The Duck of Minerva

Naazneen Barma, one of the authors of the "Mythical Liberal Order," responded to my post of last week with a reply to my critique. With her permission, I'm posting her message here and my response. Readers, we'd love for you to weigh in with your views. Naazneen had this to say about my original post: I'd push back, in particular, on your straw man point. We started by defining the aspirations / ideal of the liberal order precisely because that's what so many turn to in defending it. Our goal was to separate the aspirations from the reality — and then to ask, very concretely, whether it is...

Last week, Naazneen Barma, Ely Ratner, and Steven Weber offered "The Mythical Liberal Order," a provocative update to their earlier article on the world without the West. They sought to puncture certain mythologies about the strength of the liberal order, that it never was a strong as defenders thought: its decline is much exaggerated since there was not much to begin with. Moreover, they seek to offer more convincing and significant evidence that non-Western countries are "routing around" the West through currency swaps and discussion of a new multilateral bank and other actions. Both that...