World Order By Chapter Summary A. Kissinger

During the 1970s, the world was full of conflicts between western democracy and the emerging communism, collectively known as the cold war. And amidst the political storm rose Henry A. Kissinger, a political scientist and the US Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977. Kissinger won a Nobel Prize for his efforts in ending the Vietnam War and helped push relationships with communist superpowers like the Soviet Union and emerging China.[1]

In 2014, Kissinger wrote World Order, a book that describes how international order has been achieved in the past and what steps the world should take to finally have a unified world. Kissinger believes that there are four main world orders: Westphalian peace, Islamic extremism, Sinocentrism, and US idealism.
Each order derives power from common cultural systems. The Sinocentrism order accepted those who spoke Mandarin, using an understanding of language as showing respect to the Chinese culture, warranting respect in return. In Islamic extremism, religion is the defining factor in one’s character and connects people around the globe. People who do not align themselves with Islam are seen as enemies, even if they have no harmful intentions. The Westphalian peace sees culture as identifying with the nation-state you are from. We see this in global events like the FIFA world cup where complete strangers support each other based on the colors and flags they wear. And finally, the US idealism order is very similar to Manfred Steger’s “g-local” ideals. Modern democracy balances pride in one’s own culture and the world as a whole. The old form of nationalism and pride in one’s country has adapted to globalism and pride in the world as a
Which of the four orders has the best approach to this? In the case of Sinocentrism, an emperor of the world could force major improvements in ecological preservation, however, nothing would prevent corruption of power and could lead to pollution and destruction of land. The Westphalian peace order would also have a hard time to create marginal positive changes due to a divided world and the tragedy of the commons. This is the current state of world with nations like Austria and China working to reduce emissions while nations like the US and the UK creating unsustainable and massive amounts of pollution. The Islamic extremism order would be interesting because the Islamic religion preaches that humanity, “should seek to protect and preserve the environment because by so doing the protect Allah,” and his creations.[2] This prevents corruption in government and could actually unify the world and reduce devastating changes to the environment. Finally, we see that in the best case of US idealism can the world achieve Roy Scranton’s Mitigation response to climate change. The unified world could enforce regulation on resource use and begin actual positive change. The main issue with this order is that without 100 percent commitment from all parties, nothing will get done. This ties back into the issues of the Westphalian peace because replacing this order with