Excerpts: “The collapse of the Weimar Republic was a textbook case of what happens when democracy and capitalism fail; angry, desperate people became willing to go along with a suspension of the most basic civil liberties in the hope that order and prosperity could be restored” (p. 22).

“More likely is that this will turn out to be an era of deterioration, one in which no country or group of countries exercizes effective global leadership. In that case, the future would be one of accelerating global disorder” (p. 57).

“The United States, for example, is home to less than 5 percent of the world’s people. Trade is essential for American firms to gain access to the other 95 percent of the world’s population” (p. 161).

“Any measure of order necessarily includes elements of both order and disorder and the balance between them. There is never total peace, much less complete justice and equality in the world” (p. 253).

“Whereas a preventive use of force targets a gathering threat, a preemptive action targets an imminent threat” (p. 284).

“What separates a weak state from a failed state is a matter of degree, with failed states simply describing a weak government that has lost control over most of its territory and stands little or no chance of regaining it” (p. 289-290).

“But more than anything else, the current reflexive opposition to internationalism and multilateralism needs to be rethought. It is one thing for a world order to unravel slowly; it is quite another for the country that had a large hand in designing and building it to take the lead in dismantling it” (p. 301).

Haass, Richard (2020). The World: A Brief Introduction. New York: Penguin Press.