Stability is defined as an international system with the same distribution of power for a long period of time. World order is defined as a governance anchored to the promotion of four steady values (the units of measurement) in each arena of international relations: democracy (political), market (economic), peace (military), national self-determination leading to single-nation states (cultural). Multipolar and bipolar systems were stable, but disordered, as values promoted by the main powers were not steady. Change periods were/ are unstable: from 1915 to 1945 and after 1989. In the 1990s there was an attempt to consolidate both order and stability, through the concert of powers; as pluri-national states prevailed after 1989, it was only a ‘near order’. Since 2001, there has been neither stability (both unipolarism and multipolarism failed), nor order, as the promotion of those values has been weakened by the West (especially by Obama and Trump) because of the objections of Islamic fundamentalist groups (and in part by China, Russia, Venezuela). A “disordered stability” and the return to the conservative diplomacies of ‘real-politik’ (with the West promoting ‘lesser evil’ authoritarian regimes and waging wars to fight Islamic fundamentalism) has not re-emerged yet. The Usa are not a great power anymore, as both Obama and Trump were/are shy and uncertain in foreign policy. An “unstable order” would be anchored to the promotion of single-nation (only Shiite or only Sunni, Palestinian, Kurd) states.
