A second factor was the view – which developed gradually at first, then later exploded – that the expansion of free trade and international finance was hurting US interests, and that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in 1992, had led to the loss of large numbers of manufacturing jobs in the US.5 This view first emerged among progressive Democrats critical of the absence of labour rights in NAFTA’s provisions, before gaining wider currency and ultimately being used by President Trump to mobilize his base around the ‘America first’ platform seen today.
The liberal international order was not only about boosting peace and security and expanding free trade globally; it was also built on the premise that such an order would make the world safe for democracy.6 Accommodations were made that allowed states that were recovering from war and were late industrializers to protect local industry while it caught up. But by the 1990s, as free trade deepened and expanded, and as neoliberal ideas further infused the dominant international institutions, policies designed to provide social and economic protection came under increased pressure. Economic inequalities widened in many countries, but especially in the US, and opened the door to attacks by populist leaders willing to exploit anti-elite sentiment, exacerbate social division, and undermine the trust in institutions that had been critical to the success of democracy.
China’s economic rise and its admission to the WTO in 2001 fed further suspicion of international trade agreements. China’s WTO membership later helped to give rise to a new consensus in the US that China was benefiting from the liberal international order at the expense of the US, and that China had failed to become a responsible stakeholder in that order. From its entry into the WTO until 2023, China’s GDP increased from $1.3 trillion to $18 trillion in nominal terms.7 Within eight years of joining the WTO, China also became the world’s largest goods exporter.8
The 2008 global financial crisis was a turning point. The collapse of international trade and its impacts on the US transformed the nascent but contained US political conversation about globalization into a political about-face that questioned some of the most central elements of the liberal international order.9
The politics unleashed by the financial crisis created new momentum around the anti-trade agenda. US leaders on both sides of the political aisle increasingly pushed back against trade and investment liberalization. One example was the collapse of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a multilateral free-trade agreement among 12 Pacific Rim states, signed in February 2016. President Barack Obama had negotiated US membership of the TPP. Yet both Hillary Clinton, who ran as the Democratic candidate to be Obama’s successor, and Trump then opposed US participation in it. In 2017, on his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the US from the TPP.
The politics unleashed by the financial crisis created new momentum around the anti-trade agenda. US leaders on both sides of the political aisle increasingly pushed back against trade and investment liberalization.
The perception that China was unduly benefiting from its participation in the WTO had another spillover effect: it hampered efforts to reform the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, the two Bretton Woods institutions. The US rejected calls to reapportion voting shares at the IMF to reflect China’s new international economic status. (Voting shares have not changed since 2010.) The US aversion to being unduly constrained also spurred it to block reforms to the appellate body at the WTO, effectively scuppering the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism.
But it was an unforeseen global crisis – the COVID-19 pandemic – that presented the greatest test for the liberal international order and revealed that order’s weakness. The US response was a parochial one. Political attention turned inwards, the government adopted strict border controls, and public debate became mired in a domestic battle about the virus and its significance. Once it had produced a vaccine, the US carefully guarded its supplies while China in turn used its own vaccine to curry geopolitical favour. Competition between the US and China in other domains escalated. Wary of China’s growing assertiveness, the US restricted technology-sharing with China and pressured Europe to do the same. And the pandemic-induced shock to supply chains spurred efforts to ‘near-shore’ and ‘friend-shore’ manufacturing. President Joe Biden’s investments in climate action, as seen in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, also prioritized manufacturing and job creation inside the US, creating new frictions with Europe. This protectionist turn in the US helped to cement the view in many countries that the US was chipping away at the building blocks of the liberal international order.
Allies and adversaries alike see the US as an unreliable actor
Since Trump’s first election to the presidency in 2016, polarization between the Republican and Democratic parties has intensified, making it harder to agree spending priorities and pass legislation. This has fed the perception that Washington has become politically dysfunctional.
The Biden administration had lulled Europeans into a belief that the first Trump administration was an exception to the rule of sound US leadership. Even after the chaotic allied withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden allayed Europe’s worst fears by delivering a strong, multilateral and anticipatory response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But later US decisions to veto multiple UN Security Council resolutions condemning Israel for atrocities in its war in Gaza unleashed an avalanche of criticism of Washington for having double standards. Charges of hypocrisy against the US rose to new levels following the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas and the US support of Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza.
Trump’s return to office in 2025 has created a sense of urgency around the need to settle the war between Russia and Ukraine. This has come during a period when many countries are struggling with slow economic growth, complex challenges around migration, and the growing influence of far right political parties. His disruptive tactics domestically and internationally are creating heightened uncertainty among the US’s closest allies and partners. The threat to use tariffs to coerce policy change first in Colombia, Mexico and Canada, and later globally, Trump’s unconventional and shocking claims on the Panama Canal, Greenland and Gaza, his administration’s rhetorical attacks on Canada and Europe, and his recent labelling of Ukraine’s president as a ‘dictator’ have all contributed to a new consensus that the US may be a necessary ally but not a reliable one.
Against this backdrop, states have worked to safeguard their geopolitical room for manoeuvre. Values are also contested and many states prefer a more tailored international order, one that delegates concerns for human rights and democracy to sovereign states. Brazil has asserted its independence and maintained its role as a leader and shaper of the liberal international order. India has clung fiercely to a strategy of non-alignment, deepening its partnership with the US while maintaining close ties to Russia. Europe is growing increasingly wary of its dependency on the US. France and now also Germany are committed to increasing their strategic autonomy.
Yet there is little sign that the quest for such autonomy has been accompanied by a realistic alternative to the US or China as a provider of global public goods. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has had mixed success. The global demand for climate finance has so far gone unmet. Developing-country debt has mounted, and growth has stagnated globally. Public health challenges and technological transformation are both global problems in need of global solutions.
For now, the US under Trump’s leadership appears actively opposed to rising to these challenges. This has created an opportunity for China to fill the leadership gap, and to bend international norms and rules to its interests. If achieved, the spread and consolidation of Chinese-led norms and cooperation mechanisms would mark a sharp break with the values that have infused the post-Cold War liberal international order.
About this paper: surveying a world of competing visions and diverse agendas
Geopolitical competition, US unilateralism and populist grievances with the liberal international order all contribute to the picture of upheaval described above. These forces are prompting a complex and diverse range of responses by states. This research paper attempts to capture these responses, and to understand where they amount to an alternative vision of international order.
The chapters that follow assess the future of the liberal international order from the perspectives of 11 different states: China, Russia, Iran, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Turkey, Germany, France and Japan. Some of these are US adversaries, others are partners or allies of the US. Each state has been selected because it has strategic or economic significance for the liberal international order. Each also has some ability to shape that order or to influence regional aspects of it.
We asked the authors to consider each state’s vision for international order. The chapters reflect on how foreign policy elites understand their state’s relative power and status, and whether these visions are a reaction to the US and its global exercise of power or to changes in the global distribution of power and increased competition between the US and China. We also asked authors to comment on whether foreign policy elites in their state had a shared vision of international order, or if this was the subject of internal contestation.
Country-by-country synopses
China, Russia and Iran are all adversaries of the US. Each presents a considerable challenge to the international or regional order. China’s ambition has been to work to adapt the international order to its own advantage, elevating the norms of sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-intervention, writes M. Taylor Fravel. China’s vision of international order is more negative than positive, with an aim of reducing the influence of the US. Beijing rejects Washington’s imposition of values on the rest of the world. China also perceives the US to have become more hostile towards it in recent years. The United Nations is at the centre of Beijing’s multilateral engagement strategy, but China also uses an array of military and economic tools to achieve influence.
Russia, too, wants to undermine the US-led order and usher in a post-Western, multipolar order. Russia sees itself as a regional leader and a great power. Alexander Cooley writes that Russia seeks both control over the post-Soviet states and the maintenance of a special zone of privilege. Russia is assertive and revisionist, and sees its war on Ukraine as an opportunity to transform the international order. Moscow believes that the US is a power in decline, and sees the international system as unstable and at a moment of change.
Vali Nasr emphasizes that Iran’s foreign policy mantra is one of ‘resistance’. Iran, too, sees the liberal international order as an instrument of US hegemony. While there has been a convergence of interest among China, Russia and Iran on the desirability of displacing US global influence, many of their wider interests diverge. The erosion of US leadership and the liberal international order has created strategic space for Iran’s revisionism. Tehran aims to defy Washington’s efforts at containment and to weaken the role of the US in the Middle East. The Iranian leadership also believes that the US will never accept Iran’s great power status in the region.
US allies no longer share a common perception of the path forward for the liberal international order. Germany is fully committed to the principles of this order and has made important adjustments (decoupling itself from Russian energy supplies and increasing defence spending), but for now it is ill equipped to lead or defend the order, writes Constanze Stelzenmüller. France sees itself as an international leader, using the European Union as a bulwark against US hegemony and China’s economic coercion, according to Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer and Martin Quencez. It also seeks to cement its autonomy by building partnerships in the Global South. Jennifer Lind argues that Japan is uncomfortable with parts of the liberal international order. Japan would welcome a more pragmatic US approach to international order-building, one that is less values-based.
Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia seek strategic autonomy. Turkey has adopted an opportunistic and defensive approach to the liberal international order, write Senem Aydın Düzgit and Ayşe Zarakol. For Turkish leaders, strategic autonomy is central to the state’s security and to regime survival. Turkey wants to be part of the West and to remain a member of its core institutions, but with weakened ties and with the flexibility to engage with China, Iran and Russia as desired. Saudi Arabia has adopted a pragmatic approach to its role in the liberal international order, as Sanam Vakil explains. As an emerging power and leader of the Islamic world, Saudi Arabia has benefited in some ways from the liberal international order even as the kingdom’s internal politics and regional ambitions often diverge from the principles associated with that order. US–China rivalry, though, is a key concern for Saudi Arabia, driving the kingdom to diversify its partnerships with other states.
India’s version of strategic autonomy is defined by non-alignment. India sees itself as non-Western but not anti-Western, writes Chietigj Bajpaee. It is reformist regarding the liberal international order. India endorses or at least accepts parts of this order, but has avoided an embrace of the human rights agenda that became more central after the end of the Cold War. Economic dependence on China and military dependence on Russia condition this position. Over time, India’s relationship with the US has grown stronger, rooted in reference to values shared by the world’s largest democracy and the world’s oldest one.
Ralf Emmers writes that Indonesia’s leaders pursue non-alignment and strategic autonomy, which is made possible by the country facing a low level of threat. In recent years, Jakarta has also tried to create a regional institutional architecture that aims to include all the major and middle powers in the Indo-Pacific.
Brazil’s strategic vision is conditioned by the fact that it sees itself as a co-architect of the existing international order, according to Oliver Stuenkel. It is an active proponent of multilateralism and adherence to international law. That Brazil anticipates and also welcomes multipolarity reflects its perception of Washington as the greatest threat to global stability. Like India, Brazil wants to reform multilateral institutions, not least so that it can gain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. But unlike India, Brazil generally sees China’s rise as a good thing, especially for the economic benefits it gains from this.
Outlook
Today the US appears increasingly alone. Its partners and allies are uncertain of future US commitment to the liberal international order, and wary of Trump’s unilateralism. Adversaries of the US regard America as a country in decline – and they see this as an advantage. They seek to undermine Western unity and either to adapt or, more often, further fracture the liberal international order. Emerging and middle powers may feel the US-led West is out of touch with the rest of the world, but they still prefer to work within the order and leverage it to their advantage. Rather than launching an international challenge to the status quo, they have usually worked at the regional level to shape institutions and norms.
The chapters in this paper confirm that the US-led liberal international order has many critics. But the ideas presented in this collection also show that no other state has managed to replace or reimagine the international order, and that many have not even tried. Only China has made an effort to rise to the challenge of replacing the US as a leading provider of global public goods. In most other cases, relative inaction by states reflects domestic constraints rather than a lack of ambition. In addition, the chapters reveal that many states, for all their reservations, still have an abiding belief in the benefits of the liberal international order – or at least elements of it. If there is a consensus among the states covered here, it is that the future of that order is deeply uncertain.
Photo of UN General Assembly vote
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Show authors
The ‘liberal international order’ that has been predominant, if often controversial, since 1945 is being challenged as never before. This reflects factors both long-standing and recent: the rise of China; the frustrations and ambitions of countries – including many in the Global South – that associate the US-led liberal international order with deep hypocrisy; inequality within liberal democracies that has given rise to populism; Russian revanchism; and perhaps above all, the US’s more nationalist outlook and disruptive foreign policy since Donald Trump took office for the second time in early 2025.
This paper takes stock of these developments, examines the US’s changing role and ambitions as a global power, and explores how 11 other key states are adapting. It examines how states are positioning themselves in this more fractured world, and how some are seeking to disrupt or even undermine the existing order. The paper, based originally on research for the US National Intelligence Council but revised and updated in this public version, considers how adversaries of the US seek to exploit what they see as the US’s declining global power, or to promote alternative visions. It also examines the challenges for US allies such as France, Germany and Japan, which have long been pillars of cooperative multilateralism but need to develop new ways to protect their interests and project power. And it explores how rising or middle powers, from Brazil to Saudi Arabia to India, are pursuing visions of international order that include elements of non-alignment, strategic autonomy, and selective or transactional cooperation with the current order.
Image — Results of votes on a draft resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are displayed during a UN General Assembly meeting on 24 February 2025. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images.
Topics
America’s international role
Regions
China France Germany India Iran Japan Russia Turkey United States of America
Departments
US and the Americas Programme
Download PDF
02 China: Balancing the US, increasing global influence
Hide contents
Preface
01 The fracturing of the US-led liberal international order
02 China: Balancing the US, increasing global influence
03 Russia stakes global ambitions on regional dominance
04 Resistance: the mantra behind Iran’s worldview
05 India: A non-Western, not anti-Western, worldview
06 Brazil sees opportunity in a multipolar order
07 Saudi Arabia’s goals rest on managing multipolarity
08 Continuity and non-alignment shape Indonesia’s worldview
09 Turkey seeks a vision fit for a multipolar world
10 Germany: An internationalist vision in crisis
11 French global status rests on averting bloc geopolitics
12 Is Japan’s model the future of the liberal order?
13 Envisioning the future international order
About the authors
Acknowledgments
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