ce is only going to emerge in the first few decades of the twenty-first century. As Kissinger says of the Concert of Europe, "paradoxically, this international order, which was created more explicitly in the name of the balance of power than any other before or since, relied the least on power to maintain itself" (79). Why this seems "paradoxical" is not clear. Perhaps he means it is 'apparently' paradoxical. But, as he says, the balance of power could only work because the effort needed to overthrow the balance was too great for any nation to make and the countries involved were operating on the basis of "shared values" (79). Metternich, "ironically," presaged Wilson in his belief that a shared concept of justice was "a prerequisite for international order" (79). The irony seems to derive from the difference in their conceptions of justice. The true irony is that Kissinger's schematizing makes it impossible for him to see that a plan that did not work (Wilson's) and a plan that did work (Metternich's) could be similar in conception -- the principal difference being that the nations involved simply had no common ground. The fact that this was the case for the US and the European nations after World War I was a mistake on Wilson's part but it does not mean that his ideas could never form a basis of agreement among nations. Certainly he does not mean to imply that they would not have subscribed as religiously to all Metternich's notions of justice in the twentieth century as they had in the early nineteenth! But this distinction between a servant of an emperor, as Metternich was (and as, perhaps, Kissinger believed he himself was) and a servant of a democratically elected leader is not a minor distinction. It is, however, a distinction Kissinger persistently fails to make a substantial part of his analysis even though he pays it lip-service.
On the question of power, as power, Kissinger clearly demonstrates how the unrestra...