At The National Interest Ted Galen Carpenter points out that the liberal world order which Trump is purportedly dismantling was largely wishful thinking:
The rules-based aspect is extremely selective, if not hypocritical. The United States and its Western allies frequently lecture other countries about violating proper international norms. During the Cold War, Washington repeatedly denounced the Soviet Union for interfering in the internal affairs of other countries and committing outright acts of aggression. U.S. leaders excoriated Moscow’s brutal crackdowns in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968). Later, Washington fumed about the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and even lower-profile Kremlin meddling in such places as Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Angola.
Similar hectoring has continued into the post-Cold War era directed at a noncommunist Russia. Washington responded angrily to Russia’s war against Georgia (even though evidence indicated Georgia initiated the fighting) and reacted with utter fury when Vladimir Putin’s government annexed Crimea . China and Iran also are prominent targets of U.S. criticism for “disruptive†behavior .
Yet the United States and its Western allies have repeatedly meddled (or worse) in the internal affairs of other nations. The CIA and its British counterpart MI5 orchestrated the 1953 coup that overthrew Iran’s government, and the CIA did the same the following year in Guatemala. In both cases, the violations of the standards the West established were especially brazen and inappropriate, since the ousted governments were democratic. The United States was implicated in numerous other coups or coup attempts, including in Indonesia, South Vietnam, and Chile.
The milder forms of U.S. meddling have been even more frequent. Studies indicated that Washington has interfered in elections and other domestic political affairs in more than eighty countries, including some two dozen, full-fledged democracies since World War II. The most recent instance was the flagrant U.S. (and European Union) interference in Ukraine to encourage demonstrators to oust the elected, pro-Russian president before the end of his term.
Both the United States and its allies have committed acts of military aggression in blatant violation of supposed international norms. Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and occupied some 37 percent of its territory—an illegal occupation and de facto annexation that continues to this day. The United States and its NATO partners forcibly detached Serbia’s Kosovo province from Belgrade’s jurisdiction by launching a seventy-eight-day air war. And Washington led the wars to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi’s in Libya.
The Kosovo episode is especially illustrative of U.S. and Western hypocrisy regarding a rules-based international order. Not only did the American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) launch an offensive war against a country that had not attacked any member of the alliance, but the war’s aftermath underscored the selective application of rules. The post-war occupation of Kosovo was under the auspices of the United Nations. When Kosovo’s leaders wanted to declare the province’s outright independence, the Western powers faced a problem. It was certain that both Russia and China would exercise their veto power on the UN Security Council to prevent that outcome. The United States and some (not even all) of its NATO allies simply bypassed the Council and approved Kosovo’s declaration of independence on an ad hoc basis. Western actions regarding Kosovo highlighted the reality that those countries follow the “rules†they officially proclaim only when it suits their interests and goals.
and wishful thinking is, sadly, the best case scenario. Too frequently the so-called liberal world order has been a melange of wishful thinking, sophistry, and guile. Even when applied only the the United States and its relationship with its European allies, our presumed allies have never hesitated to work against us when it furthered their own policy goals or was politically popular at home.
Take a single example. European opposition to genetically-modified agricultural products has largely been sophistry—a dodge around WTO trade rules that allowed them to ban or curtail the imports of U. S. agricultural products, largely in the interests of promoting the interests of their own farmers.
