In his book, M. Mazower reflects on the problem of national and international principles in international relations. Considering polar concepts - the evolution of various variants of a totalitarian internationalist utopia and the idea of establishing global harmony, achievable through the maximum refusal of control and going beyond the state - the author traces the history of the so-called middle form of internationalism, which dominated world politics for most of the twentieth century. Mazower examines the emergence in the 19th century ideas and mechanisms of international governance of the world, implemented by the European “great powers”, then shows the formation and development of the concept of Anglo-American world hegemony, as well as the features of the implementation of this policy after 1946 in the conditions of the Cold War, and, finally, the ideas of globalization and the realities of a unipolar world that emerged in the 1990s