Reflections on World Order: Past, Present, and Future

Brought to you by Hopkins at Home

What is the future of world order? The international system built out of the Second World War is showing signs of strain, if not crisis.  

In his 2014 book World Order, Dr. Henry Kissinger argued that creating a new international order, adapted to the realities of the twenty-first century, was the greatest challenge facing statesmen today. This sense of urgency has been increased by two developments: a return of great-power competition that increases fears that the West has entered a period of decline; and profound and unsettling technological changes that have transformed the basis of social, economic, and political life. Under these pressures, has the idea of a “liberal international order” lost its value? How should we think about the future state of international relations, and how might it differ from the past? What can we learn from previous efforts to construct a world order conducive to peace and prosperity? As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, we need new thinking about the future of the international system—thinking that more accurately reflects the era in which we live. 

Join Dr. Frank Gavin as you explore first-order questions about the material, political, and intellectual foundations of the current world order and its likely future direction.

Tune in for Dr. Gavin's future talk on Hopkins at Home.

Tuesday, June 9th at noon EDT | Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy
 

Francis J. Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University. In 2013, Gavin was appointed the first Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies and Professor of Political Science at MIT.  Before joining MIT, he was the Tom Slick Professor of International Affairs and the Director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas.  He directs the Nuclear Studies Research Initiative and, with James Steinberg, the International Policy Scholars Consortium and Network.  From 2005 until 2010, he directed the American Assembly’s multiyear, national initiative, the Next Generation Project: U.S. Global Policy and the Future of International Institutions.  Gavin is the Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Texas National Security Review, a Non-Resident Senior Advisor at the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an affiliate of MIT’s Security Studies Program, a senior fellow of the Clements Center for National Security, a distinguished scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center, a senior advisor to the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and a life-member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  He received a PhD and MA in history from the University of Pennsylvania, an MS in modern European history from Oxford University, and a BA in political science from the University of Chicago.

His writings include Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958-1971 and Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age.  His latest book, Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy, was published by Brookings Institution Press in January 2020.