The end of the Cold War was widely perceived as a historic opportunity to globalise the liberal script of world politics. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and its transatlantic partners sought to extend and deepen the institutions, norms, and rules of the Liberal International Order (LIO). Yet rather than ushering in global harmonisation, the post-Cold War era produced new tensions. As liberal institutions became more intrusive—expanding their reach into domestic governance—they also became deeply contested.

However, contestation is not synonymous with collapse. Today’s debates about the “end”, the “death” or the “destruction” of the LIO often conflate political turbulence and disruption with institutional breakdown. A closer look suggests a more nuanced picture: while the LIO faces serious challenges, it has also demonstrated significant resilience.

What would count as empirical evidence for the decline of the LIO? The increasing disregard of states for international law, the declining importance of international institutions, the weaponisation of economic and technological dependencies, and demands for the end of Western domination? The Munich Security Report 2026 bases its conclusion that the LIO is “under destruction” mainly on Washington’s “bulldozer politics”: the US withdrawing from liberal international institutions and violating their core norms, also in regard to its closest allies. Moreover, Trump and other “demolition men” would erode liberal orders, not only at the international but also at the domestic level, by undermining the trust of policymakers and the publics in the problem-solving capacity of liberal governance structures.

Persistent Institutional Membership

One of the clearest indicators of the LIO’s health is membership in international institutions. Despite high-profile withdrawals—particularly by the United States—there has been no mass exodus from core liberal institutions, not even from the highly contested International Criminal Court, which lost only two members (Burundi and The Philippines). On the contrary, membership in major international organisations has grown.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO), for example, has gained more than 30 new members over recent decades, even as its dispute settlement system has been hampered by U.S. obstruction. Similarly, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has expanded its membership substantially. Why would states join institutions that are supposedly in decline?

Meanwhile, other powers have not abandoned multilateralism either. Russia got suspended by many international organisations rather than leaving them voluntarily. China has established new multilateral institutions, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) or the International Organisation for Mediation (IOMed). Yet such bodies complement rather than replace global institutions like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.

Robustness Under Strain

The LIO has also proven robust in the face of norm violations. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 constituted blatant breaches of core principles such as territorial integrity and the prohibition of the use of force. Yet, these violations triggered coordinated sanctions by Western states and continued rejection by the majority of states in the UN General Assembly. Western democracies have been reluctant to openly condemn US transgression of international law, such as the use of military force against Venezuela and Iran. Yet when US President Trump threatened to invade Greenland, NATO members made it clear that they would defend Denmark’s territorial integrity.

The liberal international economic order has not caved under Trump’s massive use of tariffs, either. Global trade volumes continued to grow, reaching record levels in 2025. While the WTO Appellate Body remains paralysed, 58 member states have joined the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA) established in 2020 to preserve binding dispute settlement. Finally, states affected by US tariffs have intensified their efforts in negotiating new, or concluding ongoing free trade agreements at the bilateral or (inter)regional level. Rather than collapsing, rule-based trade governance has adapted.

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has been frequently paralysed by great-power rivalry. This gridlock, however, is not unprecedented. The UN has been in urgent need of reform for a long time. But institutional paralysis does not equal institutional death. The UNSC has adopted important resolutions, including on Gaza (2803) and Western Sahara (2797) in 2025. While the UN has been often unable to take action on major conflicts, the number of interstate wars has not surged dramatically. Russia’s war of aggression is a gross exception. The vast majority of military conflicts with the highest number of casualties has been and still is civil or transnational. Multilateral diplomacy continues across issue areas. International human rights, finally, have been eroding after a period of relative expansion around the turn of the millennium. Yet, states have never fully lived up to their (new) commitments. If there is a decline in global human rights, it started already in the late 2000s and returned to the level of the pre-expansion and institutional growth period (1999). Moreover, it is unclear to what extent the observed erosion is the result of an increased reporting of violations rather than a growth in actual human rights abuses.

Resilient Democracies

Deep contestations of the LIO increasingly arise from within rather than from the outside of liberal democracies. Populist and nationalist movements—on both the right and left—criticise the perceived intrusiveness of international institutions. Democratically elected leaders such as Donald Trump and Javier Milei have attacked rule-based multilateralism rhetorically and, at times, institutionally.

Yet the rise of authoritarian populism has not translated into the collapse of liberal democracies. Notwithstanding the global democratic regression, Hungary and Poland are the only liberal democracies that have broken down. Poland recovered in 2022, and Victor Orbán’s longtime rule in Hungary may come to an end in the upcoming elections. US democracy is seriously challenged by President Trump but reports of its death are premature.

Public dissatisfaction with liberal international institutions has increased but does not necessarily imply support for dismantling them altogether. Resentment, in other words, is not destruction.

In Europe, finally, U.S. retrenchment has arguably reinvigorated multilateral initiatives. The European Union has intensified trade negotiations and proposed ambitious defense cooperation frameworks to strengthen its strategic autonomy. Arguably, the conclusion of the Mercosur trade accord, after more than two decades of negotiations, and its provisional implementation, would not have been possible without a pending trade war with the US. This is also the case for the EU-India trade pact. These economic partnership agreements can form the basis for cooperation on other issues, including regulatory standards, digital infrastructure, climate change, migration and mobility, or security and defense. Rather than abandoning the liberal international order, key actors are investing in its reform and adaptation.

Contestation Without Collapse

There has never been a golden age in which the LIO enjoyed universal support. Hypocrisy, double standards, and geopolitical interests have always compromised its normative aspirations. What is distinctive today are not contestations per se, but their intensity and visibility.

Still, empirical evidence for outright destruction remains thin. Membership levels are stable or growing. Institutional mechanisms adapt to political shocks and global disruptions. Major powers continue to operate within multilateral frameworks, even as they challenge aspects of them.

The future of the LIO will depend less on the absence of contestations than on its capacity for reform and reconstruction. Deep contestations do not predetermine collapse. Instead, they may serve as a catalyst for institutional recalibration.

Scholars and policy makers alike should distinguish contestations of the LIO from its decline, and recognise resilience where it persists.