[Richard Haas, The World. A Brief Introduction (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2020), 378 p]

August 31, 2020

review / Salvador Sánchez Tapia

During a fishing workshop on Nantucket with a friend and his son, then a computer engineering student at the prestigious Stanford University, Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, engaged the young man in conversation about his programs of study, and asked him what subjects he had taken, apart from the strictly technical ones. To his surprise, Haass noted how limited issue of these he had taken. No Economics, no history, no politics. 

Richard Haass uses this anecdote, which he refers to in the introduction to The World. A Brief Introduction, to illustrate the general state of the Education higher education in the United States -which is not, we might add, very different from that of other countries-, and which can be summarized in this reality: many students in the country that has the best universities in the world and which is also the most powerful and influential on the planet, which makes its interests global, can finish their university-level training without a minimum knowledge -let alone an understanding- of the world around them, and of its dynamics and functioning.

The World. A Brief Introduction is a direct consequence of the author's concern about the seriousness of this important gap for a nation like the United States, and in a world like today's, in which what he calls the "Las Vegas rule" - what happens in the country stays in the country - does not work, given the interconnectedness resulting from an omnipresent globalization that cannot be ignored.

The book is conceived as a basic guide intended to educate readers - hopefully including at least a portion of that plethora of uneducated students - of varying backgrounds and levels of knowledge, in the basic issues and concepts commonly used in the field of international relations.

By the very nature of the work, no informed reader should expect to find in this book great discoveries, revolutionary theories or novel approaches to contemplate the international order from a new perspective. Instead, what it offers is a systematic presentation of the essential concepts of this field of knowledge straddling History, Political Science, Sociology, Law, or Geography.

The book avoids any theoretical approach. On the contrary, its goal is eminently practical, and is none other than to present in an orderly and systematic way the information that an average reader needs to know about the world in order to form a criterion of how it works and how it is articulated. It is, in final, to make him or her more "globally educated".

From his vantage point as president of one of the leading global think-tanks, and with the experience gleaned from his years of service as part of the security establishment of the two Bush presidents, Richard Haass has made numerous important contributions to the field of international relations. In the case of the book before us now, the author's merit lies in the effort he has made to simplify the complexity inherent in international relations. In a simple and attractive prose, accessible to readers of all subject, Richard Haass, demonstrating a great understanding of each of the subjects he deals with, has managed to distill their essence and capture it in the twenty-six chapters of this brief compendium, each of which would justify, on its own, an enormous literary production.

Although each chapter can be read independently, the book is divided into four parts in which the author approaches the status of today's world and the relations between states from different angles. In the first part, Haass introduces the minimum historical framework necessary to understand the configuration of the current international system, focusing in particular on the milestones of the Peace of Westphalia, the two World Wars, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War world.

The second part devotes chapters to different regions of the world, which are briefly analyzed from a geopolitical point of view. For each region, the book describes its status, and analyzes the main challenges it faces, concluding with a look at its future. The chapter is comprehensive, although the regional division used for the analysis is somewhat questionable, and although it inexplicably omits any reference letter to the Arctic as a region with its own geopolitical identity and called to play a growing role in the globalized world to which the book constantly alludes.

The third part of the book is devoted to globalization as a defining and inescapable phenomenon of the current era with enormous impact on the stability of the international order. In several chapters, it reviews the multiple manifestations of globalization - terrorism, nuclear proliferation, climate change, migration, cyberspace, health, international trade, monetary issues, and development- describing in each case its causes and consequences, as well as the options available at all levels to deal with them in a way that is favorable to the stability of the world order.

Finally, the last section deals with world order - the most basic concept in international relations - which it considers essential given that its absence translates into loss of life and resources, and threats to freedom and prosperity at the global level. Based on the idea that, at any historical moment and at any level, forces that promote the stability of order operate alongside others that tend towards chaos, the chapter deals with the main sources of stability, analyzing their contribution to international order -or disorder-, and concluding with the significance this has for the international era we are living in. Aspects such as sovereignty, the balance of power, alliances, or war, are dealt with in the different chapters that comprise this fourth and final part.

The coda of the book, entitled Where to Go for More, is of particular interest to those who wish to delve deeper into these matters. This final chapter offers the reader a well-balanced and authoritative compendium of journalistic, digital and literary references whose frequent use, highly recommended, will undoubtedly contribute to the educational goal proposed by the author.

It is an informative book, written to improve the training of the North American and, beyond that, global public, in matters related to the world order. This didactic character is not, however, an obstacle for Haass, in some moments, and in spite of his promise to provide an independent and non-partisan criterion that makes the reader less manipulable, to tinge those matters with his staff vision of the world order and how it should be, nor to exercise a criticism -somewhat veiled, it must be said- to the international policy, not very globalist, of the current tenant of the White House. Nevertheless, The World. A Brief Introduction offers a simple and complete introduction to the world of international relations, and is almost a must-read for anyone who wants to get started in the knowledge of the world order and the mechanisms that regulate it.