The World: A Brief Introduction
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I also want to give shout-outs to the people at Penguin, above all Scott Moyers and Christopher Richards. This is the second book I have done with them, and I will simply say it is a true and valued relationship, at least from my end. And speaking of relationships, let me not neglect my agent, Andrew Wylie, who continued to weigh in on the project as it moved along.
There are quite a few maps and graphs in this book. I owe a big thanks to Katherine Vidal, Will Merrow, Michael Bricknell, and Joyce Chen, all of whom work here at CFR. I also owe a great deal to the team at Penguin, including interior designers Lucia Bernard and Claire Vaccaro, production editor Carlynn Chironna, copy editor Ingrid Sterner, production director Gloria Arminio, and cover designer Oliver Munday.
I want to single out David Sacks, my research assistant, for all he did to make this book both possible and better. The research load was heavier than usual given the wide range of subjects covered. David has the gift of being able to produce prodigious amounts of quality work at warp speed. All that along with the fact he was not shy about voicing his own informed views about what I had written made him an indispensable partner throughout the writing and editing process alike.
I wrote the bulk of this book in early mornings and on weekends, as I have a day job here at the Council on Foreign Relations, which I have been fortunate to lead for seventeen years. I want to thank my colleagues here, above all Doreen Bonnami, Nicholas Weigel, Alyssa Goessler, and Jeff Reinke, who not only commented on the manuscript but helped structure my life and protect my time so I could do my job and produce this book. I also want to salute the talented and dedicated staff at CFR who have produced hundreds of backgrounders and video explainers, a classroom simulation of the National Security Council and the United Nations called Model Diplomacy, and a curriculum, World 101, that anyone can benefit from. All are of high quality, available for free on the Council’s website, cfr.org, and like this book intended to help Americans and others better understand the world that for better and for worse will shape their lives in fundamental ways.
Speaking of the Council on Foreign Relations, I need to remind readers that it is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, publisher, and educator. Its mission is to be a resource that improves the quality of the debate in this country and around the world about the foreign policy choices facing governments and citizens. It does not, however, take positions of its own on matters of policy, and what is contained in these pages represents my thinking and not the institution’s.
One last (but definitely not least) item. This book is dedicated to my family: my wife, Susan, and our two children, Sam and Francesca. We are living not just in history but in difficult, often stressful times, and I am fortunate and then some to have a family that provides the ultimate sanctuary, one filled with conversation, laughter, love, and yes, constructive criticism.
WHERE TO GO FOR MORE
The central aim of this book has been to provide you with a foundation to better make sense of and prepare for a world that will shape your life. Ideally, though, it has whetted your appetite to learn more and to follow international events and foreign policy debates more closely.
But how? There is no substitute for reading a quality newspaper that has substantial international coverage. Those with the most value have teams of journalists on the ground where events unfold or policy is made, along with editors whose job it is to ensure accuracy. The best papers also tend to limit opinions to the editorial pages. A good list to choose from would include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Financial Times, although there are many other newspapers well worth reading that are published in other American cities and in major world capitals.
There are also a number of magazines worth reading regularly. The best weekly that combines coverage of the news with analysis (and at times a large dose of opinion) is The Economist (which has the added advantage of being written with flair). Other general interest magazines that often contain important international coverage include The New Yorker and The Atlantic.
Slightly more specialized are those magazines and websites devoted to international issues and the foreign policy of the United States and others. These tend to provide not news but analysis and in some cases recommendations for what should be done. The best of these magazines or journals is Foreign Affairs, published six times a year by the Council on Foreign Relations, where I happen to be president. Equally valuable is its website, ForeignAffairs.com, which publishes shorter pieces more closely tied to the news. Despite my obvious bias, Foreign Affairs is the authoritative magazine devoted to the subject and is incomparably more readable and understandable than academic and policy journals, which with few exceptions (including The American Interest, International Security, The National Interest, and Survival) are often difficult to read and understand.
Another place to go for background, analysis, and suggested policy are the websites of the various think tanks. Again, I am biased, and think the best is that of the Council on Foreign Relations (cfr.org). What makes it special is the effort to include explainers and background information and analysis for nonexperts as well as experts. Other sites worth visiting include those of the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Rand Corporation. Some non-American institutions also have excellent sites, including Chatham House (U.K.), IFRI (France), the Lowy Institute (Australia), the SDP (Germany), and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, or IISS, which, while London based, is international in its orientation. (Full disclosure: I worked there for several years when I was in my twenties. It was so long ago that it was just the ISS, because it had yet to become fully international. And because I am disclosing, I should add that I also worked for a time at both the Carnegie Endowment and the Brookings Institution.)
There are as well the sites of more specialized institutions, such as the Inter-American Dialogue, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and the International Crisis Group. And speaking of websites, there are a few devoted to international subjects that I would recommend, including War on the Rocks and Foreign Policy. I apologize for omitting many quality organizations and sites, but my point is simply that there are many valuable resources online for those interested.
There are also a large number of reference books, many of which are available online. Among these are The Military Balance (published annually by the IISS), the SIPRI Yearbook (which includes texts of arms control pacts and is published by the Stockholm-based SIPRI), and various publications from the UN, IMF, WTO, OECD, and World Bank. In particular, I would note the twice-yearly IMF World Economic Outlook reports, the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects, and the WTO World Trade Report.
U.S. government departments and agencies such as the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Commerce Department publish a wide range of valuable statistics and data in areas that fall under their purview. The CIA World Factbook is particularly useful. I also recommend the annual unclassified threat assessment issued by the U.S. director of national intelligence, the Global Trends survey published every four years by the National Intelligence Council, and analyses published regularly by the Congressional Budget Office and the Congressional Research Service.
Television offers relatively little in the way of serious coverage of international and foreign-policy-related issues—and certainly much less than was the case just a few decades ago. There are, though, important exceptions, including the PBS NewsHour, various shows on MSNBC (including Morning Joe, where I appear with some regularity), on occasion CBS Sunday Morning and 60 Minutes, and Fareed Zakaria GPS, which airs on Sundays on CNN and is arguably the best television show devoted to international subjects. PBS’s Frontline produces quality documentaries on international subjects, as do
HBO and others from time to time.
The best coverage of the world on radio is to be found on National Public Radio (NPR) and NPR affiliates. Such NPR shows as Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition regularly feature serious international coverage and conversation. Regional radio shows on NPR affiliates can be especially good, in particular Michael Krasny’s Forum on KQED out of San Francisco and Brian Lehrer’s talk show out of WNYC in New York. Podcasts are also coming on strong but tend to come and go too rapidly to be listed here. That said, I would be remiss and disloyal if I did not mention three that we do at the Council on Foreign Relations—The President’s Inbox, The World Next Week, and Why It Matters.
I confess I spend some time on social media, Twitter in particular. I find it useful as a way to share thoughts, disseminate what I and others have written, and learn about things. I invariably come across some article or video of some speech or event that I did not know about and am glad to look at. All that said, I feel compelled to issue a warning at this point, akin to what one finds on medicines. Twitter and the internet more broadly can be dangerous places for information. There are often no editors, no one to verify that what is there is either accurate in what it states or accurate in what it represents; that is, what it says can be true but possibly represents merely 10 percent of the picture. In this way, something posted can be accurate and inaccurate at one and the same time. It is also the case that social media promotes narrowcasting, allowing users to follow only others who share a similar worldview. In such instances, users come across only information that confirms their existing beliefs and are not challenged to hear the opposing side and grapple with new or different information. So if you do spend time on Twitter, consider following individuals or organizations who speak to international issues and embrace ideas different from your own.
I would hope that some of you reading this book will be persuaded to undertake a more formal study of international affairs. I would simply add that you need not take a formal international relations course (not that I would discourage it) to learn something of real value. Offerings in history, science, economics, politics, regional studies, comparative religion, and more can all be valuable, especially if you are fortunate enough to come across a good teacher who makes the subject come alive. My own interest in the field that has kept me interested and occupied for close to five decades began with a professor of religion in college. I went off to do my junior year abroad (in the Middle East), and as they say, one thing led to another that led to another.
Enrolling in a formal classroom setting is not the only path. There are a growing number of online academic options, many of which are not just high quality but free. Here again I want to point out one associated with my own institution, the Council on Foreign Relations. Called World 101, it is in many ways an online companion to this book, one made of modules with videos, graphics, interviews, and more on many of the same subjects.
Because this is a book, though, I want to end with books. If this was the first book you have read about the world, I hope it is not your last. I would argue for history, memoirs, and biography above all else. Some of the books that have most influenced me include Hedley Bull’s The Anarchical Society, which will be overly theoretical for many readers but nonetheless provides a useful framing for thinking about and assessing world order; Henry Kissinger’s A World Restored, which is not just a brilliant history of the Congress of Vienna but a primer on statecraft; and a book written by two of my former Harvard colleagues, Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers, which, as the subtitle suggests, offers tips for how best to use history for guidance.
For those especially interested in the current post–Cold War era, I would highlight G. John Ikenberry’s Liberal Leviathan, Robert Kagan’s The Jungle Grows Back, Henry Kissinger’s World Order, Charles Kupchan’s No One’s World, Joseph Nye’s Is the American Century Over?, Hal Brands’s Making the Unipolar Moment, Ian Bremmer’s Every Nation for Itself, and Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World. To this list I would immodestly add my own A World in Disarray. These and literally hundreds of other books and articles are mentioned in the notes that follow. The notes include not just source material for this book but also additional readings relating to every chapter for those who wish to delve deeper and wider.
NOTES
Preface
a rudimentary understanding of the world: The American Council of Trustees and Alumni analyzed more than eleven hundred colleges and universities, with a combined enrollment of nearly eight million students, and found that less than half of the schools surveyed require the study of literature (34 percent), a foreign language (12 percent), U.S. government or history (17 percent), or economics (3 percent). Only 33 percent of the schools surveyed received a grade of A or B from the council, while the remaining 67 percent received a C, D, or F. See American Council of Trustees and Alumni, What Will They Learn? 2018–2019: A Survey of Core Requirements at Our Nation’s Colleges and Universities, www.goacta.org/images/download/what-will-they-learn-2018-19.pdf.
less than a third required history majors: The American Council of Trustees and Alumni studied the requirements of history majors at seventy-six of America’s leading colleges and universities and found that only twenty-three programs—or 30 percent—require a course on American history. American Council of Trustees and Alumni, No U.S. History? How College History Departments Leave the United States out of the Major (2016), 4, www.goacta.org/images/download/no_u_s_history.pdf.
one-third of Americans: According to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in October 2018, 69.1 percent of 2018 high school graduates were enrolled in colleges or universities. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Economic News Release: College Enrollment and Work Activity of Recent High School and College Graduates Summary,” April 25, 2019, www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.nr0.htm.
40 percent who do achieve a degree: According to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 77 million Americans have attained either a bachelor’s degree (48.2 million), a master’s degree (21 million), a professional degree (3.2 million), or a doctoral degree (4.5 million). Given that there are 215 million Americans twenty-five years of age or older, only 36 percent of Americans have attained a bachelor’s degree or higher. See www.census.gov/topics/education/educational-attainment/data.html.
85 percent of adults: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization tracks literacy rates around the globe and found that 86 percent of adults (those aged fifteen years and older) are literate, while 750 million are not. UNESCO Institute for Statistics, “Fact Sheet No. 45: Literacy Rates Continue to Rise from One Generation to the Next” (September 2017), uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/fs45-literacy-rates-continue-rise-generation-to-next-en-2017_0.pdf.
one out of twenty people: As of July 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the U.S. population at 329.3 million, and a world population of 7.6 billion, meaning that the United States has 4.3 percent of the people in the world—or roughly 1 out of 23. See www.census.gov/popclock/.
on the order of 25 percent: In 2018, the United States had an output (gross domestic product, or GDP) of $20.5 trillion, which is 24 percent of the global total of $84.7 trillion. International Monetary Fund, “World Economic Outlook Database” (April 2019).
PART I: THE ESSENTIAL HISTORY
From the Thirty Years’ War to the Outbreak of World War I (1618–1914)
Thirty Years’ War: For the best history of the Thirty Years’ War, see Peter H. Wilson, The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011).
Treaty of Westphalia: For an excellent discussion of the Treaty of Westphalia, see Henry Kissinger, World Order (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 20–41.
Congress of Vienna: The best books on the Congress of Vienna and the Concert of Europe are Henry Kissinger, A World Restored:
Metternich, Castlereagh, and the Problems of Peace, 1812–22 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957); and Harold Nicholson, The Congress of Vienna (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1946).
Concert of Europe: For more on the Concert of Europe, see René Albrecht-Carrié, The Concert of Europe (London: Macmillan, 1968).
I would argue for: I expanded on this in my essay “How a World Order Ends: And What Comes in Its Wake,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2019.
Otto von Bismarck: For more on Bismarck, see Henry Kissinger, “The White Revolutionary: Reflections on Bismarck,” Daedalus 97, no. 3 (Summer 1968): 888–924; and Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
For China, the nineteenth century: For those interested in this period of Chinese history, the best one-volume work is Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990).
the Meiji Restoration: For more on this era of Japanese history, see Donald Keene, Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
This primacy arguably lasted: For an account of Britain’s relative decline, see Aaron L. Friedberg, The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895–1905 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988).
Exactly why World War I broke out: Of this vast literature, I would recommend Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (New York: HarperCollins, 2012); Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Ballantine Books, 1962); and Margaret MacMillan, The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (New York: Random House, 2013).