A New Account of International Relations: Creating a World Order of Concentric Circles  
TCA Ranganathan
GLOBAL DISCORD: VALUES AND POWER IN A FRACTURED WORLD ORDER by Paul Tucker Princeton University Press, 2022, 552 pp., $42.00
May 2023, volume 47, No 5

This book is about Geo-Economics (the intersection of economic and geo-political objectives) and self-confessedly examines issues from a Euro-centric, or even at times, from a narrower Anglo-American perspective. It examines what, from this perspective, is the central question which bedevils global policy today: ‘How can liberal democracies maintain their values even as they find themselves interdependent with powers whose traditions and attitudes stand at odds with their own?’ The intent of the book is to create a framework for a sustainable system of international cooperation based on political realism, power and interests without sidelining morality that would/could accommodate/deal with the ambitions of a visibly emergent China and/or other illiberal states, by the incumbent powers in the post-Ukraine conflict world. This is sought to be done by discussing how the ebb and flow of globalization over time, compelled geo-politics and economic policy-making to intersect and intertwine, resulting in the evolution of the various differing current day dispute settlement mechanisms, including arbitration.

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