New World Order, Old World Mess Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

New World Order, Old World Mess - Essay Example The ensuing cold war was an effort to prove which side was right in best achieving a world order, a state of utopia, a paradise where nations are at peace and all components of social order are in place, people freely choosing their rulers, and everyone justly rewarded for their work. This new world order, they hoped, would be the fruit of cooperation and understanding among nations that shared the same values of peace, justice, happiness, and freedom (Russett 24-33). The downfall of communism proved that capitalist democracy was better, but not necessarily the perfect solution, and for a brief period the world's powers thought that the ingredients for crafting a new world order were in place, one dream and one strategy of nations under the West's model of free market economics and political democracy. However, instead of an era of peace, what followed was a turbulent decade until 9/11 which made peoples and nations realize that their shared values and their definitions of utopia differed, and that different peoples, nations, and cultures understood peace, justice, happiness, and freedom in different, even conflicting, ways, making the new world order look similar to the previous ones characterized by chaos (Fukuyama 120-121). The end of the 20th century was not the peaceful era everyone thought it would be. The collapse of the East released pent-up cultural tensions that had simmered for centuries, artificially controlled or artfully concealed by the cold war (Fukuyama 1993: 213). Even before the euphoria of Berlin faded, violent explosions were felt in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia (Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia), the former U.S.S.R. (Russia, Chechnya, Armenia, and Azerbaijan), and Africa (Rwanda, Sudan, Liberia, and Angola). These conflicts were... The downfall of communism proved that capitalist democracy was better, but not necessarily the perfect solution, and for a brief period the world’s powers thought that the ingredients for crafting a new world order were in place, one dream and one strategy of nations under the West’s model of free market economics and political democracy. However, instead of an era of peace, what followed was a turbulent decade until 9/11 which made peoples and nations realize that their shared values and their definitions of utopia differed, and that different peoples, nations, and cultures understood peace, justice, happiness, and freedom in different, even conflicting, ways, making the new world order look similar to the previous ones characterized by chaos (Fukuyama 120-121).The end of the 20th century was not the peaceful era everyone thought it would be. The collapse of the East released pent-up cultural tensions that had simmered for centuries, artificially controlled or artfully concealed by the cold war (Fukuyama 1993: 213). Even before the euphoria of Berlin faded, violent explosions were felt in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia (Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia), the former U.S.S.R. (Russia, Chechnya, Armenia, and Azerbaijan), and Africa (Rwanda, Sudan, Liberia, and Angola). Almost two decades since the end of the cold war, the new world order has been redefined as a war against terrorism, as despots used by both the East and the West showed their true colors and began biting the hands that fed them.