The Many Threats to Liberalism

The world is in great turmoil. In the war in Ukraine, which began in February 2022, the brutal fighting continues to drag on, and in the United States, the Trump administration is causing concern among its allies. So what will the international order look like going forward?

- YUICHI HOSOYA

Behind all this turmoil lurks an ideological climate that is critical of liberalism. In other words, the ideals of liberalism, which spread around the globe as universal ideals following the end of the Cold War, are now facing criticism and backlash around the world. In fact, criticism, dissatisfaction, anger and hostility toward liberalism have emerged as the driving force behind politics in some major countries.

From Russian President Vladimir Putin's perspective, the spread of liberal and democratic thought and its arrival in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova is a national security threat to his country. This development can be seen as one side of a coin, the obverse side being an eastward expanding NATO and an expanding sphere of U.S. influence.

At the same time, the United States, which has embodied liberalism since its founding, has seen its own steady uptick in critiques of such thinking. For instance, in his 2018 book "Why Liberalism Failed," Prof. Patrick Deneen of the University of Notre Dame, whose philosophy is close to that of the Trump administration and is close to U.S. Vice President JD Vance, argued that liberalism "has failed because it has succeeded."

Deneen predicted that in response to the anger and fear felt by the public following the collapse of liberalism, a populist nationalist dictatorship or a military dictatorship would be highly likely.

After the end of the Cold War, paeans were made to the triumph of democracy and liberal economics over the communist system.

As can be seen in Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History?" essay, published in 1989, there was a growing utopian belief that foresaw the inevitable spread of liberalism around the world. However, history has not come to an end so easily.