From the Civil War, to the turbulent 20th century, to the pressing issues of globalism and conflict we’re facing today, the year’s best history books look at how politics and leadership play a role in shaping the world. In examining the past, each of the books below offer insight into how we got to where we are, […]
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Overview
"An astute analysis that illuminates many of today's critical international issues." —Kirkus Reviews
Henry Kissinger offers in World Order a deep meditation on the roots of international harmony and global disorder. Drawing on his experience as one of the foremost statesmen of the modern era—advising presidents, traveling the world, observing and shaping the central foreign policy events of recent decades—Kissinger now reveals his analysis of the ultimate challenge for the twenty-first century: how to build a shared international order in a world of divergent historical perspectives, violent conflict, proliferating technology, and ideological extremism.
There has never been a true “world order,” Kissinger observes. For most of history, civilizations defined their own concepts of order. Each considered itself the center of the world and envisioned its distinct principles as universally relevant. China conceived of a global cultural hierarchy with the emperor at its pinnacle. In Europe, Rome imagined itself surrounded by barbarians; when Rome fragmented, European peoples refined a concept of an equilibrium of sovereign states and sought to export it across the world. Islam, in its early centuries, considered itself the world’s sole legitimate political unit, destined to expand indefinitely until the world was brought into harmony by religious principles. The United States was born of a conviction about the universal applicability of democracy—a conviction that has guided its policies ever since.
Now international affairs take place on a global basis, and these historical concepts of world order are meeting. Every region participates in questions of high policy in every other, often instantaneously. Yet there is no consensus among the major actors about the rules and limits guiding this process or its ultimate destination. The result is mounting tension.
Grounded in Kissinger’s deep study of history and his experience as national security advisor and secretary of state, World Order guides readers through crucial episodes in recent world history. Kissinger offers a unique glimpse into the inner deliberations of the Nixon administration’s negotiations with Hanoi over the end of the Vietnam War, as well as Ronald Reagan’s tense debates with Soviet Premier Gorbachev in Reykjavík. He offers compelling insights into the future of U.S.–China relations and the evolution of the European Union, and he examines lessons of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Taking readers from his analysis of nuclear negotiations with Iran through the West’s response to the Arab Spring and tensions with Russia over Ukraine, World Order anchors Kissinger’s historical analysis in the decisive events of our time.
Provocative and articulate, blending historical insight with geopolitical prognostication, World Order is a unique work that could come only from a lifelong policy maker and diplomat. Kissinger is also the author of On China.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780143127710 |
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Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
Publication date: | 09/01/2015 |
Pages: | 432 |
Sales rank: | 66,347 |
Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d) |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
The Question of World Order
IN 1961, as a young academic, I called on President Harry S. Truman when I found myself in Kansas City delivering a speech. To the question of what in his presidency had made him most proud, Truman replied, “That we totally defeated our enemies and then brought them back to the community of nations. I would like to think that only America would have done this.” Conscious of America’s vast power, Truman took pride above all in its humane and democratic values. He wanted to be remembered not so much for America’s victories as for its conciliations.
All of Truman’s successors have followed some version of this narrative and have taken pride in similar attributes of the American experience. And for most of this period, the community of nations that they aimed to uphold reflected an American consensus—an inexorably expanding cooperative order of states observing common rules and norms, embracing liberal economic systems, forswearing territorial conquest, respecting national sovereignty, and adopting participatory and democratic systems of governance. American presidents of both parties have continued to urge other governments, often with great vehemence and eloquence, to embrace the preservation and enhancement of human rights. In many instances, the defense of these values by the United States and its allies has ushered in important changes in the human condition.
Yet today this “rules-based” system faces challenges. The frequent exhortations for countries to “do their fair share,” play by “twenty-first-century rules,” or be “responsible stakeholders” in a common system reflect the fact that there is no shared definition of the system or understanding of what a “fair” contribution would be. Outside the Western world, regions that have played a minimal role in these rules’ original formulation question their validity in their present form and have made clear that they would work to modify them. Thus while “the international community” is invoked perhaps more insistently now than in any other era, it presents no clear or agreed set of goals, methods, or limits.
Our age is insistently, at times almost desperately, in pursuit of a concept of world order. Chaos threatens side by side with unprecedented interdependence: in the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the disintegration of states, the impact of environmental depredations, the persistence of genocidal practices, and the spread of new technologies threatening to drive conflict beyond human control or comprehension. New methods of accessing and communicating information unite regions as never before and project events globally—but in a manner that inhibits reflection, demanding of leaders that they register instantaneous reactions in a form expressible in slogans. Are we facing a period in which forces beyond the restraints of any order determine the future?
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Question of World Order 1
Varieties of World Order 2
Legitimacy and Power 9
Chapter 1 Europe: The Pluralistic International Order 11
The Uniqueness of the European Order 11
The Thirty Years' War: What Is Legitimacy? 20
The Peace of Westphalia 23
The Operation of the Westphalian System 31
The French Revolution and Its Aftermath 41
Chapter 2 The European Balance-of-Power System and Its End 49
The Russian Enigma 49
The Congress of Vienna 59
The Premises of International Order 68
Metternich and Bismarck 73
The Dilemmas of the Balance of Power 76
Legitimacy and Power Between the World Wars 82
The Postwar European Order 86
The Future of Europe 91
Chapter 3 Islamism and the Middle East: A World in Disorder 96
The Islamic World Order 97
The Ottoman Empire: The Sick Man of Europe 109
The Westphalian System and the Islamic World 111
Islamism: The Revolutionary Tide-Two Philosophical Interpretations 118
The Arab Spring and the Syrian Cataclysm 122
The Palestinian Issue and International Order 129
Saudi Arabia 134
The Decline of the State? 142
Chapter 4 The United States and Iran: Approaches to Order 146
The Tradition of Iranian Statecraft 149
The Khomeini Revolution 152
Nuclear Proliferation and Iran 159
Vision and Reality 169
Chapter 5 The Multiplicity of Asia 172
Asia and Europe: Different Concepts of Balance of Power 172
Japan 180
India 192
What Is an Asian Regional Order? 208
Chapter 6 Toward an Asian Order: Confrontation or Partnership? 212
Asia's International Order and China 213
China and World Order 221
A Longer Perspective 228
Chapter 7 "Acting tor Ail Mankind": The United States audits Concept of Order 234
America on the World Stage 239
Theodore Roosevelt: America as a World Power 247
Woodrow Wilson: America as the World's Conscience 256
Franklin Roosevelt and the New World Order 269
Chapter 8 The United Slates: Ambivalent Superpower 276
The Beginning of the Cold War 280
Strategies of a Cold War Order 283
The Korean War 288
Vietnam and the Breakdown of the National Consensus 295
Richard Nixon and International Order 302
The Beginning of Renewal 308
Ronald Reagan and the End of the Cold War 310
The Afghanistan and Iraq Wars 317
The Purpose and the Possible 327
Chapter 9 technology, Equilibrium and Human Consciousness 330
World Order in the Nuclear Age 331
The Challenge of Nuclear Proliferation 336
Cyber Technology and World Order 341
The Human Factor 348
Foreign Policy in the Digital Era 354
Conclusion: World Order in Our Time? 361
The Evolution of International Order 365
Where Do We Go from Here? 371
Acknowledgments 375
Notes 379
Index 405
What People are Saying About This
Hillary Clinton, The Washington Post:
“It is vintage Kissinger, with his singular combination of breadth and acuity along with his knack for connecting headlines to trend lines — very long trend lines in this case. He ranges from the Peace of Westphalia to the pace of microprocessing, from Sun Tzu to Talleyrand to Twitter... A real national dialogue is the only way we’re going to rebuild a political consensus to take on the perils and the promise of the 21st century. Henry Kissinger’s book makes a compelling case for why we have to do it and how we can succeed.”
Michiko Kakutani,The New York Times
"Henry Kissinger’s new book, World Order, could not be more timely... the book puts the problems of today’s world and America’s role in that increasingly interconnected and increasingly riven world into useful — and often illuminating — context... Mr. Kissinger, now 91, strides briskly from century to century, continent to continent, examining the alliances and divisions that have defined Europe over the centuries, the fallout from the disintegration of nation-states like Syria and Iraq, and China’s developing relationship with the rest of Asia and the West. At its best, his writing functions like a powerful zoom lens, opening out to give us a panoramic appreciation of larger historical trends and patterns, then zeroing in on small details and anecdotes that vividly illustrate his theories."
The Financial Times
“Kissinger’s conclusion deserves to be read and understood by all candidates ahead of the 2016 presidential election. World order depends on it.”
John Micklethwait, The New York Times Book Review
“If you think America is doing just fine, then skip ahead to the poetry reviews. If, however, you worry about a globe spinning out of control, then World Order is for you. It brings together history, geography, modern politics and no small amount of passion. Yes, passion, for this is a cri de Coeur, from a famous skeptic, a warning to future generations from an old man steeped in the past... it is a book that every member of Congress should be locked in a room withand forced to read before taking the oath of office."
James Traub,The Wall Street Journal
"Recent years have not been kind to those who believe in America's missionary role abroad. Since the terrorist attacks of 2001 upended our sense of the world, the United States has been governed by a conservative idealist who tried to impose American values on the Middle East, and failed calamitously, and a liberal idealist who invited America's adversaries to re-engage with us on the basis of a new humility and mutual respect, and found his hopes dashed. It is, in short, a moment for Henry Kissinger... The fact that he has written yet another book, the succinctly titled World Order, is impressive in itself. What is more remarkable is that it effectively carries on his campaign to undermine the romantic pieties of left and right that have shaped so much of American foreign policy over the past century. Mr. Kissinger bids fair to outlast many of the people who hate him and make others forget why they hated him in the first place."
Walter Isaacson, Time
“Kissinger’s book takes us on a dazzling and instructive global tour of the quest for order….The key to Kissinger’s foreign policy realism, and the theme at the heart of his magisterial new book, is that such humility is important not just for people but also for nations, even the U.S. Making progress toward a world order based on “individual dignity and participatory governance” is a lofty ideal, he notes. “But progress toward it will need to be sustained through a series of intermediate stages.”
The Los Angeles Times
"Kissinger's geopolitical analysis of our global challenges is compelling... Mark Twain, who was known more for his sense of humor than his diplomatic skills, once said, "History does not repeat itself. But it rhymes." Kissinger's advice is not nearly as glib, but much more valuable to a country that right now seems to want the rest of the world to just go away."
Jacob Heilbrunn, The National Interest:
"Kissinger… demonstrates why he remains such a courted adviser to American presidents and foreign leaders alike…. [World Order is] a guide for the perplexed, a manifesto for reordering America’s approach to the rest of the globe. Kissinger’s vision could help to shape a more tranquil era than the one that has emerged so far.”
Kirkus Reviews:
"An astute analysis that illuminates many of today's critical international issues."