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Title: The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century by Charles Kupchan ISBN: 0-375-41215-8 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 29 October, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.29 (17 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A great read...
Comment: I just finished reading this book and I think its a fairly elaborate thesis on Kupchan's vision of what the future will look like and what it should look like (if the US follows his grand strategy as the epicentre of its foriegn policy). Kupchan heavily draws from historical comparisons and parallels, despite himself making clear the fact that history cycles but moves forward at the same time. This shortcoming notwithtanding, I think his predictions are as rational and have as much a probability of occurence as any reasonable assumption by an intelligent human. I agree with Kupchan that Europe will increasingly posture itself as a rival pole to US supremacy. Clearly the emergence of France, Germany and Russia as a rival pole in the Iraq situation highlights this fact. With homegrown and Russian military help coupled with economic might of a united Europe, it is not inconceivable to think that European military can rival that of the US by 2010. I also agree with Kupchan that US hegemony is but temporary and like all civilizations before it, will come to an end. The emergence of East Asia as yet another pole is another prediction of Kupchan. This is where I disagree with Kupchan. I think China and Japan will not forge an alliance to establish their collective might. The big question is - Will there develop an India-Russia-China axis or will Russia align itself more with Europe. In effect, I think the direction Russia will tilt in, will be the eventual deciding factor in the development of the main adversarial pole to the US. I think Japan will at best be a player in the sidelines. Geopolitics aside I think Kupchan makes some interesting points about economics and culture. I think most American people do not realize the fragility of the world economy, where is everything is based on speculative forces in the market. With huge deficits, China (and the rest of the world) is in effect financing the US government for now. The moment Asian and European countries stop investing in US treasuries and bonds, it will lead to very bad times for the US economy. And nobody knows if Europe will be there to pick up the pieces and establish hegemony. In any case I would have liked Kupchan to elaborate more on this aspect. I also disagree with his premise of the motivations of the terrorists. I think increasingly the term "terrorism" will be misapplied and used to quell legitimate democratic aspirations of non-state actors by professed nation states. As the distiction gets increasingly murkier, I think the impact and power of non-state actors will rise and increase the chaos that already exists in the world. In any case, I think this book is a valuable addition to any collection on contemporary foriegn policy.
Rating: 2
Summary: Strategic Capitulation
Comment: Almost everyone agrees the current U.S. ascendancy in global politics is temporary. Even conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer says Americans should enjoy their current geopolitical dominance because it will not last. In "The End of the American Era," Charles Kupchan also thinks that American dominance is temporary and believes a strategy is needed by which the U.S. transfers some of its global responsibilities to other emerging powers.
He begins his book by addressing the shortcomings of other recent major conceptual frameworks of global politics as conceived by Frances Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Paul Kennedy and Robert Kaplan (who Kupchan groups together), John Mearsheimer, and Thomas Friedman. The flaw in all of these thinkers, according to Kupchan, is that none of them have recognized the most important fundamentals of the present global system, which is America's current overwhelming power and the fact that its hegemony cannot last.
If the U.S. is in decline, who will take its place? Kupchan believes a united Europe is rising and that East Asia (China and Japan) is not far behind. In this global environment, and because of U.S. domestic tendencies towards isolationism, he thinks a grand strategy is necessary for the U.S. to smoothly make the transition from a unipolar world to a multipolar one. While Kupchan is not entirely clear about the timing of this transition, in at least one area of the book he says Europe is about a decade away from forming a credible alternative axis of world power and East Asia about three decades away. Other countries - mostly Russia, sometimes India - are also mentioned in places throughout the book as potential poles, but without much detail.
Europe is the main object of Kupchan's attention. According to his argument, Europe's ever-growing economic and political solidarity will soon naturally give rise to geopolitical power. If the U.S. cedes some of its power to Europe now in preparation of that development, a healthy relationship will grow between the two; if not, then we can expect a bumpy ride on the way to multipolarity.
While I agree with some of Kupchan's premises, such as the inevitable relative decline of U.S. power and the likelihood that the new world will be multipolar, I disagree with both his vision of what that new world will look like as well as his suggestion for a grand U.S. strategy on how to handle it.
Contrary to Kupchan's thinking, Europe has neither the will nor the military to become a geopolitical force within the next decade. If economics and some shared values were all that was required, Europe would have become an alternative axis of power rivaling the U.S. years ago. Instead, as the crisis over the U.S.-led war in Iraq makes clear, if the Europeans are ever going to be a geopolitical force, they will need institutions to make common and *binding* diplomatic and defense policies that override the national priorities of their constituent states. And even if they have these institutions, the money will have to be found to build a first-rate military. With many European nations heavily in debt, and a demographic crisis looming on the continent, where will this money come from? Kupchan brushes aside these difficulties.
Europe's common military does not have to rival America's, but it must have power projection capabilities to both Eastern Europe and the Middle East. If it doesn't, then Europe will still require the United States to enforce stability in those areas using its military power when other measures have failed. After all, a resurgent Russia might still haunt the future of Eastern Europe, and Europe, as a whole, is far more dependent on Middle East oil than the U.S. Nothing we see today shows Europe will be ready to handle those responsibilities any time soon.
The less said about Kupchan's thoughts on East Asia, the better. His brief sections on the region and the countries in it are surprisingly thin, devoid of fresh thinking, or even proof he did anymore than just remedial reading on the area. What's more, his vision of how U.S. strategy fits into the region is shockingly naïve, envisioning the United States leading the way towards a sort of united East Asia by - among other things - helping Japan and China to forsake old enmities. That's not strategy; that's fantasy. Even Kupchan admits as much.
There is a common theme to this book. No matter what the region or area - whether it's to Europe, East Asia, or international institutions - Kupchan's strategy calls for the U.S. giving up power. This seems an odd strategy for what is still by far the most powerful country in the world and what is likely to remain the most powerful country in the world for the foreseeable future. Wouldn't a realist at least call for giving up power in one region where it is less needed so that it could be at least partially redeployed somewhere else where it is more needed? Instead, Kupchan seems to think that U.S. power is a cheap currency to be spent on dubious schemes such as pushing Chinese/Japanese reconciliation.
By showing he has only one general prescription to fit every region's future, Kupchan signals he is less interested in seeing the shifting balance of world power as it is, and putting forth a strategy to deal with it, than he is in pushing an ideology of world power that he feels comfortable with. The final section of the book gives a clue as to why, showing he is highly downbeat about America's future. Interestingly enough, having dismissed Robert Kaplan's vision of a splintering world divided between north and south, he buys into Kaplan's view of the United States as a splintering country. Kupchan believes that even as the U.S. helps the rest of the world come together (Europe and Russia/China and Japan/north and south), regions within the states themselves are destined to grow apart. This ending is a contradictory and absurd coda to an already faltering book.
Rating: 5
Summary: It could be a very ugly world
Comment: We all know the first, most basic lesson from history - civilizations rise and fall. There are several parameters that will ensure that a powerful nation secures its supremacy for a prolonged period of time - but the key is enlightened leadership. How is it that one of our leading accounting firms whose founder worked to the highest ethical standards fell during the Enron era? How is that just one American President could turn the world's biggest creditor nation into the world's biggest debtor nation in just eight short years. How is it that Japan lost its supremacy in a decade? Surely the answer lies in having enlightened leadership and a system that ensures that a steady succession of enlightened leaders take the helm and are ready in the wings whenever the call arises. Our present system of electing the leader who can blow his own trumpet the loudest has the seeds of self-destruction. My hero in this respect is Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus, the Roman General who tilled the land in retirement until the empire was threatened and he was twice called to the dictatorship of Rome in 458 and 439 BC. In 458 BC he defeated the Aequians in a single day, and after entering Rome in triumph and with large spoils returned to his farm. No blowing his own trumpet and holding onto power by this general!
A wise nation does a simple SWOT analysis - strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats - and formulates a strategy to ensure that it holds on to power. Kupchan reminds us of Churchill's policy in response to the German threat prior to the First World War when, over much opposition, he brought the British fleet back to defend the homeland. But the British leadership was not so enlightened prior to the Second World War; fortunately Churchill was there waiting in the wings. "The End of the American Era" is primarily about the lessons from history applied to present day America and as you might imagine from the title the author gives a thumbs down on the degree of enlightenment of the American leadership today. The author points out that there are already signs that American preponderance and the stability it breeds are slipping away. American internationalism was at its high-water mark during the last decade but is now on the wane despite that fact that today's problems require a multilateral approach and reliance on international institutions. Terrorism poses a collective threat and requires a collective response. The tragic events of September 2001 served as a wake up call to America, alerting the country that the homeland is no longer inviolable and that the US would be wise to take greater interest in crucial foreign policy issues. The central challenge of the future will be the same as the past - managing relations between contending centers of power. Other concerns will pale in comparison to the dangers that will emerge if America believes that its primacy is here to stay. The US has unparalleled potential to shape what comes next but lacks a grand strategy; America is a great power adrift. Unfortunately, the intellectual initiative and institutional creativity of 1815, 1919 and 1945 are missing in Washington today. In addition, we do not have a clearly identified enemy but a much more elusive enemy in terrorism - an enemy schooled in guerrilla tactics where patience and tact are more useful weapons than military power.
Think tanks turn out work with a short shelf life while universities generate scholarship of little relevance to policy. What should America's new map look like? Is Fukuyama in The End of History right in that liberal democracy is taking the world by storm? Is Samuel Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order right that a struggle among Judeo-Christian, Islamic and Confucian civilizations is in the offing? Is Thomas Friedman in The Lexus and the Olive Tree right that globalization has changed the rules for good? In Kupchan's opinion each vision has its merits but all are wrong. The defining element of the global system is the distribution of power, not democracy, culture, globalization, or anything else. As the US withdraws from multilateral institutions in favor of unilateralism the vacuum will be filled by a new era of geopolitical rivalry. If history is a guide, the end of US primacy will bring with it a more unpredictable and unpleasant world.
It is impossible to predict your opponent's next move in chess, let alone predict moves and counter moves on the international scene. However, Kupchan has presented a convincing argument of how the future might unfold. Homeland security must not stand in the way of efforts to address the more dangerous challenge of the return to rivalry between the world's power centers. All this comes together in the final chapter with the closing sentence "It is now the task of those convinced by the warnings to get on with the difficult, but essential, duty of preparing for the end of the American era." This book has as its prime audience policy makers and decision-makers. Personally, I think every American voter should read this book and understand that voting for the person who blows his trumpet loudest is not going to put the most enlightened leader in the White House and without enlightened leadership we will most certainly see the end of the American era soon. Then it is likely to be a very ugly world.
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