Fragile Victory: The Making and Unmaking of Liberal Order

by James E. Cronin

How the history of liberal order and democratic politics since the 1930s explains ongoing threats to democracy and international order
 
The liberal democratic order that seemed so stable in North America and Western Europe has become precarious. James E. Cronin argues that liberalism has never been secure and that since the 1930s the international order has had to be crafted, redeployed, and extended in response to both victories and setbacks.
 
Beginning with the German and Japanese efforts in the 1930s to establish a system based on empire, race, economic protectionism, and militant nationalism, Cronin shows how the postwar system, established out of a revulsion at the ideas of fascism, repeatedly reinvented itself in the face of the Cold War, anticolonial insurgencies, the economic and political crises of the 1970s, the collapse of communism, the rise of globalization, and the financial crisis of 2008.

Interview with the Author

American Purpose’s Bookstack
Episode 95: James E. Cronin on the Reinvention of the Liberal Democratic Order
3/1/23             32 min

New Books Network 
The Future of the Liberal Order: A Discussion with James E. Cronin
2/16/23           51 min

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