Description
In response to the Trump Administration’s attacks on the Liberal International Order (LIO), US allies and partners have begun to improvise a loose, ideologically grounded bloc politics that we term “Global Centrism”. Adopting a conceptual-historical approach, we identify how Global Centrism revolves around an attempt by current and former centrist leaders to defend and restore the LIO in the US’ absence. This article situates Global Centrism as a response to the LIO’s long-running crisis and the emergence of a multiplex world order, with US President Trump’s return to office provoking the emergence of a collective Global Centrist consciousness. Despite these attempts, we explain why Global Centrism’s external and internal tensions render it unlikely to achieve its objectives. In so doing, we nonetheless foreground the importance of ideological contention for mediating international order-building efforts in a post-LIO world.
