THE ONCE AND FUTURE WORLD ORDER

The decline of the West? The end of the American century? Good thing, this sweeping history argues.

International relations professor Acharya offers a definition of “world order” that admits at the outset that there’s never really been any such thing: that is, a single entity governing the entire globe. Instead, there have been multiple world orders, usually imposed by an empire, sometimes by “a system of sovereign states.” The present world order, such as it is, is less dominated by empires than before, and if China and the U.S. harbor imperial ambitions, neither is likely to be the single dominant power of the future. This, Acharya argues, is a good thing, leaving room for “a confluence of civilizations, rather than a clash of civilizations.” Acharya builds his argument from antiquity to the present: He considers the Egyptian-dominated coalition of great powers in the Middle East of three dozen centuries ago, with Egypt first among equals, whereas the Sumerian and later Persian empires “developed an imperial world order through outright conquest and domination of its neighbors.” Fast-forward to nearer our own time, when European powers rushed to build colonial empires, many sustained by enslavement, all “the result of superior military technology, religious zeal, disease, and brutality.” Against these examples, Acharya argues that the future world order will include formerly colonized nations; in this regard, he notes that Nigeria is a net exporter of popular culture via its film industry, with other film centers in India and China now supplanting Hollywood in the world market. Just so, he adds, Italian food may be the most popular in the world, but it’s now followed by various Asian cuisines. That’s one form of world order, to be sure, and, Acharya observes approvingly, the West no longer has a lock on it.

A fresh look at world affairs that finds room for the Rest as well as the West.