THE ONCE AND FUTURE WORLD ORDER

Amitav Acharya is distinguished professor at American University, and he offers a sweeping history of global civilization, arguing that world order - the political architecture enabling cooperation and peace among nations - existed long before the rise of the West and will survive its decline.

Drawing on decades of research, Acharya shows that in the long arc of history the past few centuries of Western domination are but a passing moment. For many centuries, global cultural pluralism and greater dispersion of power were the norm. The fact that this is increasingly the case again is not cause for alarm. Taking a close look at the rise and fall of world powers, from ancient Egypt to America today, he argues that many of the core elements of the current world order on which its peace and stability rests - universal humanitarian values, republican institutions, economic interdependence, and the balance of power - are not Western inventions. They were and are common to many different societies.

Despite conventional wisdom, they won't disappear with the decline of the West, and the end of Western dominance might even allow for a more just world to emerge.

In a field dominated by Eurocentrism, Acharya is offering a much-needed non-Western perspective that takes a closer look at the contributions of societies across the Global South to civilization We think there will be keen interest from readers in a less alarmist argument about the future of great power competition.

Amitav Acharya is currently distinguished professor and the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance at American University, Washington, DC. Cited as "one of the most original thinkers in contemporary international relations" by Sciences Po of Paris, Acharya has written for the Washington Post, Financial Times, and Foreign Affairs, among many other media outlets, and he has appeared on CNN, NPR, the BBC, Al-Jazeera TV, and CNBC. He is the former president of the International Studies Association (ISA), the most respected and widely known association in the field, with 6,500 members spanning 100 countries; born and educated in India, he was the first non-Western scholar to hold that position.