Joint Lecture

Fabian Klose

The Quest for a New World Order:

International Politics Between Visions of Global Governance and Catastrophic Failures in the 1990s

24 March 2022

(0:44 h)

Joint Lecture

Fabian Klose

The Quest for a New World Order:
International Politics Between Visions of Global Governance and Catastrophic Failures in the 1990s

GHIL Joint Lecture, in co-operation with the Faculty of History, University of Oxford, given 10 November 2021

After the end of the Cold War, the 1990s mark the beginning of the quest for a new world order. During this decade new visions of global governance emerged, based on a redefinition of fundamental principles such as peace, security, sovereignty, and the idea of responsibility associated with these multilateral approaches. Far from being linear and triumphalist, however, these developments were overshadowed by mass violence, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the international community’s failure to prevent them. Investigating these visions and accompanying failures offers a way of historicizing the 1990s and analysing the decade’s lasting impact on our world today.

Fabian Klose is Professor of International History and Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Cologne. His research focuses on the history of decolonization, international humanitarian law, human rights, and humanitarianism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His most recent book, In the Cause of Humanity: A History of Humanitarian Intervention in the Long Nineteenth Century, will be published by Cambridge University Press in February 2022.