The American effort to expand the liberal international order, which structured post-World War II relations in the West, to the entire world after the end of the Cold War has ended in failure. That order, based on liberal principles and ostensibly on the rule of law, was ultimately dependent on American power, that is, America’s willingness to use force, and ability to use it effectively, to enforce the rules anywhere on the planet. There may have been a brief period, the so-called unipolar moment in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the United States came close to making that order truly universal, but that moment faded away as China rose and Russia reasserted itself on the global stage. The pandemic has only underscored America’s retreat from global leadership and lack of sufficient power to enforce the liberal rule of law. That order might continue to operate regionally, within the Transatlantic community, for example, although Trump’s disdain for America’s European allies has eroded even that. Worldwide, however, there is no one dominant, universal world order. American, Chinese, and Russian concepts compete for adherents. In many places, there is only growing disorder.
I would go further. The peak of liberal internationalism was just before 9/11. Historians often look at the portents and omens people used to see in the sky as narrative starting points. That was ours.
Nothing undermined the West’s faith in The Way Things Are like those two planes.
America has not rolled back the expansion of State power that was brought in after 9/11 and I don’t see any chance of them doing so now. Since then the world has become less global, less dynamic and more divided.
My speculation is that the rise of Russian and China is at least in part a response to the way the US handled itself. The hegemon started an unpopular war that it couldn’t win. Typically when empires do that they start to struggle.
I also suspect that the politics of Trump et al have roots back in 9/11 too. It becomes more and more attractive to people to believe globalisation is the the problem when the hegemon starts to miss step and new powers fragment the world stage.
Since then the forces of 2008 and declining productivity have been stronger than innovation. Tech has not yet been enough.
Obama’s internationalism didn’t work, with the pivot to Asia largely unaccomplished. And Trump is, at least in part, the legacy of a political class that saw the post-2008 world as a time to double down on their policies, ignore the rising mass of people left behind, increase the overall tax burden, increase regulation, expand immigration, conjure money out of no where, and generally act in a way that is *politically* superior and naive, irrespective of whether you agree with their policy choices. These are the same people who brought you the war on terror folks.
Under these conditions I am optimistic for some positive changes but not a return to normal. The conditions for the globalisation we used to enjoy have been ebbing away and it seems likely they will not come back rapidly after this.
I hope I am wrong.
It's only chemo 
People, perhaps starting with Americans, do like to do violence to the meaning of “liberal”. I can’t for the life of me see what is intrinsically liberal about American foreign policy since – oh, since the Treaty of Paris of 1783. It used to be said, accurately, that every American war had been a war of American aggression save for WWII.
Some might have been justified some e.g. the American attack on North Korea, or on Iraq in the first Gulf War, though neither South Korea nor Kuwait had a treaty of alliance with the US.
9/11 changed that. The US was attacked by a “non-state actor”. Since the terrorists were a bunch of Saudis the US chose to attack Afghanistan where, in an act of utter stupidity, rather than mount a punitive expedition it fought a war of conquest . As expected, the US lost. The reckless folly of the Second Iraq War also led to an expected loss. (If you have to pay tribute to various warlords so that you can withdraw most of your troops unmolested, you lost.)
Another way to look at the whole thing is to look at the characters of recent US presidents. The last one who combined useful experience with being a grown-up was Bush the Elder. Thereafter they elected a bunch of adolescents until 2016. Then they elected a strange cove who is part bawling infant, part intuitive sage. Unlike Slick Willie, W, or O he has launched intellectually frivolous tweets rather than intellectually frivolous wars.
It’s worth noting that all American wars after WWII ended in defeat (or in the case of Korea a draw) save for (i) mere skirmishes such as Grenada, and (ii) wars that lasted only one battle e.g. the First Iraq War and the air attack on Serbia. They even managed to lose a one-battle war against Israel when the Israeli air force and navy attacked the USS Liberty at the cost of 205 casualties and considerable damage to the ship.
As for the Rule of Law, I suspect their model is the sort of Hollywood western where the baddie drawls “I’m the law in this here town, Marshall”.
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