For a very long time throughout history some nations at one time or another gained power while others lost it.  This question is not only of a historical interest but is also very important for the understanding of our world as the twenty first century unravels.  For just as the great empires of the past rose and fell will today’s empires rise and fall as well.  This question as addressed in a book called The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers which was written by Dr Paul Kennedy who was professor of history at Yale University.  The book was an immediate success and a real sensation.  The author was trying to explain why sometimes during history certain powers rose to very great heights and then fell.  In the last few chapters of the book the author was asking whether the United States would go through the same cycle that was in 1987, at that time I thought the question was absolutely irrelevant then the United States was at the peak of its economic and military power.  Now, after spending two years in this country I am sure I was mistaken.

The work was a wide ranging and a very brilliant analysis of global  politics over the past five centuries, it concerns itself a great deal with the with wars specially those major drawn out conflicts fought by coalitions of great powers which had great  impact upon the international order, but it is not strictly a book about military history.  It also concerns itself with tracing the changes which have occurred in he global economic balances since 1500; but it is not a work of economic history what it concentrates upon is the interaction between economics and strategy as each of the leading states in the international system strove to enhance its wealth and its power to become or to remain both rich and strong.  The author’s main conclusion, nations project their military power according to their economic resources and in defense of their economic interests.  He argues that the cost of projecting that military power is more than even the largest economies can afford indefinitely especially when new technologies and new centers of production shift economic power away from established great powers, hence the rise and fall of the great powers.

The book was divided into several chapters, strategy and economics in the pre-industrial world, strategy and economy in the industrialized era and strategy and economy today and tomorrow, each chapter was divided into several parts the last of which was a look into the 21st century with some very interesting historical speculation.  The work is so massive and its  scope is so large it is simply impossible to cover in the limited space this blog usually allows for a single posting, what I am going to do is try to briefly summarize them here.

The first chapter sets the scene for all that follows by examining the world around 1500 and by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of each of the power centers of that  time, the Ming dynasty in China, the Ottoman Empire , the Mogul Empire, Moscow and Japan.  At the beginning of the sixteenth century it was not apparent that Europe which was made up of a cluster of small weak entities in west central Europe who were constantly at odds with each other was destined to rise above all the just mentioned oriental powers. In spite of these powers  awesome advantages over Europe they all suffered from the consequences of having a centralized authority which insisted on upon a uniformity of belief and practice not only in the official state religion but also in areas like commerce and weapons development.  The lack of any such supreme authority and the warlike rivalries among its various kingdoms and city-states stimulated a constant search for military improvements which interacted fruitfully with new technological and commercial advances that were also being thrown up in this competitive entrepreneurial environment.  Possessing fewer obstacles to change, European societies entered into a constant upward spiral of economic growth and enhanced military effectiveness which over time was to carry them ahead of all other regions of the globe.

So according to the book in its chapter two with the dawn of the 16 century the Europeans were driven while this technological change and military competiveness gong on wee driven forward to gain more power but one of the contenders had more assets and military powers than its rivals was in much better position to strive for a leading role and that contender was the Hapsburgs.  The Hapsburgs were dynastic religious blocks who were ruling Austria and Spain they were able to maintain their position as a great power for almost 150 years and were a short breath from dominating Europe because with the resources they had they were able to suppress their enemies.  But in spit of all that power the Hapsburgs were steadily overstretched themselves in the course of repeat conflicts and became militarily weaker on top of a weakening of their economic base which ended in their downfall.

From 1660 certain European powers like Spain and the Netherlands were falling into second ranks.  At the same time five others, Russia, Britain, Austria, Prussia and France were to dominate the diplomacy and warfare in the wake of the fall own of the Hapsburg Empire.  This was an age in which France under Louis XIV and later under napoleon came very lose to dominate Europe than a an me before or after, but this appetite to dominate was always checked by a combination of other powers like those who were in the flanks protected by geography Britain and Russia.  During the final decades of the century the industrial revolution was under way in Britain which gave that state an enhanced capacity both to colonize over seas and to frustrate the Napoleonic bid for European mastery.

For few decades after 1815 there was a strategic equilibrium in Europe, no single nation was able to make a bid for dominance.  The Europeans’ powers main concern was to maintain their stability inside their borders and further expansion abroad.  This allowed Britain to rise to the zenith as a global power in naval, colonial and commercial terms.  As the twentieth century approached considerable very often insuperable problems, for the British this situation would deteriorate even further after world war one because although like France they came out of the war as winners hey have actually suffered immensely in that victory.  The indisputable victor in the first war was the United States which emerged as the strongest power in the world.  Nevertheless Britain and France remained at the center stage of diplomacy, but this position will be challenged in a very short time by Germany, Italy and Japan.

In the last chapters of the rise and fall the author was talking about the world during the decades which followed the First World War.  I am not going into those events in a great detail its events are very recent and I am sure a lot of people remember them reasonably well, all I am going to do is go very rapidly and as shortly as possible.  The world was shattered by madness, a very destructive war between Germany and its allies and Britain.  Later on the Soviet Union and the United States will be involved on the side of the British.  The Second World War was a very destructive madness, at the end of it 8 years later forty million were dead and hundreds of cities and millions of square miles of land were ruined and lay wasted.  Germany was devastated, but the victors did not fare much better themselves, Britain and France were bankrupt, but the Soviet Union was in a much better shape, during the closing stages of the war Stalin was able to put his hand on many places, a big chunk of Germany the whole of Eastern Europe three Baltic states and a large number of countries in the Caucasus and central Asia almost a third of the globe.  The only real winner was the United States, it emerged from the madness with its lands safe and intact, its mighty production machine in full gear, it was once more the number one world power, but that position would very soon be challenged by a greatly invigorated Soviet Union.  Immediately after the end of the war the Soviets were engaged a very active rebuilding effort concentrating on their military, which within a very short time became extremely powerful with a huge arsenal of conventional a non-conventional weapons including atomic bombs.  In fact another super-power and from that position they started to challenge the American position and for almost half a century they engaged the United States in a very serious conflict, the famous cold war.  The cold war was an extremely serious and expensive conflict, there was no direct military confrontation between the two super powers, but there was many wars which were fought on behalf of one super or the other which incurred a very heavy burden on the Soviet Union’s economic resources.  This with other social and national problems led to the sudden collapse of the Soviet Empire during the middle of the last decade of the 20th century.  Suddenly there was no more a Soviet Union and the United States was once again number one, another example of a great military power which was destroyed by over stretching its economic resources.

In the last chapter of the book “history and speculation” which was published in 1987, the author was wondering whether the United Sates, which was a that time at that peak of its economic and military power was going to repeat the cycle of a rise and fall of the great powers which has happened so regularly during the last 500 years.  At that time I dismissed the professor’s speculation as irrelevant and hypothetical.  Now after 2 years in this country I am sure I was wrong in hastily dismissing the professor’s speculation.

Dr. Najeeb Hanoudi
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Southfield, Michigan