“World Order” is a book by Henry Kissinger that delves into the complexities of global politics and the evolution of the international order. Kissinger explores the historical development of world order, from the Westphalian system of sovereign states to the challenges and opportunities presented by globalization and the rise of non-state actors.
Kissinger begins by examining the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which marked the beginning of the modern state system and established the principle of state sovereignty as the foundation of world order. He highlights how this system has evolved over the centuries, shaped by the balance of power among major states and the emergence of new norms and institutions.
The author then discusses the challenges to world order posed by revolutions in technology, economics, and geopolitics. He explores the impact of globalization on the distribution of power and the interconnectedness of states, as well as the rise of non-state actors such as multinational corporations and terrorist organizations.
Kissinger emphasizes the importance of diplomacy and statesmanship in managing international relations and resolving conflicts. He draws on historical examples and personal experiences to illustrate the role of diplomacy in shaping world order, from the Congress of Vienna to the opening of China by President Nixon.
The author also examines the role of ideology in shaping world order, from the clash between communism and capitalism during the Cold War to the spread of democracy and human rights in the post-Cold War era. He explores how competing ideologies have influenced the behavior of states and the dynamics of international relations.
Kissinger discusses the challenges posed by failed states, rogue regimes, and transnational threats such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and climate change. He argues that these challenges require collective action and cooperation among states, as well as a balance between national interests and global responsibilities.
The author also explores the rise of regional powers and the shifting balance of power in different regions of the world, from Asia to the Middle East to Europe. He examines how these regional dynamics shape global politics and influence the behavior of major powers such as the United States, China, and Russia.
Kissinger reflects on the future of world order and the prospects for peace and stability in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. He argues that while the challenges facing the international community are daunting, there are also opportunities for cooperation and collaboration to address common threats and promote shared interests.
In conclusion, “World Order” provides a comprehensive analysis of the forces shaping global politics and the evolution of world order. Kissinger offers insights into the historical roots of international relations, the challenges posed by globalization and non-state actors, and the role of diplomacy and statesmanship in managing international conflicts and promoting peace and stability.
Long ago, in youth, I was brash enough to think myself able to pronounce on “The Meaning of History.” I now know that history’s meaning is a matter to be discovered, not declared. It is a question we must attempt to answer as best as we can in recognition that it will remain open to debate; that each generation will be judged by whether the greatest, most consequential issues of the human condition have been faced, and that decisions to meet these challenges must be taken by statesmen before it is possible to know what the outcome may be.
To play a responsible role in the evolution of a 21st-century world order, the US must be prepared to answer a number of questions for itself:
What do we seek to prevent, no matter how it happens, and if necessary alone? The answer defines the minimum condition of the survival of the society.
What do we seek to achieve, even if not supported by any multilateral effort? These goals define the minimum objectives of the national strategy.
What do we seek to achieve, or prevent, only if supported by an alliance? This defines the outer limits of the country’s strategic aspirations as part of a global system.
What should we not engage in, even if urged by a multilateral group or an alliance? This defines the limiting condition of the American participation in world order.
Above all, what is the nature of the values that we seek to advance? What applications depend in part on circumstance?
A purposeful American role will be philosophically and geopolitically imperative for the challenges of our period. Yet world order cannot be achieved by any one country acting alone. To achieve a genuine world order, its components, while maintaining their own values, need to acquire a second culture that is global, structural, and juridical - a concept of order that transcends the perspective and ideals of any one region or nation. At this moment in history, this would be a modernization of the Westphalian system informed by contemporary realities.
To strike a balance between the two aspects of order - power and legitimacy - is the essence of statesmanship. Calculations of power without a moral dimension will turn every disagreement into a test of strength; ambition will know no resting place; countries will be propelled into unsustainable tours de force of elusive calculations regarding the shifting configuration of power. Moral proscriptions without concern for equilibrium, on the other hand, tend toward either crusades or an impotent policy tempting challenges; either extreme risks endangering the coherence of the international order itself.
Europe has set out to transcend the state and to craft a foreign policy based principally on soft power and humanitarian values. But it is doubtful that claims to legitimacy separated from any concept of strategy can sustain a world order. And Europe has not yet given itself attributes of statehood, tempting a vacuum of authority internally and an imbalance of power along its borders.
Every international order must sooner or later face the impact of two tendencies challenging its cohesion: either a redefinition of legitimacy or a significant shift in the balance of power. The first tendency occurs when the values underlying international arrangements are fundamentally altered - abandoned by those charged with maintaining them or overturned by revolutionary imposition of an alternative concept of legitimacy. This was the impact of the ascendant West on may traditional orders in the non-Western world; of Islam in its initial wave of expansion in the 7th and 8th centuries; of the French Revolution on European diplomacy in the 18th century; of Communist and fascist totalitarianism in the 20th; and of the Islamist assaults on the fragile state structure of the Middle East in our time.
The essence of such upheavals is that while they are usually underpinned by force, their overriding thrust is psychological. Those under assault are challenged to defend not only their territory but the basic assumptions of their way of life, their moral right to exist and to act in a manner that, until the challenge, had been treated as beyond question. The natural inclination, particularly of leaders from pluralistic societies, is to engage with the representatives of the revolution, expecting that what they really want is to negotiate in good faith on the premises of the existing order and to arrive at a reasonable solution. The order is submerged not primarily from military defeat or an imbalance in resources (though this often follows) but from a failure to understand the nature and scope of the challenge arrayed against it.
The second cause of an international order’s crisis is when it proves unable to accommodate a major change in power relations. In some cases, the order collapses because one of its major components ceases to play its role or ceases to exist - as happened to the Communist international order near the end of the 20th century when the Soviet Union dissolved. Or else a rising power may reject the role allotted to it by a system it did not design, and the established powers may prove unable to adapt the system’s equilibrium to incorporate its rise. Germany’s emergence posed such a challenge to the system in the 20th century in Europe, triggering two catastrophic wars from which Europe has never fully recovered. The emergence of China poses a comparable structural challenge in the 20th century.
The US has made a significant contribution to this evolution. American military power provided a security shield for the rest of the world, whether its beneficiaries asked for it or not. Under the umbrella of an essentially unilateral American military guarantee, much of the developed world rallied into a system of alliances; the developing countries were protected against a threat they sometimes did not recognize, even less admit. A global economy developed to which America contributed financing, markets, and a profusion of innovations. From perhaps 1948 to the turn of the century marked a brief moment in human history when one could speak of an incipient global world order composed of an amalgam of American idealism and traditional concepts of balance of power.
Yet its very success made it inevitable that the entire enterprise would eventually be challenged, sometimes in the name of world order itself. The universal relevance of the Westphalian system derived from its procedural - that is, value-neutral - nature. Its rule were accessible to any country: noninterference in domestic affairs of other states; inviolability of borders; sovereignty of states; encouragements of international law. The weakness of the Westphalian system has been the reverse side of its strength. Designed as it was by states exhausted from their bloodletting, it did not supply a sense of direction. It dealt with methods of allocating and preserving power; it gave no answer to the problem of how to generate legitimacy.
Since the Renaissance the West has been deeply committed to the notion that the real world is external to the observer, that knowledge consists of recording and classifying data - the more accurate the better - and that foreign policy success depends on assessing existing realities and trends. The Westphalian peace represented a judgment of reality - particularly realities of power and territory - as a temporal ordering concept over the demands of religion.
In the other great contemporary civilizations, reality was conceived as internal to the observer, defined by psychological, philosophical, or religious convictions. Confucianism ordered the world into tributaries in a hierarchy defined by approximations of Chinese culture. Islam divided the world order into a world of peace, that of Islam, and a world of war, inhabited by unbelievers. Thus China felt no need to go abroad to discover a world it considered already ordered, or best ordered by the cultivation of morality internally, while Islam could achieve the theoretical fulfillment of world order only by conquest or global proselytization, for which the objective conditions did not exist. Hinduism, which perceived cycles of history and metaphysical reality transcending temporal experience, treated its world of faith as a complete system not open to new entrants by either conquest or conversion.
Great statesmen, however different as personalities, almost invariably had an instinctive feeling for the history of their societies. As Edmund Burke wrote, “People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.” What will be the attitudes of those who aspire to be great statesmen in the Internet age? A combination of chronic insecurity and insistent self-assertion threatens both leaders and the public in the Internet age. Leaders, because they are less and less the originators of their programs, seek to dominate by willpower or charisma. The general public’s access to the intangibles of the public debate is ever more constrained. Major pieces of legislation in the US, Europe, and elsewhere contain thousands of pages of text whose precise meaning is elusive even to those legislators who voted for them.
Previous generations of Western leaders performed their democratic role while recognizing that leadership did not consist of simply executing the results of public polls on a day-to-day basis. Tomorrow’s generations may prove reluctant to exercise leadership independent of data-mining techniques - even as their mastery of the information environment may reward them with reelection for pursuing cleverly targeted, short-term policies.
In such an environment, the participants in the public debate risk being driven less by reasoned arguments than by what catches the mood of the moment. The immediate focus is pounded daily into the public consciousness by advocates whose status is generated by the ability to dramatize. Participants at public demonstrations are rarely assembled around a specific program. Rather, many seek the uplift of a moment of exaltation, treating their role in the event primarily as participation in an emotional experience.
Conflicts within and between societies have occurred since the dawn of civilization. The causes of these conflicts have not been limited to an absence of information or an insufficient ability to share it. They have arisen not only between societies that do not understand each other but between those that understand each other only too well. Even with the same source material to examine, individuals have disagreed about its meaning or the subjective value of what it depicts. Where values, ideals, or strategic objectives are in fundamental contradiction, exposure and connectivity may on occasion fuel confrontation as much as assuage them.
The concept of truth is being relativized and individualized - losing its universal character. Information is presented as being free. In fact, the recipient pays for it by supplying data to be exploited by persons unknown to him, in ways that further shape the information being offered to him.
Whatever the utility of this approach in the realm of consumption, its effect on policymaking may prove transformative. The difficult choices in policymaking are always close. Where, in the world of ubiquitous social networks, does the individual find the space to develop the fortitude to make decisions that, by definition, cannot be based on a consensus? The adage that prophets are not recognized in their own time is true in that they operate beyond conventional conception - that is what made them prophets. In our era, the lead time for prophets might have disappeared altogether. The pursuit of transparency and connectivity in all aspects of existence, by destroying privacy, inhibits the development of personalities with the strength to take lonely decisions.
For all the great and indispensable achievements the Internet has brought to our era, its emphasis is on the actual more than the contingent, on the factual rather than the conceptual, on values shaped by consensus rather than by introspection. Knowledge and history and geography is not essential for those who can evoke their data with the touch of a button. The mindset for walking lonely political paths may not be self-evident to those who seek confirmation by hundreds, sometimes thousands of friends on Facebook.
In the Internet age, world order has been equated with the proposition that if people have ability to freely know and exchange the world’s information, the natural human drive toward freedom will take root and fulfill itself, and history will run on autopilot, as it were. But philosophers and poets have long separated the mind’s purview into three components: information, knowledge, and wisdom. The Internet focuses on the realm on information, whose spread it facilitates exponentially. Ever-more-complex functions are devised, particularly capable of responding to questions of fact, which are not themselves altered by the passage of time. Search engines are able to handle increasingly complex question with increasing speed. Yet a surfeit of information may paradoxically inhibit the acquisition of knowledge and push wisdom even further away than it was before.
The acquisition of knowledge from books provides an experience different from the Internet. Reading is relatively time-consuming; to ease the process, style is important. Because it is not possible to read all books on a given subject, much less the totality of all books, or to organize easily everything one has read, learning from books places a premium on conceptual thinking - the ability to recognize comparable data and events and project patterns into the future. And style propels the reader into a relationship with the author, or with the subject matter, by fusing substance and aesthetics.
Traditionally, another way fo acquiring knowledge has been through personal conversations. The discussion and exchange of ideas has for millennia provided and emotional and psychological dimension in addition to the factual content of the information exchanged. It supplies intangibles of conviction and personality. Now the culture of texting produces a curious reluctance to engage in face-to-face interaction, especially on a one-to-one basis.
International society was like a frontier settlement without an effective police force:
In new and wild communities where there is violence, an honest man must protect himself; and until other means of securing his safety are devised, it is both foolish and wicked to persuade him to surrender his arms while the men who are dangerous to the community retain theirs.
This essentially Hobbesian analysis delivered in, of all occasions, a Nobel Peace Prize lecture, marked America’s departure from the proposition that neutrality and pacific intent were adequate to serve the peace. For Roosevelt, if a nation was unable or unwilling to act to defend its own interest, it could not expect others to respect them.
The cultural and political backgrounds of the two sides diverge in important aspects. The American approach to policy is pragmatic; China’s is conceptual. America has never had a powerful threatening neighbor; China has never been without a powerful adversary on its borders. Americans hold that every problem has a solution; Chinese think that each solution is an admission ticket to a new set of problems. Americans seek an outcome responding to immediate circumstances; Chinese concentrate on evolutionary change. Americans outline an agenda of practical “deliverable” items; Chinese set out general principles and analyze where they will lead. Chinese thinking is shaped in part by Communism but embraces a traditionally Chinese way of thought to an increasing extent; neither is intuitively familiar to Americans.
Are we, the countries of Asia and Africa, devoid of any positive position except being pro-communist or anti-communist? Has it come to this, that the leaders of thought who have given religions and all kinds of things to the world have to tag on to this kind of group or that and be hangers-on of this party or the other carrying out their wishes and occasionally giving an idea? It is most degrading and humiliating to any self-respecting people or nation. It is an intolerable thought to me that the great countries of Asia and Africa should come out of bondage into freedom only to degrade themselves or humiliate themselves in this way.
The Arab Spring started as a new generation’s uprising for liberal democracy. It was soon shouldered aside, disrupted, or crushed. Exhilaration turned into paralysis. The existing political forces, embedded in the military and in religion in the countryside, proved stronger and better organized than the middle-class element demonstrating for democratic principles in Tahrir Square. In practice, the Arab Spring has exhibited rather than overcome the internal contradictions of the Arab-Islamic world and of the policies designed to resolve them.
The oft-repeated early slogan of the Arab Spring, “The people want the downfall of the regime,” left open the question of how the people are defined and what will take the place of the supplanted authorities. The original Arab Spring demonstrators’ calls for an open political and economic life have been overwhelmed by a violent contest between military-back authoritarianism and Islamist ideology.
In Egypt, the original exultant demonstrators professing values of cosmopolitanism and democracy in Tahrir Square have not turned out to be the revolution’s heirs. Electronic social media facilitate demonstrations capable of toppling regimes, but the ability to enable people to gather in a square differs from building new institutions of state. In the vacuum of authority following the demonstrations’ initial success, factions form the pre-uprising period are often in a position to shape the outcome. The temptation to foster unity by merging nationalism and fundamentalism overwhelmed the original slogans of the uprising.
No single society has ever had the power, no leadership the resilience, and no faith the dynamism to impose its writ enduringly throughout the world. Universality has proved elusive for any conqueror, including Islam. As the early Islamic Empire expanded, it eventually fragmented into multiple centers of power. A succession crisis following Muhammad’s death led to a split between Sunni and Shia branches of Islam, a defining division in the contemporary Islamic world. In any new political enterprise, the question of succession is fraught; where the founding leader is also regarded as the “Seal of the Prophets,” the final messenger of God, the debate becomes at once political and theological.
When it maintained a global system, Europe represented the dominant concept of world orders. Its statesmen designed international structures and prescribed them to the rest of the world. Today the nature of the emergent world order is itself in dispute, and regions beyond Europe will play a major role in defining its attributes. Is the world moving toward regional blocs that will perform the role of states in the Westphalian system? If so, will balance follow, or will this reduce the number of key players to so few that rigidity becomes inevitable and the perils of the early 20th century return, with flexibly constructed blocs attempting to face one another down? In a world where continental structures like America, China, and may be India and Brazil have already reached critical mass, how will Europe handle its transition to a regional unit? So far the process of integration has been dealt with as an essentially bureaucratic problem of increasing the competence of various European administrative bodies, in other words an elaboration of the familiar. Where will the impetus for charting the inward commitment to these goals emerge? European history has shown that unification has never been achieved by primarily administrative procedures. It has required a unifier - Prussia in Germany, Piedmont in Italy - without whose leadership (and willingness to create faits accomplis) unification would have remained stillborn. What country or institution will play that role? Or will some new institution or inner group have to be devised for charting the road?
Austria learned too late that in international affairs a reputation for reliability is a more important asset than demonstrations of tactical cleverness.
The international arena remained in the state of nature and was anarchical because there was no world sovereign available to make it secure and none could be practically constituted. Thus each state would have to place its own national interest above all in a world where power was the paramount factor.
The Peace of Westphalia in its early practice implemented a Hobbesian world. How was this new balance of power to be calibrated? A distinction must be made between the balance of power as a fact and the balance of power as a system. Any international order - to be worthy of that name - must sooner or later reached an equilibrium, or else it will be in a constant state of warfare. Because the medieval world contained dozens of principalities, a practical balance of power frequently existed in fact. After the Peace of Westphalia, the balance of power made its appearance as a system; that is to say, bringing it about was accepted as one of the key purposes of foreign policy; disturbing it would evoke a coalition on behalf of equilibrium.
The rise of Britain as a major naval power by early in the 18th century made is possible to turn the facts of the balance of power into a system. Control of the seas enabled Britain to choose the timing and scale of its involvement on the Continent to act as the arbiter of the balance of power, indeed the guarantor that Europe would have a balance of power at all.
The Peace of Westphalia did not mandate a specific arrangement of alliances or a permanent European political structure. With the end of the universal Church as the ultimate source of legitimacy, and the weakening of the Holy Roman Emperor, the ordering concept for Europe became the balance of power - which, by definition, involves ideological neutrality and adjustment to evolving circumstances.
Today these Westphalian concepts are often maligned as a system of cynical power manipulation, indifferent to moral claims. Yet the structure established in the Peace of Westphalia represented the first attempt to institutionalize an international order on the basis of agreed rules and limits and to base it on a multiplicity of powers rather than the dominance of a single country. The concepts of raison d’etat and the “national interest” made their first appearance, representing not an exaltation of power but an attempt to rationalize and limit its use.
Much like the Middle Eastern conflagrations of our own period, sectarian alignments were invoked for solidarity and motivation in battle but were just as often discarded, trumped by clashes of geopolitical interests or simply the ambition of outsized personalities. Every party had been abandoned at some point during the war by its “natural” allies; none signed the documents under the illusion that it was doing anything but advancing its own interests and prestige.
The inherent equality of sovereign states, regardless of their power or domestic system, was instituted. Newly arrived powers, such as Sweden and the Dutch Republic, were granted protocol treatment equal to that of established great powers like France and Austria. All kings were referred to as “majesty” and all ambassadors “excellency.”
The Peace of Westphalia became a turning point in the history of nations because the elements it set in place were as uncomplicated as they were sweeping. The state, not the empire, dynasty, or religious confession, was affirmed as the building block of European order. The concept of state sovereignty was established. The right of each signatory to choose its own domestic structure and religious orientation free from intervention was affirmed, while novel clauses ensured that minority sects could practice their faith in peace and be free from the prospect of forced conversion.
The genius of this system, and the reason it spread across the world, was that its provisions were procedural, not substantive. If a state would accept these basic requirements, it could be recognized as an international citizen able to maintain its own culture, politics, religion, and internal policies, shielded by the international system from outside intervention.
Three conclusions emerge from Richelieu’s career. First, the indispensable element of a successful foreign policy is a long-term strategic concept based on a careful analysis of all relevant factors. Second, the statesman must distill that vision by analyzing and shaping an array of ambiguous, often conflicting pressures into a coherent and purposeful direction. He must know where this strategy is leading and why. And, third, he must act at the outer edge of the possible, bridging the gap between his society’s experiences and its aspirations. Because repetition of the familiar leads to stagnation, no little daring is required.
The future of Iranian-American relations will – at least in the short run – depend on the resolution of an ostensibly technical military issue. As these pages are being written, a potentially epochal shift in the region’s military balance and its psychological equilibrium may be taking place. It has been ushered in by Iran’s rapid progress toward the status of a nuclear weapons state amidst a noegotiation between it and the permanent members of the UNSC plus Germany (the P5+1). Though couched in terms of technical and scientific capabilities, the issue at heart about international order – about the ability of the international community to enforce its demands against sophisticated forms of rejection, the permeability of the global nonproliferation regime, and the prospects for a nuclear arms race in the world’s most volatile region.
The traditional balance of power emphasized military and industrial capacity. A change in it could be achieved only gradually or by conquest. The modern balance of power reflects the level of a society’s scientific development and can be threatened dramatically by developments entirely within the territory of a state.
The issue of peace in the Middle East has, in recent years, focused on the highly technical subject of nuclear weapons in Iran. There is no shortcut around the imperative of preventing their appearance. But it is well to recall periods when other seemingly intractable crises in the Middle East were givne a new dimension by fortitude and vision.
China rejects the proposition that international order is fostered by the spread of liberal democracy and that the international community has an obligation to bring this about, and especially to achieve its perception of human rights by international action. The US may be able to adjust the application of its views on human rights in relation to strategic priorities. But in light on its history and the convictions of its people, America can never abandon these principles altogether. On the Chinese side, the dominant elite view on this subject was expressed by Deng Xiaoping:
Actually, national sovereignty is far more important than human rights, but the Group of Seven (or Eight) often infringe upon the sovereignty of poor, weak countries of the Third World. They talk about human rights, freedom and democracy is designed only to safeguard the interests of the strong, rich countries, which take advantage of their strength to bully weak countries, and which pursue hegemony and practice power politics.
In Roosevelt’s view, the international system was in constant flux. Ambition, self-interest, and war were not simply the products of foolish misconceptions of which Americans could disabuse traditional rulers; they were a natural human condition that required purposeful American engagement in international affairs. International society was like a frontier settlement without an effective police force.
Islam’s rapid advance across 3 continents provide proof to the faithful of its divine mission. Impelled by the conviction that its spread would unite and bring peace to all humanity, Islam was at once a religion, a multiethnic superstate, and a new world order.
In Qutb’s view, Islam was a universal system offering the only true form of freedom: freedom from governance by other men, man-made doctrines, or “low associations based on race and color, language and country, regional and national interests” (that is, ll other modenr forms of loyalty and some of the building blocks of Westphalian order). Islam’s modern mission, in Qutb’s view, was to overthrow them all and replace them with what he took to be a literal, eventually global implementation of the Quran.
As this void looms, the Middle East is caught in a confrontation akin to – but broader than – Europe’s pre-Westphalian wars of religion. Domestic and international conflicts reinforce each other. Political, sectarian, tribal, territorial, ideological, and traditional national-interest disputes merge. Religion is “weaponized” in the service of geopolitical objectives; civilizans are makred for extermination based on their sectarian affliation. Where states are able to preserve their authority, they consider their authority without limtis, justified by the necessities of survival; where states disintegrate, they become fields for the contests of surrounding powers in which authority is often is achieved through total disregard for human well-being and dignity.