The Crisis of World Order: An Analysis of Henry Kissinger's Last Work
Key Concepts: World Order, Westphalian System, Balance of Power, National Interest, Multipolarity, Chinese World Order, Islamic World Order, American Ambivalence.
What is World Order?
World order is defined as the vision or worldview that a country or group of countries has regarding how the planet is and how it should function. Different countries have different visions, making the concept of order different for the U.S. than for Iran. The current prevailing world order is a system of rules that regulates the interaction of countries in the international network. This system is based on the role of nation-states that relate cooperatively, guided by international law, promoting democratic political systems and liberal economic systems. However, not everyone agrees with these rules, leading to significant challenges to the current system.
The Westphalian System
Four centuries ago, in 1648, the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War in Europe. This peace established the conditions for the modern world: a multiplicity of political units, none powerful enough to overthrow all the others. The Peace of Westphalia was based on a system of independent states that pledged not to interfere in the internal affairs of other states while mutually controlling their expansionist ambitions through a general balance of power. These diplomats unknowingly laid the foundations for a model that could be applied worldwide. The Westphalian model faced challenges like the French Revolution, World War I, Nazi Germany, and the Marxist order of the Soviet Union. After the Cold War, this mental order was exported from Europe to the entire world, with the principles of Westphalia becoming the pillars of the current world order.
The Rise of Multipolarity and the European Union
The world has taken on a multipolar form. Europe is no longer a group of independent states but acts as a unit in the international context. The European Union has become another player in a now global version of the Westphalian system. However, events like Brexit and the rise of the far right are causing Europe, the creator of the system, to retreat upon itself, distancing itself from the system of states it designed.
Russia's Vision of World Order
While Russia has participated in relevant European affairs, Kissinger analyzes it separately because Russia has its own notion of world order. According to Kissinger, it is completely opposed to Westphalian balance principles. Russian principles are mainly based on two pillars: an absolute monarch who centralizes all power in his person, as seen with the great tsars and today with President Vladimir Putin; and second, a unified religious orthodoxy. These are the pillars upon which the Russian mission sits, which is to implement a program of territorial expansion in all possible directions.
Asia's Lack of Unified Order
Asia is a very diverse region with great differences, including industrialized and technologically advanced countries like Japan, Korea, and Singapore; three countries of continental dimension: China, India, and Russia; two large archipelagos: the Philippines and Indonesia; three ancient nations: Thailand, Vietnam, and Burma; immense Australia and New Zealand with populations of European descent; a militarily aggressive dictatorship: North Korea; and a large Muslim population in central Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia. There is no Asian world order. Asian institutions are amorphous, lacking a system of stable rules and norms. Geography plays against it, separating more than uniting, so Asia has advanced separately in its history. Asian nation-states are growing, but they have great rivalries, history, and attitudes that bring agreements to the brink of confrontation. The established orders are not based on the premises of Westphalia, and Asia as a whole cannot agree on a consensus of a world order for this 21st century. Kissinger warns that continuing down this path, all countries would be drawn into a confrontation.
China's Historical Perspective
Kissinger dedicated an entire chapter to China. The Asian giant has had the most lasting but also the most distant concept of the principles of the Westphalian world order. Historically, it considered itself the only sovereign government in the world. The emperor had cosmic dimensions and was seen as the link between the human and the divine, who dominated everything under the sky, with China being the central, civilized part that inspired the rest of humanity, who are seen as barbarians. Its concept of order is hierarchical, which is why it collides with the European balance of power world order. China's rise as a power in this 21st century is not seen as something new according to the Chinese idea itself, but that China historically was the power of the world, which may be interrupted by some years of European supremacy. China has not forgotten that it was initially forced to accept the existing international order in a way that was absolutely contrary to the historical image it always had of itself and has not participated in the creation of the rules of the system of which it is a part. It has no option but to assume rules that it did not help create. Thus, China and its character as a power will create new rules or even revise the current system.
The Islamic World Order
Kissinger's vision is critical of the Islamic world, seemingly encompassing the entire Islamic world in a terrorist cell. Radical Islam, from its birth, is perceived as a holy war through which the world will only know peace when Islam encompasses everything completely and there are no more infidels on the planet. Islam is simultaneously a religion, a superstate, and a new world order. This order depends on the capacity to forge and expand a unitary global Islamic entity, not on the balance between peers or rivals. This thinking represented an almost total inversion of the Westphalian international order. The state cannot be the starting point of an Islamic international system because states are secular and therefore, according to their vision, illegitimate. The Middle East is simultaneously experiencing all its historical experiences: empires, holy wars, foreign domination, sectarian war of all against all, before reaching a defined and regional concept of international order. Until it achieves this, the region will continue to be pulled by two alternatives: joining the world community or fighting against it.
The Absence of Africa and Latin America
Kissinger does not comment on Africa and Latin America in his work.
The Ambivalence of the United States
The United States is an ambivalent power, having historically defended and implemented two different conceptions of world order. On one hand, the U.S. has its own vision of the world, based on democratic principles, freedom, and the self-determination of peoples. According to its conception, when the whole world adopts these principles, the world will attend full peace and balance. These principles diverge from the non-intervention in internal affairs and the balance of power of Westphalia, but over time the U.S. would become an indispensable defender of the order created by Europe. The U.S. has oscillated between defending the Westphalian balance of power system and criticizing it as obsolete and immoral, sometimes doing both simultaneously. It continues to affirm the universal relevance of its own values, the creation of a peaceful world order, and reserves the right to defend them globally. According to the author, the U.S. positions ambivalence between force and diplomacy, realism, idealism, power, and legitimacy. Thus, in the different administrations, its role in foreign policy has varied. When necessary, it is based on the balance of power; on the other hand, when it was opportune, it raised the banner of idealism, which allowed it to leave home to defend freedom and democracy in any corner of the planet. The internal American debate is usually described as a dispute between liberalism. If the U.S. cannot act in both senses, according to Kissinger, it will not be able to fulfill the American purposes of the world or any of them.
Conclusion
Today, there is a world of increasingly contradictory and conflicting worldviews and realities. The different conceptions of world orders are heading towards imminent conflict. The reconstruction of the international order is the ultimate challenge for the statesmen of this 21st century and, according to the author, for the United States of America, who must redefine in which direction they will seek to go to impose an order to their measure that thus brings, according to him, peace to the world. Kissinger not only justifies but promotes the intervention of the U.S. in the gestation of the next order. Following his line of thought, a direct, absolute, and devastating confrontation would be unleashed from Westphalia while different world order worldviews.
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