Introduction
In his seminal book on varieties of international political orders, John Ikenberry construed that after 1945 a constitutional international order (hereafter: CIO) had been established, an order where “international institutions bind powerful and weaker states together, creating a difficult-to-change institutional framework within which their relations are carried out, and thereby establishing some limits on the arbitrary and indiscriminate exercise of state power.”1 That was a stunning achievement since previous attempts to structure world politics resulted in either balance-of-power or hegemonic types of order, each being more fragile and competitive. Several consecutive US administrations were responsible for the scaffolding of the CIO, which benefited the United States and other partners in the endeavor. John Owen succinctly summarized the key advantage: “America has safeguarded its internal regime [of democratic capitalism] partly through a grand strategy called ‘liberal internationalism.’ The strategy has entailed the protection of other wealthy democracies through self-binding multilateral military, political, and economic institutions.”2 Arguably, the United States kept its Republican institutions and values (and even became a better Republic thanks, for instance, to the Voting Rights Act of 1965) through liberalizing itself, its allies (France, Taiwan, Korea), and old adversaries (Japan, Germany, Italy) eventually creating an international order conducive to democracy promotion. It will not be a stretch to see a causal link between the establishment of the CIO and the subsequent “Third Wave of Democratization,” which marked the “unipolar moment” favorable to the US.
And yet, revisiting his argument in 2018, Ikenberry concluded that the US is likely to dismantle the CIO, breaking “with long-standing institutions and norms, but it would pay a price. There would be legitimacy and lost cooperation costs.”3 Although Biden’s intermezzo temporarily halted the CIO’s undoing, the new Trump administration seems to have put the process on steroids. What remains unclear is the role of the Russo-Ukrainian War in the erosion of the CIO. Is it a catalyst or an inhibitor? Or something entirely different?
Elaborating on ideas of Ikenberry and Owen, I consider the impact of the Russo-Ukrainian war on the transatlantic relationship and its foreseeable repercussions for the international order. By advancing the polemos argument, I suggest one might expect some re-crystallization of the liberal alliance, the Trump card notwithstanding.
A Constitutional International Order and Its Enemies
Throughout history, international systems tended to structure themselves (not in the sense of a purposeful agency but rather in a haphazard way, the natural selection presses living organisms to evolve), moving from anarchy to a balance of power or a hegemony. The scholarly community studied these orders in detail, and there is no need to repeat the well-established points except highlighting a gradual diminishing of international violence, as international systems move from an anarchical state to a balanced to a hegemonic one. Less violent, however, does not mean non-violent. States lash out at one another in anarchic settings, alliances apply warfare against a rival block, and the hegemon violently punishes the states daring to ignore their biding. Since 1945, however, a combination of factors contributed to establishing a constitutional international order (CIO), where shared principles and political institutions effectively limited the need for a leading state to coerce. As conceptualized by Ikenberry, a CIO has three essential characteristics: (1) shared agreement exists over the principles and rules of order; (2) established rules and institutions that put limits on the exercise of power; and (3) entrenchment of rules and institutions in the broader political system to the extent they become difficult to alter.4
Leveraging upon the CIO, the US pushed through decolonization,5 managed international crises like Suez, and even reduced the Soviet rival to the role of the underdog, “playing perpetual catch-up with America but [failing to provide…] the kinds of breakthroughs that would speak to its supposed superiority”.6 These amazing feats were accomplished less through force than through the co-optation of important regional players in a global net of US allies. In a final account, the “original liberal international order was an ecosystem engineered to save democracy.”7 By showcasing that liberal democracy delivers prosperity, promotes security, lessens societal tensions, and contributes to peaceful conflict resolutions, the US sent a powerful impetus all over the globe to emulate liberal democratic systems. Eventually, the liberal CIO was one of the reasons why the US secured victory in the Cold War, for “liberal commitment to individual freedom g[a]ve rise to foreign policy ideology and governmental institutions that work[ed] together to produce democratic peace,”8 which provided a cornerstone for a transatlantic democratic security community who, in cooperation with liberal allies worldwide, proved to be more viable than its Soviet adversary.
However, contrary to the triumphal relations by the “lonely superpower,”9 managing the post-Cold War order became more demanding than ever imagined. Challenges were of two types. First, different states and non-state actors – in a blatant rejection of the “end of history” thesis – offered compelling ideational alternatives to liberalism democracy, ranging from Salafi Islamism to Putinesque “traditional values” but invariantly promoting authoritarianism as a preferable political system. By the 2010s, autocracy promotion10 became standard for Russia, China, and others. “Black knights”11 effectively emulate the logic behind the democracy promotion: populating the international community with new authoritarian regimes, they terraform the international environment, making it more tolerable to autocracies and, thus, enhancing domestic regime stability. Admittedly, it eroded norms and values underpinning the liberal CIO, which was hardly a drawback for Beijing or Moscow.
Second, problems metastasized into the transatlantic liberal core for three overarching reasons. To begin with, a domineering attitude followed by unilateral policy, adopted by several US administrations, provoked dismay in Europe, giving new traction to ideas of the EU as an independent geopolitical actor and damaging the transatlantic condominium. Next, general economic malaise, compounded by mismanagements during the Great Recession, provoked a wave of populist movements, constituting “an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism.”12 Populist alternatives questioned the ostensibly self-evident link between democracy and liberalism and contributed to the erosion of the liberal consensus. The process provided a breeding ground for ideological alternatives to liberalism in Spain, Greece, Hungary, Poland, France, and Germany. Finally, the crescendo of production relocation from the liberal core to other countries sapped state capacity of the essential liberal states, no longer able – let alone willing – to promote liberal values both at home and abroad.
Russo-Ukrainian War and the Polemos Argument
Shattered by the growing assertiveness of non-democratic states, decreasing capacity of liberal states, and the loss of ideational vigor, the CIO cracked revealing inability to contain political violence both in form of inter-states conflicts (e.g., Georgia, Crimea and Donbas, or Yemen) and subnational violence (e.g., Rohingya and Uyghurs persecutions, or Syrian civil war). It happened prior to the 2016 Trump election. It is, therefore, unfair to blame the man for the CIO’s devolution. Rather, Trump served as a catalyst, since his “No Friends, No Enemies” policy13 and criticism of the US military alliances, global economy, and pro-democratic policies amplified the isolationist strand of US foreign policy thinking.14 Trump’s policy after 2024 (e.g., the threatening moves against Danish and Canadian sovereignty and disengagement from international organizations) represents the continuation of the old approach.
The Russian attack against Ukraine is another indicator of the general malaise, for we witness an assertive authoritarian illiberal regime punishing a non-consolidated democracy eager to join the transatlantic community. Besides, with the CIO devolution into anarchy, it is not inconceivable that other instances of international aggression, human rights violations, and power politics are to follow. However, instead of focusing on the “emulation argument”, which speculates that other states, emboldened by Russia’s impunity, might opt for aggression to further their goals and emasculate the CIO, I am eager to explore the “polemos argument” stipulating a different effect of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
As a reminder, Πόλεμος is an obscure Greek deity that personifies warfare; hence, a typical way to translate the famous passage No. 53 by Heraclitus is “War is father of all, and king of all.”15 However, as Drew Hyland points out, “Heraclitus’ language calls for a much broader reading of polemos […] something more like ‘struggle’ or ‘opposition.’16 Construing Πόλεμος alongside the same logic, Martin Heidegger advances a whole theory of polemos as Auseinandersetzung (“confrontation”): “only in confrontation do we most fully become what we are: beings summoned to an ongoing interpretative struggle with the meaning of the world.”17
Inspired by the layers of the “Πόλεμος” notion, I contend that the Russo-Ukrainian war, being a confrontation of liberal states with the illiberal rivals, might reinvigorate the potency of liberalism within the transatlantic core. The polemos effect, however, will hardly resuscitate the CIO; rather, it will contribute to reordering global affairs alongside the balance-of-powers lines.
The “polemos argument” is, basically, a case-applied rendition of Owen’s “dialectic of negation,”18 the idea that a liberal state needs the “Other,” a non-liberal state, to identify itself against. This Hegelian conjecture effectively invalidates the Kojèvian assumption of the “end of history” thesis since it makes a global atemporal triumph of liberalism impossible. Liberalism without enemies loses its intensity of purpose, degenerates into a platitude of meaningless dogmas, eventually inviting illiberal critique. The fate of NATO, which since 1991 went though a phase of institutional sclerosis mirrors the process on the organizational level: without the Soviet threat, it lost the raison d’être and chased the chimera of “the war on terror” all over the globe, in places far away from where the security interests of most of the transatlantic core reside. However, the Russian aggression resurrected the security threat to European states, which provoked significant repercussions ranging from demands for “additional defence investments of around EUR 500 billion over the next decade”19 to Berlin’s pledge to enhance its military capabilities20 to Paris’ enlargement of the nuclear deterrence to cover other European partners.21 A comparable revitalization is expected in the ideational domain: liberalism facing assertive promotion of alternatives must rediscover its core and reinvent the peripheral concepts that effectively link the ideology to the interests of living human beings, or give way.22
The murkiest question is whether the polemos argument covers the EU-US relationship. Trump’s eagerness to focus on the Chinese challenge and his uncourteous moves against European partners damage transatlantic links. Yet one must not despair. The 2025 Democracy Perception Index suggests a significant transatlantic overlap in the public’s opinion: unlike most of the globe, only the United States and the European countries (plus the “Pacific rim” of South Korea and Taiwan) deem protecting individual rights and freedoms as the purpose of democracy.23 The transatlantic belt, therefore, has preserved its genuinely liberal ideational foundations. True, Europeans perceive Trump’s assault with dismay: the US is one of the most negatively perceived countries in Europe.24 However, the US rating drop occurred in 2024, with Trump’s second term.
The data suggest that the house of liberal democracies is still united in values, though divided by Trump politics. The notable personalization of the US politics since 2024 notwithstanding, the system still has a few alternative foci of decision-making (e.g., US Congress and Senate) with actors more positively inclined toward EU-US cooperation. Global competition also makes the transatlantic option more preferable to the US national interests: with the CIO damaged beyond repair, rivalry among different blocs is likely to accelerate. Contrary to the delusion of Musk, Witkoff, and alike, the US will incur fewer transactional costs when looking for a partnership with ideologically close European liberals than with Chinese and Russians, whose alternative values make them natural rivals for the US. Consequently, the confrontation with illiberal states should revitalize transatlantic liberalism making the ideology potent again.
1 John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 36.
2 John Owen, The Ecology of Nations: American Democracy in a Fragile World Order (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025), p.7
3 John Ikenberry, “Reflections on After Victory.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations (21)1, 2019, p. 11.
4 John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 30-32.
5 Peter Clarke, The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008).
6 Sergei Radchenko, To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024), p. 595.
7 John Owen, The Ecology of Nations: American Democracy in a Fragile World Order (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025), p.22
8 John Owen, “How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace.” International Security 19(2), 1994, p. 124.
9 Samuel Huntington, “The Lonely Superpower”, Foreign Affairs (March/April 1999).
10 Thomas Ambrosio, “Constructing a Framework of Authoritarian Diffusion: Concepts, Dynamics, and Future Research.” International Studies Perspectives 11(4), 2010, pp. 375–392; Julia Bader, Jörn Grävingholt, Antje Kästner, “Would autocracies promote autocracy? A political economy perspective on regime-type export in regional neighbourhoods.” Contemporary Politics 16(1), 2010, pp. 81-100; Rachel Vanderhill, Promoting Authoritarianism Abroad (London: Lynne Rienner, 2013).
11 Jakob Tolstrup, “Black knights and elections in authoritarian regimes: Why and how Russia supports authoritarian incumbents in post-Soviet states.” European Journal of Political Research 54, 2015, pp.673-799.
12 Cas Mudde & Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, “Studying Populism in Comparative Perspective: Reflections on the Contemporary and Future Research Agenda.” Comparative Political Studies 51(13), 2018, p. 1670.
13 Jeffrey Goldberg, “A Senior White House Official Defines the Trump Doctrine: ‘We’re America, Bitch’.” The Atlantic, June 11, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/a-senior-white-house-official-defines-the-trump-doctrine-were-america-bitch/562511/
14 Thomas Wright, “Trump’s 19th Century Foreign Policy.” Politico, January 20, 2016. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-foreign-policy-213546/
15 Heraclitus, Fragments, trans. T. M. Robinson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), p. 37.
16 Drew Hyland, “Heraclitus: Polemos, Eris, Agon, Maxesthai, Paidia.” In Drew Hyland Papers. Trinity College Archives, Watkinson Library, Trinity College Library (Harford, Connecticut, USA). Trinity College Digital Repository. https://jstor.org/stable/community.34166198, p.4.
17 Gregory Fried, Heidegger’s Polemos: From Being to Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 4.
18 John Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 41.
19 The Draghi report on EU competitiveness. https://commission.europa.eu/topics/eu-competitiveness/draghi-report_en, p. 160.
20 Nette Nöstlinger, “Germany’s Merz vows to build Europe’s strongest army.” Politico, May 14, 2025. https://www.politico.eu/article/friedrich-merz-germany-bundestag-europe-conventional-army/
21 Astrid Chevreuil, “France’s Nuclear Offer to Europe.” CSIS, October 23, 2024. https://www.csis.org/analysis/frances-nuclear-offer-europe
22 In a recent expansion of his morphological approach to ideology, Freeden observes that liberalism is simultaneously robust ideology and vulnerable. “Its robustness is partly structural; its complexity is such that damage to one of its components may not be catastrophic, as it has sufficient additional systemic capacity to survive the odd explosion or implosion [... It is fragile] because its subscription to the reflective and fair maxim of audi alteram partem disables it from the kind of decisions that political systems need to deliver when the other side is not a member of the liberal family” (Michael Freeden, Ideology Studies: New Advances and Interpretations (New York: Routledge, 2022), p. 179).
23 Democracy Perception Index 2025. Alliance of Democracies. https://146165116.fs1.hubspotusercontent-eu1.net/hubfs/146165116/2025%20Democracy%20Perception%20Index.pdf, p. 9
24 Democracy Perception Index 2025. Alliance of Democracies, pp. 40, 42.