Acharya, Amitav (2025-04). The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West: The headlines and laments in the West about the end of the American-led world order are louder than ever these days. They’re coming from scholars, policy research institutes, journalists, and commentators, and they stem from two convictions: One is that the present world order, led by the United States and the West, has by and large been a good thing, preventing major wars and allowing for international trade, economic growth, and a remarkably stable and prosperous international system. Two is that the rise of the non-Western nations and the emergence of an alternative to the familiar American-led world order will be frightening, unpredictable, and almost surely a change for the worse. For the West at least, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a stark warning about the dangers of the breakdown of the American-led world order and its replacement with a kind of Putinesque law of the jungle, a breakdown aided and abetted by an ever more powerful China. These events and trends have, not surprisingly, created a deep sense of foreboding, especially in the United States and among its allies. Certainly the fall of the world order that we have known since the end of World War II would be a development of world-historical significance. This change would involve, among other things, not only the decline of the United States, its prestige, and its influence but also the rise of other powers, especially of an authoritarian, ambitious, power-hungry China. The Chinese leadership, so goes the conventional Western narrative, sees the world through a very different lens than rulers in the West do, and, moreover, China is allied with aggressive, resource-rich Russia and bitterly anti-American Iran. That, in the reigning conventional wisdom in the West, is a terrifying prospect. Would the end of US and Western dominance really be so bad? I argue, contrary to much elite opinion, that it need not be, especially over the long run. This is not because the West’s fears about the rise of non-Western powers, including China and Russia, are always exaggerated, although sometimes they are, due to the loss of power and prestige. But it is because Western supremacy has itself contributed to plenty of instability, injustice, and disorder that might be eased by its decline. More importantly, centuries of dominance have led the West to a kind of arrogance and ignorance about the rest of the world, overlooking the ideas and contributions of other civilizations to stability and progress throughout history. We have forgotten that world order—the political architecture enabling cooperation and peace among nations—existed long before the rise of the West, and that many of the ideas we assume are Western inventions actually originated in other civilizations. Mechanisms and values that are central to world order—such as diplomacy, economic interdependence, freedom of seas, principles for the protection of people in war and peace, preservation of the environment, and cooperation among major powers, to name a few—emerged over millennia across the globe.
While Europe and the West might have led the way in areas of democracy, human rights, and rule of law, non-Western civilizations have also provided mechanisms for peace, cooperation, and morality, with many of these ideas emerging well before the rise of the West. And even when it comes to democracy and human rights, the West cannot claim to have an exclusive patent. These ideals have precursors in other societies—for example, in ancient republics and political councils allowing wider participation in governance and in prohibitions against cruel and unjust punishment. Moreover, many non-Western nations, after their liberation from Western colonial rule, have played an important part in developing the principles of human rights through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations (UN), while others such as India and Latin American nations have championed democratic governance, despite limitations and setbacks. Similarly, a rules-based order is not as new, as American, or as Western as Western pundits claim. There have been rules and rules-based orders in the past, and the present one in many ways is a refinement of similar institutions developed across the globe. While the West might have developed them further, it did not invent them. Since the values and foundations of world order are not the West’s exclusive property, they will endure even as Western power shrinks. The role of the West in the making of the many key elements of the present world order has been more as a pupil than as a teacher. In the future world, the West may once again look to the Rest for some of these ideas and approaches to sustain its progress and leave behind the excesses of its imperial past. The lament that the decline of the West amounts to the end of world order is misguided. This is reason enough not to fear that the decline of the West will lead to global chaos. To some degree, Western anxieties about world disorder today are the result of its overconfidence and hubris that were evident not so long ago. Indeed, in the years immediately after the West’s stunning victory in the Cold War in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the worldwide trend toward greater democracy seemed both inevitable and desirable. All of eastern Europe was freed from effective Soviet control; democracy was strengthened in Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. Even Communist China, now fully engaged economically and diplomatically with the rest of the world, was predicted to eventually leap onto the democratic bandwagon, so that the dominance of Western ideas and practices would grow even stronger. The most celebrated statement of this inevitability was Francis Fukuyama’s thesis of the “end of history,” by which he meant that Western-style liberal democracy was happily triumphant, that ideological wars were over, that the West had won, permanently. In light of that mood of triumph, it is understandably worrisome that history has not ended and that, rather suddenly, the idea that the Western system would endure forever has been replaced with the certainty that some other system will come to dominate. My essential argument is that this is not a disaster; indeed, in the long run, it might turn out to be a good thing. Why? There are several reasons. One is that the Western-dominated order was never as benign as many in the West believed, marred as it was by economic inequality, racism, and wars of choice waged usually in the global South. From the standpoint of the rest of the world, American and Western domination was less a blessing than it was a threat, not just to their well-being and independence but to their pride.
To these nations, the end of Western dominance offers an opportunity to build a better world, to find more voice, power, and prosperity—in other words, a fairer, more balanced, and more equal world. As we’ll see in the following chapters, other countries besides the Western ones have traditions, values, and practices that will contribute to the world order of the near future, and this will even be of benefit to the West, relieved as it will be of the anger and resentment that its domination has often caused. New balances will emerge in what will be a genuinely more diverse global community in which no single member or group of members is able to achieve hegemony. This does not mean paradise. No world order will be, or ever has been, free of conflict and war. Simply witness the not-very-pax elements of the so-called Pax Americana in places like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and, yes, Ukraine. My aim here is not to suggest that the emerging world order will be perfect but to make the case that as the West retreats, mayhem will not erupt, and a more humane world may even emerge. This book offers an epic history of world order itself, uncovering how it evolved and how it developed into the Western order. Going back nearly five thousand years to ancient Sumer and Egypt, I mine the past in a way that mainstream historians and analysts of the history of civilizations simply haven’t done. When we think through the deep history of civilization, we open a range of possibilities that can help us reimagine what the emerging world order should look like. This book, in considering this story, advances a kind of back-to-the-future thesis. I am not saying that history will repeat itself or that it is cyclical. It isn’t. But history can provide clues or possibilities for the future. I show that for most of history, China, India, and the Islamic world have been forceful actors on the world stage, that power has been dispersed among different blocs, and that cultural pluralism has been widespread. These, in other words, were the norms of centuries past. Western dominance violated these norms, and it will actually be good for everybody to restore them, bearing in mind that the core elements of the existing world order—from republican institutions to international cooperation—are not Western inventions. Rather, they were developed at multiple global locations either independently or through mutual contacts. Thus, despite the conventional wisdom on this matter, these elements won’t disappear as Western dominance ends. This should be good news for those who genuinely aspire to a world order of “the West with the Rest,” rather than “the West versus the Rest,” and for those who hope for a world order that no single nation or civilization, whether Western or non-Western, dominates. Instead of fearing the future, the West should learn from history and cooperate with the rest of the world to forge a more equitable order. What Is World Order?
One should be happy with Gen-Z who are pro-AI, Robots, Full Renewal energy, Driverless car un imaginable increase in productivity and etc., This will result 20 hours work - week. universal basic income replacement of of dictators of 7th/18th century old ideologies of religion/politics and egalitarian society with refusal to obey orders of elders to wage wars. One presumes no leader has emerged in India to lead Gen-Z none of whom is serving LIC may be except few individuals.
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Amitav Acharya 2025
Acharya, Amitav (2025-04). The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West: The headlines and laments in the West about the end of the American-led world order are louder than ever these days. They’re coming from scholars, policy research institutes, journalists, and commentators, and they stem from two convictions: One is that the present world order, led by the United States and the West, has by and large been a good thing, preventing major wars and allowing for international trade, economic growth, and a remarkably stable and prosperous international system. Two is that the rise of the non-Western nations and the emergence of an alternative to the familiar American-led world order will be frightening, unpredictable, and almost surely a change for the worse. For the West at least, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a stark warning about the dangers of the breakdown of the American-led world order and its replacement with a kind of Putinesque law of the jungle, a breakdown aided and abetted by an ever more powerful China. These events and trends have, not surprisingly, created a deep sense of foreboding, especially in the United States and among its allies. Certainly the fall of the world order that we have known since the end of World War II would be a development of world-historical significance. This change would involve, among other things, not only the decline of the United States, its prestige, and its influence but also the rise of other powers, especially of an authoritarian, ambitious, power-hungry China. The Chinese leadership, so goes the conventional Western narrative, sees the world through a very different lens than rulers in the West do, and, moreover, China is allied with aggressive, resource-rich Russia and bitterly anti-American Iran. That, in the reigning conventional wisdom in the West, is a terrifying prospect. Would the end of US and Western dominance really be so bad?
I argue, contrary to much elite opinion, that it need not be, especially over the long run. This is not because the West’s fears about the rise of non-Western powers, including China and Russia, are always exaggerated, although sometimes they are, due to the loss of power and prestige. But it is because Western supremacy has itself contributed to plenty of instability, injustice, and disorder that might be eased by its decline. More importantly, centuries of dominance have led the West to a kind of arrogance and ignorance about the rest of the world, overlooking the ideas and contributions of other civilizations to stability and progress throughout history. We have forgotten that world order—the political architecture enabling cooperation and peace among nations—existed long before the rise of the West, and that many of the ideas we assume are Western inventions actually originated in other civilizations. Mechanisms and values that are central to world order—such as diplomacy, economic interdependence, freedom of seas, principles for the protection of people in war and peace, preservation of the environment, and cooperation among major powers, to name a few—emerged over millennia across the globe.
While Europe and the West might have led the way in areas of democracy, human rights, and rule of law, non-Western civilizations have also provided mechanisms for peace, cooperation, and morality, with many of these ideas emerging well before the rise of the West. And even when it comes to democracy and human rights, the West cannot claim to have an exclusive patent. These ideals have precursors in other societies—for example, in ancient republics and political councils allowing wider participation in governance and in prohibitions against cruel and unjust punishment. Moreover, many non-Western nations, after their liberation from Western colonial rule, have played an important part in developing the principles of human rights through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations (UN), while others such as India and Latin American nations have championed democratic governance, despite limitations and setbacks. Similarly, a rules-based order is not as new, as American, or as Western as Western pundits claim. There have been rules and rules-based orders in the past, and the present one in many ways is a refinement of similar institutions developed across the globe. While the West might have developed them further, it did not invent them. Since the values and foundations of world order are not the West’s exclusive property, they will endure even as Western power shrinks. The role of the West in the making of the many key elements of the present world order has been more as a pupil than as a teacher. In the future world, the West may once again look to the Rest for some of these ideas and approaches to sustain its progress and leave behind the excesses of its imperial past. The lament that the decline of the West amounts to the end of world order is misguided. This is reason enough not to fear that the decline of the West will lead to global chaos. To some degree, Western anxieties about world disorder today are the result of its overconfidence and hubris that were evident not so long ago. Indeed, in the years immediately after the West’s stunning victory in the Cold War in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the worldwide trend toward greater democracy seemed both inevitable and desirable. All of eastern Europe was freed from effective Soviet control; democracy was strengthened in Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. Even Communist China, now fully engaged economically and diplomatically with the rest of the world, was predicted to eventually leap onto the democratic bandwagon, so that the dominance of Western ideas and practices would grow even stronger. The most celebrated statement of this inevitability was Francis Fukuyama’s thesis of the “end of history,” by which he meant that Western-style liberal democracy was happily triumphant, that ideological wars were over, that the West had won, permanently.
In light of that mood of triumph, it is understandably worrisome that history has not ended and that, rather suddenly, the idea that the Western system would endure forever has been replaced with the certainty that some other system will come to dominate. My essential argument is that this is not a disaster; indeed, in the long run, it might turn out to be a good thing. Why? There are several reasons. One is that the Western-dominated order was never as benign as many in the West believed, marred as it was by economic inequality, racism, and wars of choice waged usually in the global South. From the standpoint of the rest of the world, American and Western domination was less a blessing than it was a threat, not just to their well-being and independence but to their pride.
To these nations, the end of Western dominance offers an opportunity to build a better world, to find more voice, power, and prosperity—in other words, a fairer, more balanced, and more equal world. As we’ll see in the following chapters, other countries besides the Western ones have traditions, values, and practices that will contribute to the world order of the near future, and this will even be of benefit to the West, relieved as it will be of the anger and resentment that its domination has often caused. New balances will emerge in what will be a genuinely more diverse global community in which no single member or group of members is able to achieve hegemony. This does not mean paradise. No world order will be, or ever has been, free of conflict and war. Simply witness the not-very-pax elements of the so-called Pax Americana in places like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and, yes, Ukraine. My aim here is not to suggest that the emerging world order will be perfect but to make the case that as the West retreats, mayhem will not erupt, and a more humane world may even emerge. This book offers an epic history of world order itself, uncovering how it evolved and how it developed into the Western order. Going back nearly five thousand years to ancient Sumer and Egypt, I mine the past in a way that mainstream historians and analysts of the history of civilizations simply haven’t done. When we think through the deep history of civilization, we open a range of possibilities that can help us reimagine what the emerging world order should look like. This book, in considering this story, advances a kind of back-to-the-future thesis. I am not saying that history will repeat itself or that it is cyclical. It isn’t. But history can provide clues or possibilities for the future. I show that for most of history, China, India, and the Islamic world have been forceful actors on the world stage, that power has been dispersed among different blocs, and that cultural pluralism has been widespread. These, in other words, were the norms of centuries past. Western dominance violated these norms, and it will actually be good for everybody to restore them, bearing in mind that the core elements of the existing world order—from republican institutions to international cooperation—are not Western inventions. Rather, they were developed at multiple global locations either independently or through mutual contacts. Thus, despite the conventional wisdom on this matter, these elements won’t disappear as Western dominance ends. This should be good news for those who genuinely aspire to a world order of “the West with the Rest,” rather than “the West versus the Rest,” and for those who hope for a world order that no single nation or civilization, whether Western or non-Western, dominates. Instead of fearing the future, the West should learn from history and cooperate with the rest of the world to forge a more equitable order. What Is World Order?
One should be happy with Gen-Z who are pro-AI, Robots, Full Renewal energy, Driverless car un imaginable increase in productivity and etc., This will result 20 hours work - week. universal basic income replacement of of dictators of 7th/18th century old ideologies of religion/politics and egalitarian society with refusal to obey orders of elders to wage wars. One presumes no leader has emerged in India to lead Gen-Z none of whom is serving LIC may be except few individuals.
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