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Fragile Victory: The Making and Unmaking of Liberal Order

Online ISBN:
9780300268522
Print ISBN:
9780300247855
Publisher:
Yale University Press
Book

Fragile Victory: The Making and Unmaking of Liberal Order

James E. Cronin
James E. Cronin
Boston College
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Published online:
18 May 2023
Published in print:
3 January 2023
Online ISBN:
9780300268522
Print ISBN:
9780300247855
Publisher:
Yale University Press

Abstract

The liberal democratic order that seemed so stable in North America and Western Europe has become precarious. This book argues that liberalism has never been secure and that since the 1930s the international order has had to be crafted, redeployed, and extended in response to both victories and setbacks. Beginning with the German and Japanese efforts in the 1930s to establish a system based on empire, race, economic protectionism, and militant nationalism, the book shows how the postwar system, established out of a revulsion at the ideas of fascism, repeatedly reinvented itself in the face of the Cold War, anticolonial insurgencies, the economic and political crises of the 1970s, the collapse of communism, the rise of globalization, and the financial crisis of 2008. The book emphasizes the links between internal and external politics in sustaining liberal order internationally and the domestic origins and correlates of present difficulties. The book provides the context necessary to understand such diverse challenges as the triumph of Brexit, the election of Trump, the rise of populism, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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