Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000

Kennedy's book takes a long view of the factors that lead to the rise and fall of great powers. Despite the current conflicts, those factors continue to operate over the decades. He also notes the difficulties that historians have in predicting the rises and falls of the great powers.

I disagree with this review because it seems to ignore the central thesis of the book: that Great Powers decline relative to other powers when they overextend their military spending relative to their and the other powers' economic base. Kennedy is prescient to the position we are increasingly sliding into: our economy dependent upon the good graces and labor of other nations and their willingness to buy out debt; a populace with a very low saving rate and high personal debt; a national debt that continues to skyrocket; balance of trade deficit that is the largest in the world. We are living on the borrowed wealth of the next generations and investing far too much in regressive activities such as the military. China is rising, as is India. 50 years from now the relative power of the USA will be even more eroded than it is today. We have overextended our "imperial reach" in the name of anti-Terrorism and the spread of democracy. Kennedy may be wrong on a number of details, but the broad stroke is correct and relevant to where we have gotten to since the end of the "cold war."