Michael: A recent Harvard study looked at fifteen times in history when a rising power challenged an established one. Out of those fifteen cases, ten ended in war. Kevin: Ten out of fifteen. That’s… not a great track record. It makes you look at the headlines about the U.S. and China and hold your breath a little, doesn't it? Michael: Exactly. It feels like we're standing on a geopolitical fault line. And that's why today we’re exploring the rulebook that’s supposed to prevent that catastrophe—the very concept of world order. And we're diving into a book by a man who didn't just study the rules, he wrote them. Kevin: You must be talking about Henry Kissinger's monumental book, World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History. Michael: That's the one. And what makes this book so compelling, and also so controversial, is Kissinger himself. He’s not just an academic historian. Kevin: Right. This is coming from a man who was in the room shaping global events for decades. As National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, he was the architect of American Realpolitik. So this book is part history lesson, part memoir, and, as we'll see, part stark warning. It’s been widely acclaimed for its sheer intellectual firepower, but it’s also polarizing. Readers are often divided on whether it’s a brilliant analysis or a justification for a very controversial career. Michael: And to understand the rulebook Kissinger is so concerned about, the one he argues is fraying before our eyes, we have to go back to a moment of total, unimaginable chaos in 17th-century Europe.

Kevin: Okay, so before we get lost in history, what is this system we’re talking about? I hear the term 'Westphalian' thrown around, but it sounds like something you'd order at a German deli. Michael: (Laughs) Fair enough. The Westphalian system is essentially the operating system for modern global politics. It’s built on two core ideas: first, the world is made up of independent states, and second, those states have sovereignty over their own territory and domestic affairs. Meaning, what a government does within its borders is its own business, and other states shouldn't interfere. Kevin: So, basically, 'you stay on your side of the fence, I'll stay on mine.' Sounds simple enough. Where did it come from? Michael: It came from the ashes of one of the most devastating conflicts in human history: the Thirty Years' War. From 1618 to 1648, Central Europe tore itself apart. It was a horrifying free-for-all where politics and religion were fused into a weapon. Protestant princes fought the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor, but alliances were constantly shifting. It was a war of annihilation. Kevin: How bad was it? Michael: Kissinger lays it out starkly. In some areas, a third of the population was wiped out. Across Central Europe, it’s estimated that nearly a quarter of the people died from combat, disease, or starvation. It was a level of devastation Europe wouldn't see again until the 20th century. The continent was utterly exhausted. Kevin: A quarter of the population. That's just… unimaginable. So the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 wasn't some enlightened, philosophical breakthrough? Michael: Not at all. And this is Kissinger's crucial point. It was a pragmatic, almost desperate, admission of failure. The delegates who met in the German region of Westphalia weren't trying to build a utopia. They were just trying to stop the bleeding. They accepted that religious unity was shattered forever. They looked at the map of hundreds of autonomous political units and realized no one was strong enough to dominate all the others. Kevin: So the solution was basically a stalemate. They couldn't agree on whose version of truth or God was right, so they agreed to stop killing each other over it and just respect each other's borders. Michael: Precisely. It was a procedural solution, not a moral one. It separated church and state in international affairs. And this is where a key figure emerges: Cardinal Richelieu of France. He was a Prince of the Catholic Church, yet he funded the Protestant King of Sweden to fight against the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor. Kevin: Hold on. A Cardinal bankrolling Protestants to fight Catholics? How does that work? Michael: Because Richelieu pioneered an idea that would define the next 400 years of international relations: raison d'état, or 'reason of state.' He argued that the state is an abstract entity with its own interests, separate from the ruler's personal beliefs or even religious morality. The state's salvation, he famously said, "is now or never." Its primary duty is to survive and thrive. For France, a unified, powerful Central Europe under the Habsburg Emperor was a threat. So, Richelieu put France's national interest above his Catholic faith. Kevin: Wow. So that's the birth of 'national interest' as we know it. It feels so cynical, but also… brutally logical, especially after 30 years of slaughter. So this system, which is basically a European 'we agree not to kill each other over religion anymore' pact, somehow became the operating system for the entire planet? How did that happen? Michael: Through European expansion and colonialism, mostly. As European powers spread across the globe, they took this system with them, drawing lines on maps in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, creating states where none had existed, and plugging them into this Westphalian framework of sovereignty and balance of power. It became the default language of international diplomacy.

Michael: But here's the fundamental problem that Kissinger builds the entire book around. While the West was exporting this model of equal, sovereign states, other major civilizations were operating on completely different software. They never had a Thirty Years' War, so they never came to the same conclusions. Kevin: They were running a different operating system entirely. Michael: Exactly. Let's take China. For millennia, China's concept of order wasn't a balance of competing states. It was a hierarchy. China saw itself as the "Middle Kingdom," the center of the world. The Emperor wasn't just a political ruler; he was a cosmic figure, the "Son of Heaven," who held sway over "All Under Heaven." Kevin: So it's less like the UN Security Council and more like the head office of a massive global corporation, and every other country is just a regional branch manager expected to pay respect. Michael: That's a perfect analogy. Other societies weren't seen as equals; they were classified as various degrees of "barbarians" whose status depended on how closely they adopted Chinese culture and acknowledged the Emperor's supremacy. Their goal wasn't a balance of power, but "harmony under heaven," achieved by everyone recognizing their proper place in the hierarchy, with China at the top. Kevin: So when Western diplomats showed up in the 18th and 19th centuries talking about sovereign equality and trade treaties between equal nations, the Chinese court must have been completely bewildered. Michael: They were. They saw it as an absurdity. You can't have a treaty between the Emperor and a "barbarian" king. The barbarian can only offer tribute. This clash of worldviews led to immense friction, like the disastrous Macartney Mission, and eventually, the "Century of Humiliation" for China. It’s a deep-seated historical memory that still informs Chinese foreign policy today. Kevin: And what about other worldviews? Kissinger mentions the Islamic world as another distinct concept of order. Michael: Right. The traditional Islamic concept of world order was also universal, but based on religion. The world was divided into two spheres: dar al-Islam, the "House of Islam," where Islamic law prevailed, and dar al-harb, the "House of War," which included all other territories. The ultimate objective was to bring the entire world into the House of Islam, through conversion or conquest. Kevin: So, again, no concept of equal, sovereign states coexisting permanently. The default state is conflict until a universal order is achieved. Michael: In the classical interpretation, yes. Peace was seen as a temporary truce. This doesn't describe the foreign policy of most modern Muslim-majority nations, of course, but Kissinger argues this historical worldview still animates radical movements and informs the revolutionary ideology of a state like Iran. It's a vision of order based on faith and universal mission, not on a balance of secular national interests. Kevin: This is fascinating. It explains so much. When Western leaders talk about defending the "rules-based international order," are they and, say, leaders in Beijing or Tehran even talking about the same thing? It sounds like they're using the same words but with completely different dictionaries. Michael: That is the absolute core of Kissinger's argument. He tells a great story about his first secret trip to China in 1971. He remarked to Premier Zhou Enlai that China was a "land of mystery" to Americans. Zhou replied with profound simplicity: "You will find it not mysterious. When you have become familiar with it, it will not seem so mysterious as before." The quest for world order, Kissinger suggests, is the difficult task of bridging these vast, self-contained historical realities.

Kevin: Okay, so we have this pragmatic European system, and these clashing universalist worldviews from China and the Islamic world. Where does America fit into all this? Because we seem to be the biggest defender of the Westphalian system, but also its biggest critic. Michael: You've hit on what Kissinger calls the American paradox. The United States is the most powerful product of the Westphalian system, but it has always been deeply ambivalent about playing by its rules. Kevin: What do you mean by ambivalent? Michael: American foreign policy has been a constant tug-of-war between two competing impulses. On one hand, there's the realist tradition, personified by figures like Theodore Roosevelt or Kissinger himself. This view says America should act like any other great power, pursuing its national interest and maintaining a global balance of power. It's pragmatic, it's about managing the world as it is. Kevin: The raison d'état we talked about earlier. Michael: Exactly. But on the other hand, there's a much more powerful, messianic impulse, the one articulated by Woodrow Wilson. This is the idea of American exceptionalism—that America is not just another nation. It's a "city upon a hill," as Governor John Winthrop preached in 1630. Its purpose is not just to participate in the grubby game of power politics, but to transcend it and lead the world to a new order based on democracy, freedom, and universal law. Kevin: So we're both the player and the person who wants to flip the whole game board over and start a new, better game. Michael: That's the paradox in a nutshell. We defend the sovereignty of nations, but we also believe we have a right to intervene to stop human rights abuses or promote democracy. We build alliances based on shared interests, but we also dream of a world where such alliances are unnecessary because everyone shares our values. Kissinger quotes President Truman, who, when asked what he was most proud of, said it was that America "totally defeated our enemies and then brought them back to the community of nations. I would like to think that only America would have done this." Kevin: That is a uniquely American sentiment. But Michael, this is where Kissinger gets a lot of heat, right? He praises this American idealism, but his own career is the definition of prioritizing cold, hard national interest, sometimes in very brutal ways. The book has been called hypocritical by critics for this very reason. How does he reconcile that? Michael: He doesn't, really. And that's the point. Kissinger's entire book is an exploration of this unresolved tension. He believes America's idealism is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. It inspires incredible acts of generosity like the Marshall Plan, but it can also lead to over-extension and disillusionment, as in Vietnam or Iraq, when the world refuses to conform to our idealized vision. America is this ambivalent superpower, constantly oscillating between a desire to manage the world and a desire to save it.

Kevin: So, putting it all together, what's the final picture Kissinger paints? It sounds pretty bleak. Michael: It's certainly sobering. We're left in this incredibly fragile moment. The Westphalian system, our 350-year-old accidental operating system, is fraying. Its core principle of non-interference is challenged daily by humanitarian crises, terrorism, and cyber warfare. At the same time, there is no shared global vision to replace it. Instead, we have these powerful, competing historical concepts of order—the Westphalian, the Chinese, the Islamist, the American—all bumping up against each other. Kevin: And the main architect and defender of the current system, the U.S., is deeply conflicted about its own role. Michael: Precisely. Kissinger's ultimate warning is that order is not the natural state of humanity; it's a fragile, hard-won, and often temporary achievement. And we might be taking it for granted. He wrote this book in 2014, before some of the more recent global shocks, but his diagnosis feels more relevant than ever. Kevin: It leaves you with a really unsettling question. The Peace of Westphalia only happened because Europe was so traumatized by war that it had no other choice. Can we, in the 21st century, build a new, shared order without the horror of another Thirty Years' War to motivate us? That's the challenge Kissinger leaves us with. Michael: It's a huge question. And it requires a level of statesmanship and historical understanding that seems to be in short supply. We'd love to know what our listeners think. Does one of these models of order—balance of power, hierarchy, universal values—resonate more with you? Find us on our social channels and let's discuss. Kevin: It’s a conversation we all need to be having. This is Aibrary, signing off.