Mearsheimer, John J. 2018. Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. xiv, 313 pp. https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300240535

Abstract

The book comparatively analyzes the features of liberal hegemony, when the liberal international order strengthened after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the United States and Western European countries took the position of hegemony in world politics. While the economic dimensions of the liberal world order may be acceptable to all, its political component, as an instrument of the democratic world, is trying to serve the purpose of consolidating the world. It is important that the discourse about the liberal world order takes place during times of conflict, crisis and war, influencing the transformation of the modern world order.

The political elites of the liberal world order in the era of liberal hegemony must keep in mind that for the diverse authoritarian and democratic blocs of countries, it is necessary to protect the resilience of the international order and law. In accordance with the author’s concept of political liberalism, it is interpreted broadly and as a unity of the spiritual, social and political forms of its being. Therefore, its essence unfolds through a consistent analysis of the ideological, social and political space, which makes it possible to form an adequate idea of the role of liberal ideology and liberal international politics in the social and political process.