ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates the conceptual foundations of international order, the distribution of capabilities, and ontological security, the dynamics between them, and locates them in their respective historical and case-specific contexts. The idea that international order is based on a certain pattern, or set of principles, gives normative direction to Henry Kissinger's legitimate aims and methods of foreign policy and to Bull's goals of the international society. The post-1945 pattern of international order that underlay the Cold War was pluralistic, based on the foundational UN Charter principles of self-determination, sovereign equality and non-interference in states internal affairs. The claim by Washington that liberal-democratic capitalism is the sole legitimate form of governance forms the normative basis of a liberal international order. Strategic unipolarity underwrites the current international order. Preponderant US strategic power provides the necessary coercive authority for the functioning of a global market economy.
