The End of the Liberal Order?

Niall Ferguson, Fareed Zakaria

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781786073112
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Conservatism & Liberalism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Is it time to reaffirm our liberal values? Or are we seeing the birth-pangs of a new era? Two great thinkers debate the question burning behind headlines across the world.

‘No civilization, no matter how mighty it may appear to itself, is indestructible.’
–Niall Ferguson

‘We do not need to invent the world anew. The international order established by the United States after World War II is in need of expansion and repair, but not reconception.’
–Fareed Zakaria

Fears of a globalized world are rampant. Across the West, borders are being reasserted and old alliances tested to their limits. Could this be the end of the liberal order or will the major crises of the twenty-first century strengthen our resolve?

The End of the Liberal Order?

_________________________

Pro: Niall Ferguson Con:
Fareed Zakaria

April 28, 2017
Toronto, Ontario

THE END OF THE LIBERAL ORDER?

RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: My name is Rudyard Griffiths, and it’s my privilege to once again serve as your moderator. I want to start tonight’s proceedings by welcoming the North America–wide television audience tuning in to this debate right now on C-SPAN, across the continental United States, and on CPAC, from coast to coast to coast in Canada.

A warm hello also to our online audience watching this debate live, right now, on Facebook Live, our exclusive social media partner, and on Bloomberg.com, courtesy of Bloomberg Media. It’s great to have you as virtual participants in tonight’s proceedings. And hello to you, the over three thousand people who have filled Roy Thomson Hall to capacity for yet another Munk Debate. This is just great to see again.

This evening marks a milestone in this debate series. This is our twentieth semi-annual contest, and our ability, debate after debate, to bring you what we think are some of the brightest minds, the sharpest thinkers on the big global issues of our time, would not be possible without the generosity and the public-spiritedness of our hosts tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, an appreciation of Peter and Melanie Munk and the Aurea Foundation. Thank you both. Well done.

As I mentioned, this is a special occasion for us, our twentieth debate. So, for only the second time in the history of this series, we’re convening a one-on-one contest. Our topic is the key geopolitical question of the moment: Can the process of globalization, both economic and political, that has defined the international system since the end of World War II, survive an era of rising nationalism, protectionism, and populism?

To find out, let’s get our two debaters out here, centre stage, to square off on the resolution, “Be it resolved: the liberal international order is over.” Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your debater arguing for tonight’s motion — the renowned historian, filmmaker, and best-selling author, Niall Ferguson.

Niall’s opponent tonight, arguing against the motion, “Be it resolved: the liberal international order is over,” is CNN anchor, celebrated author, and big geopolitical thinker Fareed Zakaria.

Gentlemen, thank you for being here. This is going to be an exciting debate, and I just want to run through a few, quick, pre-debate items with you. First, for those of you watching online, those of you in the audience, and Fareed and Niall, if you wish, there is a hashtag — #Munkdebate — so you can all be part of the conversation. Also, we’ve got a rolling poll going. You can analyze, comment, and judge our debaters’ performance throughout the debate at www.munkdebates.com/vote. And we’ve also got our trusty countdown clock, a key piece of the success of these debates. This clock is going to count down to zero for each of the different segments of the debate. And when you see it count down, join me in a round of applause. That will keep our debate on time and our debaters on their toes.

Now, a fun and critical data point. At the top of the evening, all of you here, the thousand people in attendance, voted on tonight’s resolution as you were coming into this hall. “Be it resolved: the liberal international order is over,” yay or nay. Let’s see those results. The pre-audience vote: 34 percent agree, 66 percent disagree. Interesting. The room is in play.

Now, this is a critical question that we ask just to get a sense of the variability tonight: Depending on what you hear during the debate, are you open to changing your vote? Let’s have those numbers, please: 93 percent. So, wow — 93 percent are open to changing. This debate is in motion, it’s fluid.

Let’s get it started with our opening statements. Niall Ferguson, since you’re speaking in favour of the resolution, you’ll go first. You’ve got ten minutes on the clock.

NIALL FERGUSON: Well, thank you very much indeed, Rudyard. And thank you, Peter and Melanie, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this extraordinarily important issue.

Voltaire famously said that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman, nor an empire. And I think the same can be said of the liberal international order. It’s neither liberal nor international nor, for that matter, very orderly. And yet it seems reckless at best to come to, of all places, Toronto, and try to get people to vote against those three words, because you’re all liberal. And you’re all international and, by my own experience, at least, you’re all quite orderly. But it seems to be that one way of thinking about this is: How difficult would it be to get you to vote in favour of what I suppose would be the opposite, which would be “conservative home-grown chaos”?

Now, we’re trying that in the United States at the moment, and I just want to make it very clear that I am not here to defend Donald Trump. I’m not even here to persuade you that the liberal international order is necessarily all bad. I’m just here to persuade you that it’s over.

I think there should be some full disclosure, Fareed. You and I have been amongst the beneficiaries of the liberal international order. Not quite as much as Peter, but some. We’ve had our fun at Davos and Aspen over the years — I think you still go to those places. And I’m not going to deny that it’s been pretty good. The question I want to address is whether or not it’s been good for a whole lot of other people who may not be so well represented in this audience tonight.

Has it been good for ordinary Americans? North Americans, Canadians, and U.S. citizens? Has it been good for ordinary Europeans? Has it been good for the people in the places we come from? Those Glaswegians who didn’t make it to Toronto. Quite a lot tried. Or the Indian Muslims who didn’t make it onto CNN. That really seems to me the point.

And I want to suggest to you tonight that we need to consider very seriously the possibility that globalization has overshot. And that in overshooting, it caused at least two major crises, the consequences of which we’re still living with: the financial crisis, and then a crisis of mass migration. And if we carry on telling ourselves this story — and the story goes something like this: “Oh, we’ve been so much more peaceful and prosperous since 1945, thanks to those nice, liberal, international institutions, the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and so on. Ah! Why must these beastly populists spoil it all?” — that seems to me to be an extremely dangerous narrative for us to cling to. I don’t think it’s even good history to explain peace and prosperity in that way. In fact, I think it may be “fake history.” Let me explain why I think that.

Why is it not liberal? Because the principal beneficiary of this wonderful liberal international order has been China. Yes. China has been the principal winner. Back in 1980, China accounted for perhaps 2 percent of the world economy. And the U.S. and Canada together were about a quarter of the world economy.

What are the percentages now? Today, China accounts for 18 percent of the world economy, and the U.S. and Canada together slightly less, 17 percent. And on present trends, that differential will grow. By 2021, the IMF says, China will account for a fifth of the world economy. How can it be a liberal international order if the principal beneficiary is a one-party state run by a communist elite?

And they’re not the only beneficiaries. Fareed, you wrote a terrific article back in 1997 about illiberal democracies. Well, the illiberal democracies, the ones with elections but no rule of law, also turn out to have done rather well from this system. I looked at some of the measures you used in that article. I wanted to see if the world had got any more free since you wrote that article. It hasn’t. The proportion of countries that count as free is about the same as it was in 1997. And some of the world’s countries are getting less free by the day. Dramatic declines in freedom have happened not only in Russia but in countries like Venezuela. China, the principal beneficiary of the liberal international order, ranks 173rd out of 195 in terms of freedom today. Some liberal order.

Some international order, too. Let’s ask ourselves who really has benefited from this era of globalization. It’s really an inter-elitist order that we should be talking about, because the principal beneficiaries of the system turn out to be those lucky few who possess rare intellectual property, or rare, real assets, including — and Peter knows this as well as anybody — commodities.

Even Canada has experienced rising inequality in this era of liberal international order. Your Gini coefficient has gone up since the 1980s. A third of the gains that this economy made in the glorious decade before the financial crisis accrued to the top one percent of income earners. The share of income in Canada that goes to the top 0.1 percent today is as high as it was before World War II. That’s another consequence of the liberal international order.

The winners take all in this system. It’s one of the paradoxes of globalization. And if I’m right about that, it’s signified by the fact that it’s not only populists who are trying to rein in globalization. Here in Canada, you’ve just imposed an additional stamp tax on foreign investors in housing because of the dramatic increase in the cost of housing that has occurred as Chinese and other investors have poured into the Vancouver and Toronto markets. Toronto housing prices have gone up by a factor of three since the year 2000.

Let me conclude by observing that the liberal international order isn’t orderly. The order in any case wasn’t produced by the UN, much less by the World Trade Organization. It was produced by the United States and the military and other alliances that it led — a point that Fareed himself has made often in print. Let’s not confuse these things. It’s very different if the world is led by a Pax Americana based on American power as opposed to collective security based on the UN.

As the challenge has been made to that Pax Americana, what have we seen? Increased disorder. Islamic extremism, claiming tens of thousands of lives every year. Tens of millions of people displaced from their homes. Nuclear proliferation — the Koreans fired another missile tonight. Luckily, it didn’t work. This, we’re calling order? That seems to me a misnomer.

Ladies and gentlemen, we don’t need to support Donald Trump to know that there’s something wrong here. You don’t need to be a populist. You can do it as a classical liberal, which is what I consider myself, and recognize that the biggest threat to classical liberalism is an unfettered globalization that undermines the foundations of a free society based on the rule of law and representative government.

So, the liberal international order, spelled L-I-O, ladies and gentlemen, is an L-I-E. It is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• The End of the Liberal Order?
• Pre-Debate Interviews with Rudyard Griffiths
• Acknowledgements
• About the Debaters
• About the Editor
• About the Munk Debates
• About the Interviews
• Copyright