Book review: Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000. (Random House, 1987)
Five hundred years of world history tracking the balancing relationships between war, economic strength, and geopolitical position. To oversimplify drastically: wars between superpowers a/o coalitions (i.e., wars that can't be won in a few weeks' campaigning) will always be won by the side with the stronger economy. And, what a Great Power needs in order to stay Great is to invest equally in industrial development, financial development, and military strength, all at highest priority - oh, and technological R&D too; because this is by definition impossible, Great Powers inherently can't remain Great forever. Some parts of the book (the period between the World Wars especially) read very much like a history of the world told in terms of Sid Meier's Civilization.
Presented with a lot of detail and supporting numbers, but of course the real test of a work like this (especially when it's being read 20 years later) is how well it scores on the predictions in the final chapter. Kennedy scores pretty well: he wisely stresses that there inevitably will be events he can't foresee, and therefore his forecasts along then-present trends will certainly not come exactly to pass; he then goes on to project the trajectory of China, Japan, and the US for 20 years (then "the next 20," now "the last 20," if you see what I mean) pretty well, and the European Union (which he at the time just calls the EEC) with some accuracy. The one case where he falls conspicuously short is the fate of the USSR, and that's only embarrassing because he spends 25 pages on the inherent contradictions of the Soviet system, and the impossibility of it maintaining itself as of the mid-80s, but stops so far short (out of sight, really) of predicting its actual collapse.
Weaknesses? Not much: a certain Western-centrism, and the fact that this much dense serious prose in small type will scare some people off; even for me, this will never be something to pick up on an idle Saturday afternoon. Three good solid woofs.
Five hundred years of world history tracking the balancing relationships between war, economic strength, and geopolitical position. To oversimplify drastically: wars between superpowers a/o coalitions (i.e., wars that can't be won in a few weeks' campaigning) will always be won by the side with the stronger economy. And, what a Great Power needs in order to stay Great is to invest equally in industrial development, financial development, and military strength, all at highest priority - oh, and technological R&D too; because this is by definition impossible, Great Powers inherently can't remain Great forever. Some parts of the book (the period between the World Wars especially) read very much like a history of the world told in terms of Sid Meier's Civilization.
Presented with a lot of detail and supporting numbers, but of course the real test of a work like this (especially when it's being read 20 years later) is how well it scores on the predictions in the final chapter. Kennedy scores pretty well: he wisely stresses that there inevitably will be events he can't foresee, and therefore his forecasts along then-present trends will certainly not come exactly to pass; he then goes on to project the trajectory of China, Japan, and the US for 20 years (then "the next 20," now "the last 20," if you see what I mean) pretty well, and the European Union (which he at the time just calls the EEC) with some accuracy. The one case where he falls conspicuously short is the fate of the USSR, and that's only embarrassing because he spends 25 pages on the inherent contradictions of the Soviet system, and the impossibility of it maintaining itself as of the mid-80s, but stops so far short (out of sight, really) of predicting its actual collapse.
Weaknesses? Not much: a certain Western-centrism, and the fact that this much dense serious prose in small type will scare some people off; even for me, this will never be something to pick up on an idle Saturday afternoon. Three good solid woofs.