The End of the Western Path: Postliberalism and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy

From Cold War Triumph to Liberal Doubt

On March 31, 1990, American soldiers conducted their final patrol between the Thuringian town of Geisa and the Hessian municipality of Rasdorf in Germany. Their post at Observation Point "Alpha" had been strategically positioned in the "Fulda Gap" - a location where NATO feared a potential Warsaw Pact invasion. For over four decades, the soldiers of the Blackhorse Regiment had guarded what they called the "border between freedom and unfreedom." With the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, their watch came to an end. The observation towers of the East German border guards stood empty, and the former enemy territory was poised to become part of the West. Freedom, it seemed, had emerged triumphant.

Three and a half decades later, the euphoria of this "unipolar moment" hasn't completely dissipated, but it has become deeply intertwined with profound self-doubt. A series of seismic events have shaken the foundations of Western liberal certainty: the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the subsequent failures of Middle East policy; the lasting reverberations of the global financial crisis and the ensuing Eurozone crisis, made more acute by China's economic ascendance; and perhaps most significantly, the growing crisis of governability within the Western liberal democracies themselves.

Now that "unfreedom" - at least in the form of an ideologically and militarily identifiable bloc of states - has vacated the field, the future viability of the very "freedom" that Point Alpha once guarded has come into question. Can the West continue on its current path? Or has liberalism, as it was defined, understood, and defended during the Cold War, become somehow obsolete?

These questions of self-doubt were recently addressed at an international workshop hosted by the young Point Alpha Research Institute, with its main panel symbolically taking place exactly on the former border. The organizers, Veith Selk and Julian Nicolai Hofmann, aimed to bring to Germany a debate about the future of liberalism that has been ongoing in the United States and Britain for several years. The conditions for such a discussion had been notably unfavorable in Germany, where "the long path to the West" was considered a successfully achieved historical goal.

This perspective was perhaps best articulated by Heinrich August Winkler, who masterfully chronicled this journey of the German nation - with all its detours, catastrophes, and hopes - in his two-volume work that deliberately ends with 1990. Finally, the narrative concludes, Germany had arrived as a liberal parliamentary democracy at the same destination where history had already led France, Britain, and the United States. The provocative question now being posed is whether this supposedly happy destination still has a future.

The gathering at Point Alpha represents a crucial moment in political thought: the recognition that the very success of liberalism might contain the seeds of its own undoing. As traditional conservative and progressive critics alike begin to question the foundations of the liberal order, we are witnessing the emergence of a new intellectual movement that challenges not just specific policies or outcomes, but the very premises of post-Cold War liberal democracy. This critique comes not from the familiar quarters of authoritarian opposition, but from within the heart of Western intellectual tradition itself, suggesting that the triumph of 1990 may have been more complex - and perhaps more pyrrhic - than initially understood.

What makes this moment particularly significant is that it represents more than just another round of criticism of liberal democracy - it signals a fundamental shift in how we think about the relationship between freedom, community, and human flourishing. The question is no longer whether liberalism can defeat its external enemies, but whether it can survive its own contradictions and limitations in a world where its greatest triumph may have also been the beginning of its greatest challenge.

Beyond Cold War Liberalism - The New Critics

The intellectual discourse at Point Alpha revealed a striking convergence between progressive and conservative critics of liberalism, though they approach the crisis from different angles. At the center of this dialogue were three prominent voices: Samuel Moyn, Patrick Deneen, and Adrian Pabst, each offering distinct yet surprisingly complementary diagnoses of liberalism's current malaise.

Samuel Moyn, the Yale-based historian of ideas and law, whose recent book "Liberalism Against Itself" has garnered significant attention, argues that the fundamental problem lies in what he terms "Cold War liberalism." According to Moyn, the catastrophic experiences of the first half of the twentieth century and the totalitarian threat from the East led Western liberals to abandon their earlier promises of positive freedom, emancipation, and historical progress. These concepts came to be viewed as potential gateways to totalitarian politics. The result was a defensive liberalism that recognized only negative freedom as legitimate and fought against all forms of political utopianism.

This defensive posture, Moyn argues, has ultimately stripped liberalism of its popular appeal. In an era of growing voter dissatisfaction within liberal democracies, the liberal establishment appears capable only of issuing endless warnings about threats to freedom: "Liberalism found itself under perpetual siege, and its advocates became incapable of doing anything beyond repeatedly calling for higher walls to protect the liberal fortress." Instead of fixating on external enemies, Moyn contends that liberals must confront the reality that the current crisis is of their own making. His solution draws from liberal tradition itself, calling for the revival of utopian, progressive, and egalitarian elements that were marginalized in the post-war period.

Patrick Deneen presents an even more radical critique. His work has captured significant attention, earning recommendations from Barack Obama and acknowledgment from J.D. Vance, the future Vice President of the United States. Teaching at the Catholic University of Notre Dame, Deneen argues that liberalism's crisis extends beyond its Cold War variant to the very foundations of liberal thought. His vision for renewal involves a return to pre-liberal concepts of freedom, emphasizing virtue and community as antidotes to what he sees as an excessive individualism and voluntaristic conception of freedom.

In his influential book "Why Liberalism Failed," Deneen weaves together classical conservative and communitarian themes, lamenting empty churches, environmental alienation, family instability, dying villages, rampant consumerism, meaningless curricula, and increasing isolation among youth. What distinguishes his critique, however, is its explicit challenge to traditional economic liberalism. The post-liberal conservative movement he represents insists that being "pro-family" must also mean being "pro-worker."

Adrian Pabst, the British theologian and political scientist associated with the "Blue Labour" movement, provides perhaps the most concrete vision for synthesis. He argues that the only way forward is through a combination of communitarian social policy and social democratic economic policy. While this linkage might seem unusual since the Thatcher-Reagan era, Pabst contends it's the only path to a consistent political position. His argument suggests that capitalism's silent coercion and dynamics are fundamentally incompatible with stable family life, community attachment, and meaningful existence beyond work and consumption.

What unites these three critics is their understanding of populist movements not as temporary expressions of discontent, but as symptoms of deeper systemic problems. The liberal order that has ruled virtually unopposed since the 1990s faces what they see as a comprehensive crisis of system and legitimacy. Whether described as atomization and moral decay by Deneen and Pabst, or as the effect of an emptied liberalism by Moyn, there is agreement that the economic liberalization and globalization of the past four decades bear significant responsibility for the current crisis.

This confluence of critique from both left and right represents a significant shift in political discourse. It suggests that the traditional left-right divide might be giving way to a new political alignment, one that pits defenders of the current liberal order against those who seek to fundamentally reimagine it, whether through pre-liberal traditions or post-liberal innovations. The question that remains, however, is whether these critiques can move beyond diagnosis to prescription, beyond identifying liberalism's failures to articulating viable alternatives for the future.

The Paradox of Post-Liberal Futures

The fundamental challenge facing post-liberal thought became increasingly apparent during the workshop's discussions: while the critique of liberalism has grown more sophisticated and compelling, the articulation of viable alternatives remains surprisingly elusive. This difficulty raises a provocative question: Could liberalism's very success in 1990 have been so complete that it has made imagining genuine alternatives nearly impossible?

During the discussions, Patrick Deneen expressed his belief that many of the social developments he criticizes - secularization, individualization, economization - are reversible. Yet when pressed for specific alternatives, the responses from most participants remained notably abstract. Adrian Pabst came closest to offering a concrete vision by referencing Europe's corporatist traditions, but when questioned about how his proposed future would differ from existing Christian Democratic institutions in countries like Belgium or Germany, the answers remained unsatisfyingly vague.

Workshop organizer Veith Selk identified what he termed "retrogradism" in both left and right critics' temporal references: all three main speakers derived their programmatic counter-images to liberalism's current crisis from past social formations. While Pabst argues this is inevitable because all innovation ultimately stems from tradition, and Moyn seeks only to borrow from a more progressive past liberalism whose renewal would lead far beyond previously conceived ideas, significant doubts remain. Has the Western liberal victory of 1990 been so comprehensive that even at the moment of its potential collapse, we lack truly future-oriented alternatives?

Benjamin Studebaker, the American political theorist, proposed a paradoxical concept for this condition: the "stable crisis." His provocative question - "What if we simply cannot imagine another order anymore?" - suggests a troubling possibility. Under such conditions, voter dissatisfaction and intellectual criticism might continue to grow while remaining fundamentally ineffective. Neither "unfreedom" would return nor would "freedom" triumph - things would simply continue, getting progressively worse while alternatives remain unimaginable.

This paradox points to a deeper challenge facing post-liberal thought. The critics have successfully identified liberalism's internal contradictions and failures, but their proposed solutions often seem to require a degree of social and political transformation that appears impossible within the very system they criticize. The post-liberal movement thus finds itself in a peculiar position: its critique of liberalism is increasingly persuasive, yet its positive program remains caught between nostalgia for pre-liberal forms and the difficulty of imagining truly novel alternatives.

However, this apparent impasse might actually signal an important historical moment. The very difficulty of imagining alternatives to liberalism could indicate not the impossibility of change, but rather the depth of transformation required. Just as pre-1989 few could imagine the sudden collapse of the Soviet system, our current inability to envision alternatives to liberalism might precede rather than preclude fundamental change.

For those who find Studebaker's prognosis of a "stable crisis" unattractive, the emergence of prominent intellectual critics of the liberal order from both left and right should be welcomed. Their critiques, even when their proposed solutions remain unclear, perform the essential function of opening space for reimagining political possibilities. Rather than desperately defending the status quo, the West might need precisely this kind of ruthless self-examination to discover alternative futures.

The gathering at Point Alpha thus represents more than just another academic conference. It marks a significant moment in political thought: the recognition that moving beyond the current crisis requires more than just tweaking the existing system. Whether through Moyn's reinvigoration of progressive liberalism, Deneen's return to pre-liberal virtues, or Pabst's synthesis of communitarian and social democratic ideas, these thinkers are attempting to expand our political imagination beyond the constraints of Cold War liberalism.

The path forward remains unclear, but perhaps that very uncertainty is valuable. As the West grapples with mounting challenges to its liberal order, the ability to question fundamental assumptions while remaining open to multiple possible futures might be more important than having ready-made answers. The post-liberal moment, with all its uncertainties and contradictions, might not yet offer clear solutions, but it has successfully opened a space for reimagining political possibilities beyond the apparent end of history that seemed so certain in 1990.

This ongoing intellectual ferment suggests that while the "long path to the West" may have ended, new paths are beginning to emerge - even if their destinations remain unknown. The challenge now is not just to critique the present order but to develop the intellectual and political imagination necessary to envision and create genuine alternatives for the future.