We live in a time when the global order set in place after 1945 is crumbling. While it appears in retrospect to have been stable, however, that order and its multilateral institutions was defined by a hemispheric division of the globe and the threat of nuclear war. It was in fact the predictability of this division that made such an order possible if not always stable as a kind of balancing act. What put the global order into question, therefore, was not the cleavage of the Cold War but instead its disappearance.
The decade of globalisation following the Cold War resulted in the attacks of 9/11, which demonstrated the emergence of new political possibilities for a globe no longer ordered by a balance of power between states. The War on Terror launched against this globalisation of non-state violence, however, was unable either to assert a unipolar order or countenance a multipolar one. But it reduced civil liberties and so democratic norms in the West, thus bringing it into unexpected alignment with foes old and new.
The rivalry among states today lacks an ideological meta-narrative or any vision of state-society relations, the economy and global order at large. Instead, revisionism of all kinds has become the order of the day. It is now mostly middle powers which defend conventional norms, international law and the multilateral system. Unlike the international system of our recent past, therefore, a new global order cannot be established by the agreement of great powers. Not only is a balance between them lacking, but lesser powers can no longer be corralled into any such order as in the past.
The Global Orders Programme at the Oxford Centre for Global History provides a forum bringing together policymakers and academics to discuss the possible futures of global ordering in its national, regional, and international aspects. Avoiding the superficiality of commentary based on short-term considerations, the project pairs the historical depth that academics are best placed to offer with the real-world problems that policymakers must think through.
