Liberalism is supposed to support pluralism, but this is an impossible and contradictory goal (as liberal theorists have always known), and so it simply perpetuates a kind of 'active nihilism': the pursuit of power in order to ensure that nobody else can put power to good use.
It's not hard to get liberals to essentially admit to this kind of 'active nihilism'. If you point out the contradictions of pluralism, liberals will say, "at least we're not a dictatorship". Or they'll say the ideal is still worth upholding even if it's impossible.
What could it mean to say liberal ideals are worth upholding even if they can't be realized in practice? It means you're willing to defend something empty of content. It's just a different expression of pursuing power solely to ensure that others cannot have it.
In foreign policy you see something close to the acceptance of liberalism as 'active nihilism' too: The goal is to rid the world of 'authoritarians' (non-liberals). The actual functioning of liberal democracy only matters to the 'optics' of pursuing this goal.
The liberal world order is designed to ensure the continuing absence of power in the pursuit of a good (what liberal theorists call 'totalitarianism'). This goal requires powers and lots of it. It requires coercion. It requires propaganda. It requires military intervention.
What the liberal world order achieves is to produce the same kind of system of worldwide coercion, propaganda, and violence it accuses 'authoritarians' of coveting, but in the absence of any goal or higher good. It's enforced global nihilism.
There are plenty of evil ideologies in the world, but liberalism appears unique in being able to (stably) subordinate the scientific and technological worldview to itself, and thus realize its dream of global hegemony.
