Conflicts, either of low or high intensity , come with immense loss of human life and cost. But, if accumulated over a long period of time, spanning more than one hundred years, can these conflicts actually sap the energy of the West, leading to its terminal decline? Niall Ferguson, a distinguished financial historian at Harvard and Stanford University, widely considered one of the best historians to have emerged from Britain, seems to believe that it can.
With each Western involvement, the West is entwined in local conflicts, either of its making or through a suction effect, not unlike what had hitherto been described by Robinson and Gallagher. Some of these conflicts even led the US to nearly come to blows with the Soviet Union, not just in Cuba, but Afghanistan, and lately, over Latvia and Russian expansionism into Eastern Europe.
These conflicts imply that the world order, as shaped by the West, is only semi complete. Be it an order based on democratization, elaborate institution or sheer balance of powernone of these projects have produced a “long,” and “deep” peace. The world order seems to be lurching from one conflict to the other, even after Detente was announced or the fall of the Berlin Wall celebrated.
The “War of the World,” in a sense, is a sharp rebuke of the West; especially the inability of Western decision makers, from either half of Western Europe/Eastern Europe, to provide sensible leadership in many regional theaters. In fact, the one area where the West has backed out i.e. Southeast Asia, has seen conflict incidents dropping by some 99 percent since 1976. Obviously, something is telling about the intervention of the West: either the West does it for all the wrong motivations or all the good ones that do not gel with the local values on the ground.
This is not one of Niall Ferguson’s best books. Yet in many strange ways, his handling and mastery of all the historical sources are impeccable. He seems to know how to draw out the best insight based on different key historical events. In this sense, this book is still an accomplishment. And, readers who take Niall Ferguson seriously, will find themselves able to understand world history in a much more complete light, helped and facilitated by many excellent footnotes, too.