He argues that just as economics has been failing to deliver, so has politics. The end of the Cold War ushered in an age of technocracy in which both parties huddled around the center, offering a variety of tax cuts on the one hand and targeted government interventions on the other. Referring to the left-wing parties’ move to the center, Luce quotes a scholar, Jan-Werner Müller, who said, “The third way turned elections into a mere choice between Coke and Pepsi.” If economic divisions seemed to narrow, cultural ones have grown, involving issues like immigration, race and religion, over which divisions are stark and compromise is seen as betrayal. The result is two angry teams, unable to trust the other at all, no matter what facts or evidence suggests. Despair about their circumstances and bitterness toward elites have left Middle America “so cynical about the truth,” Luce writes, “that it will take its script from a political version of pro wrestling.” All this has made American politics dysfunctional and paralyzed. If America’s share of the global economy has declined, its political model has slipped even more in global esteem.

Image Credit... Alessandra Montalto/The New York Times

At the same time, Luce points out, there is the challenge to the Western order from newly rising powers. He quickly sketches out a mostly familiar story of the economic emergence of China and the inevitable expansion of its influence in Asia and perhaps beyond. This is bringing it into conflict with the global superpower and, “under Trump,” Luce writes, “the two great countries seem almost destined to stray into some kind of crisis.” He doesn’t dwell on this prospect much; he is far more consumed by his larger story of the economic and political decay of the West.

“The Retreat of Western Liberalism” is really an extended essay, and it meanders a bit without getting too absorbed by any one issue. Luce writes in fluid prose, moving from a telling statistic to a striking quotation. Throughout, one is struck by his command of the material and the acuity of his prose — he is unsparing in his condemnation of the elites who didn’t see this coming, too absorbed in their own bubble, too confident of their smart strategies. Hillary Clinton and her crowd come in for special condemnation as the most egregious examples of elite groupthink the author had ever seen.

But while we all deserve criticism for missing the phenomenon of the “left-behinds” and the economic and cultural forces that were roiling large parts of the country, I am not yet convinced that we must write obituaries for Western liberalism. Since this book was written, elections have taken place in several European countries, and everywhere the pro-European, pro-globalist forces have done well. In Holland, the center-right candidate won. In France, the centrist reformer Emmanuel Macron now dominates that country’s politics like no figure since Charles de Gaulle. In Britain, the Labour Party had a resurgence. In coming elections in Germany, the center-right Angela Merkel appears likely to win. And if she loses, it will be to the even more pro-European Social Democratic candidate.

There remain powerful reasons to embrace and uphold the liberal international order. Britain, a perennially Euro-skeptic country, has decided to leave the European Union. But that Union has grown from six to 28 over the past decades because dozens have clamored to join. And they have done so for a reason. Consider the latest aspirant, Ukraine. In 1990, around the time they were liberated from the Soviet empire, Ukraine and Poland had the same per capita GDP. Today the average Pole is over three times as rich as his counterpart in Ukraine, and Poland is secured economically, politically and militarily by the European Union and NATO. It is not just elites who benefit from the Western order; it is primarily ordinary people.