World Order

As I begin to get better acquainted with the grouping of books of this genre, I’m discovering a general theme. Each book seems to be essentially the same in one way — it tells a world history from past to present. Where each differs is the aperture in which the author tells that history.

Here, Kissinger takes us through the world through the lens of statehood and its associated geopolitics, using the treaty of Westphalia and the Westphalian System as a central compass of navigation. Irrespective of one’s views on Kissinger’s politics, I think it is hard to challenge that he is an authority on the history of diplomacy and statecraft. This book was another showing of that to me.

Kissinger’s grasp of the trends of history, and then, of course, his actual (at times central) participation in it, was engaging and useful. Its certainly of value to hear him summarize events he took part in as a primary source for his own analysis. But this book was most interesting to me in another area — Kissinger’s projections of the future. I thought he made prescient assertions on how the collection and use of social data in the 21st century could make corporations play the role of quasi nonphysical states, or at least as disrupting agents in the global order.