The Real New World Order

Many thought that new world order proclaimed by George Bush was promise of 1945 fulfilled, a world in which international institutions, led by United Nations, guaranteed international peace and security with active support of world's major powers. That world order is a chimera. Even as a liberal internationalist ideal, it is infeasible at best and dangerous at worst. It requires a centralized rule making authority, a hierarchy of institutions, and universal membership. Equally to point, efforts to create such an order have failed. The United Nations cannot function effectively independent of major powers that compose it, nor will those nations cede their power and sovereignty to an international institution. Efforts to expand suprana tional authority, whether by U.N. secretary-general's office, European Commission, or World Trade Organization (wto), have consistently produced a backlash among member states. The leading alternative to liberal internationalism is the new medievalism, a back-to-the-future model of 21st century. Where liberal internationalists see a need for international rules and institutions to solve states' problems, new medievalists proclaim end of nation-state. Less hyperbolically, in her article, Power Shift, in January/February 1997 Foreign Affairs, Jessica T. Mathews describes a shift away from state?up, down, and sideways?to supra-state, sub-state, and, above all, nonstate actors. These new players have multiple allegiances and global reach.