Varieties of World Order

In the end, culture imposes itself on the individual. Yet, culture is the least studied issue in the social sciences, even though it is the most important issue for social scientists. As Le Bon wrote: “The factors which determine the birth and development of the basic elements of a civilization are just as numerous as those which govern the development of a living being. Their study has hardly begun today; indeed, one will search in vain for the presence of such a study in most history books.” 

It follows that there is no real purpose for journalists, intellectuals, and writers other than the study of culture. Culture belongs to race, and race, as Le Bon noted, amounts to “the ensemble of the physical, moral and intellectual qualities which characterize a people.” Most important of these qualities is the moral and intellectual qualities of a race, as Le Bon argued. In turn, the moral and intellectual qualities of a particular culture or race shape the overall “mental constitution” of the people which belong to a particular culture or race. 

The broader and perhaps global political and social implications stemming from the centrality of culture in international affairs are vast and not inconsequential, given that the issue of culture and its diversity and multiplicity spills over into the issue of global order and stability. And for the time being, order applies and extends only to the people and territory which is within the reach of a particular cultural group. This scope of order is something which has been inherited from the past. To borrow from Kissinger:

“The idea of world order was applied to the geographic extent known to the statesmen of the time – a pattern repeated in other regions. This was largely because the then-prevailing technology did not encourage or even permit the operation of a single global system. With no means of interacting with each other on a sustained basis and no framework for measuring the power of one region against another, each region viewed its own order as unique and defined the others as ‘barbarians’ – governed in a manner incomprehensible to the established system and irrelevant to its designs except as a threat. Each defined itself as a template for the legitimate organization of all humanity, imagining that in governing what lay before it, it was ordering the world.”

Hence, the world system is actually a “multiplex” system to borrow from one scholar. There are “varieties of world order” as opposed to just one. The most predominant for the last number of centuries has been the European system, or the “Westphalian” system. Europeans expanded and spread all over the world, and in turn “carried the blueprint of their international order with them.” And even at a time when the European order is going through upheaval, the upheaval is occurring in the name of the European order. To borrow from Kissinger: 

“While [Europeans] often neglected to apply concepts of sovereignty to the colonies and colonized peoples, when these peoples began to demand their independence, they did so in the name of Westphalian concepts. The principle of national independence, sovereign statehood, national interest, and noninterference proved effective arguments against the colonizers themselves during the struggles for independence and protection for their newly formed states afterward.” 

In short, the European or Westphalian order is being challenged on all fronts in the name of culture and sovereignty. Order “must be cultivated” and “it cannot be imposed” to borrow from Kissinger, due to the diversity and multiplicity of cultures. A European order and cultural sovereignty must somehow be intertwined and made to be reconciled with one another. To conclude with what Kissinger wrote: “Order and freedom, sometimes described as opposite poles on the spectrum of experience, should instead be understood as interdependent.”