Whilst the illusion that the liberal international order to be the steadfast and supreme one has been shattering, the rebirth of Eurasia as a rising hub of multilateral cooperation based on mutual respect breaks up the monopoly of liberalism and vividly demonstrates that an alternative is already in place.

All the blows dealt to the liberal international order in 2016 prompted the Western elites to sound the alarm that the year 2016 initiated the decline of that liberal international order owing to the negative impact rising ‘revisionist’ forces exert on transatlantic community. The remarkable growth of anti-liberal political forces in recent years is in fact driven not primarily by the denial of liberal values per se, but rather by the mounting resentments of non-liberals against the ways in which their voices have been continuously demoralized.

However, the period of liberal supremacy comes to an end. The new paradigm of international relations on the basis of mutual respect and state sovereignty has been evolving in Eurasia providing an alternative to the liberal order. This, in turn, restores the balance of international ideas that had been disturbed with the end of the Cold War.

Read more about such a fundamental shift in a new Valdai Paper by Kazushige Kobayashi, doctoral candidate in International Relations and Political Science at the Graduate Institute (Geneva), visiting research fellow at the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC).