The liberal international order is dying, or so we are told. It might be argued that it has come close to its funeral many times over the last decade. The United Nations appears paralysed, overcome by its size. NATO is divided and trying to manage the shift from an expeditionary focus to territorial defence.
And the US, grappling with its place in the world, is talking about the current administration’s “quick wins” while there is plenty to distract. China and Russia’s increasing revisionism, from a patient and a disruptive approach respectively, provides a distracting backdrop. They are testing boundaries.
It is, therefore, very easy to conclude that the post-war architecture is finished, that the liberal international order is dead. Many commentators have done so. But what if it is not vanishing, but changing form?
The decades following the Second World War were unusually stable. There was a genuine period of broad, institutional liberal international order. That order does not, by definition, have to be US-led, although in this period it was. It worked, by and large. It was never perfect, but it did result in a rare period of durable alliances and deep economic integration, underpinned by US hegemony. For all its flaws, it prevented direct conflict between major powers.
Let us fast forward to today. The settled decades are well and truly over. It is easy to observe a steady accumulation of crises. Geostrategic events in the Middle East and the Far East are spilling over into Western politics at an unprecedented scale. Consensus on key issues has proved harder to sustain, and emerging powers do not share liberal assumptions. The liberal international order is under stress.
However, is it dying, or shifting? Trust, rather than size, is becoming the decisive currency of cooperation. Where the liberal international order was once expansive, it is now selective. Smaller coalitions can move faster precisely because they agree more.
Consider the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. It is underappreciated. It rarely makes headlines, although many in the intelligence world would argue that this is the point. Stemming from US and UK intelligence cooperation following the Second World War, it now includes Australia, Canada and, albeit reluctantly, New Zealand. It incorporates an extremely high level of shared systems and mutual trust through the intelligence sharing it enables.
From years of success within this structure came AUKUS, a trilateral agreement to develop the next generation of nuclear submarines and advanced defence technologies. AUKUS did not emerge from a multilateral conference or an inclusive forum. It was driven by senior officials and ministers across all three nations. Despite initial scepticism and some relatively minor strategic costs, such as backlash from France and industrial strain, it gained traction. That confidence was rooted in the history of the Five Eyes relationship.
Smaller alliances are not confined to the West. The expansion of BRICS demonstrates a degree of order, as does the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, even if these are more about political symbolism, signalling dissatisfaction with Western-led financial governance. The Gulf Cooperation Council has had significant impact in areas such as energy and defence, acting as a unified, at least in aspiration, regional political actor. None replicate the depth of integration seen in Five Eyes, but all reflect the same instinct. In a fractured world, states are investing in clubs.
Smaller alliances do, however, create multiple “us and them” dynamics. There is a risk of bloc formation, questions about the inclusion of smaller states, and clear challenges in bringing together the great powers. But in a fragmented world, effectiveness may matter more than inclusivity, and there may be more to come from such arrangements. The challenge for governments will be to identify the connections between these groupings and deliver progress through them effectively.
The post-war liberal international order was built in conference halls, both literally and metaphorically. Today, it is being sustained in smaller rooms. Given how the world has evolved in recent years, the liberal international order is increasingly shifting towards a collection of smaller alliances that are more efficient, more aligned, and more numerous. In the years ahead, liberal order will not be measured by the size of its institutions, but by the strength of its coalitions and alliances.
This may unsettle those who prefer universal rules to selective alignment, but in a fractured age we need systems capable of acting together, not merely convening. The liberal international order is not dying, it is morphing into something new.
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