this book originally published on 2014 tried to explain the world order by that time covering India, Europe, China, and the Middle East. But surprisingly we can still apply the main concept of this book the current global context now.
He described the Westphalian model of sovereign states with equal status within the system; an Islamic system based on a wider idea of an ummah, or community; a Chinese system based on traditional ideas of the Middle Kingdom as a great regional power; and the American order, finding a new purpose a century ago under Woodrow Wilson, eventually dominant across the globe, and now under unprecedented pressure, which still applies to the current global order.
The objective is not to prove that one “order” is superior to another, but to argue that “an order” is needed for the world to avert a descent into chaos.
Kissinger argues that in Asia, states work as fundamental units of international and domestic politics, in contrast to the Middle East, where almost all states are threatened by militant challenges to their legitimacy. He also stated that the doctrine of the Westphalian model of international order was followed by the majority of Asian nations.
The last section of the book—in which Kissinger reflects on the impact of modern communications, the Internet, and social media, on the notion of state sovereignty, human privacy, and societies’ cohesion—revolves around his unshakeable belief that the world needs an order through which states interact with one another.
Kissinger also asserts that he is skeptical of the ability of political leaders to rise above the pressures that the Internet and social media place on their decision-making processes. There is a real danger of politics becoming a theater of managing perceptions, judged by the number of Twitter followers and ‘Likes’ rather than decision-making processes that, in theory at least, maximize the general benefit of a certain nation.
In each of the chapters, Kissinger picks and chooses what he sees as the important historical experiences, the individuals worth mentioning, and the challenges they faced.
Kissinger believes that a meaningful American role will be philosophically and geopolitically compulsory to overcome the obstacles of the contemporary world. However, he argues that world peace cannot be achieved by any single country.
