Russia and global governance: the challenge to the existing liberal order

Abstract

The focus of this article is on global governance in an era in which major new actors join those who have for the past quarter century, and longer, set the rules for the liberal international order. That order has been characterized by Western political and economic dominance, the expansion—one might even say imposition—of democratic political institutions and ‘open-door’ economic policies. For the past decade, Russia has increasingly challenged the West and the existing international order across a broad set of fronts. These actions have ranged from rhetorical challenges to the global system to the use of military intervention meant to impose its policy objectives on other states, as well as cyber-attacks on national elections and direct support for right-wing political groups in the West seemingly meant to instill instability within the member states of the Western community, to support like-minded right-wing political groups, and to challenge the very existence of that community itself. Russia’s efforts to redefine the existing world order and to reduce the dominant position of the USA in defining and maintaining that order seem to have gained an important new ally in Donald Trump and some of his key advisors, who appear to question the very foundations of that order and to call for the US withdrawal from it.