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Will there be “but one heart to the globe?” asks Walt Whitman in a poem that provides an epigraph in Mark Mazower’s new book, Governing the World: The History of an Idea.
At the center of this expansive work is the question of how Americans
and Europeans have imagined the world, its peoples, and its nations. Is
there but one global identity, as Whitman surmises? Are the world’s
peoples the focus of global politics, or should nations be privileged in
international affairs? Do values and culture, or degrees of
civilization, set nations apart? These questions inform global affairs
over time. This history matters, Mazower argues, as “we find ourselves…
in a hierarchical world in which some states are more sovereign than
others.”
Power also matters: For Mazower, dominant nations come to play a role
in defining the world. He embeds his narrative in the development of
familiar institutions, such as the United Nations, and is especially
compelling when he reveals lesser-known stories like the development of
common units of measurement, presided over by social scientists in the
West. This ambitious and largely convincing account falls short,
however, when the author turns to contemporary matters. Disappointed
that international law does not adequately constrain American war
efforts, he misses an important turn in modern conflict: the way that
law itself has been reimagined as a weapon of war.