Posted: May 19, 2023
World Order
"World Order" is an analytical book, which - by necessity - contains a lot of historical details. The time period covered is right after the fall of Rome (473 C.E.) to around 2014.
The topic of the book is the framework by which the world's family of nations govern themselves so as to maintain, if not a state of friendship, at least an absence of a physical war - this framework is known as a world order.
War has been the state of the European nations up until the early 1600s and the period of the Thirty Year War. Kissinger considers the Thirty Year War to be the conflict that finally broke Europe's appetite for fighting. The Europeans wanted peace so much that they hammered together an innovative agreement known as the Treaty of Westphalia. This treaty basically said that each nation can do what it wants within its borders. Where befor,e nations would force their culture or religion on others this time they would each mind their own business for the interest of peace. The Treaty of Westphalia was dependent on maintaining a balance of power wherein one nation cannot overwhelm other countries. It was an effective form of world order for a very long time - up until the French Revolution and Napoleon.
After the Napoleonic Wars another treaty was hammered together along Westphalian lines - the Treaty of Vienna. The difference this time was there was an elephant in the room - Russia. Russia was the Eurasian powerhouse that loomed over the European nations. In spite of Russia's not so subtle bullying, diplomats managed to agree on an acceptable arrangement.
Continued peace in Europe depended upon keeping the German nations fragmented. A united Germany would upset the balance of power. Nationalism was a concept that increasingly took hold of the populace of Europe, this concept, coupled with Bismarck's rise as a German unifier led to World War I.
The end of World War I saw the Treaty of Versailles. Inferior to the Westphalian Treaty, the Treaty of Versailles had a punitive aspect directed at Germany. This virtually guaranteed the occurrence of World War II.
Word War II saw Europe brought to its knees. A new world order was created by the United States. This world order was based on the American belief that liberty is the ideal state by which every country should exist. And the United States went about spreading this belief and backing it with all the might of its superpower status.
For a very long time the United States held sway but there are three other concepts of world order vying against the American Way. One of them is the Russian Way which strikes me as a very "Viking" concept of world order, dependent on continued territorial expansion and characterized by a sort of paranoia. The other kind of world order is the Chinese Way. This concept of world order places China at the center with all other nations being its tributaries and China functioning as an ascendant and benevolent "father figure" to all other nations. The last kind of major world order is the Islamic Way. Islam divides the world into a "world of peace", which is Islam, and a "world of war", the non-Islamic parts of the world.
As countries with different conceptualizations of world order become more powerful, the world becomes increasingly more chaotic. This is because there really is no one conceptualization of world order applicable to every country on Earth. And this, according to Kissinger, is the biggest challenge of our time. Unless a common world order can be found we are all at risk of devolving into a state of war.
Kissinger lays out the problem in wonderful and interesting detail. Unsurprisingly, he has no answers; the problem is simply too complicated.
When I first read this book I could not finish it. The concepts defeated me and it all came to me as gibberish. Luckily, I picked up "World Order" again and gave it extra reading attention. To my surprise, not only did I understand it this time around, many, many, times, it actually proved to be a page turner. It was telling me things that I've been wondering about for so long. If you like to watch world news but find it too shallow this book has the depth that will satisfy you. In my case, it has added to my knowledge and understanding of the world we are living in and the history that has shaped that world.