False Promise of Liberal Order

Patrick Porter is Chair in International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham. He is a Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

“This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of the liberal international order, so worshipped by Western foreign policy elites. Porter argues with great erudition that it was never liberal – indeed, it never could be – because it was built on the ruthless employment of American power.”John J. Mearsheimer, University of Chicago “Erudite, sharp, and insightful, Porter's forensic dissection of the dream of liberal international order is essential reading for those trying to make sense of the current moment.”Duncan Bell, University of Cambridge “At a time when politics seems to have become a battle between rival nostalgias, Patrick Porter refuses to let them colonize our imagination. He has penned a bracing manifesto that exposes the alluring but dangerous myth that the United States ever led a "liberal international order." Ordering the world, he shows, is rough business. Intrinsic to the project are the most illiberal of actions — the deployment of massive and endless violence, the exercise of exclusive privilege, the concentration of power and diminishment of restraint. Not only, Porter argues, does the U.S.-led order constitute a hollow response to dangerous demagogues like Donald Trump; that very order helped to produce them. No one can speak of the "liberal international order" again without grappling with Porter's cutting analysis and lyrical reflection — and, one hopes, heeding it.”Stephen Wertheim, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft “A razor sharp, tour de force which systematically unpacks the powerful and dangerous myth of the liberal world order and mounts a serious challenge to a wilfully blind American foreign policy establishment. It should be required reading for International Relations students everywhere.”Jeanne Morefield, University of Birmingham“Persuasive”Nick Timothy, The Critic  “...the single best book on US foreign policy written from a non-interventionist perspective since Barry Posen’s Restraint.”Colin Dueck, George Mason University“I hope that Porter’s book, an international security scholar’s take on history, will prove to be the beginning of a conversation that more historians should enter. The philosophical arguments in this book are creative and compelling . . .”War on the Rocks“[The False Promise of Liberal Order] is not only an incisive critique of the failures of modern U.S. foreign policy, but it is also a much-needed dispelling of the central myth that 'foreign policy traditionalists' cling to.”The American Conservative“bracing”The New Yorker“a trenchant text, written with verve and conviction”Ed McNally, New Left Review

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction - Nostalgia in an End TimeChapter One - The Idea of Liberal OrderChapter Two - Darkness Visible: World Ordering in PracticeChapter Three - Rough Beast: How the Order Made TrumpChapter Four - A Machiavellian Moment: Roads AheadAfterword - Before Our EyesNotesIndex