World Order

by Henry Kissinger

The Arthashastra’s exhaustive and matter-of-fact catalogue of the imperatives of success led the distinguished twentieth-century political theorist Max Weber to conclude that the Arthashastra exemplified “truly radical ‘Machiavellianism’ . . . compared to it, Machiavelli’s The Prince is harmless.” Unlike Machiavelli, Kautilya exhibits no nostalgia for the virtues of a better age. The only criterion of virtue he would accept was whether his analysis of the road to victory was accurate or not. Did he describe the way policy was, in fact, being conducted? In Kautilya’s counsel, equilibrium, if it ever came about, was the temporary result of an interaction of self-serving motives; it was not, as in European concepts after Westphalia, the strategic aim of foreign policy. The Arthashastra was a guide to conquest, not to the construction of an international order.