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    Kissinger World Order

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    Himanshu Mishra

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Kissinger World Order

    Uploaded by

    Himanshu Mishra
    130 views12 pages

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    Kissinger_World_Order

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    Kissinger World Order

    Uploaded by

    Himanshu Mishra

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    World Order Henry k Kissinger PENGUIN PRESS Pb bythe Reguin Gioap ‘eagbin Group (USA) LL 575 Haden Scant, [New Yo, New Yor 01 9 USA. Cana» UIC -fand = Austin ‘Now Zealand fais = Seth fics" China A Penguin Rand Henee Company Pst plik by Pega Pres ‘member of Pengin Grp (USA) LL. 2018 Copysghe © 201 by Henry A. Kisinge Ponguin sippors copyright. Coprigh Fel reat roo fies ech and restr a ivan ele. Thos ‘ton ofthis bk a or comping eth copys laws by net epodcog mrran ot dsbsing any prof tin any br widen pines Sousa cre ‘and lowing Penguin tceminuc opi ns freer een courage dvase ois, you fr buyngan authored ISBN STE S9RDH-6 Printed inthe Unie Sate of Ameria vss7e be 42 INTRODUCTION The Question of World Order le 196t, as a young academic, I called on President Harry 8. Tru man 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 victo- ies 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 in- exorably expanding cooperative order of states observing common rules and norms, embracing liberal economic systems, forswearing ter- ritorial conquest, respecting national sovereignty, and adopting par- ticipatory 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 2 | World Order 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 sys- tem 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 threatensside 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 comprchension. New methods of accessing and communicating information unite re- gions as never before and project events globally—but in a manner that inhibits reflection, demanding of leaders that they register instan- taneous reactions in a form expressible in slogans. Are we facing a period in which forces beyond the restraints of any order determine the future? Varieties of World Order No truly global “world order” has ever existed. What passes for order in our time was devised in Western Europe neatly four centuries 20, at @ peace conference in the ct 4 | World Order: the modern sensibility: it reserved judgment on the absolute in favor of the practical and ecumenical; ie sought to distil order from ‘multiplic- ity and restraint. Russa, which was then reconsolidating its own order after the night “Time of Troubles’ by enshrining principles distinctly at odds with Westphalian balance: a single absolute rule, a unified religious orthodoxy, and a program of territorial expansion in all directions. Nor did the other major power centers regard the ‘Westphalian settle- iment eo che extent they learned of tat all) as relevant to theit own regions. ‘The idea of world order was applied to the geographic extent Known to the statesmen of the time—a pattern repeated in ether re Bions. This was largely because the then prevailing technology did not SPeoUTaE OF even permit the operation ofa single global sytem, With no means of interacting with each other on a sustained basis and no framework for measuring the power of one region against another, gach region viewed its own order as unique and defined the othere as “barbarians'—governed in a manner incomprehensible to the estab tn and irrelevant to its designs except asa threat. Fach de- fined itself as a template for the legitimate organization of all humanity, imagining that in governing. what lay before it, it was ordering the world. Place when the Roman Empire governed Europe as a uunity—basing, itself not on the sovereign equality of starcs but fon the presumed boundlessness of the Emperor's reach. In this concept, sovereignty in ‘he Buropean sense did not exis, because the Emperor held sway over The Question of World Order | 5 “All Under Heaven.” He was the pinnacle of a political and cultural hierarchy, distinct and universal, radiating from the center of the world in the Chinese capital outward to all the rest of humankind. The latter were classified as various degrees of barbarians depending in part on their mastery of Chinese writing and cultural institutions « cosmography that endured well into the modern era). China, in this view, would order the world primarily by awing other socicties with its cultural magnificence and economic bounty, drawing them into ‘elationships that could be managed to produce the aim of “harmony under heaven.” In much of the region between Europe and China, Islam’s different universal concept of world order held sway, with its own vision of a single divinely sanctioned governance uniting and pacifying the world. In the seventh century, Islam had launched itself across three conti- nents in an unprecedented wave of religious exaltation and imperial expansion. After unifying the Arab world, taking over remnants of the Roman Empire, and subsuming the Persian Empire, Islam came to govern the Middle East, North Africa, large swaths of Asia, and portions of Europe. [ts version of universal order considered Islam des- tined to expand over the “realm of war,” as it called all regions popu- lated by unbelievers, until the whole world was a unitary system brought into harmony by the message of the Prophet Muhammad. As Europe built its mukistate order, the Turkish-based Ottoman Empire revived this claim to a single legitimate governance and spread its su- premacy through the Arab heartland, the Mediterranean, the Bal- ans, and Eastern Europe. It was aware of Europe's nascent interstate order; it considered it not a model but a source of division to be ex: ploited for westward Otoman expansion, As Sultan Mchmed the Conqueror admonished the Italian city-states practicing an early ver- sion of multipolarity in the fifteenth century, “You are 20 states... you are in disagreement among yourselves . .. There must be only one empire, one faith, and one sovereignty in the world.” 6 | World Order Meanwhile, across the Atlantic the foundations of a distinet vision of world order were being lad in the “New World” As Europe's Scventeenth-century politcal and sectarian conflics raged, Puriten settlers had set out to redeem God's plan with an “errand in the wil. clerness” that would free them from adherence to established (and in their view corrupted) structures of authority. There they would build, 88 Governor John Winthrop preached in 1630 aboard a ship bound for the Massachusetts setlement, a “city upon a hill” inspiring the world through the justness ofits principles and the power of i example, 4m the American view of world order, peace and balance would occur naturally, and ancient cnmites would be set aside—onec other nations Weis given the same principled say in their own governance that Americans had in theirs. The task of foreign Policy was thus not so ‘much the pursuit ofa specifically American interest asthe cultivation of shared principles. In time, the United States would become the in- dispensable defender of the order Europe designed. Yet even as the United States lent its weight co the effort, an ambivalence ‘endured— for the American vision rested not on an embrace of the European balance-oF power system but on the achievement of peace through the spread of democratic principles, Of all these concepts of order, Westphalian Principles are, at this batting, the sole generally recognized basis of what exists of « world order. The Westphalian system sprcad around the world as the frame- work for a state-based international order spanning multiple civiliza- fons and regions because, as the European nations expanded, they ‘carried the blueprine of their international order with them While they often neglected to apply concepts of sovereignty to the colonies and colonized peoples, when these peoples began to demand their in- dependence, they did so in the name of Westphalian concepts. ‘The Principles of national independence, sovereign statehood, national ine ‘rest and noninterference proved effective arguments against the The Question of World Order | 7 SStonizerschemselves during the struggles for independence and pro- ‘on for their newly formed states afterward, The contemporary, now global Westphalian systcm—what colo-

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