The end of the Free World?

The ideals that shaped the concept of “The Free World” we know today date to Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech (1941) in the annual message to Congress, during World War II. President Roosevelt vigorously reiterated the importance of supporting Great Britain in the war against Nazi Germany, underscoring the two nation’s shared commitment to four universal freedoms - freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. Roosevelt’s four freedoms became the center of U.S. policy making during the war times.

Amidst the ending of WWII, the Bretton Woods Agreement had “crown” the U.S. dollar ($) as the world’s primary reserve currency, whilst giving birth to the IMF and World Bank. The birthing of these two institutions, the new central position of the dollar on the world’s economy, and the role of the U.S. in Europe's reconstruction pushed forward the ideals that mold the “Free World”.

In the following years, President Eisenhower's "Chance for Peace" speech (1953) contrasts the Soviet Union's post-WWII doctrine of force to the United States pursue of peace and cooperation in the world: «the free world weighs one question above all others: the chance for a just peace for all peoples». The concept of the “Free World” finally emerges, serving its role as a propaganda term against the belligerence of the Soviet Union, bringing free nations together to avoid atomic war and going as far as to challenge the new Soviet leadership to reject Stalin's style of governance.

Over the following decades, the “Free World” propaganda term evolved into shorthand for a U.S. led liberal bloc, embodying collective defense, economic openness, and ideological contrast to communism. Furthermore, even with geopolitical landscape transformations - the Soviet collapse in 1991, rising multipolarity, and repeated crises of trust - the emblematic phrase has persisted, with its meaning keeping the basis of Roosevelt’s four freedoms and Eisenhower’s freedom appeals. But have its ideals always been defended?

There is, surely, a case to make about the once coherent rallying cry, now surfacing in contested rhetorical space, signaling both aspiration and strain in the evolving architecture of global order.

Under President Trump’s current administration, we see defied two of Roosevelt’s freedoms: freedom from fear, and freedom of speech and expression. In addition, the U.S. external policy under Trump’s administration has been defying the “Free World” ideals, through his increasing defense demands, and underwhelming international cooperation & weakening of multilateral institutions. This shift in the U.S. external policy puts previously shared values - democracy, human rights, rule of law, and mutual defense - under pressure. If the U.S. leadership now emphasizes cost sharing, conditional obligations, and ideological litmus tests, the coherence of the “Free World” ideals may weaken; it becomes more transactional than values-based.

Further supporting the hypothesis of a weakening “Free World”, we may analyze the political tensions lived on major European Union powers. Since the legislative elections of June 2024, France’s President Emmanuel Macron have elected 4 prime ministers, with the most recent (re)appointment of Sébastien Lecornu. France’s neighboring country, and the biggest economy on the EU - Germany - has also been under a political shift. Germany’s AfD have become the second largest party after the most recent federal election (20.8%), increasing scrutiny and concern about democratic norms, especially after Germany's domestic intelligence agency (BfV) classified AfD as right-wing extremist.

Alas, the Russia-Ukraine war strikes at the very foundations of the “Free World,” undermining its core ideals of sovereignty, democracy, and collective security. By invading a sovereign nation, Russia revived power politics over international law, exposing the limits of institutions meant to safeguard peace. The uneven response from democratic nations revealed fractures between moral conviction and self-interest, while the energy dependence and trade disruptions weakened faith in the liberal economic order. 

The “Free World” might not end (yet), but the recent shifts in global trust, the policy recalibrations of the very nations that once championed its ideals, and the economic tremors unleashed by the latest trade war and Russia-Ukraine war suggest that the “Free World” is no longer a given - it is an idea now being renegotiated, tested, and perhaps quietly redefined.