The paper examines the issues of transition to controlled development of mankind, as well as new approaches to the interpretation of the historical process, definition of globalization and periodization of world history, on which the conclusions in political and historical studies essentially depend. The diversity of opinions on the essence of the processes occurring in the world at the global level is reduced to one conceptual position: these processes are a manifestation of the beginning of a new period of world history (after the period of chaotic development of mankind) with its own laws and institutions of governance. The first signs of this new period are Globalization and Sustainable Development. Meanwhile, there is no precise definition of either Globalization or Sustainable Development, which has led in the first case to a distortion of the essence of this concept and the spread of erroneous approaches to Globalization, which have given rise to its excessive politicization and division of the world into its supporters and opponents, and in the second – to the absence of an established concept of Sustainable Development. The following are proposed as the basis for new approaches to defining Globalization and interpreting world history: 1) history is likened to human movement in an unfriendly environment (natural and human), determined by the law of "desire – obstacle –overcoming"; 2) the theory of the "scale ladder" based on scale management. Humanity turned out to be unprepared for such a rapid development of life at the supranational level, which resulted in a "war of all against all" and the threat of chaos. This was the result of the chaotic development of humanity. At the same time, there is currently a change in ideas about planetary society, which affects the formation of the future world order. As for global governance in such a world order, humanity is on the verge of realizing the need to move away from the unipolar world and build a new world order based on global collective power (based on the principles of harmonization, transparency and justice), which has no alternative to creating a more democratic system of global governance. The spread of democratic principles in the world, carried out, as a rule, by forceful methods, does not give the desired result. Only the formation of a global economy will lead to the solution of this problem. Humanity has a future, as stated in the work, only with the construction of a global economy under the influence of Globalization and Sustainable Development, which does not mean the disappearance of national states. The world is, according to the author, on the threshold of the end of chaotic and the beginning of controlled development of planetary society.