Liberalism, Balance of Power, or Belonging? Alternatives for the Twenty-First-Century Global Order

This article examines the foundations of global order through a critical comparison of liberalism, realism, and the Philosophy of Belonging. Liberalism correctly recognizes autonomy, rights, markets, pluralism, and institutional cooperation, but underestimates the relational conditions through which individual and collective autonomy become possible. Realism correctly emphasizes power, security, national interests, strategic uncertainty, and persistent conflict, but underestimates the extent to which contemporary states are constituted through economic, technological, ecological, financial, and security interdependence. The article develops a third position based on the Philosophy of Belonging and its four principles: being is belonging; belonging is always imperfect; reality is stratified into material, biological, and human-institutional forms; and existence is simultaneously synchronic and diachronic. Applied to international relations, these principles generate three central propositions: liberalism underestimates belonging; realism underestimates interdependence; and both underestimate institutional diachronicity. The concept of institutional diachronicity identifies a fundamental problem of global order: institutions stabilize relations at a given moment while the economic, technological, ecological, military, and political realities they organize continue to change. Consequently, no institutional architecture can constitute a final solution to global order. The article proposes instead an institutional architecture based on differentiation, interdependence, reliability, repairability, and adaptability. Its central conclusion is that global order is not an equilibrium to be discovered but a relationship to be continuously institutionalized.