Niall Ferguson’s and Fareed Zakaria’s Summary Debate: The Liberal International Order is Over?

Fareed Zakaria, host of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, and Niall Ferguson, historian and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, clashed in a dynamic debate on whether the liberal international order is over. It was moderated by Gillian Tett, US Editor-at-large and Chair of the Editorial Board of the Financial Times.

Zakaria argued that the liberal international order has not lost its vigour, despite the deterioration of the situation in a number of regions. In his view, the huge changes that occurred after 1945 involved more peace, stability and international cooperation between countries around the world in a way that had not happened in history until that point. He made the case for recognising that liberal capitalism has improved the lives of millions of people living in countries that benefitted from global trends, bringing peace and prosperity to previously struggling regions.

Ferguson, on the other hand, stated the world order is not even worth discussing, questioning whether it is “liberal, international, or even an order”. In his opinion, the decline in armed conflict after 1945 was due to the USA's military supremacy, not the existence of the UN and similar organisations. Such international bodies, argued the historian, have in fact helped the most powerful in society obtain greater wealth and power, rather than distribute it more evenly. He also warned even that a new Cold War has already begun, with the USA and China in confrontation in the realm of “cyberspace and beyond.”