1: The Old Order: From the "Balance of Power" to the Oligarchs' Club.- 2: Bipolarity, Unipolarity, Multipolarity.- 3: Societies and their Diplomacy.- 4: Exploring the New World.- 5: The Powers at Odds with History.- 6: Neo-conservatism, Neo-liberalism, Neo-nationalism.- 7: France, from Thwarted Ambitions to the Challenges of Alterity.- 8: Conclusion.

We are told again and again that the world has become increasingly complex and indecipherable. However, this book reminds us that we are no longer alone in the world, that it is time to move away from the mental categories of the Cold War and stop treating all those who challenge our vision of the international order as guilty “deviants” or “Barbarians.” The author challenges the diplomacy of Western states, who want to continue to rule the world against history, and in particular that of France, which too often oscillates between arrogance, indecision, and ambiguity. The power play is stuck. The international order can no longer be regulated by a small club of oligarchs who exclude the weaker ones, ignore the demands of societies, and ignore the demands for justice that emerge from a new world where the actors are more numerous, more diverse and more restive to arbitrary disciplines. For this reason, this book also offers ways to think an international order that would be, if notfair, at least less unfair.Bertrand Badie is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po, France. He is the author of numerous articles and books, many of which have been translated into English, including Diplomacy of Connivance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

Calls for diplomacy among Western countries that wish to continue to govern the world against the passage of time Offers a vision of what the world looks like today, far from a vision that has long predominated, that of bipolarity and the balance of power Offers exciting questions about essential issues in the study of IR: power, bipolarity, multipolarity, the balance of power, the Cold War, diplomacy, neocolonialism, current conflicts Opens new avenues for reflection, by revisiting the traditional IR theory and promoting new critical perspectives