Thibault Serlet
  • Home
  • Book Reviews
  • Contact

Articles

​

World Order

1/16/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
World Order
By Henry Kissinger
Published in September 2014
420 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 3/5


World Order is Henry Kissinger’s attempt at defining his views of what a foreign policy goal should look like. Despite the title “World Order” and his use of the phrase “a new world order” I suspect that Kissinger is baiting conspiracy theorist critics who won’t bother to read his book. Far from suggesting world government, Kissinger actually criticizes the idea of hegemony as inherently prone to conflict.


Kissinger defends the Westphalian system of organizing states, where multiple powers peacefully co-exist and help preserve the existing balance of power. He systematically goes continent by continent, and explains the geopolitical problems of each continent.


His analysis on nuclear warfare is very poignant. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) had always sounded a bit… mad… to me. Now I feel like I understand the stakes and incentives that governments have when it comes to nuclear war. For example, intuitively it makes no sense that anti-ballistic missiles put people in danger. 


Kissinger, as usual, illuminates everyone year after year with his great contributions 


American neocons and other ideologically driven foreign policy agitators should read this book. It would help them realize that a policy of pragmatic peace often outperforms policies of ideological conflict.


The only major disagreement that I have with Kissinger is that he takes a very late 20th century approach to technology and computers. Kissinger worries that, because of the instant availability of information on the internet, people will stop reading books and instead focus on the minutia of data. In fact, quite the opposite has happened, and I think that this blog proves the contrary. All of my friends who love foreign policy self educated online and I only ever heard about Kissinger’s work through the internet (I certainly wouldn’t learn anything useful in school.)


Kissinger is old and I worry he will die before I have the privilege of meeting him. His work will be remembered by both his supporters and critics long 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Thibault Serlet

    Most of my articles are book reviews, but I also write about many other topics.

    Archives

    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Book Reviews
  • Contact