ABSTRACT
It is impossible to imagine international politics without human rights. Since 1948, human rights have become the primary global language of state and individual moral obligation, codified in laws and norms with which we are all intimately familiar. But they are also an artifact of a world that has already gone. The Western-dominated institutions that sustained human rights are no longer fit for purpose in a multipolar world where Beijing matters as much as Washington. And where the liberal social contract has been torn apart by digitization, rampant inequality, and climate destruction. Human rights—individualized, legalized, and entitled—have few answers, despite the faith of their ardent advocates, to the most pressing post-pandemic, post-Western political dilemmas. Accounting for the past and managing a chaotic and dangerous future full of diverse and competing interests and values puts states and sovereignty, once again, in pole position, and brings into sharp relief the failures of liberal capitalism to deliver on its promise of prosperity for all.
