May 23, 2023
Dear Friends and Family,
Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum and associated globalists are attempting to establish a different world order by creating societal concern over potentially revolutionary new technologies, fear perpetrated by climate change advocacy, and the call for repudiation of Western values and institutions. Critics have responded point by point. The information presented in the thirteen segments to date certainly provided grist for an intelligent debate on the merits of their advocacy, in particular information on Modern Monetary Theory (and the potential for increased inflation and the loss of reserve currency by the U.S. dollar), implementation of stakeholder capitalism, acceding to digital governance and the loss of democracy.
This segment backs away from the debate and addresses the issue of world order from an historical perspective as provided by Henry Kissinger in 2014. Given his perspective, a couple of questions formulated in my mind which adds more grist to the debate. Specifically:
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum and associated globalists are attempting to establish a different world order by creating societal concern over potentially revolutionary new technologies, fear perpetrated by climate change advocacy, and the call for repudiation of Western values and institutions. Critics have responded point by point. The information presented in the thirteen segments to date certainly provided grist for an intelligent debate on the merits of their advocacy, in particular information on Modern Monetary Theory (and the potential for increased inflation and the loss of reserve currency by the U.S. dollar), implementation of stakeholder capitalism, acceding to digital governance and the loss of democracy.
This segment backs away from the debate and addresses the issue of world order from an historical perspective as provided by Henry Kissinger in 2014. Given his perspective, a couple of questions formulated in my mind which adds more grist to the debate. Specifically:
- Will the World Economic Forum’s Western biased approach, which is advocated by Schwab and being followed by Biden, be adopted and supported by the non-Western world? If not, what happens to the resultant world order? War?
- If the approach is embraced by the Western world what will be the reaction of the non-elite population of America?
Happy Learning,
Harley
THE GREAT RESET: IS DEMOCRACY (worldwide) IN DANGER?
WORLD ORDER—EXCERPTS: SEGMENT 14
THE QUESTION OF WORLD ORDER:
In 1961, as a young academic, I called on President Harry S. Truman and asked what in his presidency had made him the proudest. 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.” All of Truman’s successors have followed some version of this narrative.
American presidents of both parties have continued to urge other governments, with great vehemence and eloquence, to embrace the preservation and enhancement of human rights. In many instances, the defense of these values by the U.S. and its allies has ushered in important changes in the human condition. Yet today this “rules-based” system faces challenges. Outside the Western world, regions that have played a minimal role in these rules’ original formulation 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 agreed to set of goals, methods, or limits.
Our age is insistently at times in pursuit of a concept of world order. Yet, no truly global “world order” has ever existed. What passes for order in our time was devised in Western Europe nearly four centuries ago, at a 1648 peace conference in the German region of Westphalia.
The Westphalian System: 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 were affirmed as the building block of European order. The concept of state sovereignty was established. The principles of a system of “international relations” were taking shape, motivated by the common desire to avoid a recurrence of total war on the Continent. 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. By the mid-20th century, this international system was in place on every continent; it remains the scaffolding of international order such as it now exists.
Yet Westphalian principles are being challenged on all sides, sometimes in the name of world order itself. Europe has set out to depart from the state system it designed and transcend it through a concept of pooled sovereignty. And ironically, though Europe invented the balance-of-power concept, it has consciously and severely limited the element of power in its new institutions. Having downgraded its military capacities, Europe has little scope to respond when universal norms are flouted.
In the Middle East, jihadists on both sides of the Sunni-Shia divide tear at societies and dismantle states in quest of visions of global revolution based on the fundamentalist version of their religion. The state itself – as well as the regional system based on it – is in jeopardy, assaulted by ideologies rejecting its constraints as illegitimate and by terrorist militias that, in several countries, are stronger than the armed forces of the government.
Asia, in some ways the most strikingly successful of the regions to adopt concepts of sovereign statehood, still recalls alternative concepts of order with nostalgia and churns with rivalries and historical claims of the kind that dashed Europe’s order a century ago. Nearly every country considers itself to be “rising,” driving disagreement to the edge of confrontation.
The United States has alternated between defending the Westphalian system and castigating its premises of balance of power and noninterference in domestic affairs as immoral and outmoded, and sometimes both at once. It continues to assert the universal relevance of its values in building a peaceful world order and reserves the right to support them globally. Yet after withdrawing from three wars in two generations—each begun with idealistic aspirations and widespread public support but ending in national trauma – America struggles to define the relationship between its power (still vast) and its principles.
All of the major centers of power practice elements of Westphalian order to some degree, but none considers itself the natural defender of the system. All are undergoing significant internal shifts. Can regions with such divergent cultures, histories, and traditional theories of order vindicate the legitimacy of any common system?
Success in such an effort will require an approach that respects both the multifariousness of the human condition and the ingrained human quest for freedom. Order in this sense must be cultivated; it cannot be imposed. This is particularly so in an age of instantaneous communication and revolutionary political flux. Any system of world order, to be sustainable, must be accepted as just – not only by leaders, but also by citizens. It must reflect two truths; order without freedom, even if sustained by momentary exaltation, eventually creates its own counterpoise; yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace. Order and freedom, sometimes described as opposite poles on the spectrum of experience, should instead be understood as independent. Can today’s leaders rise above the urgency of day-to-day events to achieve this balance?
Legitimacy and Power: Any one of these systems or order bases itself on two components: a set of commonly accepted rules that define the limits of permissible action and a balance of power that enforces restraint where rules break down, preventing one political unit from subjugating all others. A consensus on the legitimacy of existing arrangements does not – now or in the past – foreclose competitions or confrontations, but it helps ensure that they will occur as adjustments within the existing order rather than as fundamental changes to it. A balance of forces does not in itself secure peace, but if thoughtfully assembled and invoked, it can limit the scope and frequency of fundamental changes and curtail their chance of succeeding when they do occur.
The balance between legitimacy and power is extremely complex; the smaller the geographic area to which it applies and the more coherent the cultural convictions within it, the easier it is to distill a workable consensus. But in the modern world the need is for a global world order. An array of entities unrelated to each other by history or values (except at arm’s length) and defining themselves essentially by the limits of their capabilities, is likely to generate conflict, not order.
The mystery to be overcome is one all people share – how divergent historical experiences and values can be shaped into a common order.
THE FUTURE OF EUROPE:
The European Union diminishes its member states’ sovereignty and traditional government functions, such as control of their currency and borders. On the one hand, European politics remains primarily national, and in many countries, objections to EU policy have become the central domestic issue. The result is a hybrid, constitutionally something between a state and a confederation, operating through ministerial meetings and a common bureaucracy. But the EU struggles to resolve its internal tensions in the quest for the principles and goals by which it is guided. In the process, it pursues monetary union side by side with fiscal dispersion and bureaucracy at odds with democracy.
The United States has every reason from history and geopolitics to bolster the EU and prevent its drifting off into a geopolitical vacuum; the US, if separated from Europe in politics, economies, and defense, would become geopolitically an island off the shores of Eurasia, and Europe itself would turn into an appendage to the reaches of Asia and the Middle East.
THE MIDDLE EAST: A WORLD IN DISORDER:
Nowhere is the challenge of international order more complex – in terms of both organizing regional order and ensuring the compatibility of that order with peace and stability in the rest of the world. In our own time, the Middle East seems destined to experiment with all of its historical experiences simultaneously – empire, holy war, foreign domination, a sectarian war of all against all – before it arrives (if it ever does) at a settled concept of international order. Until it does so, the region will remain pulled alternately toward joining the world community and struggling against it.
ASIA:
After decades of war and revolutionary turmoil, Asia has transformed itself dramatically. The rise of the “Asian Tigers,” evident from 1970, involving Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand, brought prosperity and economic dynamism into view. Japan adopted democratic institutions and build an economy rivaling, and in some cases, surpassing those of Western nations. Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand brought prosperity and economic dynamism into view. Japan adopted democratic institutions and built and economy rivaling, and in some cases, surpassing those of Western nations. In 1979, China changed course and under Deng Xiaoping proclaimed a nonideological foreign policy and a policy of economic reforms that, continued and accelerated under his successors, have had a profound transformative effect on China and the world. As these changes unfolded, national-interest-based foreign policy premised on Westphalian principles seemed to have prevailed in Asia.
In Asia, almost every state is impelled by its own dynamism. Convinced that it is “rising,” it operates with the conviction that the world has yet to affirm its fully deserved role. The simultaneous pursuit of so many programs of national prestige building introduces a measure of volatility to the region order. With the evolution of modern technology, the major powers of Asia have armed themselves with far more destructive military arsenals than even the strongest 19th century European state possessed, compounding the risks of miscalculation. The organization of Asia is thus an inherent challenge for world order. Major countries’ perception and pursuit of their national interests, rather than the balance of power as a system, have shaped the mechanisms of order that have developed. Their test will be whether a transpacific partnership, proving a peaceful framework for the interplay of many established interests, will be possible.
India: Modern India conceived of its independence as a triumph not only of a nation but of universal moral principles. And like America’s Founding Fathers, India’s early leaders equated the national interest with moral rectitude. But India’s leaders have acted on Westphalian principles with respect to spreading their domestic institutions, with little interest in promoting democracy and human rights practices internationally. India was neutral and above power politics, as a matter of principle in the interest of world peace, but equally on the grounds of national interest.
China: Of all conceptions of world order in Asia, China operated the longest lasting, the most clearly defined, and the one furthest from Westphalian ideas. The United States and China are both indispensable pillars of world order. The two great societies of different cultures and different premises are both undergoing fundamental domestic adjustments; whether this translates into rivalry or into a new form of partnership will importantly shape prospects for 21st century order.
Potential tensions between an established and a rising power are not new. A Harvard study has shown that in fifteen cases in history where a rising and an established power interacted, ten ended in war. It is therefore not surprising that significant strategic thinkers on both sides invoke patterns of behavior and historical experience to predict the inevitability of conflict between the two societies. On the Chinese side, many American actions are interpreted as a design to thwart China’s rise, and the American promotion of human rights is seen as a project to undermine China’s domestic political structure. Some major figures describe America’s so-called pivot policy as the forerunner of an ultimate showdown designed to keep China permanently in a secondary position – an attitude all the more remarkable because it has not involved any significant military deployments. On the American side, the fear is growing China will systematically undermine American preeminence and thus American security. Significant groups view China, by analogy to the Soviet Union in the Cold War, as determined to achieve military as well as economic dominance in all surrounding regions and hence, ultimately hegemony.
Two other issues are contributing to tension in Sino-American relations. 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.
No formal compromise is possible between these views; to keep the disagreement from spiraling into conflict is one of the principal obligations of leaders of both sides. Any international order compromising both the United States and China must involve a balance of power, but the traditional management of the balance needs to be mitigated by agreement on norms and reinforced by elements of cooperation. Wise statesmanship must try to find that balance. For outside it, disaster beckons.
THE UNITED STATES:
No country has played such a decisive role in shaping contemporary world order as the United States, nor professed such ambivalence about participation in it. As America examines the lessons of its 21st century wars, it is important to remember that no other major power has brought to its strategic efforts such deeply felt aspirations for human betterment. There is a special character to a nation that proclaims as war aims not only to punish its enemies but to improve the lives of their people – that has sought victory not to dominate but in sharing the fruits of liberty. America would not be true to itself if it abandoned this essential idealism. Nor would it reassure friends (or win over adversaries) by setting aside such a core aspect of its national experience. The American domestic debate is frequently described as a contest between idealism and realism. It may turn out – for America and the rest of the world—that if America cannot act in both modes, it will not be able to fulfill either.
CONSIDERATIONS FOR MAINTAINING WORLD ORDER:
Nuclear Weapons: Over time, the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons will affect even the overall nuclear balance between the nuclear superpowers. Any further spread of nuclear weapons multiplies the possibilities of nuclear confrontation: it magnifies the danger of diversion, deliberate or unauthorized. It will eventually affect the balance between nuclear superpowers. And as the development of nuclear weapons spreads into Iran and continues in North Korea – in defiance of all ongoing negotiations – the incentive for other countries to follow the same path could become overwhelming. In the face of these trends, the United States needs to constantly review its own technology. It must remain at the frontier of nuclear technology, even while it negotiates about restraint in its use. The danger is compounded by the plausible deniability of those suspected of such actions and by the lack of international agreements for which there is no present system of enforcement.
WORLD ORDER IN OUR TIME? When the United States began to take up the torch of international leadership following World War II, it added a new dimension to the quest for world order. A nation founded explicitly on an idea of free and representative governance, it identified its own rise with the spread of liberty and democracy and credited those forces with an ability to achieve the just and lasting peace that has thus far eluded the world. The traditional European approach to order had viewed peoples and states as inherently competitive: to constrain the effects of their clashing ambitions, it relied on a balance of power and a concert of enlightened statesmen. The prevalent American view considered people inherently reasonable and inclined toward peaceful compromise, common sense, and fair dealing; the spread of democracy was therefore the overarching goal for international order. Free markets would uplift individuals, enrich societies, and substitute economic interdependence for traditional international rivalries.
Islam divided the world order into a world of peace, that of Islam, and a world of war, inhabited by unbelievers. 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. As these imbalances have grown, the structure of the 21st century world order has been revealed as lacking in three important dimensions.
First, the nature of the state itself – the basic formal unit of international life—has been subjected to a multitude of pressures.
Second, the political and the economic organizations of the world are at variance with each other. The international economic system has become global, while the political structure of the world has remained based on the nation-state.
Third is the absence of an effective mechanism for the great powers to consult and possibly cooperate on the most consequential issues. This may seem an odd criticism in light of the plethora of multilateral forums that exist. Yet the nature and frequency of these meetings work against elaboration of long-range strategy. Participant heads of state, by the nature of their positions, focus on the public impact of their actions at the meeting: they are tempted to emphasize the tactical implications or the public relations aspect. This process permits little beyond designing a formal communique – at best, a discussion of pending tactical issues, and, at worst, a new form of summitry as “social media” event. A contemporary structure of international rules and norms, if it is to prove relevant, cannot merely be affirmed by joint declarations; it must be fostered as a matter of common conviction.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? The contemporary quest for world order will require a coherent strategy to establish a concept within the various regions, and to relate these regional orders to one another. A world order of states affirming individual dignity and participatory governance, and cooperation internationally in accordance with agreed upon rules, can be our hope and should be our inspiration. But progress toward it will need to be sustained through a series of intermediary stages.
America – as the modern world’s decisive articulation of the human quest for freedom, and an indispensable geopolitical force for the vindication of humane values – must retain its sense of direction. 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 of nation. At this moment in history, this would be a modernization of the Westphalian system informed by contemporary realities.
Source: World Order by Henry Kissinger (2014)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
WORLD ORDER—EXCERPTS: SEGMENT 14
THE QUESTION OF WORLD ORDER:
In 1961, as a young academic, I called on President Harry S. Truman and asked what in his presidency had made him the proudest. 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.” All of Truman’s successors have followed some version of this narrative.
American presidents of both parties have continued to urge other governments, with great vehemence and eloquence, to embrace the preservation and enhancement of human rights. In many instances, the defense of these values by the U.S. and its allies has ushered in important changes in the human condition. Yet today this “rules-based” system faces challenges. Outside the Western world, regions that have played a minimal role in these rules’ original formulation 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 agreed to set of goals, methods, or limits.
Our age is insistently at times in pursuit of a concept of world order. Yet, no truly global “world order” has ever existed. What passes for order in our time was devised in Western Europe nearly four centuries ago, at a 1648 peace conference in the German region of Westphalia.
The Westphalian System: 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 were affirmed as the building block of European order. The concept of state sovereignty was established. The principles of a system of “international relations” were taking shape, motivated by the common desire to avoid a recurrence of total war on the Continent. 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. By the mid-20th century, this international system was in place on every continent; it remains the scaffolding of international order such as it now exists.
Yet Westphalian principles are being challenged on all sides, sometimes in the name of world order itself. Europe has set out to depart from the state system it designed and transcend it through a concept of pooled sovereignty. And ironically, though Europe invented the balance-of-power concept, it has consciously and severely limited the element of power in its new institutions. Having downgraded its military capacities, Europe has little scope to respond when universal norms are flouted.
In the Middle East, jihadists on both sides of the Sunni-Shia divide tear at societies and dismantle states in quest of visions of global revolution based on the fundamentalist version of their religion. The state itself – as well as the regional system based on it – is in jeopardy, assaulted by ideologies rejecting its constraints as illegitimate and by terrorist militias that, in several countries, are stronger than the armed forces of the government.
Asia, in some ways the most strikingly successful of the regions to adopt concepts of sovereign statehood, still recalls alternative concepts of order with nostalgia and churns with rivalries and historical claims of the kind that dashed Europe’s order a century ago. Nearly every country considers itself to be “rising,” driving disagreement to the edge of confrontation.
The United States has alternated between defending the Westphalian system and castigating its premises of balance of power and noninterference in domestic affairs as immoral and outmoded, and sometimes both at once. It continues to assert the universal relevance of its values in building a peaceful world order and reserves the right to support them globally. Yet after withdrawing from three wars in two generations—each begun with idealistic aspirations and widespread public support but ending in national trauma – America struggles to define the relationship between its power (still vast) and its principles.
All of the major centers of power practice elements of Westphalian order to some degree, but none considers itself the natural defender of the system. All are undergoing significant internal shifts. Can regions with such divergent cultures, histories, and traditional theories of order vindicate the legitimacy of any common system?
Success in such an effort will require an approach that respects both the multifariousness of the human condition and the ingrained human quest for freedom. Order in this sense must be cultivated; it cannot be imposed. This is particularly so in an age of instantaneous communication and revolutionary political flux. Any system of world order, to be sustainable, must be accepted as just – not only by leaders, but also by citizens. It must reflect two truths; order without freedom, even if sustained by momentary exaltation, eventually creates its own counterpoise; yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace. Order and freedom, sometimes described as opposite poles on the spectrum of experience, should instead be understood as independent. Can today’s leaders rise above the urgency of day-to-day events to achieve this balance?
Legitimacy and Power: Any one of these systems or order bases itself on two components: a set of commonly accepted rules that define the limits of permissible action and a balance of power that enforces restraint where rules break down, preventing one political unit from subjugating all others. A consensus on the legitimacy of existing arrangements does not – now or in the past – foreclose competitions or confrontations, but it helps ensure that they will occur as adjustments within the existing order rather than as fundamental changes to it. A balance of forces does not in itself secure peace, but if thoughtfully assembled and invoked, it can limit the scope and frequency of fundamental changes and curtail their chance of succeeding when they do occur.
The balance between legitimacy and power is extremely complex; the smaller the geographic area to which it applies and the more coherent the cultural convictions within it, the easier it is to distill a workable consensus. But in the modern world the need is for a global world order. An array of entities unrelated to each other by history or values (except at arm’s length) and defining themselves essentially by the limits of their capabilities, is likely to generate conflict, not order.
The mystery to be overcome is one all people share – how divergent historical experiences and values can be shaped into a common order.
THE FUTURE OF EUROPE:
The European Union diminishes its member states’ sovereignty and traditional government functions, such as control of their currency and borders. On the one hand, European politics remains primarily national, and in many countries, objections to EU policy have become the central domestic issue. The result is a hybrid, constitutionally something between a state and a confederation, operating through ministerial meetings and a common bureaucracy. But the EU struggles to resolve its internal tensions in the quest for the principles and goals by which it is guided. In the process, it pursues monetary union side by side with fiscal dispersion and bureaucracy at odds with democracy.
The United States has every reason from history and geopolitics to bolster the EU and prevent its drifting off into a geopolitical vacuum; the US, if separated from Europe in politics, economies, and defense, would become geopolitically an island off the shores of Eurasia, and Europe itself would turn into an appendage to the reaches of Asia and the Middle East.
THE MIDDLE EAST: A WORLD IN DISORDER:
Nowhere is the challenge of international order more complex – in terms of both organizing regional order and ensuring the compatibility of that order with peace and stability in the rest of the world. In our own time, the Middle East seems destined to experiment with all of its historical experiences simultaneously – empire, holy war, foreign domination, a sectarian war of all against all – before it arrives (if it ever does) at a settled concept of international order. Until it does so, the region will remain pulled alternately toward joining the world community and struggling against it.
ASIA:
After decades of war and revolutionary turmoil, Asia has transformed itself dramatically. The rise of the “Asian Tigers,” evident from 1970, involving Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand, brought prosperity and economic dynamism into view. Japan adopted democratic institutions and build an economy rivaling, and in some cases, surpassing those of Western nations. Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand brought prosperity and economic dynamism into view. Japan adopted democratic institutions and built and economy rivaling, and in some cases, surpassing those of Western nations. In 1979, China changed course and under Deng Xiaoping proclaimed a nonideological foreign policy and a policy of economic reforms that, continued and accelerated under his successors, have had a profound transformative effect on China and the world. As these changes unfolded, national-interest-based foreign policy premised on Westphalian principles seemed to have prevailed in Asia.
In Asia, almost every state is impelled by its own dynamism. Convinced that it is “rising,” it operates with the conviction that the world has yet to affirm its fully deserved role. The simultaneous pursuit of so many programs of national prestige building introduces a measure of volatility to the region order. With the evolution of modern technology, the major powers of Asia have armed themselves with far more destructive military arsenals than even the strongest 19th century European state possessed, compounding the risks of miscalculation. The organization of Asia is thus an inherent challenge for world order. Major countries’ perception and pursuit of their national interests, rather than the balance of power as a system, have shaped the mechanisms of order that have developed. Their test will be whether a transpacific partnership, proving a peaceful framework for the interplay of many established interests, will be possible.
India: Modern India conceived of its independence as a triumph not only of a nation but of universal moral principles. And like America’s Founding Fathers, India’s early leaders equated the national interest with moral rectitude. But India’s leaders have acted on Westphalian principles with respect to spreading their domestic institutions, with little interest in promoting democracy and human rights practices internationally. India was neutral and above power politics, as a matter of principle in the interest of world peace, but equally on the grounds of national interest.
China: Of all conceptions of world order in Asia, China operated the longest lasting, the most clearly defined, and the one furthest from Westphalian ideas. The United States and China are both indispensable pillars of world order. The two great societies of different cultures and different premises are both undergoing fundamental domestic adjustments; whether this translates into rivalry or into a new form of partnership will importantly shape prospects for 21st century order.
Potential tensions between an established and a rising power are not new. A Harvard study has shown that in fifteen cases in history where a rising and an established power interacted, ten ended in war. It is therefore not surprising that significant strategic thinkers on both sides invoke patterns of behavior and historical experience to predict the inevitability of conflict between the two societies. On the Chinese side, many American actions are interpreted as a design to thwart China’s rise, and the American promotion of human rights is seen as a project to undermine China’s domestic political structure. Some major figures describe America’s so-called pivot policy as the forerunner of an ultimate showdown designed to keep China permanently in a secondary position – an attitude all the more remarkable because it has not involved any significant military deployments. On the American side, the fear is growing China will systematically undermine American preeminence and thus American security. Significant groups view China, by analogy to the Soviet Union in the Cold War, as determined to achieve military as well as economic dominance in all surrounding regions and hence, ultimately hegemony.
Two other issues are contributing to tension in Sino-American relations. 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.
No formal compromise is possible between these views; to keep the disagreement from spiraling into conflict is one of the principal obligations of leaders of both sides. Any international order compromising both the United States and China must involve a balance of power, but the traditional management of the balance needs to be mitigated by agreement on norms and reinforced by elements of cooperation. Wise statesmanship must try to find that balance. For outside it, disaster beckons.
THE UNITED STATES:
No country has played such a decisive role in shaping contemporary world order as the United States, nor professed such ambivalence about participation in it. As America examines the lessons of its 21st century wars, it is important to remember that no other major power has brought to its strategic efforts such deeply felt aspirations for human betterment. There is a special character to a nation that proclaims as war aims not only to punish its enemies but to improve the lives of their people – that has sought victory not to dominate but in sharing the fruits of liberty. America would not be true to itself if it abandoned this essential idealism. Nor would it reassure friends (or win over adversaries) by setting aside such a core aspect of its national experience. The American domestic debate is frequently described as a contest between idealism and realism. It may turn out – for America and the rest of the world—that if America cannot act in both modes, it will not be able to fulfill either.
CONSIDERATIONS FOR MAINTAINING WORLD ORDER:
Nuclear Weapons: Over time, the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons will affect even the overall nuclear balance between the nuclear superpowers. Any further spread of nuclear weapons multiplies the possibilities of nuclear confrontation: it magnifies the danger of diversion, deliberate or unauthorized. It will eventually affect the balance between nuclear superpowers. And as the development of nuclear weapons spreads into Iran and continues in North Korea – in defiance of all ongoing negotiations – the incentive for other countries to follow the same path could become overwhelming. In the face of these trends, the United States needs to constantly review its own technology. It must remain at the frontier of nuclear technology, even while it negotiates about restraint in its use. The danger is compounded by the plausible deniability of those suspected of such actions and by the lack of international agreements for which there is no present system of enforcement.
WORLD ORDER IN OUR TIME? When the United States began to take up the torch of international leadership following World War II, it added a new dimension to the quest for world order. A nation founded explicitly on an idea of free and representative governance, it identified its own rise with the spread of liberty and democracy and credited those forces with an ability to achieve the just and lasting peace that has thus far eluded the world. The traditional European approach to order had viewed peoples and states as inherently competitive: to constrain the effects of their clashing ambitions, it relied on a balance of power and a concert of enlightened statesmen. The prevalent American view considered people inherently reasonable and inclined toward peaceful compromise, common sense, and fair dealing; the spread of democracy was therefore the overarching goal for international order. Free markets would uplift individuals, enrich societies, and substitute economic interdependence for traditional international rivalries.
Islam divided the world order into a world of peace, that of Islam, and a world of war, inhabited by unbelievers. 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. As these imbalances have grown, the structure of the 21st century world order has been revealed as lacking in three important dimensions.
First, the nature of the state itself – the basic formal unit of international life—has been subjected to a multitude of pressures.
Second, the political and the economic organizations of the world are at variance with each other. The international economic system has become global, while the political structure of the world has remained based on the nation-state.
Third is the absence of an effective mechanism for the great powers to consult and possibly cooperate on the most consequential issues. This may seem an odd criticism in light of the plethora of multilateral forums that exist. Yet the nature and frequency of these meetings work against elaboration of long-range strategy. Participant heads of state, by the nature of their positions, focus on the public impact of their actions at the meeting: they are tempted to emphasize the tactical implications or the public relations aspect. This process permits little beyond designing a formal communique – at best, a discussion of pending tactical issues, and, at worst, a new form of summitry as “social media” event. A contemporary structure of international rules and norms, if it is to prove relevant, cannot merely be affirmed by joint declarations; it must be fostered as a matter of common conviction.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? The contemporary quest for world order will require a coherent strategy to establish a concept within the various regions, and to relate these regional orders to one another. A world order of states affirming individual dignity and participatory governance, and cooperation internationally in accordance with agreed upon rules, can be our hope and should be our inspiration. But progress toward it will need to be sustained through a series of intermediary stages.
America – as the modern world’s decisive articulation of the human quest for freedom, and an indispensable geopolitical force for the vindication of humane values – must retain its sense of direction. 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 of nation. At this moment in history, this would be a modernization of the Westphalian system informed by contemporary realities.
Source: World Order by Henry Kissinger (2014)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| democracy_14l_world_order_--_segment_14.pdf |