The world today is freer and friendlier

Richard Steyn reviews a book that pinpoints three core ideas that increasingly characterise the world.

Summary -

Book review: The Ideas that Conquered the World by Michael Mandelbaum, 496 pp, $30

As the author, Michael Mandelbaum, a distinguished American international relations scholar, argues, the world of the 21st century is one in which three major ideas predominate: peace as the preferred basis for relations between countries; democracy as the optimal way of organising political life, and the free market as the indispensable vehicle for producing wealth. While these ideas are not all universally accepted, since the end of the Cold War and for the first time in history they face no serious intellectual challenges.

Although the roots of the modern world go back at least two hundred years, it was United States President Woodrow Wilson, a century ago at Versailles, who first proclaimed that disarmament, democracy and free trade were the foundations upon which a new and better international order could be built. “Wilsonianism” was and is the spirit of liberalism applied to international relations, and is based upon two propositions — that free markets, over time, tend to produce democracy, and that democracies tend to conduct peaceful foreign policies.

If the world at the beginning of the 21st century is not in the best of shape, it is freer and less warlike and therefore preferable to the old. For the first time in human history, a rough consensus has emerged on the political, economic and international conditions best suited to human fulfilment. For such progress, and so well-written a book, let us be thankful.

This book is not on sale in South Africa, but may be ordered (at a discounted price) from Amazon.com and other American booksellers.

Book review: The ideas that conquered the world, by Michael Mandelbaum, 496 pp, $30

Post 9/11, those of us whose daily news diet seems to consist largely of televised pictures of mayhem in the Middle East might be forgiven for concluding that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Yet, as this important and compelling book demonstrates, the converse is true. If one stands back and considers the larger picture, there are unmistakeable signs that the world is heading towards greater peace, a rejection of war as a means of settling disputes and steadily increasing prosperity. 9/11 was not, as many have suggested, an historical watershed that swept aside the assumptions by which world affairs had been conducted for decades. Rather, it was an event that illuminated a world that has been two centuries in the making.

Although the roots of the modern world go back at least two hundred years, it was United States President Woodrow Wilson, a century ago at Versailles, who first proclaimed that disarmament, democracy and free trade were the foundations upon which a new and better international order could be built. Retrospective judgments on Wilson vary greatly: to some he was a prophet and visionary; to others a strategically inept moraliser. While his views on the need for an effective international supervisory body would be anathema to the current unilateralists in Washington, his triad of prescriptions, ironically, are those that Bush and company, eighty years later, are intent on forcing down sometimes unreceptive throats.

“Wilsonianism” was and is the spirit of liberalism applied to international relations, and is based upon two propositions — that free markets, over time, tend to produce democracy, and that democracies tend to conduct peaceful foreign policies. Wilson himself put forward specific formulas for achieving world peace, popular rule and prosperity, but, in the aftermath of World War I, his ideas ran up against formidable rivals in Fascism and Communism. Only after World War II and the subsequent Cold War could the Wilsonian “triad” really come into its own.

Three elements, says Mandelbaum, characterize the conduct of human affairs at the beginning of the third millennium: the commanding position of free markets, the dramatic devaluation of war in the major nations and the absence of a plausible alternative to the global order. However, as he is quick to point out, America stands at the core. The fate of the global liberal order depends substantially on the extent to which the United States is willing to defend and sustain the institutions and practices that support the Wilsonian triad.

The author should not be misunderstood — as Francis Fukuyama was misunderstood and often misrepresented — as claiming that as long as the US continues to hold the reins, the victory of global liberalism is assured. Even in the absence of great clashes of systems such as occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries, there will always be conflicts between interest groups. “In this sense, politics and therefore history will never end.” Political and military conflict could arise from the gap between rich and poor. Overbearing or underperforming American policies could produce a reaction from major nuclear powers such as Russia and China, whose relations with their neighbours contain the potential for armed conflict. Nuclear proliferation, global warming, religious fundamentalism and terrorism are among many other threats to the global order.

Yet, if the world at the beginning of the 21st century is not in the best of shape, it is freer and less warlike and therefore preferable to the old. For the first time in human history, a rough consensus has emerged on the political, economic and international conditions best suited to human fulfilment. For such progress, and so well-written a book, let us be thankful.

This book is not on sale in South Africa, but may be ordered (at a discounted price) from Amazon.com and other American booksellers.