The international relations have developed prevailing the law of the strongest. The result is the Empire. The author analyzes the present American Empire and he compares it with the international relations within the European Union, but What is the European Union? Why have a European Union? What is the European Union for? On examining the identity, reason and mission of the European Union this book contributes to eliminating the ideological deficit, which is still argued and underlies the difficulties involved in approving the Constitution. Also the Islamic fundamentalism is analyzed, explaining its ideology. Finally, the author proposes a model to harmonize the international relations in a globalised world and to assure peace.
This book contends that the forces of late modernism are being caught between a capital-driven globalization and a territorially rooted revival of tribalism and ultra-nationalism. Its critical focus is on global structures that are producing new patterns of North/South and rich/poor domination, as well as exerting dangerous pressures on the carrying capacities of the planet. Richard Falk argues that any hopeful response to these threatening developments requires the fundamental revision of such basic ideas as sovereignty, democracy, and security. These organizing conceptions of political life are being reshaped during this era of transition from a state-centric world of geopolitics to a more centrally guided world of geogovernance. He contends that geogovernance will have adverse consequences for the human condition unless it can be mainly constructed by transnational democratic forces animated by a vision of humane governance. This volume was written for the Global Civilization Project of the World Order Models Project (WOMP), an international group of scholars formed to think creatively about legal and political structures adequate to the needs of the modern world.
The pros, cons and potential of NAFTA are analyzed in this short, detailed text which employs extensive comparison with the European Union. He discusses the EU's regional and cohesion policies, highlighting the intent of these policies to reduce disparities between rich and poor countries. Pastor (international relations, Emory U.) then turns to Vicente Fox's agenda to redefine NAFTA and provides in-depth proposals to make Fox's plan a reality, addressing trade, transportation, infrastructure, common currency, customs and immigration, energy, regional development, and education. c. Book News Inc.
“Dazzling and instructive . . . [a] magisterial new book.” —Walter Isaacson, Time "An astute analysis that illuminates many of today's critical international issues." —Kirkus Reviews Henry Kissinger offers in World Order a deep meditation on the roots of international harmony and global disorder. Drawing on his experience as one of the foremost statesmen of the modern era—advising presidents, traveling the world, observing and shaping the central foreign policy events of recent decades—Kissinger now reveals his analysis of the ultimate challenge for the twenty-first century: how to build a shared international order in a world of divergent historical perspectives, violent conflict, proliferating technology, and ideological extremism. There has never been a true “world order,” Kissinger observes. For most of history, civilizations defined their own concepts of order. Each considered itself the center of the world and envisioned its distinct principles as universally relevant. China conceived of a global cultural hierarchy with the emperor at its pinnacle. In Europe, Rome imagined itself surrounded by barbarians; when Rome fragmented, European peoples refined a concept of an equilibrium of sovereign states and sought to export it across the world. Islam, in its early centuries, considered itself the world’s sole legitimate political unit, destined to expand indefinitely until the world was brought into harmony by religious principles. The United States was born of a conviction about the universal applicability of democracy—a conviction that has guided its policies ever since. Now international affairs take place on a global basis, and these historical concepts of world order are meeting. Every region participates in questions of high policy in every other, often instantaneously. Yet there is no consensus among the major actors about the rules and limits guiding this process or its ultimate destination. The result is mounting tension. Grounded in Kissinger’s deep study of history and his experience as national security advisor and secretary of state, World Order guides readers through crucial episodes in recent world history. Kissinger offers a unique glimpse into the inner deliberations of the Nixon administration’s negotiations with Hanoi over the end of the Vietnam War, as well as Ronald Reagan’s tense debates with Soviet Premier Gorbachev in Reykjavík. He offers compelling insights into the future of U.S.–China relations and the evolution of the European Union, and he examines lessons of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Taking readers from his analysis of nuclear negotiations with Iran through the West’s response to the Arab Spring and tensions with Russia over Ukraine, World Order anchors Kissinger’s historical analysis in the decisive events of our time. Provocative and articulate, blending historical insight with geopolitical prognostication, World Order is a unique work that could come only from a lifelong policy maker and diplomat. Kissinger is also the author of On China.
An impassioned defense of open society, academic and media freedom, and human rights. George Soros -- universally known for his philanthropy, progressive politics, and investment success--has been under sustained attack from the far right, nationalists, and anti-Semites in the United States and around the world because of his commitment to open society and liberal democracy. In this brilliant and spirited book, Soros brings together a vital collection of his writings, some never previously published. They deal with a wide range of important and timely topics: the dangers that the instruments of control produced by artificial intelligence and machine learning pose to open societies; what Soros calls his "political philanthropy"; his founding of the Central European University, one of the world's foremost defender of academic freedom; his philosophy; his boom/bust theory of financial markets and its policy implications; and what he calls the tragedy of the European Union. Soros's forceful affirmation of freedom, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, social justice, and social responsibility as a universal idea is a clarion call-to-arms for the ideals of open society.
This book depicts the challenges associated with the emergence of a new global order in which patterns of conflict and the role of traditional military power are in the process of radical flux. Our ideas about global order have yet to catch up with these new behavioral trends, including the rise of non-state transnational political actors in the context of neoliberal globalization. In this historical setting the modern territorial sovereign state is confronted by multiple challenges ranging from climate change to mass migration to transnational political extremism. The existing global order seems currently overwhelmed by these challenges, resulting in widespread stress and chaos that is transforming global security in ways that endanger democratic governance. The future will be determined by whether the peoples of the world make their weight felt in support of sustainable global justice and overcome the impact of oppressive and exploitative patterns of corporate and state behavior. It is this problematic set of circumstances that Power Shift addresses.
American political history has been built around narratives of crisis, in which what “counts” are the moments when seemingly stable political orders collapse and new ones rise from the ashes. But while crisis-centered frameworks can make sense of certain dimensions of political culture, partisan change, and governance, they also often steal attention from the production of categories like race, gender, and citizenship status that transcend the usual break points in American history. Brent Cebul, Lily Geismer, and Mason B. Williams have brought together first-rate scholars from a wide range of subfields who are making structures of state power—not moments of crisis or partisan realignment—integral to their analyses. All of the contributors see political history as defined less by elite subjects than by tensions between state and economy, state and society, and state and subject—tensions that reveal continuities as much as disjunctures. This broader definition incorporates investigations of the crosscurrents of power, race, and identity; the recent turns toward the history of capitalism and transnational history; and an evolving understanding of American political development that cuts across eras of seeming liberal, conservative, or neoliberal ascendance. The result is a rich revelation of what political history is today.
