Leedy

Please join the debate. My response to @FareedZakaria column in @washingtonpost last week: 1. Zakaria argues that the "The world of a rules-based international order... emerged from the European enlightenment", mentioning specifically Hugo Grotius and Immanuel Kant. My response is to point to the racism of enlightenment thinkers like Kant. Grotius defended Dutch imperialism. 2. Zakaria credits the liberal order to the "long peace" or the absence of great power conflict since 1945. My response, the "long peace" was a period of bloody wars in Global South many of which were fueled in part by western resistance to decolonization, in Vietnam, Algeria and Kenya or the manner of decolonization as in South-Asia. 3. Zakaria says that many of what he calls Liberal values were invented in the West and then imitated by others /Rest. I argue that values such as humanitarianism, peaceful resolution of conflict, great power cooperation, rational inquiry, emerged many parts of the world, well before Enlightenment or rise of the West. They are universal values. I also argue that the post-war world order's normative principles - such as anti-colonialism, and anti-racism, human rights and support for international peace and cooperation were developed with strong agency by decolonized states. 4. Zakaria fears that if the liberal order or western supremacy ends, "we will return to a world that is more impoverished, tense and conflict-ridden than the one we have known for generations." This view ignores that some of the worst conflicts or "fires" were like Iraq and Libya were the result of Western policies, or reluctance to prevent and sct morally such as the Gaza killings. My purpose is not to attack Zakaria, but to point out that the history of world order - when looked outside of the established Western discourse that he so frequently and eloquently defends, refutes many of his arguments. As a major influencer of world order policy debates, he should take these criticisms and facts into account, which I will elaborate in my forthcoming book; "The once and future world order" Basic Books. Let readers decide. How to beat the backlash that threatens the liberal revolution Fareed Zakaria, March 22, 2024 washingtonpost.com/opinions/…