This book evaluates the current state of world (dis)order at a time of growing populism, nationalism and pandemic panic. It distils the implications of the ‘civilisational state’ for world order. The retreat of US leadership is mirrored by the decline of both the material and normative liberal multilateral infrastructure it supported. Meanwhile, the rise of China as a challenger is accompanied in political, economic and cultural terms by other emerging powers no longer bound to the norms of 20th century world affairs, notably Turkey, India, China and Russia. By emphasising a cultural lens of analysis alongside robust political and economic analysis, the author offers a prescriptive agenda for the coming post-pandemic age that recognises the changing powers of civilisational, state and hybrid non-state actors. Without overestimating their probabilities, he outlines prospects and preconditions for effective inter-civilisational dialogue and proposes a series of minimal conditions for a multilateral ‘reset’. This book will appeal to public and private decision-makers, the media, the educated lay public and civil society actors interested in the rise of civilisational politics and its possible consequences for world affairs. It will be of particular interest to students and researchers in the fields of politics, international relations, international political economy, geopolitics, strategic studies, foreign policy and social psychology.

This timely and original volume fills the gaps in the existing theoretical and philosophical literature on international relations by problematizing civilization as a new unit of research in global politics. It interrogates to what extent and in what ways civilization is becoming a strategic frame of reference in the current world order. The book complements and advances the existing field of study previously dominated by other approaches – economic, national, class-based, racial, and colonial – and tests its key philosophical suppositions against countries that exhibit civilizational ambitions. The authors are all leading international scholars in the fields of political theory, IR, cultural analysis, and area studies who deal with various aspects of the civilizational arena. Offering key chapters on ideology, multipolarity, modernity, liberal democracy, and capitalism, this book extends the existing methodological, theoretical, and empirical debates for IR and area studies scholars globally. It will be of great interest to politicians, public opinion makers, and all those concerned with the evolution of world affairs.

Based on the author’s long experience in academic life and the public realm, especially in foreign policy, this book argues that a single categoric classification of cities is inadequate, and that cities have had different and varied impacts and positions throughout the history of civilization. The author examines how the formation, transformation, destruction or reestablishment of many civilizational cities reveals a clearer picture of the cornerstones of the course of human history. These cities, which play a decisive and pivotal role in the direction of the flow of history as well as providing us with a compass to guide our efforts to understand and interpret this flow, are conceptualized by the author as civilizations’ "pivot cities". This innovative book explores the role of great cities in political historical change, presenting an alternative view of these pivot cities from a culturalist perspective. Within this framework, the role played by pivot cities in the history of civilization may be considered under seven distinct headings: pioneering cities which founded civilizations; cities which were founded by civilizations; cities which were transplanted during the formation of civilizations; "ghost cities" which lost their importance through shifts in political power and civilizational transformation; "lost cities" which were destroyed by civilizations; cities on lines of geocultural/geoeconomic interaction; and cities which combine, transform or are transformed by different civilizations. The author’s concept of pivot cities explores the interplay between vital cities and civilizations, which bears on the future of globalization at a time of instability, as projected continuing de-Westernization becomes a theme in studies of global history. This book provides highly productive discussions relevant to the literature on city-civilization relationships and the historicity of pivot cities. Its clear language, rich content, deep and original perspective, interdisciplinary approach and rich bibliography will ensure that it appeals to students and scholars in a variety of disciplines, including cultural studies, political science, comparative urban studies, anthropology, history and civilizational studies.

This concise book addresses the new geopolitical realm which will ensue from the coronavirus pandemic, exploring how the main international actors will position themselves in the post-Covid-19 realities. Contrary to some analysts, the author argues that, rather than an acceleration of existing or latent trends, the post-coronavirus world will present novel and otherwise unexpected features and challenges. Even the previously ongoing tension between the US and China will morph into an additionally complex and multidimensional puzzle, making it much more difficult to manage. In this book, the author provides a few basic tools for further analysis of the evolution of the new world situation, in an innovative way. Two main axes orient how analyses will be performed: the shape and evolution of the US–China relationship (and their interactions with other international actors), and the degree of co-operation — for example, on climate change and security arrangements — in the transformed world. The author suggests that the pandemic will be responsible for new emergences and fractures, and yet our ever more divided world will at the same time support unifying forces and links, highly dependent on technological developments being shared and/or protected. The primary objective of this book is to draw a broad picture which will serve as a frame of reference for analysing how the community of international actors will react to major challenges — be they expected or unanticipated — in the post-pandemic world. It will be of immense interest to analysts, academics, politicians and students of international relations, geopolitics, strategy, and world affairs.

The Three Fields of Global Political Economy provides a systematic and future-oriented account of global political economy dynamics since the Industrial Revolution and argues that major changes and conflicting processes can be understood through the concept of these three fields. The first field is constituted by the circuit of capital and is characterised by a tendency towards economic liberalism. The second field is brought about by reactions to, and learning from, cycles and crises and various negative experiences. The third field is the field of reason of state. It is evoked by struggles within and among states and has its own inner generative structures. This book analyses the generic dynamics of these three fields of global political economy and explores their most significant causal effects, such as growth, employment, distribution of income and wealth, wars, and ecological effects. Together, the prevailing three fields, as well as the ideas and causal forces which generate them, constitute the "holomovement" of the global political economy. This book will appeal to advanced students and scholars of global studies, international relations, international political economy, economic theory, and governance, as well as those working in social theory and sociology, and to a broader audience interested in socioeconomics.

This book while comprehending the contemporary global security environment, offers a new roadmap for nuclear disarmament by creating a balance between deterrence supporters and disarmament advocators. The author identifies the divide between competing approaches such as traditional security-centric aspects and humanity-centered disarmament perspectives, tackling the complex question of how to balance some states’ requirements for effective nuclear deterrence with other states’ long-term desire for a nuclear-free world. The book explores how new technologies such as cyber and Artificial Intelligence advances are available to more countries than nuclear technology, and could level the playing field for weaker nuclear weapons states. It also looks into the issues which continue to be obstacles in the way of convincing the nuclear weapon states on nuclear disarmament presented in this volume. The author argues that the gap between states' security needs and disarmament aspirations can be bridged by building a new roadmap and creating new security environment. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars, researchers, policymakers, NGOs and members of the diplomatic community, in the fields of security studies, strategic studies and nuclear policy.

This new book from Toby Miller engages with journalism from within the cultural studies tradition, addressing fundamental claims for the profession and its biggest contemporary challenges: critiques, objectivity, and insecurity. Why Journalism? A Polemic considers four key aspects of contemporary journalism in terms of theoretical relevance and historic tasks that are not usually considered in parallel: Citizenship: political, economic, and cultural Environment: the climate crisis and reporters’ material impact Sports: the importance of the popular; and Technology: its former, current, and future significance With examples drawn from Latin America, Spain, and France as well as the US and Britain, the query animating these investigations returns again and again, implicitly and explicitly: why journalism? Miller argues for an answer to that dilemma that will involve a fundamental shift in how reporters, proprietors, professors, students, and states view the profession. This is essential reading for scholars and students of media and cultural studies as well as journalism studies.

The book is very policy-oriented and fills an important gap in the literature on policies related specifically to the dialogue of civilisation in a globalized world. Deals with cross-cutting issues in economic integration, conflict management, human rights and sustainable development. Addresses challenges such as religious extremism, environmental problems, and political unrest.

In The Syndicate (2004) Nicholas Hagger described how in the 20th century a Syndicate of élitist mega-rich families levelled down the leading Western countries by promoting revolutions, wars and independence movements against their empires, and planned a New World Order and world government that would control the earth's resources for their own benefit. In The Secret History of the West (2005) he traced the Syndicate's roots back to secret Freemasonic organisations and revolutions that undermined the West from the Renaissance to the early 20th century. In The Fall of the West (2022), the third book in his trilogy on the West, Hagger updates the story to include the pandemic and describes how Syndicate-driven 21st-century events from the War on Terror to Covid have brought the Western financial system to the brink of collapse and shifted power from the West to the East, and China. In this first impartial attempt to assemble all the evidence to date for the origin of Covid (like fitting together available pieces of a jigsaw to reveal the main picture) Hagger, the first to discover the Cultural Revolution in China in March 1966, finds that the three main features of Covid-19 were man-made by American NIAID-funded medics in 2002 and patented 73 times since 2008, and seem to have been surreptitiously used as a bio-weapon in a Syndicate plan to limit the rise of China and its expanding trade. A dangerous new Biological Age has been born, and the West faces being levelled down and a sudden fall. Hagger sees the post-Covid West's dream of creating a good New World Order - a vaccine-protected democratic, presidential, part-federal world government and World State with sufficient authority to abolish war and solve the world's post-Covid problems - as being challenged by the self-interested Syndicate's levelling-down; and to survive, it first has to go along with the Syndicate's plan for West and East to draw together into an authoritarian world government involving China, and democratise later. This is a thought-provoking work with a prophetic vision of the future.

From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower “A dazzling history of Western ideas.” —The Economist “Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal “[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors. Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.