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| Henry Kissinger (Image: Wiki Commons) |
By James R. Holmes
Kissinger says the current world order is under threat. To rebuild it the US must first rebuild itself.
There’s an old joke among professors. Asked whether he’s read a certain book, the oldtimer replies, “Read it? I haven’t even reviewed it yet!”
The Naval Diplomat hasn’t read Henry Kissinger’s new book World Order yet. Nor will I presume to review it. What I will presume to do is offer some thoughts dredged up by the synopsis he ran in the Wall Street Journal shortly before the book debuted. As befits someone who also published a book with World Order in the title — though without Kissinger’s sales, damn his eyes — I riffed on some of these same themes this week while presenting my ultrasecret anti-China battle plan to the shadowy figures overseeing U.S. strategy in the Pacific.
For Kissinger the bottom line seems to be that the United States should accept that its vision of a law-based international order commands grudging support at best in parts of the world. This runs contrary to traditional ways of thinking. Over a century ago, for instance, Theodore Roosevelt implored advanced nations to exercise an “international police power.” They should keep order in their environs while shepherding developing nations into the advanced world. Franklin Roosevelt envisioned “Four Policemen” during the closing stages of World War II. FDR, that is, hoped the victors would act as international lawmen. And indeed, the Big Four — the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China, joined by liberated France — became the permanent five members of the UN Security Council.
Council members supposedly combined enlightenment with material power, furthering the common purposes codified in the UN Charter. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? But the Roosevelts and kindred world-order enthusiasts assumed that international lawmen would enforce a common body of laws. Deadlock in the Security Council has been commonplace since the United Nations’ inception at San Francisco. What if the forefathers of world order were wrong? What if each great power entertains a different worldview? If so, what happens at the seams between jurisdictions, what happens when police quarrel over where jurisdictional boundaries lie, and what happens when one policemen meddles in another’s precinct?
Read the full story at The Diplomat