Fortress Liberalism

Description

Leo Greenberg:

"In Europe’s capitals, partisans of the old order—liberal institutionalists like Friedrich Merz, Keir Starmer, and Emmanuel Macron—have woken up to a world they did not prepare for. Russian aggression, American hostility, backlash against mass migration, and the persistence of right-wing populism have presented radical challenges to Europe’s establishment. These problems, often treated as a single threat, have placed European liberals in a state of siege.

In response, they have turned into immigration restrictionists, justifying tightened asylum policies as the price of protecting liberal values at home. They have become security hawks, spending more on defense and calling for European integration to resist Russian invasion and American needling. Many are now practitioners of what Karl Loewenstein called “militant democracy,” a resort to muscular tactics to counter what they regard as anti-democratic threats. In response to the rise of right-wing populism, liberal governments surveil, prosecute, and bar their political opponents from office, purge judges, and re-run elections.

In each case, liberal leaders have concluded this is not a time to extend liberalism—not to the foreign adversary, not to the needy of the developing world, and not even to the large parts of their own population that vote for the populist right. Instead, they have sought a governing program designed to dig in and hold out. Today, European liberalism is a liberalism of firewalls, militancy, restrictions, defense, and pragmatism. It is a project that can be preserved for its remaining adherents but has, at least for the time being, given up dreams of expansion. This is the age of Fortress Liberalism."

(https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-age-of-fortress-liberalism/?)