Abstract: The article studies the evolution of liberal world order within the framework of conventional directions of the U.S.’ foreign policy. The purpose of this work is to reveal the peculiarities of development of the U.S.’ foreign policy in terms of liberal world order. For this purpose, the U.S.’ foreign policy is considered through the prism of Walter Russel Mead’s “four schools of American foreign policy”. The author analyzes the development and transformation of liberalism in the context of using economic coercion in the U.S.’ foreign policy. The article also considers the topical problems of development of the liberal world order faced by the realist and liberal paradigms. Representatives of both groups realize the failure of the liberal world order, but offer different strategies of defining the U.S.’ foreign policy course. Representatives of the liberal paradigm believe that the liberal world order entered a phase of self-destruction because of accelerated integration of unequal states in a single system. Realists, in their turn, claim that transformations in the structure of the global system determine the functionality of the liberal world order. Specifically, the revisionist position of Russia and China is a reaction to the imposed principles, and serves as a basis for the transition to the multipolar system. Thus, conflicts of interest between the parties cause the use of measures of coercion.