Henry Kissinger

The former Secretary of State and national security adviser provides a deep meditation on the roots of international harmony and global disorder.

World Order

Danté

Excellent synopsis of the attitudes of the world's major nations towards world order and the concept of geopolitical "balance of power". 

Some elements were lacking, such as a failure to properly address the equalizing effect of technology for emerging nations. Africa and Australia were barely mentioned, which might be a reflection of the author's dismissal of their role on the world stage. The relationship between the individual and the state was also somewhat shallow, in comparison with a book such as The Sovereign Individual. 

Having said that, I certainly learned a few things about history and the stance of India and China on territorial power.

Dana Kraft

This felt like the textbook from a course on modern world history in that is was long and only interesting at a high level. The concept that there are different concepts of what the term 'world order' actually means is interesting to me and I learned how that term might mean something different to someone from the Middle East or East Asia than it means to me. I'm not sure how to really apply that, but knowing it is interesting. 

I made one critical mistake in reading this, though. I have a bad habit when I read a book written by a well known person of reading it in my head in the specific voice of the author. That worked well with Ralph Stanley's autobiography, but Henry Kissinger's voice in my head talking about geopolitical history for 300+ pages was like taking an Ambien. Do not try that at home!

Favorite quotes:
"If order cannot be achieved by concensus or imposed by force, it will be wrought, at disastrous and dehumanizing cost, from the experience of cost." This is pretty obvious, but well said.

Quoting Bismarck from the 1800s - "We live in a wondrous time, in which the strong is weak because of his scruples, and the weak grows strong because of his audacity."

Quoting Nixon - "You pay the same price for doing something halfway as for doing it completely. So you might as well do it completely."

His discussion of the internet describes the volume and availability of information as possibly making leaders use an approach where "...manipulation of information replaces reflection as the principal policy tool."

Ostap Gorin

Henry Kissinger offers in World Order a meditation on the roots of international harmony and global disorder. There has never been a true "world order," Kissinger observes. For most of history, civilizations defined their own concepts of order. Each considered itself the center of the world and envisioned its distinct principles as universally relevant. China conceived of a global cultural hierarchy with the Emperor at its pinnacle. 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. Islam, in its early centuries, considered itself the world's sole legitimate political unit, destined to expand indefinitely until the world was brought into harmony by religious principles. The United States was born of a conviction about the universal applicability of democracy -- a conviction that has guided its policies ever since. Now international affairs take place on a global basis, and these historical concepts of world order are meeting. Every region participates in questions of high policy in every other, often instantaneously. Yet there is no consensus among the major actors about the rules and limits guiding this process, or its ultimate destination. The result is mounting tension. Grounded in Kissinger's study of history and his experience as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, World Order guides readers through crucial episodes in recent world history. Kissinger offers a glimpse into the inner deliberations of the Nixon administration's negotiations with Hanoi over the end of the Vietnam War, as well as Ronald Reagan's tense debates with Soviet Premier Gorbachev in Reykjavík. He offers insights into the future of U.S.-China relations and the evolution of the European Union, and examines lessons of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Taking readers from his analysis of nuclear negotiations with Iran through the West's response to the Arab Spring and tensions with Russia over Ukraine, World Order anchors Kissinger's historical analysis in the decisive events of our time.

World Order

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