“IN our time... power is in unprecedented flux, while claims to legitimacy every decade multiply their scope in hitherto-inconceivable ways. When weapons have become capable of obliterating civilization and the interactions between value systems are rendered instantaneous and unprecedentedly intrusive, the established calculations for maintaining the balance of power or a community of values may become obsolete.”

Such is Mr. Kissinger’s central thesis throughout the book, “World Order,” an insightful reflection on the evolution of international relations over the past four centuries. His views merit attention, for he was influential in shaping United States foreign policy as secretary of state for Presidents Nixon and Ford. He also played a key role in Nixon’s welcome decision to normalize relationships with China in the early 1970s.

In the first portion of the book, he traces the recurrent problems Europe had in sustaining peace between and among its many, oft-warring, nation-states. He identifies the “Peace of Westphalia,” emerging from a series of talks between rival Catholic and Protestant states in 1648, as the first significant attempt at establishing a “balance of power” system designed to preserve peace through a process of ever-shifting alliances intended to prevent any one state’s possession of a major advantage over others.

This was a significant innovation, as it forged a common interest among states that had many differing national interests and embraced various religious beliefs. They subordinated issues that had previously caused inter-state hostility to the achievement of a greater good: peace for all of their societies through stability.

Spiraling out of control

While this resulted in longer inter-war periods, it was not able to prevent an unanticipated event from spiraling out of control, such as the chaos of the French Revolution from which Napoleon, with his imperial ambitions, emerged. Nor could it nimbly offset the decision by a state leader to challenge the existing balance of power, as Germany’s Kaiser did prior to World War I through a rapid buildup of German dreadnaughts that Britain saw as a threat to her naval power.

Kissinger notes that the Versailles peace treaty concluding World War I ignored earlier international peace conference decisions to retain defeated states within the community of nations as equals. Whereas the Peace of Westphalia accepted the fact that differences in religious beliefs between states was the new “normal,” and the Congress of Vienna after the defeat of Napoleon invited France to resume its role in again working with other powers to ensure a sustained peace, the Versailles Conference imposed extremely dire economic and political terms on defeated Germany.

Although he applauds the concept of the League of Nations as an advanced form of the balance of power system, Kissinger observes that its intended role was undermined from the outset by Allies’ determination to keep Germany “down,” and was further weakened by the refusal of the US Senate to allow American membership in the organization (a mistake the US did not repeat after World War II).

Erroneous assumption

Further, he notes a critical weakness in both the League’s structure and that of the later United Nations — the erroneous assumption that member states’ willingness to work together to avoid future conflict also implied that they possessed equal determination to participate militarily to preserve the peace. In less than a dozen years after its creation, in fact, the League revealed its essential powerlessness by its inability to marshal resistance in response to increasingly aggressive moves in the 1930s by Japan in China, Italy in Ethiopia, and Germany in Czechoslovakia.

In the second portion of his book, Kissinger discusses how this evolving, primarily Western concept of world order does not easily “compute” with other cultures. In exploring the many complications that result, he relates alternative views of “right order” existing in Islam and the Middle East, including Iraq and Iran, as well as the complexity of competing understandings in India, China, and southeast Asia.

For radical Muslims, for instance, the only just and correct order is one in which Islam reigns supreme throughout the world; their theocentric model is held to be purer than Western conceptions of statehood and the “rights of nations.” On the other hand, many wary Asian states view the Western model as the same form of international “order” that brought imperialism to their peoples, often backed by the use of force.

Destabilizing forces

The most significant current destabilizing forces include not only the savagery of terrorists, but also the fact that the European Economic Union has not found a way to enhance political legitimacy towards a more united Europe, despite its tremendous social and economic accomplishments over the past half-century.

Kissinger also notes that not long ago diplomats had more time to ponder options. Although public opinion began to influence diplomatic decisions significantly in the latter part of the 19th century, today’s web-linked world quickly makes once-isolated events widely known, often creating escalating public demands for action.

This places incredible pressures upon leaders to react “now,” before they have taken the necessary steps to weed out emotions, think things through, and intelligently assess both short- and long-term implications.

Kissinger cautions that a jumble of data, amid the seeming urgency to respond quickly, does not constitute “knowledge” and, if precipitously acted upon, has little to do with wisdom, either.

He summarizes his concerns about where all of this may lead this way:

“The nature of the state itself... has been subjected to a multitude of pressures: attacked and dismantled by design, in some regions corroded from neglect, often submerged by the sheer rush of events.” Examples include: a) collective Europe’s non-state status, and consequent lack of legitimacy in the eyes of many; b) national borders in portions of Europe and the Middle East, cobbled together as a result of the 20th century’s world wars, that — by both dividing and merging ethnic groupings — sowed the seeds of future struggles; and c) the existence of many so-called “failed states” that have “no monopoly on the use of force or effective central authority.”

“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 ... [with] contrasting ideas of world order and the reconciliation of concepts of national interest.”

Reconstruction of world order

Kissinger also laments “the absence of an effective mechanism for the great powers to consult and possibly cooperate on the most consequential issues.” Multiple conversations are occurring, but there is little evidence of integrated long-range planning or the creation of information systems that would communicate to the world’s citizens the concerns, priorities and cooperative actions of their leadership.

Therefore, “a reconstruction of the international system is the ultimate challenge to statesmanship in our time. ... The contemporary quest for world order will require a coherent strategy to establish a concept of order within the various regions, and to relate these regional orders to one another.”

It is in this context that he stresses how vital it is that China and the United States continue the difficult but necessary process of clarifying expectations, reinforcing respect and consultation, and finding ever-greater ways of working together to address the overarching needs of the world today.

The greatest challenges facing us — including the fury of terrorists, coping with the multiple threats of global warming, and the ongoing danger of nuclear weapons — are clearly beyond the ability of any single nation to meaningfully influence, let alone control.

If we fail to establish a flexible, responsive and respectful global alliance based upon overriding mutual interests, our future, and that we bequeath to our children, threatens to be a dark one, indeed.

The author has been a college teacher of American history and political science and director of the US National Catholic Rural Life Conference; he served as a member of the Iowa State House of Representatives and retired from public service in the Iowa executive branch in 2004.