After Empire: The Birth of a Multipolar World - Couverture rigide

Hiro, Dilip

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 156858427X ISBN 13 : 9781568584270

Editeur : Nation Books, 2010

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

The US, China, EU, Russia, India, and Brazil are emerging as the key players whose relationships will define the future of global relations, according to journalist and acclaimed historian Dilip Hiro. While the era of unrivalled American supremacy is over, a new, volatile pattern of relations is emerging. Rather than being fixed alliances, however, these relationships are fluid combinations of cooperation and competition. The US and China are economically co-dependent, but strongly disagree over Taiwan and Tibet. Similarly, China and India are major trading partners, but continue to argue over territory bordering Tibet. Russia sells oil and natural gas to China, and the two countries have engaged in joint military exercises, but Beijing does not recognize South Ossetia as an independent state. The complexity of these relationships hearkens back to a period in European history after the Napoleonic Wars: a period in which international relations were dictated by the principle of the balance of power. The difference today is that such a concept, rather than being principally confined to European politics, now extends across the globe. Hiro whose 2005 book Secrets and Lies was long-listed for the George Orwell book prize and whose Inside Central Asia was a Financial Times Book of the Year in 2009 sketches the contours of a complex world system emerging. It examines, critically, the events that prepared the ground for the world to move from tutelage of the sole superpower America to a multi-polar, post-imperial global order. It also profiles the new challengers to US hegemony. Refreshingly it does so from a distinctly non-Western perspective. China, with more than two trillion dollars in its foreign reserves, is busily buying up companies worldwide. By surpassing Saudi Arabia in its oil output, Russia, the number one producer of natural gas, is now the world s foremost producer of hydrocarbons, with a nuclear arsenal on a par with America s. Elsewhere, the hydrocarbon-rich nations of Venezuela and Iran are challenging the Washington-dominated status quo respectively in South America and the Middle East. And with the political integration of the 27-nation European Union advancing, the EU, already the globe s largest trading entity, is poised to transform its weighty economic power into domestic clout at the expense of the United States. Interestingly, this presents Britain with a quandary, caught as it is between its close transatlantic ties with America and its membership of the EU. After America abounds in unsettling and stimulating insights on politics, history, hard and soft power, that are essential reading to British foreign policy elites trying to work out its future course in this new, emerging multi-polar world.

Présentation de l'éditeur

American corporations have to beg for capital from the cash-rich Sovereign Wealth Funds in the Persian Gulf. By invading Iraq, President George W. Bush grossly undermined American credibility in the international arena and irrevocably weakened Washington's diplomatic clout.

Together, these historic shifts have provided an opportunity for the world to move from the tutelage of the sole superpower, America, to a multi-polar global order, one where America's moral, economic, and military leadership will be profoundly challenged.

What form will this world resemble? What are the perils and promises of this new power order? In After Empire, Dilip Hiro provides a realistic, challenging, and nuanced look at the emerging power politics of the coming century and considers how they are going to turn our world upside-down.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Nation Books
• Date d'édition: 2010
• ISBN 10: 156858427X
• ISBN 13: 9781568584270
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 360