A highly readable, even passionate book, Amitav Acharya’s The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West (London: Basic Books, 2025) is an engaging, timely and essential read everywhere, in the ‘West’ and the ‘Rest’.It will inform, provoke and stimulate anyone interested in the current transitional, chaotic, changing, anxiety-inducing phase of world history, one frequently referred to as an age of global disorder. Its expose of historical and contemporary Western oppression will anger many readers, especially from, or of, global South heritage. It should move anyone with any sense of justice. It will also aggravate and exercise champions of Western superiority, all named and clinically dissected in detail.And it will frighten, but also reassure and comfort, those who worry about the end of the West. This is because Acharya’s excellent study – the culmination of decades of research and reflection, is also a torch shining the way towards better possible worlds, despite the doom and gloom of global politics today. It’s not a perfect book – which is? (more below) – but it is bold.After all, professor Acharya is an award-winning scholar at American University in Washington, DC, right in the heart of the American empire led by its current flag-bearer, President Donald J. Trump.The book is a personally-felt, authoritative and searing indictment of Western racism and colonialism, exploitation and plunder, and its post-1945 guise as a ‘liberal international order’ under which that continued. And, as much, it’s about the writing out of history by Western scholars, leaders and intellectuals of non-Western worldmaking, which directly and indirectly influenced the rise of Western global hegemony.One world of interconnected and interacting civilisationsAcharya’s book is much more than a passionate text: it is a clinical study of history that is highly illuminating. Its core argument is an ecumenical one that elevates no historical civilisation to some lonely pedestal. Acharya shows in appropriate historical detail that practically all civilisations regardless of geography – across east and south Asia, the Middle East, southern Europe, Latin America, and Africa (the most erased of all civilisations that made world orders) – contributed to the development of diplomacy, international trade, networks of exchange, of religions, philosophies, science, and ideas.That is, they engaged in their own time and place, separately and interconnectedly, in constructing systems of world and regional order, systems of states, international cultural, economic and military relations, rules and norms to regulate conduct.In other words, Acharya rightly argues that no current or past civilisation may be considered an island, self-made, uninfluenced by any parallel or previous cultures.Amitav Acharya’s The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West (London: Basic Books, 2025) is is engaging, timely and an essential read. Photo: https://basicbooks.uk/Consequently, Acharya argues that shining a light on the hidden past points the way to possible futures, better futures, with the hope of global pluralism and diversity rather than the Western power monopoly. This he calls global ‘multiplexity’ or the global multiplex, in which the West and Rest melt and mix (more or less) as equals, a better and (probably) more harmonious order.To be sure, Acharya is far too sophisticated and well informed to be so idealistic as to predict anything approaching some sort of utopia. He is merely saying that Western power in the American-led international system – with its cornucopia of laudable and loudly-proclaimed values – is hierarchical, unequal, racist, rotten, and self-serving, and its days of global predominance are coming to a close.The gruesome end of this order is being witnessed daily by billions across the world as America and the European great powers back to the hilt Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people. The sun is setting on the Western empire, but rising again on the Rest. Each should embrace the inevitable to make a more just and diverse world order.Critique of western hegemony: How the West was madeAcharya’s central thesis – that world order predates Western dominance and will persist in a multipolar, multicivilizational future – decentres the West. It effectively debunks centuries of myths promoted by Western cultural and ideological domination.Acharya’s survey of 5,000 years of global history, from ancient Sumer and India to medieval caliphates, challenges the idea that the West has a monopoly on order, exposing the arrogance and ignorance of Western-centric international relations, political scientific, historical and philosophical scholarship.Non-Western civilisations have historically contributed to world order through humanitarian values, economic interdependence, and interstate norms. For example, his discussion of ancient Indian republics and Buddhist influences on Chinese statecraft (e.g., Wu Zetian’s use of Buddhist imagery to legitimize her rule) highlights non-Western agency in shaping political ideas, countering the Eurocentric claim that democracy originated solely in Greece.The contributions of non-Western civilisations (e.g., Sumer, India, China, and the Islamic world) to global ideas, including those that influenced Greek civilisation, are described in great detail. Acharya also highlights how Greek philosophy and rational inquiry were influenced by earlier Near Eastern intellectual traditions.Specifically, Islamic philosophers like Ibn Rushd (Averroes) in the 12th century revived and expanded Greek notions of the eternity of the world, which had been suppressed by medieval Christian theology. Eastern (Islamic) thought, effectively, preserved and enhanced Greek ideas, indirectly showing how Greece itself benefited from eastern intellectual currents.Ancient Greek civilisation was part of broader cultural and economic networks and interdependencies across Eurasia, including the interconnectedness with ancient Sumer and India, where ideas of governance, trade, and humanitarian values emerged through cross-cultural exchanges. For instance, Greek city-states like Miletus in Ionia (modern-day Turkey) were in close contact with Persian and other Near Eastern cultures, facilitating the transfer of ideas.Acharya frequently compares Greek and Indian contributions to world order. He notes that while Greece is often credited as the birthplace of democracy, northern India around 600 BCE had republics (e.g., the Vajji confederacy) with people’s assemblies that developed early notions of a social contract, predating Western philosophers like Rousseau. The political ideas of Greece, therefore, may have parallels or indirect influences from eastern systems.Africa, ErasedBut of all world civilisations, it is Africa that the West has sought to erase from history, just cover it up and repeat the Big Lie that somehow Africa, the cradle of the human race, just never had any other contributions to make until the colonialists arrived. Acharya highlights Africa’s significant contributions to global civilisation including the evolution of liberal ideas.He emphasises that African societies developed sophisticated governance systems and political ideas that predated and paralleled Western concepts of democracy and liberalism. For example, the Kingdom of Aksum and Great Zimbabwe practiced forms of collective governance and participatory decision-making, resembling proto-democratic systems. These societies contributed to global norms through trade, cultural exchange, and diplomacy, notably via Indian Ocean networks, which connected Africa to Asia and beyond.Certain historical experiences parallel the principles of the Magna Carta, such as the Mali Empire’s Manden Charter whose tenets pointed to a national constitution with rules for political, social and economic life. According to UNESCO, the Manden Charter was “advocating social peace in diversity, the inviolability of the human being, education, the integrity of the motherland, food security, the abolition of slavery by razzia (or raid), and freedom of expression and trade” (p.226, Acharya).The Mali Empire’s Kurukan Fuga (circa 1236) constitution was a major example of codified governance that emphasised collective decision-making, justice, and social obligations. Such systems embodied democratic principles, constraining rulers’ power through customary laws and councils, much like the Magna Carta limited monarchical authority in England.This challenges the Eurocentric narrative that the Magna Carta is a unique cornerstone of liberal governance. Africa’s contributions to ideas of justice and participatory governance, therefore, predate and complement Western frameworks, enriching the concept of a shared global civilization.Acharya also underscores Africa’s role in shaping modern liberal norms, particularly through the concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which emerged from African initiatives to address mass atrocities, reflecting a commitment to human security and collective responsibility.Acharya critiques the Western-centric view of liberalism as rooted solely in Greco-Roman traditions. Africa’s contributions, thereby, enrich the multiplex world order, where diverse civilisations coexist, fostering pluralistic universalism.How colonialism made the WestAcharya also shows how the ‘West’ was made by colonialism, the violent plunder and exploitation of Asia, Latin America, the Middle east and Africa by militarily superior forces. The West was forged, not born, and it did not make itself alone, uninfluenced by the rest of the world. He roots his analysis of the West’s rise to the peace of Westphalia in 1648, that ended the Thirty Years’ War in which millions were killed in battle or from famine or disease. That effectively led to the modern, sovereign, European state system.This meant state sovereignty – not the Roman Catholic Church or any other transnational power – reigned supreme within a state’s territory. In practice, the strongest states freely intervened in the affairs of weaker European states. But Westphalia also meant, once the ‘European’ Question was settled, a so-called superior ‘standard of civilisation’ developed amongst European leaders that, quite frankly, no ‘other’ was ever likely to meet.The ‘civilised’ were deemed to maintain domestic order to the satisfaction of the great powers. This meant protecting only Europeans’ lives and interests, enforce contracts to enable extraction of wealth, etc, or be labelled savages ripe for colonisation and unequal treaties. ‘Race’ was invented to support this system and the foremost scholars – often beneficiaries of that very system of colonial extraction – helped elaborate and legitimise racial hierarchies.John Locke, for example, one of the greatest of all liberal philosophers, is identified as an investor in the slave-trading Royal African Company, as linked to southern US slavery, and as author and codifier of enslavement in the Fundamental Constitutions of the Carolinas. Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding influenced Thomas Jefferson as he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Immanuel Kant, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Georg Hegel – all played their part in erecting and perfecting theories and practices of white supremacy.It was after Westphalia that the strongest powers turned their attention to the rest of the world, and the rest is history. The Dutch and British East India companies were state-licensed to trade, interact with, and militarily force open markets and societies to Western predation. According to reliable research, Britain extracted from India alone around $45 trillion (in today’s money) between 1765 and 1938. Between 1960 and 2021, research shows the West extracted $152 trillion from the Global South.Racism – white supremacy and its underpinning pseudo-scientific bases – developed to justify and legitimise enslavement, the slave trade and colonial rule. There had been slavery before – across the world and historically, including in ancient Greece and Rome. But never before had race and colour been the systematic basis of human status or worth. And that system of racism has persisted – though resisted by people of colour and their progressive allies – from colonialism through the liberal order to the present day, albeit more subliminally.Few are aware of the development of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, widely regarded as the world’s foremost statement on human rights standards. It is normally attributed to the tireless pioneering efforts of Eleanor Roosevelt, the late FDR’s wife. Yet, it was predated and influenced by Latin Americans’ efforts and Asian contributors. Independent Latin American states suffered intervention after intervention by Uncle Sam’s military and as early as 1916 developed ideas about protecting the rights of all peoples, not only Europeans and Americans living in the ‘backyard’.A Chinese scholar-diplomat, Peng Chun Chang, advised the UN Human Rights Commission to study the principles of Confucianism as the mainly white members drafted the Declaration. And, most impressively, it was Indian feminist and anti-colonial fighter, Hansa Mehta, who made sure that the Declaration stated that “all human beings” not just men “are created equal”, even though Roosevelt had accepted that “men” referred to women as well.But racism seeped and bled into every pore of Western culture, even the ‘objective’ field of geopolitics, focused on the impact of geography on world order. British geographer Halford Mackinder and American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan between them advanced racialised theories of land and sea power to keep at bay the barbarian hordes threatening white imperial power.With Mackinder’s ‘heartland’ theory and Mahan’s demand that the West control key ‘choke-points’ in the world’s waterways, they embedded racial theory into the scientific field of power politics. Others would add ‘Lebensraum’ – the need for ‘living space’ for European have-not powers like Germany. The European standard of civilisation did not include the right to live for the ‘other’ if it in any way compromised colonial interests.It is not for nothing that as the Rest re-emerge, narratives like a ‘century of humiliation’ fuel resentment across the Global South, and are used by principled and unprincipled leaders alike to mobilise domestic opinion.Rejection of Western and American ExceptionalismWestern hegemony is sustained through the universalisation of particular interests (e.g., U.S. liberalism as “acting for all mankind,” as claimed by Henry Kissinger). Acharya’s critique of Western scholars like Kissinger, Niall Ferguson, and Samuel Huntington for presenting the post-World War II order as a Western triumph helps him push a vision of a “multiplex world” where multiple power centres coexist and interact.In his 2104 book, The End of American World Order, Acharya had proposed a non-hegemonic, multi-actor system, a kind of watered-down counter-hegemonic project, challenging the U.S.-led order’s claim to universality. Acharya calls for the West to learn from history and cooperate with the Rest to forge a fairer world.Acharya also debunks American exceptionalism in numerous ways, including by highlighting the impact on the US constitution of Native American practices and principles. Hence, the constitutionalism that governed the 6 nations of the Iroquois Confederacy influenced the confederation of the original 13 American colonies, as well as “many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the Constitution itself” (p.290).But…does Acharya Underestimate Resilience of Western Structural Power? Western power is resilient – it’s a crisis machine that appears to have the capacity for adaptation, integration, and co-optation. The very example of Americans’ absorbing Iroquois’ constitutional principles while pursing policies of genocidal warfare is instructive. The durability of Western hegemony through institutions, economic structures, and civil society, even in the face of decline, must not be underestimated.The West has structural power still. U.S.-led institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and NATO, as well as cultural power-centres like Hollywood, sustain American hegemony beyond military or economic dominance. These institutions continue to shape global norms, even as non-Western powers rise.And contemporary global capitalism, rooted in Western financial systems, maintains unequal power relations. Hegemony includes economic coercion alongside consent, and Western dominance persists through control over global trade, finance, and technology, which Acharya’s narrative of cultural and political pluralism necessarily downplays.Ambiguity in Counter-Hegemonic Mechanisms?How is this new multicivilisational world order to be realised in practice? The vision is compelling but where is the detailed roadmap for how non-Western powers might coordinate to create a more equitable order? Where is the coherent ‘counter-hegemonic’ bloc, led by organic intellectuals and supported by civil society, to challenge the ruling order?Acharya’s broad historical survey, while erudite, does not specify how non-Western states or actors will overcome internal divisions or compete with Western institutions. Are the BRICS+, or the G20, with all their common histories alongside embeddedness in the US-led world system, capable of united independent action?We should recall how the Third World’s demand for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) were emasculated and selectively co-opted by the West in the 1970s and 1980s. Are the BRICS not the effective product of that very process of co-optation?Do Global South business and political elites even want a more equitable world order that includes the rights and interests of their domestic populations? For them, multiplexity means enhanced status and even greater integration into the neoliberal order and super-profits. They directly benefit from great concentrations and inequalities of wealth and political power that the neoliberal era and creeping multiplexity has facilitated.Furthermore, Acharya’s optimism about a pluralistic marketplace in geopolitics, risks romanticizing non-Western agency. Hegemonic powers co-opt potential challengers— which could apply to the integration of rising powers like India into Western-led systems (e.g., WTO membership, place for India on the UN Security Council, etc), undermining their counter-hegemonic potential. Does Acharya underestimate this absorptive capacity of the current order?Limited engagement with class and internal dynamics?What about class inequalities and dynamics? Internal struggles over economic rewards and political powerwithin societies are critical to hegemonic struggles. Acharya’s focus on interstate relations and civilizational contributions sidelines class-based tensions and contradictions within non-Western states. Domestic regimes’ ruling elites and classes depend on internal class alliances and repression, which complicates their role as counter-hegemonic actors on the global stage. They carry performatively virtuous baggage of equity and fairness yet perpetuate that very system once it’s let them through the glass ceiling.Non-Western elites often align with Western hegemonic structures for their own benefit. In effect, are they not part of a transnational historic bloc that sustains global elite power? For instance, the reliance of Global South elites on Western capital or education systems surely undermines Acharya’s vision of a multicivilizational order free from Western dominance. And multiplexity appears to offer no effective avenues for the direct influence of the broad masses of the Global South.ConclusionAcharya’s The Once and Future World Order is highly commended for its accessibility, anti-colonial challenge to Western hegemony, rejection of Eurocentric narratives, and emphasis on non-Western agency. But I think that Acharya probably underestimates the resilience of Western structural power, lacks clarity on counter-hegemonic mechanisms and inevitable power inequalities and struggles, and elides class conflict. Multiplexity may well represent a broadening of the basis of global oligarchy rather than authentic democratisation of world order.But it is a provocative, bold, and passionate vision of a post-Western, West-Rest hybrid world. I do not believe that there is another book on this subject that comes anywhere close to the quality, historical depth and breadth of this one. With this book, professor Amitav Acharya cements his role as one of the most articulate, erudite, clear-eyed and influential intellectuals of the project to elevate the status and role of the Global South in world politics.Despite some reservations, this is a must-read book.Inderjeet Parmar is a professor of international politics and associate dean of research in the School of Policy and Global Affairs at City St George’s, University of London, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and a columnist at The Wire. He is an International Fellow at the ROADS Initiative think tank, Islamabad, and author of several books including Foundations of the American Century. He is currently writing a book on the history, politics, and powers of the US foreign policy establishment.