World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History - Hardcover

Kissinger Henry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241004268 ISBN 13: 9780241004265

Publisher: Allen Lane/Penquin, 2014

Synopsis

In world order, henry kissinger - one of the leading practitioners of world diplomacy and author of on china - makes his monumental investigation into the tectonic plates of global history and state relationsworld order is the summation of henry kissingers thinking about history, strategy and statecraft as if taking a perspective from far above the globe, it examines the great tectonic plates of history and the motivations of nations, explaining the attitudes that states and empires have taken to the rest of the world from the formation of europe to our own timeskissinger identifies four great world orders in history - the european, islamic, chinese and american since the end of charlemagnes empire, and especially since the peace of westphalia in 1648, europeans have striven for balance in international affairs, first in their own continent and then globally islamic states have looked to their destined expansion over regions populated by unbelievers, a position exemplified today by iran under the ayatollahs for over 2000 years the chinese have seen all under heaven as being tributary to the chinese emperor america views itself as a city on a hill, a beacon to the world, whose values have universal validity how have these attitudes evolved and how have they shaped the histories of their nations, regions, and the rest of the world what has happened when they have come into contact with each other how have they balanced legitimacy and power at different times what is the condition of each in our contemporary world, and how are they shaping relations between states nowto answer these questions henry kissinger draws upon a lifetimes historical study and unmatched experience as a world statesman his account is shot through with observations about how historical change takes place, how some leaders shape their times and others fail to do so, and how far states can stray from the ideas which define them

About this title

About the Author

HENRY KISSINGER served as National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and has advised many other American presidents on foreign policy. He received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Medal of Liberty, among other awards. He is the author of numerous books on foreign policy and diplomacy and is currently the chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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?

Edition details

• Publisher: Allen Lane/Penquin
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241004268
• ISBN 13: 9780241004265
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432