The World: A Brief Introduction - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Richard Haass is president of the non-partisan Council on Foreign Relations. An experienced diplomat and policymaker, he served as the senior Middle East advisor to President George H.W. Bush and as Director of the Policy Planning Staff under Secretary of State Colin Powell. A recipient of the Presidential Citizens Medal, the State Department's Distinguished Honor Award, and the Tipperary International Peace Award, he is also the author or editor of fourteen other books, including A World in Disarray.

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An invaluable primer from the president of the Council on Foreign Relations that will help anyone navigate our fast-changing world



Today's headlines generate more questions than answers. Should the United States attack North Korea and Iran or negotiate with them? What are the implications of climate change and what should be done about it? Are tariffs a good idea? What do we owe refugees and others who want to enter our country? Should democratic countries promote democracy and human rights elsewhere? What can be done to stop terrorism? Are the United States and China heading for a second cold war-and, if so, what can be done to head it off?



The World provides readers with the essential background needed to answer these and other critical questions. Readers will become more informed, discerning citizens, better able to arrive at sound, independent judgments and to hold elected representatives to account. In short, this book will make readers more globally literate. Although the United States is bordered by two oceans, those oceans are not moats. And the so-called Vegas rule-what happens there stays there-does not apply in today's globalized world to anyone anywhere. U.S. foreign policy is uniquely American, but the world Americans seek to shape is not.



Explaining complex ideas with wisdom and clarity, Richard Haass's The World is an evergreen book that will remain relevant and useful even as history continues to unfold.

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From the Thirty Years' War to the Outbreak of World War I (1618-1914)

The modern international system has its roots in seventeenth-century Europe. This continent was the center of the world because it had harnessed new technologies that proved critical to producing goods and crops and to transportation, publishing, and fighting wars. As is often the case, transition was marked by conflict.

The critical event was the Thirty Years' War, a war that began in 1618, contained both political and religious dimensions, and was fought both within and across borders by many of the major European powers of the era. Until then Europe was made up of a patchwork quilt of empires and small kingdoms. Religious and political authorities regularly confronted one another over territory and power. Borders were not respected; wars and lower-level forms of meddling were commonplace.

When the dust settled, countries emerged as an alternative to empires and principalities. Empires were often ruled from afar, which did not engender loyalty in citizens, and their large size made them inefficient to govern. Small principalities, in contrast, lacked the scale needed to compete for foreign markets or pool the resources necessary to wage war effectively. People proved more willing to devote themselves to governments they saw as their own. The emergence of a world composed of independent countries that respected one another's independence turned out to be a major innovation, one that introduced a greater degree of stability and peace but also created a capacity to make war on a level never before seen.

The Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War in 1648, codified this new understanding. The treaty in many ways established the modern international system, one dominated by countries and the principle of sovereignty. The concept of sovereignty had three basic dimensions. First, countries should accept the borders of other countries and not use force in an attempt to change them. Second, countries should not interfere in events inside other countries. Third, governments should have a free hand to do as they please within their own borders. These three notions may not seem to amount to all that much, but they represented a major step forward, one that if honored would have dramatically reduced the instability and violence that had become relatively commonplace in the world.

European nations, however, often violated the sovereignty of their neighbors, which explains, in part, why the history of this continent has been so violent and destructive. The Treaty of Westphalia did, however, introduce a period of relative peace. Europe did not descend into another major war or, to be more precise, a series of wars until the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, the brilliant, ambitious French general turned politician turned emperor. He came to power following a revolution in France that-like most revolutions-ended in excess and disorder. After a number of military victories that gave him control of much of Europe, Napoleon became overextended, electing to fight too many foes on too many fronts, and was finally defeated by a coalition that included Austria, Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom. The victors and the vanquished (minus Napoleon) came together in Vienna in 1814 and 1815 and created a settlement designed to prevent France from threatening its neighbors and to make it more difficult for revolutionary movements to overthrow the unelected governments of the day. The Congress of Vienna also made the wise choice of integrating a defeated France into the new order rather than penalizing and ostracizing it and potentially sowing the seeds of a France that would one day rise and try to overthrow the order.

The Congress of Vienna produced what became known as the Concert of Europe, a name that suggests the diplomatic equivalent of an orchestra of musicians playing together. This system was centered on Europe, but it nonetheless constituted much of the international order of its day given the dominant position of Europe and Europeans in the world at the start of the nineteenth century. In fact, by the middle of the nineteenth century, Western Europe accounted for roughly one-third of global economic output, eclipsing China and India and maintaining a substantial lead over the United States. The Concert put into practice understandings that were at the core of the Treaty of Westphalia, above all ruling out invasion of another member country or any involvement in the internal affairs of another participant in the Concert without its permission. The Concert had a decidedly conservative bias, meaning that it favored the continued rule of existing dynasties and opposed revolutionary impulses. Beyond the obvious self-interest of rulers, what also allowed the arrangement to hold for as long as it did was the balance of military power in Europe that made it unattractive for any individual country to go against its principles.

The Concert technically lasted until the eve of World War I, but it ceased to play a meaningful role decades before then. It is a matter of judgment as to when it effectively ended, but I would argue for the middle of the nineteenth century, when most of the major powers had a falling-out with Russia over Crimea. This was an early conflict over who would come to control lands then part of the declining Ottoman Empire. It was followed by wars between Prussia (the principal forerunner of modern Germany) and both Austria and France. As will be discussed below, what remained of the Concert could not survive the rise of Germany, which was unified under the Prussian minister president Otto von Bismarck in 1871 and under his successors disrupted European stability.

Beyond Europe

It would be an error to limit a review of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history to Europe, even though Europe was the part of the world where the most powerful and influential entities of this era were to be found. A great deal of the world-parts of the Middle East, South Asia, Africa, the Americas, and East Asia-was colonized, mostly by European countries (principally Britain, France, Portugal, and Spain, and to a lesser extent Germany and Italy), but also by Japan and the United States. The principal motive was economic, although matters of national pride and the pursuit of glory were not far behind.

For China, the nineteenth century began well enough; its economy was relatively large, in part because of profitable trading relations with the British and others. But the century proved to be anything but glorious. It was a time that came to be marked by unimaginative imperial rule, internal challenges to central authority, and foreign aggression against China, including the Opium Wars, in which Britain forced China to participate in an opium trade that China wanted no part of given the effect of the drug on its citizens. These conflicts were followed by a series of incursions into China on the part of Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia, which in turn set off a scramble among these powers for economic concessions from China, which had fallen far behind the European powers economically, administratively, and militarily. This reality would not change until well into the second half of the twentieth century.

The period beginning with the Opium Wars and ending with Mao Zedong's proclamation of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 has become known to the Chinese as the "century of humiliation" and continues to shape how China's citizens view the world. China's current government argues that a China in internal disarray invites aggression from foreign powers and that only a strong central government can hold China together. The Communist Party employs this argument to justify its...