Into the Post-Liberal World — Navigating the Way Forward
Populism is back, the rule of law at the global level is over, and Fukuyama is dead — Hegel is the last man standing. Every phrase is lifted verbatim from your text.
The top journals that ostensibly describe world events from their respective spectrums are unequivocal in announcing a paradigm shift, a vital pivot that is taking place in the world, if not already come to pass, confirming that populism is now back and the liberalism that started shaping the world in the 1960s has now effectively come to its end or is ending. The rule of law at the global level is effectively over. Instances of buying distant land (when no one is selling, after decimating it), forcible annexations of other’s land, or threats of it by the nations of both sides of the Bering Strait confirm the end of the international legal system. The world is pivoting from the era of expansion of liberal politics to a world of narrow parochialism. An apparent schism is also developing in the Western world; its leader, as it is making itself great again, had heralded that schism in his earlier version. The Rest of the world in the south is not just a mute spectator; I think in their sufferings, in which there is little chance of any real alleviation, may at least hope, even if it’s against hope, of openings for them in the schism and change. In short, Fukuyama is dead (not literally, of course), and Hegel lives on, on whose historical dialectics Fukuyama premised his theses but parted in hubris. Hegel, that way, is the last man standing.
As Edward Said said, the End of History is really the end of Fukuyama.
The nakedness of the West has been masked by the charade of schemes that took on from (their) Enlightenment and in what they implemented as high ideals in their parochial color-coded schema across the world, perpetuating the system of oppression of the Rest with kind words and legal jargon while never ceasing to enhance the might of their stick, their military and weaponization. This charade was played out in the name of the liberal order. In this scheme, the Rest of the world had to be content mostly with the nice words. In this pivot of our times, the leader of the West has brought them back to where the new world’s steam engine started, with Adam Smith’s Capitalism, the Crown, and the Church. This is a potent mix, and when you add Color, it transforms into an unstoppable force. We have a colonial history that is a litany of horror as proof, and where it ended in the great wars is a good point to consider where we are all leading. MAGA has taken the masks off the West, and its subsidiaries and affiliates in the rest of the Western world are creating their own MAGAs in their respective domains, forgetting that there can only be one MAGA and that one MAGA can never be compatible with another.
Get Sajid Mohamed’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The post-liberal world will be a Hobbesian War of All against All. We had a miniature digital version of these in Ukraine and its enhanced apocalyptic version in Gaza. Liberalism, while wary of concentrated power within individual states, has theoretically supported global governance structures (akin to the United Nations) — as long as they operate under the rule of law and consent of nations, and nations consenting based on the principles of law. So, in that sense, a true global authority — such as an empowered UN, is not necessarily contradictory to liberal ideals.
Since it was a charade, institutions such as the UN never came to any meaningful authority. It’s weakening to the extent it has — barely struggling to uphold if not enforce international law, the ICC being ignored by major powers or even sanctioned, is a sign that the order based on the rule of law is unraveling, if not unraveled already unmasking the charade and displaying stark nakedness. We are likely entering a period of increasing disorder — where might is right politics, crass majoritarianism within nations, regional conflicts, and economic fragmentation take precedence over international law and order. It is in this sense that post-liberal order will be Hobbesian; without a functioning global authority, states and non-state actors will act primarily out of self-interest, leading to escalating competition and instability with no attempts even to maintain a charade. We would likely see, at least in theory, more proxy and direct wars, economic decoupling, and the collapse of smaller states unable to navigate the chaos until a new order emerges after passing through a long descent into a multipolar anarchy. While a multipolar world is a better alternative to a unipolar or bipolar world, without a global institutional framework, a multipolar world could lead to uncontrollable chaos.
Francis Fukuyama’s End of History thesis — where liberal democracy was supposed to be the final form of government — has clearly not held up, and it is in this sense that his theory is a dead letter. The resurgence of authoritarianism, nationalism, and geopolitical rivalry suggests that history is far from over. If anything, we’re seeing a return to pre-liberal struggles for dominance, influence, and survival, engulfing all into a Huntingtonian world where the likes of Aleksandr Dugin’s ideas reign — with loosely identified concepts such as civilizations, rather than ideological systems, become the primary fault lines of conflict. The outcome will depend upon the depth to which the post-liberal world collapses.
It, of course, need not be so. Had the liberal order been what it was supposed to be and not a White-wash to serve the imperial interests of the post-imperial Western world, Fukuyama had a chance. Be that as it may, there is a chance if all societies come together to rescue the world from a plausible doom. When I say all societies, I mean societies that are alive. Societies that did not extensively debate the digital and apocalyptic versions of the war in their protests, actions, and primary and daily discourses are soulless, dead societies. For them, this pivot is irrelevant and meaningless. For those societies that are alive, it is time to act.
These societies would first like to wake their sleeping neighbors up, not those whose souls are dead; they cannot be awakened. If a running live holocaust has not awakened them, nothing will. So those awake must start on it right away, first by picking up the stream of their individual and then collective thoughts, rigorously dissecting them, letting the hardest of prejudices wane. Read and re-read the founding documents to see their meaning and where they are. Start questioning and looking for answers; question your questions and your answers. Don’t be parochial. Be moral. Then, start changing the material forces slowly but steadily, and with a good chance, the ideas you would have so rigorously developed will work on the material forces to ensure the outcome we hope for. If the paradigm of might is right is established, as it is getting consolidated, the Hobbesian world will be upon us very soon, and you will find no one is mightier than all. The world is destined to perish in the War of All against All. You are no exception, whosoever you may be.
