The End of the American Era
U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Refuting the conventional wisdom that the end of the Cold War cleared the way for an era of peace and prosperity led solely by the United States, Charles A. Kupchan contends that the next challenge to America’s might is fast emerging. It comes not from the Islamic world or an ascendant China, but from an integrating Europe that is rising as a counterweight to the United States. Decades of strategic partnership across the Atlantic are giving way to renewed geopolitical competition. The waning of U.S. primacy will be expedited by America’s own ambivalence about remaining the globe’s guardian and by the impact of the digital age on the country’s politics and its role in the world.
By deftly mining the lessons of history to cast light on the present and future, Kupchan explains how America and the world should prepare for the more complex, more unstable road ahead.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The title alone makes it clear how controversial this book promises to be in the present climate. That all great nations must fall is a historical fact of central importance to Kupchan's distinctive and provocative version of 21st-century geopolitics. A former National Security Council staffer and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Kupchan eloquently describes the historical trends and long-term patterns within European and American foreign policy that help reinforce his projections detailing the end of the American era. He devotes much of his book to explaining and subsequently refuting alternative views of the future from other famed political analysts such as Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington and Thomas Friedman. Kupchan unequivocally states, "Each of the visions has its merits, but all of them are wrong." According to Kupchan, most of these accounts subscribe to an unrealistic worldview that has America remaining the sole power in a "unipolar" world. Kupchan asserts that the rise of the European Union coupled with the emergence of a strengthened Asia will create a serious challenge to America's primacy, and that new fault lines will emerge around these multiple centers of power, creating a new cycle of history. With a belief that America will contribute to its own demise with the current "go-it-alone impulses" of American policy makers, he warns the U.S. to shy away from an isolationist policy that could alienate potential partners. Given most recent foreign policy developments, Kupchan's book should be more relevant and more roundly criticized than ever.
