![]() Every region participates in questions of high policy in every other, often instantaneously. Now international affairs take place on a global basis, and these historic concepts of world order are meeting. The United States was born of a conviction about the universal applicability of democratic principles-a conviction that has guided its policies ever since. Islam considered itself the world’s sole legitimate political unit, destined to expand indefinitely until the world was brought into harmony by Muslim principles. In Europe, Rome imagined itself surrounded by barbarians when Rome fragmented, European peoples refined a concept of an equilibrium of sovereign states and sought to export it across the world. China conceived of a global cultural hierarchy with the Emperor at its pinnacle. Each considered itself the center of the world, and envisioned its distinct principles as universally relevant. For most of history, civilizations defined their own concepts of order. There has never been a true “world order,” Kissinger observes. ![]() ![]() Now he offers his analysis of the twenty first century’s ultimate challenge: how to build a shared international order in a world of divergent historic perspectives, violent conflict, proliferating technology, and ideological extremism. ![]() Henry Kissinger has traveled the world, advised presidents, and been a close observer and participant in the central foreign policy events of our era. A deep meditation on the roots of international harmony and global disorder ![]()
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