The purpose of this chapter is threefold: first, to identify, however briefly, the limits of the Modern Age and how these are impacting on international relations generally and global security in particular; secondly, to situate the evolving geopolitical landscape of the post-Cold War period and especially the declining fortunes of the imperial project within this longer era of transition; and thirdly to point to the ensuing competition of ideas, and to a promising set of perspectives associated with the ‘dialogue of civilisations’. More specifically, the aim is to explore the insights which dialogical discourse brings to the reading of the contemporary human predicament and the responses it proposes to the limits of imperial power and boundary-maintaining conceptions of power and authority.