Paul Michael Kennedy as the Greatest British historians - Book Report/Review Example

History Final Assignment Introduction No one can deny that Paul Michael Kennedy is among the greatest British historians who have published a number of prominent history books that have greatly contributed to in-depth understanding of the world history. Particularly, his book ‘The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers’ is among his best works. The book explores the economics and politics of Great Powers from 1500-2000, the reasons for Great Powers decline and forecasts the European economic community (EEC), China, United States, Japan and soviet union position by the end of the 20th century. However, since its publication in 1987, the book has aroused so much controversy. Kennedy points across that even though Great powers rise, their expenditures and imperial commitments cannot allows them to continue rising. They divert their national resource to a military that saps the country’s economic strength and to other forces resulting to inevitable decline. He therefore predicts that the Pacific region particularly China and Japan will rise while the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union Decline1. However, as put across by Joseph, we are in the 21st and the Great Powers predicted to decline have not yet done so. 2 In fact, domestic changes that have been experienced in Europe and United states have continued to revitalize European and American Powers while the delays that have been experienced in the soviet Union, Asian countries and Japan domestic reforms have doomed the soviet power and slowed the Asian and Japanese growth dramatically. This has made most Historians wonder how credible ‘The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers’ by Paul Kennedy is and in order to find out, it is necessary that we carry out a synthesized evaluation and criticism so that we can come up with grounded evidence in regard to the credibility of Kennedy’s book.3 Book summary As elative strength of the great nations in the world affairs will never remain constant, Kennedy puts across that the Great Powers think that there is an optimum balance between military strength and wealth creation over a long term. "Military and naval endeavors may not always have been the raison dêtre of the new nations-states, but it certainly was their most expensive and pressing activity" (xv). The leading powers therefore think that they can neglect the creation of wealth in favour of the military adventures but unfortunately, the other countries rising- up close the gap and their relative strength is eroded. Slowly, the once leading powers decline. In the first chapter, Kennedy draws the line between early modern history and Renaissance whereby he briefly discusses the Muslim and Ming worlds of that time and how the Western powers relative to them rose. As he puts across, the rise of Europe in 1500 was not obvious considering the Ottoman Empire, Ming China, Muscovy, tokugawa Japan and Mongul which had a centralized authority, were well organized and had insistence on uniform beliefs and practices. Europe had the Orient knowledge, was erroneous and fragmentary but till had an image of vast army and fabulous wealth. Compared to the Islam world, Europe was also culturally and technologically behind. In 1453, Constantinople fell and the Ottoman Turks pressed towards Vienna and Budapest and this gave Europe an opportunity to rise.4 On the second chapter ‘the Hasburg bid for Mastery’, Kennedy emphasized of the importance of the Europe’s political boundary and the way they fought their wars ‘manpower revolution’ in shaping the political power balance. The European states stimulated economic growth, advances and military effectiveness. And while the Habsburgs had repeated conflicts, other European states maintained ‘the balance between their material base and their military power better than their Habsburg opponents.5” In chapter 3, Kennedy concentrates on financial power reigning from 1600-1815. For instance, Britain and Russia created an advanced credit and banking system. As he points out, Netherlands and Spain declined while Britain, Russia, France, Prussia and Austria rose and dominated warfare and diplomacy. Particularly, Britain enjoyed a great deal of wealth creation and was able to rise on colonial and commercial terms than other Great Powers. In the next three chapters, Kennedy talks about industrialization and how it spread and tilted the power balance by introducing expensive weaponry and making the world less stable. A he points out, with the exception of Germany, the European countries declined while Russia and USA rose to power. Again, World War I left Russia and Europe weakened, Japan better and US the most powerful country6. In the last two chapters, the author concentrated on long distance delivery systems, nuclear weapons and arms race between Russia and United states and how this changed the diplomatic and strategic landscape. As he points out, global productivity balances changed faster than ever as EU became the largest trading unit. China leaped forward and Japan experienced phenomenal economic growth. The Russian and USA rates had already begun being sluggish and their global production and wealth share had begun shrinking dramatically from 1960’s. As he points out, we now have major super powers: Japan, China, the EU, US and the Soviet Union. Kennedy says that “What follows is speculation rather than history, therefore it is based upon the plausible assumption that these broad trends of the past five centuries are likely to continue. In summary, even though the subtitle in the book implies that Kennedy is talking about ‘military conflict’, he examines the rise and Fall of the super powers in the context of ‘economic change “The triumph of any one Great Power in this period, or the collapse of another, has usually been the consequence of lengthy fighting by its armed forces; but it has also been the consequences of the more or less efficient utilization of the states productive economic resources in wartime, and, further in the background, of the way in which that states economy had been rising or falling, relative to the other leading nations, in the decades preceding the actual conflict.7” Evaluation and Criticism Paul Kennedy predicted that ‘the global productive balances … have already begun to tilt in certain directions: away from Russia and the United States, away also from the EEC, to Japan and China… the rise of the Pacific region… is likely to continue.’ He argued that these two superpowers would succumb to the military overstretch as a result to spiraling arms race and the decline of economic growth and investment. As he put across, Europe would remain an enigma but world also be prone to a relative decline unless it was unified. However, his predictions have not been right and even though Russia has continued to decline, its decline is not based on Kennedy’s argument. Russia kept declining even after shedding the Afghanistan’s military interventions and the soviet empire burdens. On the other hand, the United States never declined at all, on the contrary, it experienced a rebirth of not only overcoming the Cold War but also becoming a dominant economical power in the entire world. The EU also created a common currency and market and in spite of a weak euro, it enjoyed a steady growth by the end of 1990’s8. On the contrary, the Pacific region predicted that it will rise floundered as Japan hit the big pothole in 1990’s and still struggled at the beginning of new millennium to crawl from the decade economic slump. China slowed to 2-4% annual growth rate from the previous 10-12% and therefore faces potential crippling problems such as corruption, social unrest and unemployment. The rest of the Asia suffered from the severe 1997-998 financial crisis and therefore had to begun a restructuring process from the export manufacturing growth to the information oriented activities including the financial industry9. Therefore, the ‘rise of the Pacific region’ turned into the trouble-laden stall while the ‘Asian Miracle’ predicted by Kennedy was immediately aborted. To ascertain the evaluation and criticism, these outcomes were measured one decade after Kennedy predicted the trends. It might be possible that the European and America renaissance is like a temporary blip and Asian nations and Japan nations are inclined into resuming their meteoric rise but it is clear that china and Russia need more time in order to adapt to the rapid globalized world economy. Nevertheless, Kennedy’s predictions are not trivial. We can therefore come into terms with the notion that Kennedy wrote his book at a viewpoint of a realist who only saw the world in terms of power struggle. In his viewpoint, political fragmentation was the condition that characterized Europe after 1500 and spurred nations to rivalry thereby driving ascendance and military arms race. The technological and economic changes that evolved unevenly conveyed advantages that were arbitrarily to various countries ad at different times10. Conclusion: As any historian, Kennedy incredibility was as a result of abjuring theory in favor of facts. He avoided selecting facts and fusing them with theory. The only reason why his book appealed to the academic communities back then in 1987 was because it condemned the Reagan administrative conservative nature which included excessive military overstretch that led to excessive spending and disinvestment. However, Kennedy ignored historical and domestic factors (facts) that usually motivate states to use the economic and military power. ‘To dare all and do anything in order to make the world their oyster.’ As he concluded, they only thing that mattered was who ‘possessed the ships and firepower with which to achieve their ambitions.’ This simply meant that he kept his focus on the military issues (power struggles) and avoided important historical facts that would have made his book credible11. Works Cited Kennedy, P. (1987). The Rise and fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. New York: Random House. Pg. 441-538 Joseph S. (1990). Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. New York: Basic Books. Pg. 34-123. Paul Kennedy, (1993). Preparing for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Random House. Pg. 16-40. Waltz, Kenneth N (1999). Theory of International Politics. McGraw-Hill. Pg. 167-198  Nau, Henry (2001). ‘Why ‘The Rise and fall of the Great Powers’ was wrong’. Review of International Studies. Vol. 27, 579–592. Read More