In the last decade, there has been much discussion about the need to build a coalition of countries either to respond to the rise of China, or to defend the liberal international order, or both. But the essays in this collection illustrate some of the intellectual and political difficulties in doing so. They show that, as well as seeing the China challenge in different ways based on their own different interests and relationships with China, there are different views in Asia, Europe and the United States about the liberal international order itself. In particular, this concluding chapter examines differences around the sense in which the order is “liberal,” different visions for the Indo-Pacific, and different views about whether the order should simply be defended or also reformed.

A Contested Concept

The liberal international order is an elusive concept that has been aptly referred to as “conceptual Jello-O.”Footnote 1 That elusiveness has to do with the complexity of the order—it has different elements and it has evolved over time, particularly after the end of the Cold War.Footnote 2 But it is also has to do with an ambiguity about the sense in which the order that was created after World War II and developed in the post-Cold War period is “liberal.” It can be understood as “liberal” in a political sense (that is, as opposed to authoritarianism), in an economic sense (that is, as opposed to economic nationalism or protectionism), or in an international relations sense (that is, as opposed to realism or other theories).

The idea of a liberal international order that is liberal in a political sense, which tends to be most prevalent in the United States, centers on democracy. If one thinks about the order in this way—in other words, that there is something inherently pro-democratic about it—the group of countries that have an interest in preserving it is largely synonymous with a coalition of democracies that some also argue is now needed and would be opposed to China and Russia as a kind of authoritarian axis. Thus, the questions of how to defend the order and how to respond to the China challenge merge; the idea is to build a coalition of countries that will do both.

The idea of a liberal international order that is liberal in the international relations sense, which tends to be most prevalent in Europe, centers on rules.Footnote 3 As Celine Pajon and Alexandra Sakaki point out, French and German policymakers both think in terms of the “rules-based order”—a term they prefer because they fear that the concept of “liberal international order” might alienate or antagonize non-democratic countries. The European emphasis on the importance of rules reflects a deeper desire to “domesticate” international politics embodied by the European Union itself, a regional rules-based order in which rules have gone further in replacing politics than elsewhere in the world in the last 40 years, albeit with some problematic consequences for democracy.Footnote 4

Interestingly, as Richard McGregor points out, China also seems to prefer to talk about the “rules-based order,” even if the prefix “so-called” expresses skepticism about the concept. China has a more complicated relationship with the existing system of rules than is often suggested. On the one hand, it is committed to the rules of the first iteration of the liberal international order after World War II in which state sovereignty was paramount. It has also benefited more than anyone from the “hyper-globalization” produced by the post-Cold War liberalization of the economic order. On the other hand, this new post-Cold war version of the order also undermined state sovereignty through principles like the Responsibility to Protect, which China opposes.

The complexity of the liberal international order helps to explain China’s evolving approach to it. As China acquires and consolidates territory in the South China Seas and ignores international tribunal rulings, it is now threatening to break the rules on state sovereignty that it once criticized the United States for violating, as Russia already has. At the same time, as McGregor shows, it also wants to change the rules to better reflect its own interests—a legitimate aspiration from a realist perspective but less so from a liberal perspective. This creates a dilemma for others: should they seek to work with China to reform the liberal international order, or should they seek simply to defend it from China and perhaps even exclude China from it?

The dilemma is particularly relevant to the question of the liberalism of the liberal international order in an economic sense. In the post-Cold War period, the order became more liberal in this economic sense—in particular through the creation of the World Trade Organization, which was created in 1994, and which China joined in 2001. Initially, theorists of the liberal international order were hopeful that the integration of China into a system of free trade would transform China into a “responsible stakeholder” and strengthen the order.Footnote 5 But more recently, there has been a rethink as economic interdependence with China has come to be seen as a vulnerability as well as an opportunity.

Here, Japan is a particularly interesting case. It has created a new position of minister for economic security and, as Kazuto Suzuki shows, is taking steps to protect its key industries and infrastructure from embargoes and sanctions by other countries, especially China. But, as he rightly acknowledges, these steps should be understood as essentially protectionist. In that sense, they embody a partial rejection or reversal of the economic liberalism of the post-Cold War liberal international order. Of course, whether such steps are the beginning of a dangerous protectionist spiral or an overdue correction to the excessive economic liberalism of the post-Cold War order is a matter of debate.

Indo-Pacific Objectives

During the Trump administration, the United States saw the China challenge in largely realist terms. As Zack Cooper shows, the National Defense Strategy published in 2018 centered on the idea of “great power competition.” But the Biden administration has reframed the challenge as part of a wider ideological struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. This ideological reframing may in theory create more space for allies in Asia and Europe to identify with the U.S. strategy. But many in both Asia and Europe are skeptical of the democracy framing, which they see as too adversarial and binary. As we have seen, it is also for these reasons that France and Germany prefer the idea of a “rules-based” order to a “liberal” one.

There are striking differences even between French and German approaches to the Indo-Pacific. Sakaki writes that above all Germany seeks to “preserve peace and stability” in the Indo-Pacific—not least so it can continue to export there—but until recently did little to contribute to security in the region. France’s approach is almost the opposite. Pajon writes that, as a nuclear power and permanent member of the United Nations Security Council that also has extensive territory and 1.5 million citizens in the Indo-Pacific, its focus is primarily on “the security dimension of the rules-based order.” Along with the United Kingdom, but unlike most other EU member states, it has been willing to carry out presence operations in the Indo-Pacific.

However, the German view of the Indo-Pacific is strikingly similar to that of south-eastern Asian countries—and indeed German policymakers see the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as an important and promising partner in the region. Nithin Coca argues that south-east Asian countries are predominantly focused on their economic interests and are “unable or unwilling to take an active role” in protecting the liberal international order. However, as he shows, they do need alternatives to Chinese investment and the Chinese market. This is where Europeans and especially Germans think they can help—in particular through the EU connectivity strategy that Maaike Okano-Heijmans discusses in her chapter.

For France, however, the partnership between ASEAN and the EU forms part of a wider idea that the EU could be a puissance d’équilibre, or balancing power, that would offer an alternative to the choice between China and the United States that countries around the world but especially in the Indo-Pacific increasingly seem to face. “Rather than upholding a continued U.S. dominance,” Pajon writes, “France supports a multipolar order that would allow for it to pursue its own approach, while also reducing China’s influence in the region.” In other words, it is not just that continental Europeans “perceive an increasingly multipolar world,” as Cooper puts it, but that some, particularly in France, want actively to create an order that is more multipolar.

France had originally hoped that India and even Australia and Japan might be part of such an alternative grouping pursuing a “third path” in the Indo-Pacific. But the the trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (AUKUS) announced in 2021 shattered illusions that Australia might join France in seeking an alternative to a U.S.-led approach. As a U.S. treaty ally, Japan is also unlikely to be a candidate for an alternative grouping. India has traditionally sought to be “non-aligned,” which makes it a more promising partner for France. But as Dhruva Jaishankar shows, while India is interested in deepening partnerships with countries like France, it sees them as complementing the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) rather than as an alternative to it. France will likely face a choice between deepening cooperation with Quad countries or remaining without close partners in the region, except perhaps ASEAN.

As Luis Simon shows, the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific are increasingly interconnected, which could create a basis for Europeans to make more of a contribution to security in the Indo-Pacific. But the French aspiration to be a balancing power—that is, not so much to uphold the U.S.-led order that Simon describes as to create an alternative to it—will remain a major barrier to the development of a joint Transatlantic approach to the China challenge and/or the Indo-Pacific. Pajon suggests that French or EU policy could actually “complement” a U.S. approach that is more focused on using military power to deter China from aggressive actions. But as her chapter makes clear, the idea of a balancing power is based not on the use of different tools for the same objectives but rather on different objectives.

Beyond a Defensive Approach

Perhaps because China seeks to reform the liberal international order, there is a reflexive tendency in the West to simply defend it as it is. This is most clearly expressed by Europeans—Sakaki says that Germany seeks to “defend” the order and Pajon says that France seeks to “preserve” it. However, the United Kingdom’s Integrated Review, published in 2021, suggests it is moving away from the idea of defending a “rules-based order” and towards a different approach. In a more competitive world, the review said, “a defence of the status quo is no longer sufficient.”Footnote 6 Instead, together with its partners but taking a lead where it can, the U.K. needed to take a much more proactive and dynamic approach to shape the world.

Even if increased competition did not require it, however, there are good reasons to think we need to go beyond a defensive approach to the liberal international order. In particular, it is now clear that the way the order evolved in the post-Cold War period had problematic consequences both domestically and internationally that in turn helped undermine support for the order in the United States, the main guarantor of the order. In other words, instead of simply defending the liberal international order, we need to reform it. In particular, there is a need to reform the economic order, which became even more liberal during the post-Cold War period.

Cooper argues that the liberal international order needs to be adapted for an era of multipolarity. He writes that the United States should accept the reality that the world is multipolar and seek to “build coalitions rather than attract countries into the U.S. orbit.” In other words, countries would not be forced to choose between China and the United States. This would go some way to meeting French, German and south-east Asian concerns about the increasing “polarization” of international politics. But although this might be a “more inclusive approach to order-building,” as Cooper suggests, it leaves open the question of what a reformed liberal international order itself would look like.

The dilemma that the United States and its allies ultimately face, and which runs through the essays in this collection, is whether to continue to seek to include China and other authoritarian states in the liberal international order. John Ikenberry has shown how the liberal international order began as an “inside order” within the U.S. alliance system and then expanded in the post-Cold War period to include other states.Footnote 7 The accession of China to the World Trade Organization was the defining moment of this expansion of the liberal international order. Now that the problematic consequences of that expansion have become clearer, the choice is whether to “decouple” from those states, and thus shrink the order back to something like its original core, or to maintain an order that is “thinner” but universal.Footnote 8