Description
This paper argues that although the liberal rules-based order has not met the moral claims that justified its creation, it endures as a political myth, a continuing process of sense-making, significance-building, and legitimation, that shapes the foreign policies of liberal democracies.
The order’s post-1945 promise to prevent atrocity and protect universal rights sits in persistent tension with institutional incapacity visible in Russia’s war against Ukraine, the scale of civilian harm in Gaza, and repression in Xinjiang. These are not episodic lapses but recurrent failure patterns rooted in structural limits of the UN Security Council and international legal regimes. Yet the order persists because the myth does practical work: it frames what leaders see, filters which responses appear acceptable, and supplies a language of justification to domestic and allied audiences. In this sense, the myth is performative even where institutions are ineffective.
The paper then identifies two risks that follow from treating the rules-based order as mythic practice. First, asymmetric constraint: liberal democracies may bind themselves where rivals do not. An example of this is the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which curtailed the capabilities of liberal democracies, later shown to be operationally significant in conflicts like Ukraine, while non-parties have retained, supplied, and used them, potentially providing a competitive advantage on the battlefield. Second, strategic weaponisation: states that do not subscribe to the order can appropriate its rule-of-law claims to undermine the ontological security of liberal democracies. The Chagos Archipelago dispute illustrates how appeals to international legality and self-determination have been used to undermine the ontological security of a leading liberal state, generating reputational costs and constraining diplomatic flexibility.
