Some folks worry that America is embarking on a new course of world
domination. Noted social scientist Wallerstein argues that our day
in the imperial sun is already over. It seems counterintuitive to
suggest, as the ashes of Baghdad cool, that US military power is
waning, its political and economic might fizzling. But Wallerstein
(Ecole des Hautes Etudes/Binghamton Univ.), known among academics
for his "world-system" approach to history, maintains that the
events of September 11, 2001, hold a fivefold lesson for America:
its military power has severe limitations (else the terrorists
would not have been able to launch such a devastating attack on the
homeland); anti-American feeling is on the rise throughout the
world; the "economic binge of the 1990s" was an aberration in a
larger cycle of global impoverishment; civil liberties are ever
fragile and steadily being whittled away; and American nationalism,
with its twin strains of isolationism and "macho militarism," is
responsible for more than a few of the world's troubles. These
essays, many drawn from journal articles, advance these arguments
capably, though some of Wallerstein's lines of thought turn on
assumptions that not all readers will share-among them the Marxian
notion that capitalism necessarily sows the seeds of its own
demise, and Wallerstein's apparently self-evident premise that
state structures are declining across the planet, which will ipso
facto increase the level of quotidian violence and global
instability. To these assumptions Wallerstein adds the cheerful
prediction that capitalism as we now know it will disappear in the
coming century, once the world left stops affording it survival "on
the basis of the nonfulfillment of liberal rhetoric." What might
replace it, of course, is anyone's guess, though Wallerstein holds
out much hope for a "relatively democratic, relatively egalitarian
world." Provocative, if wholly arguable, and likely to enjoy wide
circulation among the antiglobalism contingent. (Kirkus Reviews)
The United States in decline? Its admirers and detractors alike
claim the opposite: that America is now in a position of
unprecedented global supremacy. But in fact, Immanuel Wallerstein
argues, a more nuanced evaluation of recent history reveals that
America has been fading as a global power since the end of the
Vietnam War, and its response to the terrorist attacks of September
11 looks certain to hasten that decline. In this provocative
collection, the visionary originator of world-systems analysis and
the most innovative social scientist of his generation turns a
practiced analytical eye to the turbulent beginnings of the 21st
century. Touching on globalization, Islam, racism, democracy,
intellectuals, and the state of the Left, Wallerstein upends
conventional wisdom to produce a clear-eyed—and
troubling—assessment of the crumbling international order.
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