MikeLigalig.com

The administration’s alternative vision for the international order is a bare-knuckled assertion of unilateral power that some call America First; more colorfully, a White House official characterized it to The Atlantic as the “We’re America, Bitch” doctrine. This aggressive disregard for the interests of like-minded countries, indifference to democracy and human rights and cultivation of dictators is the new world Mr. Trump is creating. He and his closest advisers would pull down the liberal order, with America at its helm, that remains the best guarantor of world peace humanity has ever known. We are entering a new, terrifying era.

According to the president, the liberal world order is a con job — he insists America is paying too much and being swindled by its friends. He wants the United States to pull back from its alliances and let its partners fend for themselves, and devote its money to its domestic needs.

Those criticisms resonate in a time when Americans are fearful of how the world is changing, and when the country’s leaders have done a poor job of explaining those changes and easing their impact on workers and their families.

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That last point is critical, and it is the genius of the system. America benefits from supporting others. The American security umbrella enables friendly governments to attract investment and grow peacefully. It encourages cooperation. The system allows America and other countries to share the costs of preserving common defense and the free movement of goods and people (although sometimes others put in less than Americans would like).

The world has never seen anything like this — a superpower constraining itself to such a degree — or the peace and stability it brings. America doesn’t always get it right; often it’s clumsy, fails to live up to its ideology, and breaks its own rules.

But the results speak for themselves. It has been over 70 years since the last great-power conflict. Democracies fight lots of wars, but they do not fight other democracies. The wars they fight are about enlarging the perimeter of security and prosperity, expanding and consolidating the liberal order.

The global economy has grown about sevenfold since 1960, adjusted for inflation. Free people and free markets have produced most of the strongest and most prosperous states in the international order, and those states have linked themselves through alliances, institutions and trade regimes that are mutually beneficial.

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The Islamic State in part grew out of the United States doing too little to consolidate the gains of the surge in Iraq and caring too little about the Syrian government’s depredations against its people. None of these are outcomes that advance American interests.

Now imagine the longer term. China is already demonstrating that not only will it not play by the rules of the American-led order, but it also intends to write and enforce new rules. Absent American opposition, it will continue to force smaller, weaker states in East Asia into submission and expand its control over sea traffic. It will use technology to monitor, restrain and penalize critics worldwide. A Chinese-led world order would be one of privileges rather than rights, power rather than law, tribute rather than alliance.

That’s a very costly peace — if it even succeeds at sustaining peace. More likely, if the United States does not sustain the order, a rising power will eventually force it to defend its interests or succumb. That is what happened in every power transition except the one between Britain and the United States — an exception born of their democratic similarities, and one unlikely to be repeated with the United States and China.

Mr. Trump’s attack on the liberal world order is not just about the price America pays for it. He seems bent on destroying the friendships and respect that bind America and its allies. If he succeeds, America will be seen as — and may even become — no different from Russia and China, and countries will have no reason to assist America’s efforts rather than theirs.

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