Far Right Foreign Policy after Liberal Internationalism

Thorsten Wojczewski

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Over the last decade, the far right has been on the rise in many world regions (Mudde 2019). In the world’s three largest democracies – Brazil, India and the United States – political actors identified as far right succeeded in attaining power. Across Europe, far-right parties have achieved significant electoral breakthroughs and entered government in countries such as Austria, Italy, Hungary and the Netherlands. Even where the far right is not officially in power, its influence has grown. Recently, scholars have drawn attention to the mainstreaming of the far right by showing how far-right ideas and frames are increasingly entering and shaping the political discourse (Mondon 2025). The mainstreaming of the far right has not only transformed domestic politics but also impacted foreign policy and global politics by contesting international norms and institutions. A nascent International Relations (IR) literature has begun to focus on the inter- and transnational dimensions of the far right (de Orellana and Michelsen 2019; Abrahamsen et al. 2024; Wojczewski 2024).

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This short article aims to illuminate the international trends behind the far right and its foreign policy orientation. More specifically, it addresses the following two research questions: How can “the international” help us to explain the rise of the far right in different world regions?  What does the far right want from foreign policy? The article argues that the simultaneous rise of the far right highlights the importance of “the international” for understanding how it constitutes a reaction to international dynamics. In particular, it shows how the rise of the far right relates to the expansion and crisis of liberal internationalism in the post-cold war era. It argues that the far right’s foreign policy outlook is informed by a strict anti-egalitarianism that aims to defend or restore entrenched differences and hierarchies between people and regards “the international” as a key site for countering the global expansion of egalitarian rights, liberal institutions and sociocultural openness.

The far right is best understood as an umbrella term for different political actors located at the rightmost end of the left-right political spectrum (Pirro 2023). It shares a common anti-egalitarian worldview characterized by the strong belief in a natural order of inequality that celebrates and defends hierarchies, differences and practices of exclusion, relating to ethnicity, culture, race, class and gender (Mudde 2019, 24-25). The far right can be further divided into an extreme right and a radical right: While the extreme right ‘rejects the essence of democracy, that is, popular sovereignty and majority rule’, the ‘radical right accepts the essence of democracy, but opposes fundamental elements of liberal democracy, most notably minority rights, rule of law, and separation of powers’ (Mudde 2019, 7). Accordingly, the extreme right typically supports and practices the violent and revolutionary struggle against the prevailing political order and opponents, whereas the radical right takes a more reformist, plebiscitary approach to politics and derives its legitimacy from the democratic process. Yet, the radical right’s ultimate goal is the creation of an illiberal ‘ethnocracy’, which links political rights to ethnocultural criteria (Mudde 2019, 28).  

Today, the radical right is the prevalent form of far-right politics. However, extreme-right groups and violence have also been on the rise in recent years (Stevenson 2019). The usage of the term far right is intended to highlight the ideological, historical and personal connections as well as direct or indirect alignments between radical and extreme right. For example, Donald Trump openly endorsed extreme-right groups such as the Proud Boys and encouraged the 2021 Capitol Riots, in which such groups played a leading role (DiMaggio 2022, 59/131). In India, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the police have ties to militant Hindu-nationalist groups that carry out vigilante attacks against racialized minorities, particularly Muslims, and political opponents (Jaffrelot 2021, 211ff.).    

A key contribution of the IR literature is the conceptualization of ‘the international as constitutive of the far-right’ in that far-right actors ‘fixate on the international as the “spectre” and source of fear, hostility and opportunity’ (Saull et al. 2015, 13). Accordingly, the far right not only typically locates threats to the nation, race or civilization in the international realm, but also views foreign policy as the pathway to the creation or restoration of the exclusive, organic and harmonious political community – be it through the deportation of racialized minorities, the withdrawal from international organizations or territorial expansionism (Wojczewski 2025, 2). This conceptualization of the far right can also shed light on the simultaneous rise of the far right in different parts of the world by showing how the shared exposure to inter- and transnational processes provides far-right actors with opportunity structures for political mobilization.

The expansion and crisis of liberal internationalism is such an opportunity structure. Historical fascism emerged amidst the global spread of the liberal-capitalist system and devastating international crises such as World War I and the Great Depression. Similarly, the contemporary rise of the far right follows a time period of intensified and deepened international liberal-order building in the post-cold war era. Liberal internationalism is here understood as both a foreign policy orientation and a wider international order-building project that aims to promote core liberal ideas, such as representative democracy, market economy and individual freedoms and equality, in the international system (Ikenberry 2020; Lake et al. 2021).

The rise of the far right can be interpreted not only as a reaction to and backlash against the dislocatory effects of the attempted globalization of liberal norms and institutions on sedimented racial, cultural and gendered conceptions of the national space and entrenched identities and status hierarchies both within and between states, but also as a manifestation of the inherent contradictions and crises of this liberal project: for example, the hollowing of democracy by delegating decision-making authorities to largely unaccountable (international) governance institutions (Mair 2023), persistent and widening income and wealth inequalities and the concentration of corporate power (Saull 2015), or the racial dimensions of the liberal international order that position the “White West” as a supreme political actor in the world (Acharya 2022; Brown 2024).

The far right can exploit and amplify the fears, grievances and resentments resulting from these dislocations by projecting political, economic and social problems onto the liberal global order and promising that reversing domestic and international policies will restore order, prosperity and security. According to de Orellana and Michelsen (2019, 749), the far right thus promotes a ‘reactionary internationalism’ that aims to replace ‘liberal assumptions of universal humanity and its protection through institutions, with the promotion of inequality among identities.’

The far right’s approach to foreign policy is informed by this belief in a natural order of inequality between people. As I have shown elsewhere (Wojczewski 2024), this anti-egalitarianism translates into five principal foreign policy positions: (1)ultra-nationalism: the ethnoculturally or racially constituted political community is seen as the highest authority, prioritizing the sovereignty, exclusiveness and narrow interests of the nation against “foreign” demands and interferences; (2)group-based enmity: a strict us-versus-them mentality, identifying and opposing perceived external and internal enemies based on ethnicity, culture or race; (3)authoritarianism: a militarized approach that glorifies the display or use of military virtues and state power to punish norm violations with a firm hand; (4)revisionism and reactionism: contestation of international norms and institutions that challenge the far right’s anti-egalitarian ordering of the world and desire to create ethnocultural or racial unity and homogeneity; (5)producerism: foreign economic policies that divide the world into productive people and parasitic outsiders, whereby economic problems and inequalities are externalized and attributed to ethnicity, culture or race.

This basic ideological outlook shapes how far-right parties and governments perceive and address foreign policy issues. The far right’s ultra-nationalism, group-based enmity and authoritarianism have an impact on how far-right actors respond to military conflicts and security threats. For example, several far-right parties, including Alternative for Germany, Freedom Party of Austria, National Rally and Fidesz, opposed sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, adopting an our-nation-first approach. At the same time, the war also exposed significant fault lines within the far right (Wondreys 2025). In the United States, the Trump administration not only militarized border and immigration policies by adopting an eliminationist rhetoric that frames (illegal) immigration as a threat to national survival (Wojczewski 2025, 8), but also pursued a belligerent and expansionist approach towards other states such as Iran and Venezuela, with Trump openly threatening with the total destruction of the enemy (Trump 2026).

Far-right governments have also sought to promote their nationalistic, authoritarian and reactionary ideas in international organizations. For example, the governments in Brazil, Hungary and the US have joined forces to contest international gender and LGBTQ norms (da Costa Santos 2025; Sanders and Jenkins 2025). Far-right actors have also mobilized against the UN Global Compact on Migration (Rone and Fielitz 2025), and sought to promote their anti-migration agenda in international organizations by reducing their funding (Tokhi and Zimmermann 2025). However, despite increased cross-border collaboration, the far right does not constitute a unified and homogeneous bloc. Its hyper-nationalism, together with ideological, domestic, historical and geographical differences, often prevents the adoption of a concerted approach toward international issues.

References

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Thorsten Wojczewski is a Lecturer in International Relations at Coventry University. His research focusses on foreign policy, populism and the far right, and emerging powers and global orders. His research has been published in International Affairs, International Studies Review, Political Studies, Third World Quarterly, and Foreign Policy Analysis, among others. He is the author of The Inter- and Transnational Politics of Populism: Foreign Policy, Identity and Popular Sovereignty (Palgrave, 2023).