World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History

“Any system of world order, to be sustainable, must be accepted as just—not only by leaders, but also by citizens. It must reflect two truths: order without freedom, even if sustained by momentary exaltation, eventually creates its own counterpoise; yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace. Order and freedom, sometimes described as opposite poles on the spectrum of experience, should instead be understood as interdependent.”

Here Kissinger emphasizes the importance of domestic and international politics as they pertain to the question of world order. Implicitly, this is an argument for democratic politics in which the ordinary people have a say in their government’s foreign policy and, indeed, endorse it. Should the opposite be the case, neither domestic nor international politics are sustainable in the long term, according to the author. 

“In a period of general upheaval, a country that maintains domestic authority is in a position to exploit chaos in neighboring states for larger international objectives.”

As a statesman and an academic, the author is known as a practitioner of a realist foreign policy. At times, this realism borders on Machiavellianism. Here Kissinger suggests using other countries’ domestic weaknesses to pursue one’s own national and international interests.

“The Peace of Westphalia became a turning point in the history of nations because the elements it set in place were as uncomplicated as they were sweeping. The state, not the empire, dynasty, or religious confession, was affirmed as the building block of European order.”

The author considers the Westphalian settlement to be revolutionary because it shifted its focus to the state as a political entity. This settlement was also important because its rules dictated procedure rather than substance, such as a ruling dynasty, which might change at any point.

“Revolutions erupt when a variety of often different resentments merge to assault an unsuspecting regime. The broader the revolutionary coalition, the greater its ability to destroy existing patterns of authority. But the more sweeping the change, the more violence is needed to reconstruct authority, without which society will disintegrate. Reigns of terror are not an accident; they are inherent in the scope of revolution.”

The author discusses the French Revolution and the subsequent reaction that involved terror. In other chapters, Kissinger reviews the 1917 Russian, 1949 Chinese, and 1979 Iranian revolutions. As was the case with the French Revolution, each case was followed by social restructuring and sometimes terror. The subject of revolutions is an undercurrent in this book because the drastic change in domestic order might lead to significant changes in international relations and the existent regional or even world order.

“Europe was coming to embrace its multipolarity as a mechanism tending toward balance, but Russia was learning its sense of geopolitics from the hard school of the steppe, where an array of nomadic hordes contended for resources on an open terrain with few fixed borders.”

Kissinger describes Russia as an “enigma”—an outlier located in both Europe and Asia and an heir of the Byzantine Empire. The author believes that the different formative experiences that Russia had and its geographic position might pose a challenge to a fruitful relationship with Europe.

“Not unlike the United States in its own drive westward, Russia had imbued its conquests with the moral justification that it was spreading order and enlightenment into heathen lands (with a lucrative trade in furs and minerals an incidental benefit). Yet where the American vision inspired boundless optimism, the Russian experience ultimately based itself on stoic endurance. Stranded “at the interface of two vast and irreconcilable worlds,” Russia saw itself as endowed with a special mission to bridge them but exposed on all sides to threatening forces that failed to comprehend its calling.”

Many historians have compared the American continental drive westward and the Russian eastward counterpart. Kissinger’s perception of Americans as “optimistic” and Russians as “stoic” appears to be reductionist. For example, the American continental expansion might have been optimistic and inspired by the supremacist Manifest Destiny, but in practical terms, this initiative led to negative consequences such as the Native American Trail of Tears. 

“Austria learned too late that in international affairs a reputation for reliability is a more important asset than demonstrations of tactical cleverness.”

Here, Kissinger describes a complex international situation that precipitated from the mid-19th-century Crimean War. During this war, Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire attacked Russia. Austria tried to use this war to its own advantage but ended up isolated. The author uses this scenario to underscore the value of being a dependable partner in the realm of diplomacy.

“World War I was welcomed by enthusiastic publics and euphoric leaders who envisioned a short, glorious war for limited aims. In the event, it killed more than twenty-five million and shipwrecked the prevailing international order.”

Kissinger discusses the collapse of the balance of power, established by the Europeans, in the case of World War I. This war devasted many countries, and three large empires—the Austrian, Ottoman, and Russian—collapsed in the process. The subsequent Treaty of Versailles (1919) was a failure and ultimately was one of the causes of World War II, according to Kissinger and many other historians.

“Islam’s rapid advance across three continents provided proof to the faithful of its divine mission. Impelled by the conviction that its spread would unite and bring peace to all humanity, Islam was at once a religion, a multiethnic superstate, and a new world order.”

Kissinger appears to be following the Huntington model of civilizations throughout this book. He describes the rise of Islam in the 7th century as a separate civilization and argues that this civilization and its world order—a blend of the religious and the political—were unlike anything seen before.

“Cold War–era relations between the Islamic and the non-Islamic worlds, on the whole, followed this essentially Westphalian, balance-of-power-based approach. Egypt, Syria, Algeria, and Iraq generally supported Soviet policies and followed the Soviet lead. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Morocco were friendly to the United States and were relying on U.S. support for their security.

Kissinger points out that the historic developments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are incredibly complex. They were subject to internal issues, religious sectarianism, as well as foreign colonial influence. After the colonial Europeans reshaped the region in the wake of WWI, the MENA was essentially at an equilibrium during the Cold War divided between the Soviet and American blocs. Kissinger compares this division to the Westphalian balance of power.

“This experience raises the issue of humanitarian foreign policy. It distinguishes itself from traditional foreign policy by criticizing national interest or balance-of-power concepts as lacking a moral dimension. It justifies itself not by overcoming a strategic threat but by removing conditions deemed a violation of universal principles of justice.”

The tension between morality, such as the American idea of justice and human rights, and realist, practical concepts of foreign policy is one of the key themes in Kissinger’s book. This moralizing aspect is also unique to American and American-imposed foreign policy. The author repeatedly highlighted the fact that the traditional European balance-of-power relations were devoid of morality. In the 21st century, American hegemony in Europe is, in part, responsible for the Europeans adopting similar thinking.

“Yet as the birthplace of Islam and protector of Islam’s holiest places, Saudi Arabia cannot afford deviation from Islamic orthodoxy. It has attempted to co-opt radically resurgent Islamist universalism by a tenuous amalgam of modern statehood and Westphalian international relations grafted onto the practice of Wahhabism, perhaps the most fundamentalist version of the faith, and of subsidizing it internationally.”

According to Kissinger, Saudi Arabia is the most paradoxical ally of the United States in the MENA region. As a theocratic monarchy that practices beheadings as a form of punishment and supports the most fundamentalist version of Islam, it is as far from the type of values of universal human rights that the United States attempts to project around the world. This type of relationship displays the limits of a moralizing-messianic foreign policy when encountering the realities of a region.

“The doctrine that took root in Iran under Khomeini was unlike anything that had been practiced in the West since the religious wars of the pre-Westphalian era. It conceived of the state not as a legitimate entity in its own right but as a weapon of convenience in a broader religious struggle.”

The author analyzes the major change that occurred in the Middle East with the 1979 revolution in Iran. The exiled Ayatollah Khomeini replaced the Shah as the leader of that country, as Iran transformed from a West-facing, secular state to the Islamic Republic. Khomeini perceived the state instrumentally to be used for greater religious goals.

“The West expanded with the familiar hallmarks of colonialism—avariciousness, cultural chauvinism, lust for glory.”

The subject of European colonialism is not the focal point of this text. However, Kissinger brings it up periodically whenever historical grievances or different value systems are relevant to covering foreign policy and international relations.

“Japan had ‘arrived’ as the first non-Western great power in the contemporary age, accepted as a military, economic, and diplomatic equal by the countries that had heretofore shaped the international order. There was one important difference: on the Japanese side, the alliances with Western countries were not based on common strategic objectives but to expel its European allies from Asia.”

Kissinger points out that Japan’s geographic location as a set of islands off the coast of Asia allowed it to practice an isolationist foreign policy for centuries and simply avoid participation in the world order. Yet when Japan opened up to the world in the mid-19th century, it underwent rapid modernization and joined the great European powers on an equal basis. However, Japan had ulterior motives of removing its European colonial competitors from the region and colonizing it. Japan did just that between the late 1920s and 1945.

“Traditionally, China sought to dominate psychologically by its achievements and its conduct—interspersed with occasional military excursions to teach recalcitrant barbarians a “lesson” and to induce respect. Both these strategic goals and this fundamentally psychological approach to armed conflict were in evidence as recently as China’s wars with India in 1962 and Vietnam in 1979, as well as in the manner in which core interests vis-à-vis other neighbors are affirmed.”

Kissinger dedicates a separate chapter to China as a major geopolitical player. He believes that certain general trends in Chinese foreign policy have remained consistent for hundreds of years into the present. These trends include the combination of impressing others with one’s accomplishments and using the military where necessary.

“Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force, and legitimacy. In Asia, it must combine a balance of power with a concept of partnership. A purely military definition of the balance will shade into confrontation. A purely psychological approach to partnership will raise fears of hegemony. Wise statesmanship must try to find that balance. For outside it, disaster beckons.”

Kissinger acknowledges that the inexorable rise of China will reshape the region and international relations at large. He believes that the upcoming changes to the global order, in which the Chinese will also be setting the rules, must focus on partnerships and cooperation. This type of cooperation is multidimensional rather than being reduced to the display or use of force.

“On the journey toward that vision, America began to encounter other historic views of world order. New nations with different histories and cultures appeared on the scene as colonialism ended. The nature of Communism became more complex and its impact more ambiguous. Governments and armed doctrines rejecting American concepts of domestic and international order mounted tenacious challenges. Limits to American capabilities, however vast, became apparent. Priorities needed to be set.”

The author describes the United States in its superpower status in the wake of World War II. This status came with the self-perception of being exceptional, morally superior, and having the ability and the right to impose its set of values onto the rest of the world. At the same time, during the Cold War period, America encountered challenges to its imperial vision when it encountered emergent post-colonial states and the different versions of Communism, each of which had its own set of values and a vision of regional and global order.

“An improved relationship with China would gradually isolate the Soviet Union or impel it to seek better relations with the United States. As long as the United States took care to remain closer to each of the Communist superpowers than they were to each other, the specter of the Sino-Soviet cooperative quest for world hegemony that had haunted American foreign policy for two decades would be stifled. (In time, the Soviet Union found itself unable to sustain this insoluble, largely self-created dilemma of facing adversaries in both Europe and Asia, including within its own ostensible ideological camp.”

This event is the result of Kissinger’s personal contribution to establishing a better relationship with China as a result of his secret trip in 1971. The goal of rapprochement with the Chinese was to splinter the Communist bloc and exploit its weaknesses further beyond the existent Sino-Soviet split to amplify the American position.

“Given the ethnic divisions in Iraq and the millennial conflict between Sunni and Shia, the dividing line of which ran through the center of Baghdad, the attempt to reverse historical legacies under combat conditions, amidst divisive American domestic debates, imbued the American endeavor in Iraq with a Sisyphean quality.”

The author analyzes the recent American wars, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This war was launched, in part, under a false pretext of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, George W. Bush envisioned it within the slippery slope of his global war on terror and set grand nation-building goals. As a result, Kissinger considers this endeavor doomed to fail.

“It was in the conduct of its ‘hot’ wars that America found it difficult to relate purpose to possibility. In only one of the five wars America fought after World War II (Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War, Iraq, and Afghanistan), the first Gulf War under President George H. W. Bush, did America achieve the goals it had put forward for entering it without intense domestic division.”

The author compares America’s successes in the international arena in such areas as economics with the failures of its traditional military engagements. Only the 1991 Gulf War was limited enough to meet the set goals. America lost the other wars for different reasons, including the grandiosity of its nation-building pursuits, a committed insurgency, difficult geography as was the case in Afghanistan, and domestic opposition.

“The nuclear balance has produced a paradoxical impact on the international order. The historic balance of power had facilitated the Western domination of the then-colonial world; by contrast, the nuclear order—the West’s own creation—had the opposite effect.”

Kissinger discusses the double-edged sword of science and technology, which delivers both innovation and destruction. He points out the surprising effect that the development of nuclear weapons had on international relations. Prior to the nuclear age, the West dominated the Global South in an oppressive manner. Yet after the invention of nuclear weapons, the much stronger United States unilaterally pulled out of every conflict, except Korea, with weaker powers, including Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

“To strike a balance between the two aspects of order—power and legitimacy—is the essence of statesmanship.”

Throughout World Order, Kissinger attempts to distill complex ideas into simple formulas. He underscores the importance of two factors for a well-functioning state: its power—and its ability to wield it—and its legitimacy domestically and abroad.