Volume 36, Number 4 · March 16, 1989
Can the US Remain Number One?
By Paul Kennedy
The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895–1905
by Aaron L. Friedberg
Princeton University Press, 329 pp., $29.95
The Future of American Strategy
by David C. Hendrickson
Holmes and Meier, 210 pp., $16.95 (paper)
Thinking About America: The United States in the 1990s
edited by Annelise Anderson, edited by Dennis L. Bark
Hoover Institution Press, 590 pp., $14.95
Preventing World War III: A Realistic Grand Strategy
by David M. Abshire
Harper and Row, 331 pp., $19.95
The end of the century is coming, and serious citizens of the world's number one power are beginning to get worried. Four decades earlier, it had occupied a virtually unchallengeable position in the international system. Its economy was far larger and more productive than any other, its financial reserves were enormous, and its current-account surpluses were staggering. It was the manufacturing center of the globe, and it was also dominant in invention, science, and technology. Being the richest and most successful nation in the world, its inhabitants believed that they had been blessed with a unique political culture—of economic liberalism, a constitutional balance, individual liberties—which all other societies ought to imitate; if, that is, they wished to improve themselves. Moreover, its own superior way of life was buttressed by considerable armed forces should it ever need to fight to preserve its national and international interests; it had the world's most powerful navy, an unrivaled capacity to move troops from one continent to another, and an enormous industrial 'surge capacity' in the event of a prolonged war.
Review, 7180 words
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