ماض ومستقبل: لماذا ستنجو الحضارة العالمية من انحدار الغرب؟!

Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, the West has been experiencing a real crisis. Social unrest, political polarization, and the rise of other great powers, particularly China, threaten to undermine today's Western-led global order. Many fear that this will lead to global chaos. But the West never monopolized the system. By reviewing five thousand years of global history, political scientist Amitav Acharya reveals that the world order—the political structure that enables cooperation and peace among nations—existed long before the rise of the West. Acharya moves from ancient Sumer, India, Greece, and Mesoamerica, through the disputes of the Middle Ages and the Eurasian empires, to the present, showing that human values, economic interdependence, and codes of conduct between nations have emerged throughout the world over thousands of years. History suggests that the regime will persist even as the West declines. In fact, the demise of Western hegemony gives us the opportunity to build a better world, where non-Western nations find greater voice, power, and prosperity. Instead of fearing the future, the West should learn from history and cooperate with the rest of the world to forge a more just order. This is the crucial explanation for how the world order will develop and why it will withstand the West's decline.