Fragile Victory: The Making and Unmaking of Liberal Order

The liberal democratic order that seemed so stable in North America and Western Europe has become precarious. James Cronin argues that liberalism has never been secure and that the international order has had to be crafted, redeployed, and extended since 1945. Cronin emphasizes the links between internal and external politics in its history. Fragile Victory provides the context necessary to understand such diverse challenges as the triumph of Brexit and Trump, the rise of populism, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

James Cronin is research professor at Boston College and a local affiliate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. He earned his PhD from Brandeis University in 1977. His research and publication have focused on labor and politics in Britain and on the Cold War and its effects. His signature book on Britain is The Politics of State Expansion (1991) and, on the Cold War, Global Rules: America and Britain in a Disordered World (2014).

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is organized jointly by the American Historical Association and the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks its anonymous individual donors and institutional partner (the George Washington University History Department) for their continued support.