Michael: The most senior American military officer, a man with 40 years of service, recently said today's world is the most unpredictable he's ever seen. He didn't say 'dangerous' or 'chaotic.' He said unpredictable. Kevin: Huh. That’s a really specific word choice. 'Dangerous' I get, we see that on the news every day. But 'unpredictable' feels different. It feels deeper, like the rules of the game themselves have changed and no one knows how to play anymore. What was the old rulebook? Michael: That is the central question in Richard Haass's book, A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order. He argues that the very operating system that has governed the world for centuries is now crashing. Kevin: Richard Haass. I know that name. He’s a big deal in foreign policy circles, right? Michael: A very big deal. And he's the perfect person to write this. Haass wasn't just an academic in an ivory tower; he was in the room where it happened for decades—as a top advisor at the State Department, an envoy for peace processes in places like Northern Ireland. He has seen the machinery of world order from the inside, which is why his diagnosis of its breakdown feels so credible and urgent. Kevin: Okay, so an insider is telling us the system is broken. I'm listening. Where do we start? Michael: Well, to understand why it's so unpredictable now, Haass says we first have to understand the old operating system. And it all starts with a treaty signed almost 400 years ago.

Kevin: Four hundred years? I was expecting you to say, like, 1991. What happened four centuries ago that still matters today? Michael: It was the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648, a conflict that had torn Europe apart over religion. The peace treaty they signed, the Treaty of Westphalia, introduced a radical new idea that became the foundation of our modern world. Kevin: Let me guess, something to do with sovereignty? I hear that word thrown around a lot. Michael: Exactly. The Westphalian system established the principle of sovereign states. Before this, you had empires, religious authorities, all sorts of overlapping powers. Westphalia said, essentially, that a state is a state. It has defined borders, and what happens inside those borders is its own business. Other states shouldn't interfere. Kevin: So it’s basically ‘you stay in your yard, I’ll stay in mine, and we won’t tell each other how to mow our lawns.’ Michael: That’s a perfect analogy. And for a long time, that was the core of 'world order.' But Haass makes a crucial point: 'order' doesn't mean 'orderly' or 'peaceful.' It's just the agreed-upon set of rules and arrangements at any given moment. And to make it work, you need two things: a balance of power, so no single state can dominate everyone else, and legitimacy, which means the major players have to actually buy into the system. Kevin: Okay, that makes sense. You need rules, and you need the biggest kids on the playground to agree to follow them. Can you give me an example of when that actually worked? It sounds a bit theoretical. Michael: Absolutely. The best story Haass tells is about the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Europe was an absolute wreck. Napoleon had just rampaged across the continent for years, upending everything. The victors—Britain, Prussia, Russia, Austria—could have easily decided to crush France, to punish it into oblivion. Kevin: Which is what you’d expect, right? That’s what usually happens after a huge war. Michael: It is. But they did something astonishingly clever instead. Led by brilliant diplomats like Austria's Metternich, they invited the loser, France, to the negotiating table. They brought their former enemy in to help design the new peace. Kevin: Wait, really? They invited the guy who just burned their houses down to help rebuild the neighborhood? That seems… shockingly modern. And kind of risky. Michael: It was! But they understood that a lasting peace required France's buy-in. They needed France to feel like it had a stake in the new system, that the new order was legitimate. So they redrew the map of Europe, established a new balance of power, and created something called the Concert of Europe, which was essentially a commitment by the great powers to talk to each other regularly to manage crises. Kevin: A neighborhood watch for kings. Michael: Exactly! And it worked, more or less, for decades. It wasn't perfect, there were still wars, but it prevented another continent-wide catastrophe for nearly a century. It was an order built on both power and consensus. Kevin: So that's one model. What about something more recent, like the Cold War? That felt like a very different kind of 'order.' It was just two superpowers staring each other down. Michael: It was a totally different model, but it was still an order. It was a bipolar order, rigid and terrifying, but it had rules. The balance of power was based on military might and, most importantly, the threat of nuclear annihilation. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union knew that a direct war meant the end of the world. Kevin: Mutually Assured Destruction. The ultimate disincentive. Michael: Precisely. And that fear created its own set of unwritten rules. Think about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The Soviets put nuclear missiles in Cuba, and the world held its breath for thirteen days. It was the closest we ever came to nuclear war. But it was resolved not just with threats, but with back-channel diplomacy, with Kennedy and Khrushchev finding a way for both sides to back down without losing face. They understood the rules of the game, even as they pushed them to the absolute limit. Kevin: So even in the most tense standoff in history, there was a shared understanding of where the red lines were. There was a script, even if they were improvising parts of it. Michael: Yes. There was a terrifying, high-stakes order. It was a world of walls and iron curtains, but you knew where you stood. You knew who the players were and what the rules were. That predictability is what has vanished.

Kevin: Okay, so we had these different 'orders'—the flexible Concert of Europe, the rigid Cold War—and for all their flaws, they had some kind of rules. What went wrong? When did the disarray that Haass talks about really begin? Michael: The pivot point was the end of the Cold War. The Berlin Wall falls in 1989, the Soviet Union collapses in 1991, and suddenly, there's only one superpower left standing: the United States. And for a brief, shining moment, it looked like a new, better era was dawning. Kevin: The 'end of history' moment. I remember that feeling of optimism. Michael: Exactly. And Haass uses one specific event to capture that spirit: the Persian Gulf War in 1990. Saddam Hussein's Iraq invades its tiny neighbor, Kuwait. It was a classic, old-school act of aggression—a bigger country trying to swallow a smaller one. Kevin: A clear violation of the 'stay in your own yard' rule. Michael: A flagrant violation. And the world, led by the United States under President George H.W. Bush, responded with remarkable unity. They built a massive international coalition, got UN authorization, and decisively pushed Iraq out of Kuwait. It was a stunning success for international cooperation. Kevin: I remember watching that on TV. It felt like the good guys won, and the system worked. Michael: It did. And President Bush gave a famous speech to Congress where he talked about this moment giving birth to a "new world order... freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace." It was a vision of a world united against aggression, led by a benevolent America. Kevin: That sounds like a huge success story. So why does Haass call this an illusion? Where did that dream go? Michael: It unraveled, slowly at first, and then all at once. Haass argues that the very forces that seemed to promise stability—American dominance and economic globalization—were also sowing the seeds of disarray. Power began to diffuse. It wasn't just in the hands of states anymore. Kevin: You mean like non-state actors? Terrorist groups? Michael: Precisely. Groups like Al-Qaeda showed that a small number of people with box cutters could challenge a superpower. And power also spread to corporations, to NGOs, to individuals with a smartphone. The world became more crowded and complex. The old top-down model of order wasn't equipped to handle it. Kevin: And at the same time, something was happening inside the Western countries that were supposed to be leading this new order, right? Michael: Yes, and this is a huge part of Haass's diagnosis. The consensus that supported globalization and internationalism began to crumble. People started to feel left behind. They saw jobs going overseas, they felt their national identity was being eroded, and they grew skeptical of foreign wars and entanglements that seemed to have huge costs but few benefits for them personally. Kevin: And that discontent boiled over. Michael: It boiled over spectacularly. Haass points directly to two shock events in 2016: the Brexit vote in the UK, where a majority voted to leave the European Union, and the election of Donald Trump in the United States on an "America First" platform. Both were a powerful rejection of the post-Cold War establishment and its globalist project. Kevin: It was the public saying, 'This 'new world order' isn't working for me.' Michael: Exactly. A British columnist quoted in the book called Brexit "the most damaging blow ever inflicted on the liberal democratic international order." Pandora's box was open. The disarray wasn't just happening 'out there' in foreign lands; it was happening right at the heart of the system. There was a growing gap between the global challenges we faced and our collective will or ability to respond.

Kevin: So if the old system is broken, the optimism of the 90s was an illusion, and we're now in this state of disarray... what's the fix? Does Haass just tell us we're doomed to float around in this unpredictable chaos forever? Michael: No, and this is where the book becomes really forward-thinking and, I think, quite radical. He argues that we can't go back to the old models. The world is too interconnected. We need a new operating system, which he calls 'World Order 2.0.' Kevin: World Order 2.0. I like the sound of that. What's the core feature of this new software? Michael: The core feature is a redefinition of sovereignty itself. Haass introduces a concept he calls "sovereign obligation." Kevin: Okay, hold on. 'Sovereign obligation.' Break that down for me. That sounds like a contradiction in terms. I thought sovereignty was about the right to do whatever you want. Michael: That's the old definition, the Westphalian one. Haass argues that in the 21st century, that's no longer enough. In a globalized world, what you do inside your borders inevitably affects everyone else. So, sovereignty can't just be a set of rights; it must also include a set of obligations. It's the responsibility of governments not to harm their own people, and critically, not to cause serious problems for the rest of the world. Kevin: That is a powerful idea. You're saying my country's right to act stops when it starts messing things up for your country. But who enforces that? You can't send in the troops because a country is polluting too much. That sounds like a recipe for constant conflict. Michael: You're hitting on the key challenge. Haass is not arguing for a world government or for constant military interventions. He's arguing for building new international norms and agreements around this principle. And the fascinating thing is, it's already happening in some areas. Kevin: Really? Where? Michael: Think about climate change. For years, we tried to solve it with top-down, legally binding treaties, and it failed. The 2015 Paris Agreement took a different approach. It didn't assign mandatory emission cuts. Instead, it operated on the principle of sovereign obligation. Each country had the obligation to put forward its own best effort, its own plan to contribute to the global goal. Kevin: So it was a system based on peer pressure and shared responsibility, not legal force. Michael: Exactly. It was a step toward this new model. But an even more powerful example is global health. Think about the SARS outbreak in 2003 or the Ebola crisis in 2014. The world quickly realized that an infectious disease outbreak in one country is a direct and immediate threat to health everywhere. Kevin: Right, a virus doesn't stop at a border checkpoint. Michael: It doesn't. And so, a norm of sovereign obligation has developed. Countries are now expected to have the capacity to detect new diseases, to notify the World Health Organization immediately, and to accept international help to contain an outbreak. A government that tries to hide a pandemic is now seen as a rogue actor, a threat to global security. Kevin: Wow. When you put it that way, it makes perfect sense. It's the 'you stay in your yard' rule, but updated for a world where someone's bonfire can set the whole neighborhood on fire. Michael: That's the perfect metaphor. The world is too small and too connected for borders to provide cover for activities that can harm us all. Whether it's pandemics, cyberattacks, terrorism, or financial crises, our fates are intertwined. World Order 2.0 is about creating the rules of the road for that new reality.

Michael: So, we've taken quite a journey. We've gone from a world of walled-off states in the Westphalian system, to the brief, heady optimism of the post-Cold War 'new world order,' to our current, messy state of disarray. Kevin: It feels like a history of the world's operating systems, from version 1.0, to a failed 1.5, to the buggy, crashing system we have now. Michael: That's a great way to put it. And Haass's core insight, the big takeaway for me, is that we can't go back. We can't reboot the old software. The problems we face today—from a virus that emerges in one city and shuts down the planet, to a cyberattack launched from one continent that cripples the infrastructure of another—they simply don't respect borders. Kevin: It really makes you think about what it means to be a citizen of a country, but also a citizen of the world. The book argues those two things are no longer separate, and in fact, they might be fundamentally linked now. Michael: They are. The health and security of your own country now depend on the health and security of the entire system. Haass argues that foreign policy isn't some abstract game played by diplomats anymore; it's about managing our shared existence on a crowded, fragile planet. Kevin: And his idea of 'sovereign obligation' is the proposed framework for that. It’s a shift from 'what are my rights?' to 'what are my responsibilities?' Michael: Exactly. So the question Haass leaves us with, the one that hangs over the whole book, is a profound one: are we, as nations and as individuals, willing to accept these new global responsibilities, even when it's difficult, expensive, or politically inconvenient? Kevin: That's a huge question. It’s not just for presidents and prime ministers; it’s for all of us. We'd love to hear what you think. Drop us a comment on our socials—what's one 'sovereign obligation' you think is most urgent for the world to tackle today? Is it climate? Health? Something else? Let us know. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.