The Rise and Decline of the Post-Cold War International Order

Hanns W. Maull is Senior Distinguished Fellow, German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), Berlin, Senior Policy Fellow for China's Global Role, Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), Berlin and Adjunct Professor of International Relations, Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe, Bologna. He served on the academic advisory boards of Germany s two most important foreign policy think tanks, the German Institute for International Security
(as Chairman of the board, 2004 - 2012) and the German Council on Foreign Relations. Hanns W. Maull has authored, co-authored and edited more than four dozen books and contributed widely to academic journals in German, English, French, Italian and Japanese, including Foreign Affairs, International
Affairs, Politique Etrangère, Europa Archiv, and Chuo Koron.

This books surveys the evolution of the international order in the quarter century since the end of the Cold War through the prism of developments in key regional and functional parts of the 'liberal international order 2.0' (LIO 2.0) and the roles played by two key ordering powers, the United States and the People's Republic of China. Among the partial orders analysed in the individual chapters are the regions of Europe, the Middle East and East Asia and the
international regimes dealing with international trade, climate change, nuclear weapons, cyber space, and international public health emergencies, such as SARS and ZIKA. To assess developments in these various segments of the LIO 2.0, and to relate them to developments in the two other crucial levels of
political order, order within nation-states, and at the global level, the volume develops a comprehensive, integrated framework of analysis that allows systematic comparison of developments across boundaries between segments and different levels of the international order. Using this framework, the book presents a holistic assessment of the trajectory of the international order over the last decades, the rise, decline, and demise of the LIO 2.0, and causes of the dangerous erosion of
international order over the last decade.

This book takes a bird's eye view of what has been happening with the international order over the last quarter century.

Introduction: The International Order: A Framework for Analysis