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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: 0-375-72659-4 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 11 November, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.33 (18 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Search for a 'Grand Strategy'
Comment: The End of the American Era deals with a crucial and very timely task. It endeavors to find a 'grand strategy' for the United States in an era of power transition in years or decades to come.
It is by and large about peaceful change of international order, which is highly going to be shaped by American policies. Kupchan's work is remarkable as it makes an effort to bridge theory, history and present time. It draws attention to power or balance of power in international politics. This realist base, however, is also complemented by liberal notions of strategic restrain and the need for international cooperation. In this sense, Kupchan's analysis is based upon a mixture of realist-liberal framework. Moreover, Kupchan makes several policy recommendations for current American foreign policy. He criticizes unilateralist drives of the Bush administration, which lead to counter-balancing behavior against the United States by major powers in international system. For this reason, the author recommends American foreign policy elites to follow strategic restrain for the sake of peaceful change of international order as well as the on behalf of American interests.
This book is a well-written and timely one on American foreign policy and it is highly recommended for students of international relations and American foreign policy. Alike, this book is recommended for the informed public. No doubt, Kupchan's work seems to remain as an important key to understand the potential implications of the current Iraqi crisis on the relations between the United States and other major powers.
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: 4
Summary: Europe`s point of view...
Comment: Prof. Kupchan has a very agreeable style. Most - not all - of his ideas are right. He claims the internet is bad for Democracy in the US. I claim the internet is good for Democracy on a global scale. The internet is positive for transatlantic relations. If this is the end of the American Era just as WW II was the end of the European Era could this be the beginning of the Global Era?! He owes me an answer...
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Title: Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order by Robert Kagan ISBN: 1400040930 Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Pub. Date: 28 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone by Joseph S. Nye Jr. ISBN: 0195150880 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy by Ivo H. Daalder, James M. Lindsay ISBN: 0815716885 Publisher: Brookings Institution Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics by John J. Mearsheimer ISBN: 039332396X Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy by A. J. Bacevich, Andrew J. Bacevich ISBN: 0674009401 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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