A New World Disorder in the Making? An Historical Assessment

If seven days is said to be a long time in politics, fifteen years must constitute an eternity in international relations. This is a period beginning in 1991 with President George H.W.Bush [Bush Snr.] confidently and repeatedly proclaiming that a "New World Order" of peace and security lay in prospect, and arriving at the beginning of 2006 when the spectre of war and insecurity under President George W. Bush [Bush Jnr.] looks more likely to materialise as an integral part of a New World Disorder instead. This paper attempts to provide not only an historical commentary of the turn of events of the last fifteen years, but also an explanation for them. Today, with the United States looking vulnerable rather than invincible and Islamist terrorism threatening to become ubiquitous, a world order of harmonious international relations based on any single universalist prescription of norms, rules and values - American or otherwise - looks decidedly distant.