Books with sensational theses lose a sensational value over time – that is the course of the world. The situation is different with “Ascent and Fall of the Great Powers”, the book that Paul Kennedy made famous in 1987, the British historian who studied in Newcastle in Oxford and has been teaching in Yale since 1983. In retrospect, the time of the publication appears amazing: The British historian predicted the decline of the United States. Ironically shortly before the start of your unipolar moment! How did Kennedy get? Didn't the United States reach a new highlight of their power? Economic, political, militarily?
Kennedy made predictions for five centers of power: the Soviet Union, America, Europe, Japan and China. Not only did he aptly describe the decline of Moscow. He also recognized China's return early. Kennedy self -critically admits today that he did not see the signs of stagnation of Japan in the 1990s. To do this, he did not characterize Europe unjustly as a civilized area, wealthy and nice, but which could not get up to act like a single actor in foreign and defense policy.
And the United States? The starting point of the thesis of the American decline was Kennedy's observation that it takes a long time for an empire to die. He referred to the Ottoman Empire, the decline of which was already spoken in the eighteenth century. But it passed until the end of the First World War.
His plea for a world government was wishful thinking
The decisive factor for Kennedy's forecast of an imperial overstretching of the United States and thus its relative descent compared to the rise of China and India was his conclusion from the interaction of economic change and military conflicts since the sixteenth century that there was a connection between the economic basis and the external policy engagement and obligations of a major power. How much Kennedy was right here is shown by the debate in the second presidency of Donald Trump again about the security policy of the load between Americans and Europeans.
Two decades later, Kennedy dealt with the “parliament of mankind” in the slipstream of the great powers and their global news or even non -action – the past, present and future of the United Nations. Even then, he drew the image of a fallible world organization that is often dependent on the great powers – for whose validity should speak even more today. That is why his then plea for a world government looks like wishful thinking.
Lessons of 1944 for the Ukraine secretary
In the realistic contrast, a study by Kennedy, which appears extremely up to date today and should become a mandatory reading of everyone who deals with the recent bloody presence of Europe: ten years before Russia's full invasion of Ukraine, Kennedy portrayed the “engineers of victory” (“Engineers of Victory”) of the Allies in World War II. As in the Ukrainian defense campaign against the Russians today, it was also in 1943 and 1944, in which the Allied armed forces obtained the upper hand towards the armies of the axis powers, not least about technical innovations and tactical innovations. And even then nothing was decided by the end – only in the historical review it sometimes seems that.
At the beginning of “Rising and falling the big powers”, Kennedy set an Arabic proverb: “Anyone who predicts the future is not wise, they are lucky.” We wish him on his eightest birthday that it was still a hold.
