Civilizations without Hierarchies? Reimagining Global Order - A Book Review by Seifudein Adem, (Institute for Advanced Research and Education, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan.)

Editor's Note: One of the founding members of the Japan Society for Afrasian Studies (JSAS), Professor Adem Seifudein, has also become one of the most thoughtful and consistent contributors to this Newsletter. We are therefore delighted to share with our readers a book review he recently wrote for the Journal of International Relations of the Asia-Pacific. The review, which follows, is both insightful in its own right and an excellent gateway to the book it discusses.

Reading Professor Seifudein’s reflections immediately brought to mind the theme we adopted for the JSAS 2025 conference: Enhancing Asia–Africa Partnerships in the Global Paradigm Shifts. That phrase—global paradigm shifts—may sound abstract, yet recent events remind us how real and unsettling such shifts can be. The institutions and norms that have shaped the international system since the end of the Second World War—institutions such as the United Nations and the wider architecture of multilateral cooperation—are increasingly under strain. In moments like these, the question naturally arises: what happens when global orders weaken, and who is prepared to imagine alternatives?

History reminds us that no empire or dominant order is permanent. Roman, British, and other hegemonies eventually declined, often leaving periods of uncertainty behind them. One lesson we might draw from this is the importance of strengthening regional and interregional cooperation so that international instability does not simply translate into local fragmentation. In this sense, the spirit of Bandung—the aspiration for Afro-Asian solidarity and cooperation—was not misguided. If anything, the greater mistake may have been failing to pursue that vision with sufficient seriousness and institutional commitment.

Regional organizations such as the African Union, ASEAN, and others represent important attempts to build such frameworks. If they are to play a stabilizing role in an era of global transformation, they must be strengthened and sustained. When global orders shift—as they inevitably do—strong regional institutions can help ensure that the resulting adjustments do not simply divide neighbors or revive old patterns of “divide and rule.” These reflections are only a prelude to the thoughtful review that follows. Professor Seifudein’s discussion of Amitav Acharya’s The Once and Future World Order invites us to reconsider how civilizations have interacted across history and how a more plural and balanced global order might emerge in the future. We thank Professor Seifudein for generously allowing us to share this review with the JSAS community.

The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West by Amitav Acharya, London: Basic Books, 2025, 455 pp. ISBN: 9781399811750, 18.99 Paperback.

This book is ambitious and distinctive. It is the first English-language book of its kind—a systematic comparison of the major world orders and civilizations of the last 5,000years from a non-Western perspective (p. 352). It is a roadmap for the new world order, too, which the author, Amitav Acharya, calls the “global multiplex” (p. 38).

The book begins by underscoring (the fact) that different ideas and institutions so commonly associated with today’s US-led “Western” world order emerged in non-Western civilizations thousands of years before the rise of the West. These ideas encompass those relating to the independence of states, interstate cooperation, diplomacy, peace treaties, protection of individuals against cruel and unjust punishment, religious and cultural tolerance, freedom of the seas, mutually beneficial trade, and environmental protection (p. 15). But the mainstream history of international relations and world orders does not teach this.

It is suggested in the book that a major source of this apparent sin is the dominance of the European perspective in various fields over the last 500years. Two categories of sins may be associated with Eurocentrism: sins of commission and sins of omission. Sins of commission are largely misinterpretations or distortions of the achievements of non-Western cultures and civilizations. Sins of omission occur when fundamental facts about them are overlooked. A significant portion of the book is a chronicle of these sins.

Without romanticizing them, Acharya reveals what has been distorted, obscured, or omitted about non-Western civilizations. The book is indeed about the achievements and failures of non-Western and Western civilizations. It is about Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in each one of them. It is about how the illusion of benevolence nevertheless becomes a common denominator of imperial discourse time and again. It is this even-handed approach that sets Acharya’s book apart from many others that have engaged in a similar endeavor.

It is precisely this even-handedness that allows Acharya to document, in graphic detail (p. 150), the violence and brutality associated with Islamic civilization, for instance—just as he does for Roman, Indian, and Chinese civilizations—while simultaneously emphasizing that Islam was neither uniquely nor exceptionally violent.

The civilizations examined in this book can be classified into at least four broad types based on the relationship among them (or lack thereof).

First, in parallel civilizations, two or more civilizations coexist independently, without interaction with each other. It is conceivable that before they came into contact with Islamic and European civilizations, African civilizations, on the one hand, and other civilizations, on the other, had co-existed in this way, with little or no interaction among them.

Second, there are congruent civilizations in which two or more civilizations share accidental similarities. Elements in the Pre-Columbian civilizations (of the Maya, Aztec, and Inca) can be compared in this sense with those in Sumer, Egypt, Greece, India, China, and, much later, Europe (pp. 202–204).

Third, interactive civilizations are based on an unequal relationship. Western civilization, for instance, is interactive in this sense. However, out of its interactions with other civilizations, what emerged is a civilization that pretends to be global but, at its core, remains Eurocentric.

Finally, in a convergent civilization, the values of one civilization begin to merge and mix with those of another civilization based on “parity of esteem.” This is the system of “global civilization,” which is based, among other things, on the “ideals of equality and mutual respect among civilizations” (p. 363). Such a civilization may be emerging, as Acharya claims (p. 21), but it does not yet exist.

According to Acharya (pp. 357–366), the three fears in the West about the end of the American-led Western order are: the fear of the rise of the “civilization states,” the fear of the Chinese-built and Chinese-led order, and the fear of “chaos, violence, and conflict.” Acharya concedes that the future will not be “a garden of peace” (p. 365). After reviewing the history of world orders, however, he suggests that the emerging order may be more humane and, almost certainly, no less so than the current world order. Acharya’s cautious optimism about the future partly arose from his recognition that “[l]ike Pax Romana and Pax Britannica, Pax Americana was an illusory pax…” (p. 307).

Amitav Acharya also identifies (pp. 309–310) the three schools of thought regarding the future of the USA as a preeminent power in the contemporary world order. The first, so-called “cry-wolf” school, postulates that the theory about the decline of the USA is nothing new; it has come and gone, but the USA remains the leading power, and it will likely continue to be so in the future as well. The second is the “bionic-man” argument, which concedes that America is indeed on the decline, but it is likely to rebound. The third, the “Roman Empire” analogy, suggests that the US decline will be slow, like the decline of the Roman Empire, and may take up to two centuries. In addition, is it also not possible, in theory, for a world order to emerge in which the leading economic and military power is neither loved nor respected—because it lacks the moral and normative legitimacy—but is feared? We cannot answer this question, of course, any more than we can know about how today’s world order might have been different had Alexander the Great been successful in uniting the Greek and Persian civilizations more than 2,000years ago (p. 64). Amitav Acharya (p. 356) writes:

The Greeks would not have achieved take off without borrowing from Sumer, Egypt, and other preceding civilizations. Islam reached greatness first by drawing on the science and philosophy of Greece, India, Persia, and China and then adding its own innovations and exporting them to Europe. Europe would not have emerged from its Dark Ages without borrowing ideas, technologies, and resources from Islam, China, India, the New World, and Africa.

Civilizations and world orders have been learning from one another over the past 5,000years, Acharya thus reminds us, and there is no reason why they should not continue to do so now.

The idea that civilizations borrow from one another is, of course, not entirely new. Acharya himself does not claim to be the first to observe this. What is new, however, is the systematic and comprehensive way in which he argues that global order can be rebalanced by simultaneously drawing on shared global values and distinct civilizational traditions. His originality is therefore not in proposing borrowing per se, but in demonstrating—across cases and across time—how a more pluralist approach could meaningfully inform the reimagining of world order today.

The book’s argument constitutes a particularly important and timely reminder because it speaks directly to the current moment of profound global transformation. Across academic, policy, and diplomatic communities, there is an active search for alternative conceptual frameworks capable of explaining and guiding a rapidly changing world. Amid rising multipolarism, normative contestation, and institutional flux, Acharya’s call to rethink global order through the creative integration of diverse civilizational resources resonates strongly. It reminds us that simplistic cultural relativism is not sufficient for the challenges ahead. In this sense, the reminder is timely not simply because it is a coherent argument, but because it meets an urgent analytical and policy need.

In my judgment, two issues in the book needed more attention than they received. First, Acharya, for one, does not subscribe to Samuel Huntington’s cyclical conception of history (p. 5). And yet, the bulk of the book is about the rise and fall of major world orders and civilizations—driven by religion, economy, empire, and technology—and spanning from the Sumerian and Egyptian world orders in what is today known as the Middle East in the 4th millennium BC to the current American-led world order in the 21st century AD. How is this different, logically, from Huntington’s idea of the clash of civilizations? Is the Acharya of the “non-cyclical” conception of history here not at odds with the Acharya of the rise and fall of civilizations?

Second, Acharya does not subscribe to the linear conception of history popularized by Francis Fukuyama (p. 19) either. Yet Acharya not only claims that the American-led world order would be the last Western order (p. 310) but also speculates about the possible emergence of a “global multiplex” (p. 366)—which is characterized by “new forms of connectedness and stability, where neither the Rest nor the West is dominant” (p. 19). Is this not just another version of the end of history—perhaps a “Global South” version? Is the Acharya of the “non-linear” conception of history in this instance not at odds with the Acharya of the “global multiplex”?

Acharya is obviously aware of the tension between the two conceptions of history. What is less clear from the analysis is how he wants the reader to reconcile it.

On the whole, this book elevates the level of discourse about the emerging world order. Apart from its impressive scope and the originality of many of its ideas, the book combines respect for detail (the trees) and sensitivity to the broad sweep of history (the forest) exceptionally well. It could therefore easily become an essential source of information, insight, and inspiration.

Seifudein Adem,

(Institute for Advanced Research and Education, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan.)

 *Email: sadem@mail.doshisha.ac.jphttps://doi.org/10.1093/irap/lcag001)

About the book:

Civilizations without Hierarchies? Reimagining Global Order : The Once and Future World Order: Why Global Civilization Will Survive the Decline of the West

Amitav Acharya, London, Basic Books 2025, 455pp. ISBN: 9781399811750, 18.99 Paperback.

About the article:

Seifudein Adem: International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Volume 26, Issue 1, 2026, lcag001, https://doi.org/10.1093/irap/lcag001

Published: 09 February 2026

© The Author(s) 2026. Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan Association of International Relations; All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.

International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 2026, 26, 1–5

https://doi.org/10.1093/irap/lcag001

Book Review