The book titled World Order is the distillation of Kissinger's thoughts on history, strategy, and the political management of states. It is as if the author observes our planet from a high vantage point, recording the titanic shifts of the tectonic plates of history and the motivations of nations, interpreting the stance that states and empires have taken towards the rest of the world from the formation of Europe to our present time.
Kissinger identifies four main versions of "world order" in history: the European, the Islamic, the Chinese, and the American. From the end of Charlemagne's empire, and especially after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Europeans sought by all means to achieve a balance in international relations, initially within the limits of their own continent and later on a global scale. Islamic states focused their attention on expanding into areas inhabited by infidels, a stance characteristically expressed in our time by Iran under the leadership of the ayatollahs. For more than two thousand years, the Chinese believed that "all under Heaven" must pay tribute to the Chinese emperor. America, on the other hand, sees itself as a "city upon a hill," a beacon for the rest of the planet, with its values having universal application.

How have these trends evolved and how have they shaped the history of the respective nations and regions, as well as the rest of the planet? What happened when these views came into contact with one another? How have they ensured a balance between legitimacy and power in different eras? And what position does each of these perspectives hold in our time? How do they shape the relations between states today?