The Post-Liberal Era: He Who Covers Himself with the World Is Left Naked

By Abdallah Ali Ibrahim

Summary
There were many moments when Sudan’s modernist forces should not have taken the world at face value. Global liberalism was already shifting beneath their feet, though they did not notice, because they lived off its crumbs. For most of their existence, these forces operated in opposition, accustomed to receiving moral support and solidarity from abroad. But when they rose in our day to stop what they called “the generals’ absurd war,” they appealed for international rescue only to find the world unwilling or unable. Throughout the war, they demanded foreign military intervention to protect civilians from the violations of both sides, but the UN Security Council bluntly told them it was tied hand and foot.

Former Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi once recalled that a communist classmate at Hantoub Secondary School in the early 1950s tried to recruit him. The student explained that the world was divided into two camps: socialism and peace led by the Soviet Union, and capitalism and war led by the United States. Turabi asked him: “And where do we fit into this world?”

One wonders if Sudanese modernist groups—whether gathered under platforms like “Sumud” or in the Communist Party and its allies—have lately asked themselves a similar question about their place in a world that has changed profoundly, as even its architects now admit. These groups ultimately adopted dogmas and sensibilities derived from global liberalism, which built the post–World War II order around the United Nations and declared history complete after its Cold War victory.

Sudanese modernists sheltered under global liberalism not only after their older creeds—Arab nationalism, Marxism, socialism, and liberalism itself—had collapsed, but also after they had grown estranged from their own people, consumed by decades of heroic but exhausting resistance to authoritarian regimes that dominated 50 of Sudan’s 70 years of independence. When Marxism folded in Eastern Europe, Sudan’s Communists launched their “general discussion” on whether it was time to discard Marxism as a guiding framework. In the end they kept the label for appearance’s sake, while sidelining it in practice. Arab nationalism, too, fell into disarray, yet today Sudan still has three competing Baath parties, a Nasserist faction, and others. As for liberals, they often poured their energy into joining marginalized armed movements—groups over which they held little real influence.

When their resources were exhausted, these groups sought refuge in global liberalism. Thus, in campaigning for women’s emancipation, they leaned on the UN’s CEDAW convention (1979), even though it provoked fierce debate even in its countries of origin. When seeking justice for marginalized communities, they borrowed from critical race theory, often encouraging separatist impulses—exemplified by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu’s SPLM faction treating the Nuba Mountains as a separate homeland. When calling for secularism, they imagined it as a ready-made import stripped of the nation’s Islamic identity, rather than as a negotiated process. If a Sudanese party suggested that legislation should reflect the faith of the majority, modernists dismissed it as “Islamism,” depriving themselves of the chance to engage in a constructive public debate. In the end, they ceased to produce original thought rooted in local experience, broadcast to the people through sustained social mobilization.

Reaching the Turning Point

Analysts agree that we are now in a post-liberal era, one shaped not by global liberalism but by realism. It is this same global liberalism on whose leftovers Sudanese modernists had survived. Michael Hirsh, in his essay “Why Everyone in Washington Is a Realist Now,” argued that realism is here to stay, not a passing phase tied to Donald Trump.

Both Republicans and Democrats agree that America’s post–World War II foreign policy as the “world’s policeman” has collapsed. A new generation of policymakers, chastened by the Iraq debacle and the shock of China’s rise, has embraced realism. Unlike their predecessors, they no longer view America’s central role in the world with boundless optimism. With their rise, global liberalism collapsed alongside America’s policeman role.

Despite their usual differences, both U.S. parties now converge on a realist foreign policy, one that tempers expectations of what America can achieve abroad and prioritizes national interests. The backlash against free trade and China’s ascent devastated the American working class and fueled populist resentment of elites. Realism now dictates that the U.S. “shorten its blanket to the size of its legs”—retrenching from Europe and the Middle East and leaving NATO leadership to Europe.

Democrats, too, claim realism. They insist they will not simply revert to past “missionary” foreign policy agendas centered on spreading democracy. Their critique of Trump is not that he was realist, but that he mishandled realism. Their aim is to refine his approach into an even more pragmatic realism.

Religion Enters Politics

In post-liberal America, religion has re-entered politics—not as a sudden outburst of fanaticism but as the fruit of decades of organizing by the “religious right.” Long resisting secular triumphalism, it patiently built influence within society until it became an electoral force.

A prime example is Dr. James Dobson (1936–2024), the evangelical leader who passed away last week. A child psychologist, Dobson became a leading voice in Christian fundamentalism, challenging liberal approaches to childrearing. Disturbed by the permissiveness of the 1960s counterculture, he advocated a return to traditional Christian discipline, coining the phrase “dare to discipline.”

He left medicine to devote himself fully to activism, founding the influential media program Focus on the Family, which reached millions and grew into a massive institution. Later he launched the Family Research Council in Washington as a lobbying arm of Christian fundamentalism. Dobson played a role in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election, advised George W. Bush, and was an evangelical counselor to Donald Trump.

For Dobson, liberalism was to blame for the collapse of the family, the bedrock of society. He opposed working mothers, contraception, premarital sex, and abortion. His controversial advocacy of corporal punishment, presented as an expression of Christian love, shaped Republican family policy for decades.

After Liberalism

Analysts agree that the turn away from liberalism will not be short-lived. As David French wrote in Foreign Policy, the backlash against liberalism is here to stay. It is not a Trump-era anomaly, because the presidential powers he used to undermine liberalism are embedded in the U.S. Constitution itself. This is what Fred Zakaria once described as the rise of the “imperial presidency.” Though theoretically checked by Congress’s impeachment power, in practice presidents are restrained only by their own character.

“And Where Do We Fit Into the World?”

Sudanese modernists have too often taken the world at face value, blind to the fact that global liberalism was eroding beneath them. They grew dependent on the world’s solidarity, accustomed to sympathy for their struggles. But when they sought help to end today’s devastating war, the world was reluctant or powerless. They appealed for military intervention to protect civilians, only to hear the UN Security Council say bluntly: its hands were tied.

Had these groups understood how much the world had changed—how global liberalism had lost its aura—they might have devised more grounded strategies. For as a Sudanese proverb says: “He who covers himself with the world is left naked.”