Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World
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Overview
The internationally renowned theorist contends that the sun is setting on the American Empire.The United States in decline? Its admirers and detractors alike claim the opposite: that America is now in a position of unprecedented global supremacy. But in fact, Immanuel Wallerstein argues, a more nuanced evaluation of recent history reveals that America has been fading as a global power since the end of the Vietnam War, and, in the long term, its response to the terrorist attacks of September 11 may well hasten that decline. In this provocative volume Wallerstein—the "visionary" (Diplomatic History) originator of world-systems analysis and the most innovative social scientist of his generation—turns his practiced analytical eye to the turbulent beginnings of the 21st century. Wallerstein upends conventional wisdom to produce a clear-eyed—and troubling—assessment of the crumbling international order and America's precarious footing at its pinnacle.Synopsis
The originator of world-systems theory expands upon the argument he first advanced in the Foreign Policy article "The Eagle Has Crash-Landed" and provides a number of his earlier essays as background material. He acknowledges the U.S. as by far the world's preeminent military power, but suggests that it is a declining hegemonic power. He also addresses, in a number of essays published prior to 2001's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, such concepts as globalization, the West's commitment to democracy, the role of intellectuals, and the conflict between Islam and the West. His final contributions address the political left in the United States and the meaning of "being antisystemic." Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Kirkus Reviews
Some folks worry that America is embarking on a new course of world domination. Noted social scientist Wallerstein argues that our day in the imperial sun is already over. It seems counterintuitive to suggest, as the ashes of Baghdad cool, that US military power is waning, its political and economic might fizzling. But Wallerstein (Ecole des Hautes Etudes/Binghamton Univ.), known among academics for his "world-system" approach to history, maintains that the events of September 11, 2001, hold a fivefold lesson for America: its military power has severe limitations (else the terrorists would not have been able to launch such a devastating attack on the homeland); anti-American feeling is on the rise throughout the world; the "economic binge of the 1990s" was an aberration in a larger cycle of global impoverishment; civil liberties are ever fragile and steadily being whittled away; and American nationalism, with its twin strains of isolationism and "macho militarism," is responsible for more than a few of the world's troubles. These essays, many drawn from journal articles, advance these arguments capably, though some of Wallerstein's lines of thought turn on assumptions that not all readers will share-among them the Marxian notion that capitalism necessarily sows the seeds of its own demise, and Wallerstein's apparently self-evident premise that state structures are declining across the planet, which will ipso facto increase the level of quotidian violence and global instability. To these assumptions Wallerstein adds the cheerful prediction that capitalism as we now know it will disappear in the coming century, once the world left stops affording it survival "on the basis of thenonfulfillment of liberal rhetoric." What might replace it, of course, is anyone's guess, though Wallerstein holds out much hope for a "relatively democratic, relatively egalitarian world." Provocative, if wholly arguable, and likely to enjoy wide circulation among the antiglobalism contingent.