The Liberal International Order as a Core–Periphery Order

Abstract The chapter offers an alternative macrohistory of the liberal international order (LIO) that was explicitly designed to perpetuate Western dominance and American hegemony. The LIO is better understood as a core–periphery order because inequality between the Western core and the “Restern” periphery was constitutive of it. (Re-)imperialism—not just liberalism—remained a central ordering mechanism well after 1945. It shows the two-way deep contestations between the liberal and anticolonial ordering projects, especially at the 1955 Bandung Conference. Contra the post-LIO pessimism of disorder/chaos, it argues that the normative agency of the Southeast Asian states informed by the legacy of Bandung is heralding a multiplex, multiregional world order. As the declining inequality between the West and Asia transforms the core–periphery LIO, the emergent decentered world order will lack a core, whether Western/liberal or Asian. This deep transformation should be welcomed, not deeply contested, although coexistence and global integration require embracing deep pluralism, not liberalism.