The Once and Future World Order

Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West

De: Amitav Acharya

Narrado por: Fajer Al-Kaisi

The epic story of the past, present, and future of world order, revealing how the decline of the West may be a good thing for the world.

Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, the West has been in crisis. Social unrest, political polarization, and the rise of other great powers—especially China—threaten to unravel today’s Western-led world order. Many fear this would lead to global chaos. But the West has never had a monopoly on order.

Surveying five thousand years of global history, political scientist Amitav Acharya reveals that world order—the political architecture enabling cooperation and peace among nations—existed long before the rise of the West. Moving from ancient Sumer, India, Greece, and Mesoamerica, through medieval caliphates and Eurasian empires into the present, Acharya shows that humanitarian values, economic interdependence, and rules of inter-state conduct emerged across the globe over millennia. History suggests order will endure even as the West retreats. In fact, the end of Western dominance offers us the opportunity to build a better world, where non-Western nations find more voice, power, and prosperity. Instead of fearing the future, the West should learn from history and cooperate with the Rest to forge a more equitable order.

This is the definitive account of how world order evolved and why it will survive the decline of the West.

©2025 Amitav Acharya (P)2025 Basic Books

Reseñas de la Crítica

“The Once and Future World Order offers a powerful reminder that not all world orders in history have been Western, and that we now seem headed for a new multipolar order in which non-Western states are key to the future. This timely book argues that a dominant West is not a necessary condition for a rules-based international framework.”—Odd Arne Westad, coauthor of The Great Transformation

“In The Once and Future World Order, Amitav Acharya subjects the presuppositions of the quintessentially colonial discipline of international relations to rigorous scrutiny from a decolonial perspective. This book should serve as a model for many other academic disciplines that were founded on similarly colonialist assumptions.”—Amitav Ghosh, author of Smoke and Ashes

“Twenty-first century geopolitics will be a marketplace, not a monopoly. In this rich tapestry of a book bridging ancient civilizations and modern debates, Amitav Acharya reminds us that the unfolding multipolar, multi-civilizational world order is the historical norm—and should be celebrated as an opportunity for knowledge to spread in all compass directions. An essential guide to the post-Western world.”—Parag Khanna, author of Connectography