RICHARD FALK REVISITING WESTPHALIA, DISCOVERING POST-WESTPHALIA ⋆ (Received 14 August 2002; accepted in revised form 15 August 2002) ABSTRACT. This article explores the structure of world order from the perspective of the Treaty of Westphalia, which is treated as the benchmark for the emergence of the modern system of sovereign states. Emphasis is placed on Westphalia as historical event, idea and ideal, and process of evolution, and also on developments that supersede this framing of world politics, especially, globalization and the megaterrorist challenge of September 11, 2001. At issue is whether the state system is resilient enough to adapt to new global conditions or is in the process of being supplanted, and whether the sequel to Westphalia is moving toward humane global governance or some dysutopic variant, or both at once. KEY WORDS: cosmopolitan democracy, globalization, global empire, humane global governance, international law, megaterrorism, nation, regionalism, sovereignty, world government, world order The undertaking of this article is to consider the historically ambiguous circumstances of world order as contextualized by macro-historical devel- opments early in the 21st century, especially the overall impacts of the complex market-led phenomenon generally described as “globalization” and the more traumatic September 11, 2001, megaterrorist attacks on the US that have given rise to a resurgence of security-oriented geopolitics. What these two, seemingly, so disparate developments have in common, is their subversive impact on a structure of world order as long constituted overwhelmingly by the interplay of sovereign states. Both challenge in complementary ways the regulative capabilities of states in the face of profound challenges associated with the rise of the non-territorial potency of networked forms of information-based organization. These develop- ment have given rise to profound doubts about the continuing role of resource-based power that has dominated international diplomacy and foreign policy for the last several centuries. ⋆ Large portions of this article were drawn from “The Post-Westphalia Enigma” in Björn Hettne and Bertil Od´ en (eds.), Global Governance in the 21st Century: Alternative Perspectives on World Order (Expert Group on Development Issues, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sweden, 2002), pp. 147–183. The Journal of Ethics 6: 311–352, 2002. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.