ABSTRACT
The advocates of the new world order cannot match its characteristics with any of the set blueprints of political theory. Empire and imperialism in particular have too many negative connotations and, despite clear similarities with the present dispensation, cannot be sufficiently purified for use in a nominally postcolonial world. Cosmopolitanism, an ancient philosophical tradition, has therefore been revived and turned into a shorthand for the (partly actual partly hoped for) institutional and constitutional design of the new order. Its post-modern promoters promise and prophesise the end of wars and the dawn of an age of perpetual peace, if the cosmopolitan constitution is fully implemented. A main difference between (emerging) cosmopolitanism and the post-Second World War order is the elevation of a strong moral component with a weak legal gloss – human rights – into the ruling ideology. At the same time, the last twenty years have witnessed continuous violence, war and conquest. As in most millenarianism, extensive destruction and pillage precedes the promised land of peace and plenty. This and the next chapter turn to the main ideological components of the emerging empire, first cosmopolitanism then human rights.
