There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. with many contributions to global order while noting that America “has risked extremes of overextension and disillusioned withdrawal.” The author also discusses the role of science and technology in shaping world affairs, urging that the instant information afforded by the Internet be viewed within the broader context of history. Regions must agree on their own concepts of order before they can relate to one another.Īn astute analysis that illuminates many of today’s critical international issues.Įlie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. Kissinger traces the rise of America’s idealistic vision of world order-one based on the universality of American principles-and credits the U.S. In the Arab world, he finds that Islam is “a religion, a multicultural superstate, and a new world order,” where, in the case of Iran, for example, negotiation is seen as part of “an eternal religious struggle.” The “ominous” disintegration of Arab nations into tribal and sectarian units, writes the author, recalls the religious wars in pre-Westphalia Europe. In this erudite view of our disordered world, Kissinger views each region from a historical perspective to reveal the forces behind differing views of world order. They never reigned globally in a world of divergent cultures, histories and theories of order. Those rules and limits diminished greatly after World War II, when the United States dominated the Atlantic Alliance. It came closest four centuries ago when warring European states, under the Peace of Westphalia, recognized state sovereignty and principles of international relations.
In fact, the world has never achieved world order, writes Kissinger. Former Secretary of State Kissinger ( On China, 2011, etc.) considers the prospect for order in a world without agreed-upon rules.Īt a time when many nations differ on the meanings of democracy, human rights and international law, the 21st-century world is in a state of flux regarding the concepts of power and legitimacy-the foundation of world order.
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