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Welcome back to 1945 The liberal world order was always a myth

Trump is the antidote to all-consuming American global liberalism. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Trump is the antidote to all-consuming American global liberalism. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images


November 12, 2024   7 mins

Were he magically granted the power of time travel, would it be a moral obligation for David Lammy to kill the baby Trump in his cradle? He did after all describe America’s President-elect as “a racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser” and “a wannabe despot”, “a neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” who “spits on the graves of men and women who died fighting fascism”. Similarly, a fortnight ago Kamala Harris labelled Trump a “fascist” who “would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of six million Jews”, thereby invoking liberalism’s greatest political taboo in her failed attempt to win power.

These are serious questions: if his claims were true, then Lammy should shrink from his role as a quisling official in a major client state to a dangerous regime. Indeed, the only moral response would be a British withdrawal from Nato so immediate and dramatic as to make Jeremy Corbyn appear a collaborator in comparison. Harris, equally, should surely prepare her soul for political martyrdom, launch a military coup to save American democracy from its voters, or gather an armed band of partisans around her for a last desperate insurgency — perhaps in the hilly California wine country she knows so well. Yet apparently the answer to this thought exercise is No, as our hapless Foreign Secretary now brushes off these remarks as the youthful exuberance of a then-40-something politician. Harris, meanwhile, urged a peaceful transfer of power in a concession speech notable more for its ditzy wine-aunt motivational messaging than any allusion to being a participant in a dark and historic tragedy.

What can this all mean? Either Trump genuinely is a fascist or Nazi, and the self-proclaimed defenders of the liberal order have shirked their historic destiny — or the terms have become meaningless, and Trump is merely a politician like any other. We may assume, from the revealed actions of Trump’s critics, that the latter is the truth. Yet the inflated rhetoric, so easily cast aside, reveals something of great importance about the American empire, euphemised as the “liberal international order”, now, like its current overseer and contemporary Joe Biden, locked in a state of senility and decline. The “1945 order” so beloved of Washington’s caste of imperial officials and their propagandists — the “subintellectuals” recently mocked by Anton Jäger — is a highly mythicised construct of the post-Cold War world, created to justify America’s global military dominance and now cynically and vainly invoked, reductio ad absurdum, at the unipolar moment’s conclusion.

As opposed to the actually existing one, the mythical “1945 order” began, we can say, at some point between 1989 and 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. As John Mearsheimer correctly observes, “’the Cold War order’, which is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a ‘liberal international order’, was neither liberal nor international”, instead being a bounded order, limited to Western Europe and North America, within a bipolar global system contested between the United States and the Soviet Union. From its inception, Nato had very little interest in the advancement of liberal democracy which has, from the Nineties onwards, become its ostensible purpose: Salazar’s Portugal, Greece’s junta and Turkey’s various military putschists were all valued members at one time or another. All of them were less democratic and more authoritarian than Trump. Peace in Europe — if not in Asia, which witnessed millions of deaths in the struggle between the two political poles for dominance — was not the natural product of a liberal democracy guarded by the great Western victor of the Second World War, but preserved simply by the nuclear standoff between the two rival empires.

“American liberalism searched the world for monsters to destroy and created them.”

Indeed, we can go further than Mearsheimer, deconstructing the Second World War myth so sacred to British institutional memory — no doubt because it recasts Britain’s subordination to the American Empire as an act of Christ-like sacrifice. In the vulgar version of the myth, the great contest was a struggle for liberal democracy, and indeed the Allied eventual victory was proof of its superiority over rival political systems — an otherwise perceptive British politician told me just this, with complete conviction, the other week. Yet Stalin’s Soviet Union, which bore the brunt of the fighting, was hardly a benign liberal democracy, and Churchill was correct in viewing the alliance as one with the devil, borne of amoral necessity. Even the Poland Britain and France went to war to defend, in 1939, was not a liberal democracy but an authoritarian military regime, typical of the Central Europe of the time. Yet it was viewed as no less worthy of support for this. Yet by the standards of today, Poland’s Right-wing paternalist regime of 1939, happy to harass Jews and annex the territory of its weaker neighbours, would be the object of liberal enmity rather than support.

Today’s political taboos simply cannot be mapped onto the actually existing world which birthed them: following the fall of France, Britain’s only extant ally, for a time, was Greece’s military dictatorship; and following Greece’s liberation, Churchill made sure to oust the country’s effective Communist resistance and replace it with a Right-wing regime, which employed Nazi collaborators to hunt down the wartime resistance. Like many Western conservatives, Churchill had admired Italian fascism and Mussolini — “one of the most wonderful men of our time” — and regarded Italy’s late alliance with Germany as a tragedy. Indeed, even the Britain and France of 1945, which together ruled vast swathes of what is today called the Global South through non-democratic and coercive means, would be far beyond the pale of 21st-century liberalism.

At its simplest, the Second World War was won by the combined industrial might of two great land empires, the United States and the Soviet Union, whose power was the result of the preceding two centuries of continental expansion, experienced as dispossession and genocide by the native inhabitants. It is perhaps natural that this simple truth is too much for liberals to bear as the foundation of their political system, and that a gentler and more noble myth was required to take its place. Yet the result is that the actual world constructed by the victorious Allies of 1945 — the world to which we have in many ways returned — is paradoxically an alien and hateful one to today’s shrill defenders of the post-Cold War “1945 order”. Trump’s mass deportation orders would be comprehensible to Eisenhower, the architect of both the D-Day victory and Operation Wetback; the attitude of today’s American liberals would not. It is hard to see how Musk is more objectionable a rocket scientist than Wernher von Braun, other than through liberal radicalisation in the intervening decades. It is the supposed destroyers of the 1945 order who instead retain its pragmatic values.

The Ukraine war, and the Gaza war, each in their own way define the terminal point of the post-Cold War 1945 myth. At the peak of Ukraine’s military successes, in 2022, it was commonplace to hear the claim that the war was a fight for liberal democracy against authoritarianism, which Ukraine’s fragile democracy was predestined to win due to the inherent superiority of its political system. Three years on, this argument is rarely heard, for obvious reasons. Indeed we can say Ukraine’s looming defeat is largely the product of liberal democracy. Within a domestic dynamic fuelled largely by the liberal conspiracy theories of the 2016 election, Putin served as a metaphorical final-boss Trump to be defeated. In response, the Trumposphere adopted an exaggerated antipathy for Ukraine, wearing the sympathy for Putin they were tarred with as a badge of honour. As a result of America’s divided democracy, the Ukraine war swiftly mutated from a bipartisan cause into another battleground of its own internal conflict. Putin’s calculations on Ukraine’s capacity for organised resistance may have been faulty, but his assessment of Western democracy has proved entirely correct.

In 2022, despite America’s own record of invading countries to overthrow their regimes, or annexing territory from hostile rivals to award it to pet clients, Washington’s criticism of Russia’s actions in Ukraine could reasonably expect a fair hearing. But in 2024, as the world observes America’s shrugged posture of helplessness at the slaughter in Gaza, the moral high-ground shimmers far beyond Washington’s reach. The original sin of the actually existing 1945 order was invading other countries, violating their borders in pursuit of a messianic political vision. But this taboo rapidly became obsolete once America claimed the same right for itself. Instead, after 1989, as cultural historians have long noted, the Holocaust — only tangentially dealt with at Nuremberg — became “the supra-denominational passion story of late modernity”. And by explicitly tying the atrocity to contemporary conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, “Never Again” suddenly became the moral basis for America’s new empire, justifying military interventionism as long as a humanitarian principle could be invoked. 

“Today’s political taboos simply cannot be mapped onto the actually existing world which birthed them.”

Yet the human rights NGOs who provided moral justification for America’s wars against its rivals find themselves ignored and helpless when it comes to Gaza: the revealed principle of America’s liberal order is not that never again can war be waged against civilians, but that only Israel may do so. As in other aspects of politics, Israel presents itself as a dark, perhaps unconscious satire of America: that the war in Gaza helped turn liberal American voters away from the global order which claims their name is only fitting. Perhaps, indeed, America’s global liberal order helped undermine its domestic one. If the first time round Trump was dealt with as an aberration against the natural order of things, now it is the Biden administration that shows itself the aberration — a brief and largely failed interlude in the new world that has dawned.

For as Mearsheimer notes, the American global liberal order, which claimed the mantle of the 1945 victory to justify its imperial dominance, was “bound to fail”. The hyperglobalisation of capital it undertook detached the working- and middle-classes of the Western world from an economic and political regime which impoverished them; the equivalent hyperglobalisation of human beings reignited the West’s dormant nationalism through creating a sense of demographic threat. The messianic mission to reshape the world in America’s image overstretched and weakened the empire, while consolidating an alliance of rival major powers which now outmatches it. As expansionist and revisionist as any of the great 20th-century totalitarianisms, American liberalism searched the world for monsters to destroy and created them, just as domestically it fears fascists under the bed — while it rapidly creates them too.

If Trump were a fascist, we should surely welcome his isolationism. Instead, for American liberal hawks, the proof of his fascism is his desire not to militarily intervene in far-off lands. In its dying days, the Harris campaign deployed voter-repelling neoconservatives-turned-Never Trumpers like Liz Cheney — the overlap between these two categories is more or less exact — and suffered for it. The age of the liberal imperialist is over. It is only natural for its remaining hawks to tremor at the age that has just begun, which they themselves midwifed. But in truth, American foreign policy is bound to continue much as before: America’s options are now constrained by its dwindling power, rather than ideology. A cold war, and perhaps a military confrontation with China is destined by geopolitical logic, rather than the personalities of the rival contenders for the imperial throne. A painful peace settlement for Ukraine was coming whoever won the American election, just as, for all Trump’s outreach to Arab-American voters, his policy on Israel will differ only by dispensing with the Biden Administration’s facade of helpless angst.

Nevertheless, we should not lament the collapse of the global order America built after 1989: indeed, liberals themselves should welcome it. Just as the bipolar order of the Cold War world, by restraining liberalism’s inherent tendencies to radicalisation and hubris, made the Western world safe for a tempered and moderate liberalism, so may the multipolar world we have entered save liberals from their own excesses. Beset by confident rivals abroad, and by the disenchantment of their own voters at home, liberals will once again have to learn restraint. The post-Cold War order ultimately proved disastrous for American liberalism: a return to the actually existing order of 1945 may prove more congenial. Lammy’s newfound equanimity at a Trump White House may yet prove uncharacteristically astute.


Aris Roussinos is an UnHerd columnist and a former war reporter.

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Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
17 hours ago

When politicians who should know better start calling their opponents Nazis and fascists, the words that spring to my mind are “lazy” and “desperate”.

They don’t want to/can’t be bothered to engage with the phenomenon or interrogate it, hope it just goes away if you say the magic words.

Trumpism is like a blocked toilet: standing there yelling at the porcelain won’t help you. In the end, you’ll just end up with a house full of stinking waste. Fairly soon, you need to stick your hand right down there and see what’s causing the issue, even though it makes you feel ill.

The Democrats are currently standing up to their thighs in mess, still eff-ing and blinding at the bowl. It’s quite funny, but pitiful too.

Wilfred Davis
Wilfred Davis
13 hours ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Calling people you disagree with Nazis and fascists, is worse than merely ‘lazy’ or ‘desperate’, surely.

I would condemn it as ‘deplorable’.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
11 hours ago
Reply to  Wilfred Davis

Or even Nazi

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
7 hours ago
Reply to  Wilfred Davis

I assume that is rich deplorable instead of poor deplorable?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 hour ago
Reply to  Wilfred Davis

They are bitter clingers to a world long gone.

Brian Kneebone
Brian Kneebone
20 hours ago

To paraphrase Churchill. America may be an awful great power, until you compare it to the others. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea; give me a break! For all its faults, perhaps better to stick with the 800 pound gorilla.

Stewart White
Stewart White
9 hours ago
Reply to  Brian Kneebone

This got three downvotes…?

Tony Buck
Tony Buck
9 hours ago
Reply to  Brian Kneebone

A gorilla that is old and shrinking.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
12 hours ago

In other words, having a common enemy might make the Left stop hating its own countrymen quite so much.
Personally I don’t see it. The Left now hate their fellow countrymen so much they’ll ally with anyone against them. If/when a new USSR and Cold War appears I fully expect the Left will be completely on board with aiding them. I mean the Left were on the side of the USSR last time, so why expect anything different this time?

shay fish
shay fish
10 hours ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Indeed. We have 51 intelligence officials who invoked Russia in order to interfere with our own Presidential elections.

michael harris
michael harris
8 hours ago
Reply to  shay fish

One of them,it seems, the husband of Dana Bash the CNN ‘commentator’.

Matt M
Matt M
15 hours ago

Lots to agree with but I think he overplays the weakness of the USA and the strength of the BRICS countries. America has its debt problems, sure, but it also has an impregnable homeland, the world’s largest military, the global currency, a birthrate that is cratering more slowly than its rivals, lakes of oil, the world’s most innovative firms, the ability to land rocket boosters back on the gantry and now Trump 2! I think they will be just fine.
And David Lammy and 2TK should certainly hold them as closely as possible – time for Sir Nigel to be deployed, I think.
If you are looking for countries with systemic problems, I would suggest China, Russia and Germany are good places to start.

Last edited 15 hours ago by Matt M
Tony Buck
Tony Buck
9 hours ago
Reply to  Matt M

If the liberals come back on board, the US may have a great future.

But if they continue hating conservatives quite so much, no – the US will continue polarised and divided.

Pedro the Exile
Pedro the Exile
7 hours ago
Reply to  Matt M

You could add a fair few more to that list-France/Spain/Italy for starters.

Paul MacDonnell
Paul MacDonnell
15 hours ago

This is a good analysis. Though I’m not sure where Israel fits into it. The positioning of Israel in this essay is—to borrow a metaphor about the Jews in current discourse from a conversation between Gad Saad and David Deutsch—a single piece of the jigsaw that the author has, before setting down to write the article and before any of the other pieces are in place, already chosen to nail to the table. Notwithstanding, the author has painted a clear and reasonable picture. But that Israel piece is nailed to the wrong part of the table.

Ben Jones
Ben Jones
14 hours ago

Gotta get with the Zeitgeist, right?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
11 hours ago

I think the author is getting it 100% wrong when it comes to Israel. I am for Trump’s victory but I really have an issue with the rhetoric of so many of his voters or supporters when it comes to Israel! They do not get the conflict at all or their hate for Jews is so deep that they will try to do everything to justify their stupid, fake and wrong assumptions about this conflict! It is maddening how stupid or hateful or ignorant people are!

Last edited 11 hours ago by UnHerd Reader
Tony Buck
Tony Buck
9 hours ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Surely it’s Trump’s liberal opponents you’re talking about ?

Antisemitism is mainly on the Left now.

Many US conservatives are pro-Israel to a fulsome and embarrassing extent.

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
8 hours ago

The Israel piece was a huge flaw in an otherwise thoughtful and interesting essay. Others have pointed out why, so I won’t bother. I’m not Jewish but can’t see how Israel can do anything other than what they are doing now. Were it not for massive international interference they probably would have done this decades ago and all of this would have stabilized and died down.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
6 hours ago

Yes indeed. It is frustrating to watch Israel constantly being hamstrung by the U.S., which hasn’t a clue on how to actually win a war, but rather let disputes simmer on a low boil in the vain attempt of hoping a 5,000 year old conflict will disappear without civilian casualties.

David McKee
David McKee
21 hours ago

Golly, Aris must have had a lot of time on his hands to come up with all this. Essentially, he argues that America’s foreign policy actions are dictated more by geopolitical constraints, than who is the occupant of the White House.

Both matter. The president has to act within his financial, political and military constraints. That said, Trump has options, the main one being whether or not he calls time on globalisation. Will he impose tariffs? And will he deport the illegal migrants?

Last edited 21 hours ago by David McKee
Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
16 hours ago
Reply to  David McKee

I think Aris is right. Both matter, but individual actors are significantly less, er, significant – they affect timing, but the overall playout, not so much, nor the scale. Think of the 2008 banking crash – had Lehman Brothers not folded, would that have spared the world the crash? That would be like saying, had not some of the “masters of the universe” not existed, there would have been no crash. Or if different world leaders had been in office in the preceding two decades, there would have been no crash. Or think of WWI. If you go to wikipedia, they will imply that the assassination of that Bosnian Duke was a key event in triggering WWI. To my eyes the idea that had Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie never existed, or even simply got delayed that day because they had a plumbing emergency in their mansion that morning, then WWI might not have happened at all, is ludicrous. Arse about face. It’s like saying that the cause of an explosion is not the powder keg but the spark that lights the tinder.

In the same vein, Trump is not going to call time on globalisation, nor can he. What Trump will do is attempt to arrange matters such that globalisation works more towards securing American interests – as any national leader is duty bound to do for his or her nation. The only people who have forgotten this are the liberal elites who have somehow gotten it into their heads that they are the good guys on a mission saving the universe.

Last edited 15 hours ago by Prashant Kotak
David Hedley
David Hedley
21 hours ago

I find the analysis in this article cogent. One additional aspect which could be explored is the power of large technology companies, both US and Chinese, their influence on political dialogue, and their promotion of value judgements which are difficult to challenge. It’s also interesting to see the development of the BRICS economies in the context of this analysis, and their continued dependence on the US and the dollar, perhaps even more effective than military action.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
16 hours ago

Several good points amid the exaggerations, but some silly ones as well.

Either Trump genuinely is a fascist or Nazi, and the self-proclaimed defenders of the liberal order have shirked their historic destiny — or the terms have become meaningless, and Trump is merely a politician like any other.

Trump is not a politician ‘like any other’ – he is a lot worse – but he does not have to be Mussolini for that. How about taking the liberals ‘seriously, but not literally’, I seem to remember someone else needing that dispensation.

 the revealed principle of America’s liberal order is not that never again can war be waged against civilians, but that only Israel may do so

Rubbish. Western foreign policy is defined by a mixture of liberal principles, power politics, and practical possibilities (Russian or Chinese policy do without the liberal principles altogether. You see the difference). This really is the best that anyone could expect. The reason that the West does not inervene in Sudan, Tigray or Xinjiang is not a lack or principles, but the fact that there does not seem to be anything practical one can do. In Israel we would all prefer peaceful coexistence in a two-state solution, but we do not try to force it on Israel because we can see no way of getting there. And in the end we back Israel because it is our ally and (Netanyahu notwithstanding) a victory for the Israeli settlers is still going to be a lot less bloody than a victory for Hamas and Iran.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
10 hours ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

How about taking the liberals ‘seriously, but not literally’, ——> How many times can they call Trump a fascist, Nazi, Hitler, dictator, etc. before we can them seriously in what they think of him? Part of being taken seriously is acting seriously.

Tony Buck
Tony Buck
8 hours ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

How is Trump “a lot worse” than other politicians ?

His private life has been no worse than Bill Clinton’s.

As for Trump’s political life, arguably it is better than other politicians’.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
22 hours ago

A lot of verbiage to hide a mediocre analysis of world politics IMO. I don’t necessarily disagree with everything he says, but what’s his hang up with liberalism? American forever wars have nothing to do with liberalism.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
20 hours ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

And everything to do with globalism. Let us hope that this election marks the end of this era. The American people have had enough of sustaining an Empire that benefits only a tiny fraction of its people. Most Americans will celebrate the end of their own empire.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
18 hours ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Whilst very verbose the analysis seems very sound to me, although Tod said it some years ago

El Uro
El Uro
9 hours ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

By the way, it is quite strange to hear reproaches to Americans from Europeans who, when something happens, run to Americans for help. The crisis in Yugoslavia, the crisis in Georgia, the current crisis in Ukraine, fears about the US leaving NATO – America is to blame for everything, right? But we will ask it for help, wincing at the smell of sweat coming from this plumber.

Last edited 9 hours ago by El Uro
Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
4 hours ago
Reply to  El Uro

Did “Europe” ask the USA for help?

As I recall the USA involved itself in Yugoslavia, the USA wants involvement in Georgia..(wonder why?…), the crisis in Ukraine is entirely due to US involvement…and the chances of the USA leaving the military arm of its foreign policy ie NATO are precisely zero…it just wants others to pay more…to the US MIC…(and I don’t blame them on that one…business is business after all..)

El Uro
El Uro
3 hours ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

Although I didn’t go into the details of the collapse of Yugoslavia at the time, I still have no complaints about my memory and remember not only what MSM writes today, but also what they wrote then.
.
320. The International Community’s Response to the Yugoslav Crisis: 1989-1995.
“…There were three phases of U.S. policy. The U.S. initially did not want to interfere in a primarily European problem—much as it did not during the wars of Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Then the US started to interfere in their capacity as a superpower to end the fighting, first through diplomacy and, ultimately, through a military intervention”
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/320-the-international-communitys-response-to-the-yugoslav-crisis-1989-1995

Last edited 3 hours ago by El Uro
Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
7 hours ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

“Liberalism” seems to be used very differently in the U.S. and Europe and I never quite get it, when an author uses the word so liberally (sorry the pun). Aris is European (British/Greek?) so I am confused. In Europe “liberalism” is mostly used as an expression of a “laissez-faire” economic system and individual freedom. In the U.S. “liberals” seem to be people with left leaning political philosophies….
The same way I am irritated and confused by the word “neocon”as the word is also often used in different contexts. The dreaded Wikipedia says “neocons” describes people with a “paleoconservatism” philosophy of non-interventionism, decentralisation of federal policy and controls and also sometimes overlaps “poleolibertarianism”.
But then “neocons” are also people, disenchanted with the pacifist Democratic Party of the 60s, promoting interventionism in international relations and their philosophy is “Peace through Strength”, espousing sometimes military interventions and fierce opposition to communism and radical politics.
So I wonder what Aris meant by “The liberal world order was always a myth” and I agree with you, that the “verbiage” hides the analysis. Also have no clue, why he would fit Israel into his big word salad.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
6 hours ago

As an American who considers himself a liberal in the European sense, sometimes called a “classical liberal,” I, too, am frustrated by the term being co-opted by the American left. Aside from some moderate Democrats, most of the left are more correctly called progressives – a term, I believe, a Republican President, ironically, originally coined to describe his politics.

That same President, Teddy Roosevelt, would likely be called a Neocon. Wikipedia, in this case, gets the definition of Neoconservatism completely wrong in my opinion. There has never been anything “paleo” about them. The were coined “neocons” pejoratively because they were different from the conservatives of the day – who today would be considered “paleo conservatives.” Neocons would more correctly be defined as progressives with a foreign interventionist ideal. Which is why so many of them happily endorsed Harris.

Alex Cranberg
Alex Cranberg
11 hours ago

Lots of sensible points here. But the bias in his characterization of the Gaza war as a war against civilians prevents the writer from making an actually useful point about the nature of war and its romanticization when convenient. War whether just or not, always kills more civilians than combatants especially if it is existential in its nature for the nations involved. The Greatest Generation killed civilians at a far greater ratio than does Israel. Yet this nature of war is glossed over by the advocates of the Liberal International Order until they confront a war which for some inexplicable reason they love the illiberal but losing side.

Gordon Arta
Gordon Arta
11 hours ago

There is no ‘moral high ground’ in the Israeli Gaza conflict, only adopting the least worst from a small set of appalling, and nationally potentially fatal, options. Israel has chosen national survival over international approval. If you think they should choose a more ‘acceptable’ option, spell it out, for and against, the advantages and disadvantages, likely casualties, and the desired end state. Israel fears, and for very good reasons, that if it takes any other path it will go the way of the Banu Quraysa. Nothing about the enemy it faces has changed since.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
10 hours ago

Yet the human rights NGOs who provided moral justification for America’s wars against its rivals find themselves ignored and helpless when it comes to Gaza:
Is this the human rights NGOs working to finance Hamas or the human rights NGOs presiding over the massive influx of illegals into the US? It’s almost as if these groups are the opposite of their intended claim. Meanwhile, Trump is not interested in more war, conquest, and expansion. He never was. That was clear the first time.
Meanwhile, what to do with this “special relationship” with a UK whose govt sent operatives to help with the Harris campaign? After years of hearing about alleged Russian interference in our election and the Brexit vote, this is a problem. Imagine an ally openly sending people to participate in another nation’s electoral campaign. I don’t like it when my country does it and the author is correct about our meddling but you can’t have it both ways.

Claire Grey
Claire Grey
15 hours ago

I appreciate this taking apart of the post 1989 liberal world order myth, I think there are interesting arguments here, but do not the actual facts on the ground almost always give the lie to the speechs and noble utopian visions expounded on by politicians and the founders and leaders of NGOs ?

It seems to me we humans tend towards having grand plans perpetually thwarted by other humans with different grand plans, we, of course are thwarting their plans in turn.
At the same time all of us constantly having to deal with unexpected events.
Plus the other dangerous problem, the tendency for corruption of the grand plans by false ideologies and hubris.

Anyway, I enjoyed the article, thank you.

Walter Brigham
Walter Brigham
10 hours ago
Reply to  Claire Grey

Game theory analysis would be revealing.

Claire Grey
Claire Grey
9 hours ago
Reply to  Walter Brigham

Not sure what you mean, please explain.

Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson
7 hours ago

You had me until Gaza. Writers who want to draw a wider audience should sit down and ask a conservative / libertarian friend which chestnuts of received progressive wisdom alienate the non-progressive reader. A list would include – hand wringing over Gaza – stating confidently that we are all going to die of climate change – ‘disinformation’ misinformation’ – enthusiasm for forced adoption of electric cars – anything blah blah ‘phobic’ or blah blah ‘denier.’

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
11 hours ago

“…in the hilly California wine country she knows so well.”

I think she knows the wine better than the country.

John Galt
John Galt
10 hours ago

> At its simplest, the Second World War was won by the combined industrial might of two great land empires, the United States and the Soviet Union,

Can we dispense with this myth about the Soviets being capable of doing anything at all but getting their own people killed, and they certainly were not an industrial powerhouse. If not for the US supplies the Soviet army would’ve starved to death, they were weilding American rifles, marching on American boots, while eating American rations.

And so many of them died only because of the staggering and astonishing incompetence and deliberate malice of every single person in the chain of command. The Soviets deserve no more credit for overthinking the Nazis than a man deserves for rescuing people on a sinking ship by starting it on fire.

Ben Jones
Ben Jones
6 hours ago
Reply to  John Galt

As I said, an undergrad history student would get lots of red pen over his or her essay if they wrote like this.

Ben Jones
Ben Jones
6 hours ago
Reply to  John Galt

Although, to be fair, the Soviet arms industry was solid. US support was primarily trucks, vehicles, rear echelon supplies etc.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
4 hours ago
Reply to  Ben Jones

Trucks in particular were essential. Zukhov even said so after the war…retracted later…under pressure from Stalin.

However that doesn’t detract from the oceans of blood the Soviet peoples shed to defeat Germany.

At its simplest the British secured the time, the USA gave the wealth and the Soviets the blood.

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
6 hours ago

Most of the world has never subscribed to the “rules-based international order”, whether that’s China’s signing up to the WTO and then ignoring its rules, or Putin’s more obvious transgressions in Syria, Georgia, Ukraine and central Africa.
I can’t think of a single country in the Global South that pays any attention to these rules. The USA pays lip service to them, as it keeps the delusion going in the West, but in practice its foreign policy is a muscular defence of its national interest.
Only Western Europe and the “Old Commonwealth” countries still believe in it and are busily betraying their citizens by doing so. Our useless lawyer PM is a ghastly example of someone who can’t see how the rest of the world – starting with Mauritius – is laughing at him behind his back while happily taking his – our – money.
Even this week he’s in Baku, innocently handing out £Ms of our money for third world climate change aid, while failing to notice that no other country is following our “world-leading” example of Net Zero blackouts and bankruptcy.

Last edited 6 hours ago by Dougie Undersub
mike flynn
mike flynn
1 hour ago

As an ordinary American, I am certain the US govt is selling out it’s citizens, too. Not practicing a muscular defense of its national interest. We hope Trump us able to put a stop to this.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
8 hours ago

I am a big fan of UnHerd, and I often appreciate Mr. Roussinos’ actual reportage, but I find that some of your favorite writers are obsessed with a game called ‘politics’ and never get away from the “isms”; liberalism, communism, etc. Like an art critic who only sees fauvism or cubism or color field or action painting etc. they miss the reality and the subtlety of real life.
For instance, the idea of “Trumpism” is comically nonsensical. I’ve been (involuntarily) watching Trump for forty years (he’s inescapable here in NYC), the only thing predictable is that he’ll surprise everyone just about every day.
This essay jumps through hoops to make connections that are imaginary at best. Read it again in a year and I think you’ll see what I mean.

Last edited 8 hours ago by laurence scaduto
Martin M
Martin M
15 hours ago

Yet apparently the answer to this thought exercise is No, as our hapless Foreign Secretary now brushes off these remarks as the youthful exuberance of a then-40-something politician“. In fairness to Lammy, JD Vance said some fairly uncharitable things about Trump in his “youth” too.

richard jones
richard jones
8 hours ago

This article seems very pleased with itself for no good reason.
Roughly speaking, the Soviet Union failed and was taken over by gangsters and then old grudge matches in the middle east and central Europe kicked off which were eventually quelled by western power. Things might have continued in that vein had not 9/11 happened.
The 2 later developments that changed everything were tech and the success of China’s economy and what followed there, neither of which has anything to do with liberals or 1945. And here we are.
As for what’s next, who knows? Certainly not this bloke.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
22 hours ago

Yeeeoowch! This author uses at least three big words per sentence. Sorry, kid, but you don’t get extra points for each multi-syllabic word, but for clear, cogent thought. Your words are too big for your topic. They obscure your meaning instead of revealing it. I have no idea what you just said. I don’t think you do, either ….. 😉

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
20 hours ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

There is perhaps no skill so useful in politics or journalism than the art of saying as little as possible using as many and the largest words possible.

Last edited 20 hours ago by Steve Jolly
Walter Brigham
Walter Brigham
10 hours ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

Intend to agree. Read Diedra (Donald) McCloskey on this topic regarding economic writing.

Tony Buck
Tony Buck
9 hours ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

Try reading the article.

It’s very clear and easily understood.

Benedict Waterson
Benedict Waterson
6 hours ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

Seemed fine to me
I would suggest that you are just proudly announcing that you are an inexperienced and incompetent reader
That’s fine, but keep it to yourself

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
2 hours ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

It would be an incredibly boring site to read if the articles didn’t illustrate various points with examples and metaphors

Kyle Pelletier
Kyle Pelletier
8 hours ago

I simply don’t see the evidence that Russia’s victory in Ukraine is inevitable. This article’s author presupposes that victory and from that initial assumption declares the nascent existence of Dugin’s multipolar world. Again, I don’t see the evidence for that victory.

Headlines constantly scream about Russia’s advance, but by its average rate of advance over the last two years, it will take it an unreasonable amount of time to even reach Kyiv. Meanwhile, its economy is hurting. We see very few headlines about that, but it’s the truth — the data show a Russian economy increasingly unable to be bailed out by China and the other BRICS allies for fear of secondary sanctions. It recently made a BARTER deal. Russia was paid in literal potatoes.

Its economy has massive inflation, diminishing cash reserves, and no realistic plan for a solution which does not involve a cessation of western sanctions. Nabiullina fights a massively overheated economy with one hand tied behind her back and the other mysteriously gyrating inside Putin’s trousers.

Point being, the multipolar world is not here. There is still time for decisive action to chasten Russia and deprive China of its most important ally. Whether or not Trump’s caprice will choose this course of action is anyone’s guess; but no matter the outcome, it will be one we have collectively chosen… not one forced upon us by our enemies.

Jeff Dudgeon
Jeff Dudgeon
10 hours ago

Much right but lots wrong. Cardi B did more damage to Kamala than Liz Cheney. Turkey was essential for NATO regardless of its military takeover and PM Menderes’s execution. Portugal’s Salazar may actually have been fascist but it was a fairly mild form. Greece was only taken over briefly by the military in crazy anti-Turk zealotry over Cyprus but keeping the communists out of power (as accepted by Stalin) was a huge kindness by the UK – ever read the novel Eleni?

John Tyler
John Tyler
9 hours ago

“The liberal world order was always a myth.” Just the same as the socialist world order or any other you can think of. Why can’t we all get it in to our thick heads that, however much we think something is the best way, the fairest way or the most efficient way, other people are just as certain that their preferred path is the real solution to all problems? Vive la difference!

Swanhild Bernstein
Swanhild Bernstein
11 hours ago

The so-called Western world built up a moral superiority that was never true. But people liked the system because they had a good life. Nowadays, there is still the claim of a higher moral standard, but it is only propaganda, and the people know it because life has become so hard. A new World Order is coming, and we should all hope and do everything possible to make this a smooth and peaceful transition. The Western world could be part of this new world order, but we must understand that we are only a part of it. 

Tony Buck
Tony Buck
8 hours ago

What makes you think that the new World Order will be any better (if not worse) than the existing one ?

For it to be better, miracles will be required.

In any case the West has often been morally superior to its enemies. Not that that says much.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
6 hours ago
Reply to  Tony Buck

Have some faith! Miracles have already taken place. Israel is still in existence and Trump will be POTUS again.

R E P
R E P
11 hours ago

Great article – it lays bare the lack of nuance in our political debate. Also, the nonsense of our guilt by association model which enables the Maoist tendency in our media and academia to delegitimize the past.

Steve Gwynne
Steve Gwynne
3 hours ago

Interesting analysis Aris.

International realism as the actually existing post 1945 international order was reframed by international liberal idealists as the international liberal order but in reality, international liberal idealism was always an international realism strategy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(international_relations)#:~:text=Liberal%20realism%20or%20the%20English%20school%20of%20rationalism,-Main%20article%3A%20English&text=The%20English%20school%20holds%20that,in%20a%20strict%20realist%20view.

This of course makes the rhetoric of liberal idealism actually existing liberal realism and therefore makes the rhetoric of liberal cooperation actually existing liberal competition whether at the international or national level with the only difference being that liberal idealists do not acknowledge that their liberal cooperation is actually liberal competition whereas liberal realists do acknowledge that their liberal cooperation is liberal competition.

Thus liberal virtue signalling is actually a form of liberal manipulation.

Arguably other forms of liberal idealism (in contrast to conservative realism) in which competition masquerades as cooperation is the rhetorical support of open borders and migration led population growth despite the need to capture foreign land, energy and materials to support open borders population growth.

https://www.wwf.org.uk/riskybusiness

Therefore, rather than being benevolent and cooperative, open borders population growth is actually malevolent and competitive which is why liberal idealists will distract away from the global foreign costs of open borders population growth and therefore distract away from the competitive nature of this policy by instead solely focusing on the national domestic benefits which provides a simulcra of cooperation.

However, whilst conservatives only focus on the national domestic costs but not the global foreign costs of foreign land, energy and materials appropriation, this partial system perspective provides liberal idealists a rhetorical edge as a result of conservatives being (market) idealists rather than realists.

Thus any liberal restraint will be determined by the extent to which conservatives are realists by acknowledging both the national domestic and global foreign costs of open borders population growth. By doing so, conservative realists can force liberal idealists to become liberal realists and thereby restrain liberal ideology.

Such is the dialectical relationship between idealism and realism as mediated by the dialectical relationship between liberalism and conservatism. Maybe!

Last edited 3 hours ago by Steve Gwynne
G M
G M
1 hour ago

Both the USA and Israel are democracies with free speech.

Hamas, Hezbollah, Russia, China etc. are not democratic and are trying to destroy democratic countries.

We should support democracies.

El Uro
El Uro
22 hours ago

“But in 2024, as the world observes America’s shrugged posture of helplessness at the slaughter in Gaza”
It seems that hatred of Jews is in the blood of gentlemen of Greek origin

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
18 hours ago
Reply to  El Uro

What a stupid reply. Somebody being critical of Israel’s actions doesn’t mean they hate Jews. Trying to shut down any criticism of a nation by lazily claiming it’s down to antisemitism is no better than the woke labelling anybody they disagree with as f***ist.
Both terms have now been used so much they’ve lost all meaning

Davey M
Davey M
16 hours ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

surely a bot, or at best, a troll

El Uro
El Uro
15 hours ago
Reply to  Davey M

I’m not a bot and not a troll.
The difference between you and me is unbelievably simple. I lived in Mariupol and my relative saw that Russian plane that dropped a bomb on the Mariupol theater with large signs saying “Children” around it, and now I live in Israel and have been running to a bomb shelter during rocket attacks for over a year.
That is why I have my own attitude towards Mearsheimer’s admirers, who absolutely do not understand that both wars began with the complete connivance and even provocation of Obama and Biden. In both cases it was not NATO threat, it was not a coup, created by CIA in Ukraine, or Israel’s expansionist policy.
It was stupidity, cowardice and helplessness of two idiot presidents. You have already forgotten that Obama demanded that Ukraine not resist the annexation of Crimea, that Putin was neither seen nor heard during Trump’s presidency, and that Biden gave Putin the go-ahead for a “small incursion”. You do not see the connection between the funding of Iran by these two idiots and the Hamas attack on Israel on 10/7. It is easier for you to call me a bot. I understand that thinking is hard, it requires effort..
So when Fazi or Aris talk about the coup in Ukraine or the Israeli atrocities in Gaza, I am somewhat struck by their blatant incompetence coupled with their astonishing self-confidence..
But if you continue to consider me a troll, so be it. I don’t care.
PS. Just don’t try to convince me or yourself that I suffer from PTSD. I’m too old for such disorders. It’s just that by force of circumstances I was involved in both of these wars long before they entered the hot phase and I humbly believe that I know a little more about them than the authors I mentioned and readers here.

Last edited 14 hours ago by El Uro
Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
14 hours ago
Reply to  El Uro

I have great sympathy for your own situation but with Ukraine there most certainly was a CIA coup and NATO most certainly did expand having said it wouldn’t.

Then missiles in Poland to protect against…Iran! Yeh..right!

So yes, Mearsheimer entirely right on this one.

The Middle East situation is somewhat different and more complicated. However it doesn’t have the capacity to escalate into a widespread nuclear exchange and is therefore important more to the individual actors than others.

El Uro
El Uro
13 hours ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

I have great sympathy for your own situation but with Ukraine there most certainly was a CIA coup and NATO most certainly did expand having said it wouldn’t.
I don’t care about your opinion and don’t need your sympathy, I cope with my problems quite well, sorry.
Continue to read “UnHerd” and relax… Although I always find it funny when people can’t understand why 30,000 NGOs (Fazi’s words!) and a horde of European politicians can’t make now a revolution in Georgia, while Nuland succeeded in Ukraine with her cookies. Perhaps the Ukrainians love cookies too much…

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
9 hours ago
Reply to  El Uro

Yep…it was the cookies that did it…lol…

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
9 hours ago
Reply to  El Uro

Yep…the cookies did it..lol…and NATO never expanded eastwards having said it wouldn’t…

Last edited 9 hours ago by Michael Cazaly
Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
8 hours ago
Reply to  El Uro

What a great – measured – reply.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
11 hours ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Yes it is exactly that! Someone critical of Israel in this case is for me clearly Anti-Jewish! You also would not criticize the Americans when they bombed Nazi Germany! As this is exactly what is happening now with the fake palestinians! They are the modern Nazis of today! Whoever does not understand it is either an idiot, a useful idiot or Anti-Jewish!

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
13 hours ago
Reply to  El Uro

Imagine thinking that by observing that there is a real legitimate slaughter in Gaza, that makes you hate Jews. So much for reasoned and nuanced debate on UnHerd, the Israel lobby never stops working.

El Uro
El Uro
12 hours ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

“legitimate slaughter in Gaza” – I can’t accept your lying, sorry. It’s a war.
I didn’t see a crowd of joyful Israelis dancing at the sight of the intestines spilling out of a dead Palestinian’s stomach.
I did see a crowd of Palestinians dancing at the sight of the intestines of a dead Israeli. This was long before 10/7.
There is no point in trying to convince you. When Europeans are slaughtered on the streets of Europe or girls in a dance class, it is an accident for you. The victims in Gaza are much more important. In fact, Israel is simply closer to these creatures, and you are further away. …For now (but you will fix the situation)

Last edited 12 hours ago by El Uro
Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
12 hours ago
Reply to  El Uro

The point is that everybody on UnHerd has an an opinion. You give them upticks or downticks to show if you agree. It is a conversation with a host of viewpoints. You are correct when you imply that your opinion is more relevant if you are close to a situation. From that perspective your opinion will also be more biased.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
11 hours ago

IT WON’T BE MORE BIASED IT WILL BE MORE TRUTHFUL AS YOU CAN SEE WITH YOUR OWN EYES EVERYDAY WHAT THOSE FAKE PALESTINIANS ARE DOING!!!!!!!

El Uro
El Uro
10 hours ago

You are correct when you imply that your opinion is more relevant if you are close to a situation. From that perspective your opinion will also be more biased
.
You know what? I agree with you!
.
But when readers say that Maidan was a CIA-organized coup, it’s just stupid, although I don’t deny that the Americans tried to interfere, but the result depended on them as much as the result of training Afghan troops. It is under Biden that Ukraine’s dependence on the America became critical. When people say I’m a bot or a troll (read above) it’s a direct insult from smug fools who don’t want to listen to another point of view…
That’s why I’m willing to listen to people like you, but not to those above.

Last edited 10 hours ago by El Uro
Warren Trees
Warren Trees
6 hours ago

I wish everyone to have their opinion, but for Heaven’s sake make it an informed opinion!

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
10 hours ago
Reply to  El Uro

70% of those killed in Gaza are women and children. The age killed the most have been 5 year olds. How dare you call them creatures. It is a slaughter and has never been a war.

Gorka Sillero
Gorka Sillero
9 hours ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

It is a war though. Initiated by the jihadis also known as Hamas, who rule Gaza. Funded by the also jihad minded Iran, following the ancestral Jew hatred that traces back to the Quran. I wonder if you were among those chasing Jews in Amsterdam last week

Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye
9 hours ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

The problem with citing Gaza death statistics in order to make a point, is that these are always Hamas numbers, whitewashed by the UN. Nobody else has any reliable statistics.

Tony Buck
Tony Buck
8 hours ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

A slaughter caused by Hamas

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
11 hours ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

You just showed that you hate Jews by admitting that you think that the Israel lobby is controlling the narrative, idiot!

Tony Buck
Tony Buck
8 hours ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

With Israel fighting for survival, it certainly needs to.

Citizen Diversity
Citizen Diversity
14 hours ago

The USSR was one of the original aggressors of 1939. In a radio speech at the time Churchill made the excuse that in invading Poland, Russia was protecting her own borders. If anyone made that claim about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine they would be denounced as a Putin apologist.
The Second World War ended with the same conditions as it has begun. Churchill took the initiative and willingly offered eastern Poland to Stalin as part of a post-war peace settlement. Again, if such a proposal were made today regarding the Ukraine war it would be regarded as appeasement.
The noble allies – Churchill and Roosevelt – agreed with Stalin that millions of people of some sort of German heritage – mostly women, children and the elderly by that time – should be ethnically cleansed from central and eastern Europe. As as result, at least 3 million died either of starvation, exposure or murder. Another holocaust.
Ghoulishly, in a speech to the House of Commons, Churchill justified this on the grounds that as millions of Germans had been killed in the war, there was living space for them in Germany. Forgetting that the RAF’s Bomber Command under the equally ghoulish Air Marshall Harris has destroyed large areas of housing stock while killing all those Germans.
How much remembrance is there in the UK’s Remembrance Day?

El Uro
El Uro
13 hours ago

“The noble allies – Churchill and Roosevelt …Another holocaust” – Your virtue signaling accepted.
About ten years ago I was in Dresden. The melted remains of the church looked terrible. It is a very difficult impression, which you cannot imagine if you have not been there. Really hard to see. But the thought that flashed through my mind then I remember even now: “Yes, this is a monstrous punishment, but for unimaginable crimes.”

Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
12 hours ago
Reply to  El Uro

If all of the people who took part are dead, how long should the punishment continue?

R E P
R E P
11 hours ago

It should not – we are not guilty for the acts of people not us.

El Uro
El Uro
11 hours ago

Go to the history, please, Germans continued to make weapons and to fight till the last days of the war, and they were very good workers and soldiers.
Nicholas Stargardt, The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945 is a perfect source.

Last edited 10 hours ago by El Uro
Tony Buck
Tony Buck
8 hours ago

It hasn’t continued.

Walter Brigham
Walter Brigham
10 hours ago

We’re Nazi’s to actually exist and represent an existential threat many more “moves” would be acceptable.

Tony Buck
Tony Buck
8 hours ago

Britain didn’t cause the displacement of Germans circa the end of the War.

And was completely powerless to prevent it.

It wasn’t a “Holocaust”, that is, a genocidal plan.

Personally, I blame Hitler and his many German supporters for the displacement of Germans. I suggest that you do too.

Last edited 8 hours ago by Tony Buck
Chris Quayle
Chris Quayle
6 hours ago

Can we have a summary of that flow of consciousness in a single sentence please ?.

David Colquhoun
David Colquhoun
4 hours ago

Since you deplore “liberal imperialism”, I find it baffling that you support Putin’s illiberal imperialism. I think that you’d enjoy living in a country ruled by Putin even less than you seem to enjoy living in England.

Ben Jones
Ben Jones
15 hours ago

Word salad. A specious argument constructed specifically to deconstruct. An old-school history undergrad would be ripped a new one for writing this. C minus.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 hours ago

This so-called analysis is simplistic beyond belief.The vocabulary is elevated but the ideas, in presenting the facts in stark black and white is, indulgently, at GCSE level.

mac mahmood
mac mahmood
8 hours ago

It was indeed. It was something rustled up to cloak the predatory nature Western activities in something nice to gull the unwary in their opposition to the Soviets. As the author has indicated, this cloak spectacularly came off showing the underbelly when it came to Gaza. What are we to make of people who profess to want to defeat terrorism by aiding the terrorists to destroy their victims?
Jewish : Zionist Terrorism And The Establishment Of Israel.Peeke, John Louis.