Session Abstract
“Re-Interpreting the History of the Contemporary Global Order”
Global order has been one of the most widely invoked topics in world politics and yet one only beginning to be investigated by historians. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s aggressive foreign policy have been widely described as threats to the global order created by the United States and its allies after the Second World War. This order, as envisioned by its founders, embodied a commitment to peace over war, trade rather than protectionism, and international monetary stability and financial openness as opposed to the currency blocks of the interwar era. Institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) provided a framework for practices and norms that supported this order. Yet crucial questions about the contemporary global order remain contested. For veteran U.S. policymaker Stuart Eizenstat, U.S. leadership has been essential to the global order and overwhelmingly positive: “Over five decades, under ten presidents and sixteen secretaries of state, U.S. negotiators have sought to resolve disputes, advance justice, promote prosperity, and bring nations together.” For a realist critic Stephen Walt, global order is a fraud: “Although U.S. leaders are adept at cloaking their actions in the lofty rhetoric of ‘world order,’ naked self-interest lies behind most of them.” For radical critics like Noam Chomsky, there are “two forms of international relations: the U.S. form of a ‘rules-based order,’ which means that the world must follow the U.S.-imposed rules, or the UN form of an international order based on the UN Charter.”
This session will re-examine the origins, development, and contradictions of the contemporary global order. Questions will include, first, did the U.S-led global order, from its beginning, embody an unresolved contradiction between the universal goals of the UN, IMF, World Bank, and GATT and the regional basis of NATO and Pacific alliances upon which U.S. security rested? Second, to what extent has the alleged Pax Americana since 1945 actually depended upon states in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia helping to keep the peace, often with little support from the U.S? Third, how did opponents of imperialism shape the global order as decolonization brought an end to African and Asian empires ruled by Europeans? Fourth, given that U.S. leaders for decades treated international institutions as weapons to wage the Cold War, when did the “rules-based order” that political scientists began celebrating in the 1990s actually emerge? Finally, given that the global order has undergone immense changes over its 75 year history, what lessons can we learn for its future from its past? For example, how different and similar were the institutions and practices of the Cold War from those that emerged in the post-Cold War era? Our session will both summarize the latest research by historians on a topic that has until recently been largely the preserve of international relations specialists and provoke new directions for scholars of many disciplines.