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Review by
THE MODERN
TRIBUNE
"The End of the American Era"
by
Charles A. Kupchan
February 4, 2003
Buy from Amazon.com
"The End of the American Era" is
highly recommended to anyone who desires to know what
is going on in the world of global power
struggles, grand national strategies, and how events
of the day are now shaping the future of American and
the world. With an amazing weave of American and world
history, global and domestic politics, and current
events, Dr. Kupchan, predicted, with the clarity
of an historic visionary, fault lines and power
struggles - developing over ideology and competing
national ideals - which are beginning to unfold since
the book was written. Once
you have read his insightful book, the pieces of the
global political puzzle will begin to make sense and
the events predicted by Dr. Kupchan will begin unfold
before your eyes.
Learn about the grand strategies of a
nations, the use of power, the
reasons why other great world powers of the world such as Rome and
Great Britain fell. This book takes you from the birth
of American, it's expansion, it's growth, the wars,
the Great Depression, the cold war and fall of the
USSR, and up to the EU, the euro, and what it all means.
It takes you to a time when democracy has no enemies
and the struggle for power pits democracies against
one another. What caused the Great Depression - the
parallels - the boom and bust - the US faced in
the 90s and now? How the EU has united with one
currency, all but eliminated borders, and has built an
economy which may soon surpass that of the US? How
economic power leads to the need for military power.
The pitfalls of expansion to quickly and the problems
of maintaining global dominance -
instability to fall? Why NATO's recent
military alliance with the EU may turn the EU economic
force into a military threat? Learn why tensions
with France and Germany - over the approach and
necessity for the war in Iraq - may exacerbate a
fault line between the US and the EU nationalist
tendencies, and, pose a threat to American global
dominance. Learn how geopolitical,
theological, economic, and political fault lines are
now drawing and how they are shaping a rapidly
changing global power shift. Understand America's
emerging challenge by the EU and the coming of Asia.
What is America grand strategy?
Since it's writing, the pieces have
fallen into place so accurately that you would swear
that Dr. Kupchan knew the plot before the movie
was released. This book is a must read if you want
to place current events in perspective and understand
how alienating the EU with the war on Iraq may
undermine American power and contribute to making the
American economy second place - with the EU as the
next major economic and military challenge.
"The End of the American Era" ask and
answers many questions which impact us all. This book
is not so much a prediction of doom about what country
or set of countries will replace the United States as
the world superpower, as it is about how the U.S.
should accompany and help shape a more stable world as
new world powers rise.
Other Reviews
The End of the American
Era: U.S. Foreign Policy After the Cold War.
By Charles Kupchan.
New York:
Alfred Knopf,
2002,
368 pp.
Reviewed by G.
John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2002
A bold and elegant new statement about the coming
breakdown of Pax Americana and a return to great-power
rivalry. The United States is so powerful that it
looks as though a Washington-centered international
order will last forever. In this thought-provoking
study, however, Kupchan argues that a unipolar world
is unsustainable. Dramatic shifts in the international
landscape are afoot -- and America neglects this
emerging unfavorable turn of events at its own peril.
In Kupchan's view, two developments are pushing the
world back to multipolarity. One is the rise of
Europe, which is acquiring both the economic and
political heft necessary to challenge American
leadership and its own political identity as a
superpower. The other is the decline of American
public support for internationalism, which makes it
increasingly difficult for the United States to honor
commitments and bear the burdens of sustaining the
existing order. Indeed, Kupchan is most insightful in
illuminating the impact of America's distinctive
political culture on grand strategy. In his eyes, the
growing influence of the old-style populism found in
the American South and West -- and its deep suspicion
of international engagement and entanglements -- will
fuel the American retreat from the global stage.
Eventually, the end of U.S. primacy will usher in a
more "unpredictable and unpleasant" world of
competition and conflict between the traditional great
powers. But Kupchan is vague about how dangerous or
unstable this order will be. He rejects the
predictions of both realist hard-liners, who expect
rivalry and the threat of war, and liberal optimists,
who expect an expanding democratic peace. Rather,
Kupchan thinks the coming order will be marked by a
return to the familiar world of competing great powers
but also by the revolutionary changes of a new digital
era. The book's message to the navigators of the
American ship of state: open your eyes and expect
change ahead.
Dr. Kupchan's "The End of the
American Era" can be purchased on Amazon.com or at
most major book stores.
See The Writings and Thoughts of Kupchan
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