Systems of World Order

Abstract

It is enough to read the news these days to realize that the earth is without form and void, and darkness is upon the face of the deep (Genesis 1:2). The bipolar ideological and power order has dissolved and recongeled, dropping its ideological wraps and reappearing as a bare power confrontation; its ideal replacement based on the notion of the equality of states is only a legal myth. The cold war order had its own myths and meaning, imparted to it by the reality of power, both within the blocs and between them. These blocs have collapsed, one in victory, the other in defeat, and their collapse has even dissolved the blocless group of states, robbing nonalignment—along with alignment—of both its rationale and its victory. As an unexpected consequence, the collapse of globalism has carried down with it the structures and discipline of regionalism, sweeping away the previous debate between the two levels of relations.