Following the end of the east-west confrontation after 1990 the West appeared to have been the
victor in the contest between different systems. However the superiority of the West was not
confirmed in the years following the millennium and the world has become neither more clearly
ordered nor more peaceful. In a well-founded and convincing way this book shows that the West
- precisely through its values and its identity - is capable of developing a persuasive
political strategy to meet problem situations in an increasingly fragmenting world. The new
dual strategy presented here of external self-limitation and internal self-assertion could
give the West greater stability and at the same time allow it to engage better with an
inevitably multipolar world order.
