The first Cold War was a struggle between capitalism and communism; most Western politicians and policymakers imagine the new one to be a struggle between democracy and autocracy. Russia's World Order explains that in Russian eyes, the conflict is about something very different: it is a fight between two incompatible visions of where history is leading.

Russia's World Order describes the civilizational theory that has come to dominate Russian official discourse, and that has come to dominate Russian official discourse and that is being used to justify its clashes with the West. Whereas the West promotes a vision of history that drives all nations toward convergence on a single model, Russia's political leaders increasingly portray the world as consisting of numerous distinct civilizations, each diverging toward its own destination. The Russian state portrays itself as defending the right of all civilizations to chart their own independent path and is having some success in using this logic to win allies.

Paul Robinson recounts how ideas of inevitable convergence once dominated Russian thought as well but were gradually pushed out by civilizational theories. He outlines where these theories came from, what they propose, and how they became popular. Russia's World Order thereby reveals the true nature of today's New Cold War.