Libya is in civil war, fundamentalist armies
are building a self-declared caliphate across Syria and Iraq and
Afghanistan's young democracy is on the verge of paralysis. To these
troubles are added a resurgence of tensions with Russia and a
relationship with China divided between pledges of cooperation and
public recrimination. The concept of order that has underpinned the
modern era is in crisis.
The search for
world order has long been defined almost exclusively by the concepts of
Western societies. In the decades following World War II, the
U.S.—strengthened in its economy and national confidence—began to take
up the torch of international leadership and added a new dimension. A
nation founded explicitly on an idea of free and representative
governance, the U.S. identified its own rise with the spread of liberty
and democracy and credited these forces with an ability to achieve just
and lasting peace. The traditional European approach to order had viewed
peoples and states as inherently competitive; to constrain the effects
of their clashing ambitions, it relied on a balance of power and a
concert of enlightened statesmen. The prevalent American view considered
people inherently reasonable and inclined toward peaceful compromise
and common sense; the spread of democracy was therefore the overarching
goal for international order. Free markets would uplift individuals,
enrich societies and substitute economic interdependence for traditional
international rivalries.
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