Day of Empire_ How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance--And Why They Fall - Amy Chua [3]
THE SECRET TO WORLD DOMINANCE
How fast the world changes. In the 1980s, the United States was a mere superpower, with an easy-to-hate authoritarian rival. Ten years later, it was the world's undisputed hyperpower, and American global dominance seemed almost boundless. Today, after the debacles of Iraq and Hurricane Katrina, people are already talking about America's decline.
When the term hyperpower was first applied to the United States, it was not intended favorably. The word was coined by France's foreign minister Hubert Vedrine, one of the most outspoken critics of the United States, when he declared that France “cannot accept a politically unipolar world, nor a culturally uniform world, nor the unilateralism of a single hyperpower.” Although he meant “hyperpower” reproachfully, Vedrine captured a historical development of fundamental importance. As Vedrine described it, the United States had become “dominant or predominant in all categories”: America had attained not only economic, military, and technological preeminence, but also a “domination of attitudes, concepts, language and modes of life.”1
Today, the idea of an America “dominant in all categories” does not ring quite as true. America remains the world's economic and military powerhouse, but it is beleaguered on many fronts, its confidence shaken, its reputation bruised, its fise depleted by hundreds of billions poured into a war it may not win. Meanwhile, other emerging powers are shifting and jockeying for position. The European Union has not only a larger population but a gross domestic product already almost equal to that of the United States. China, with a fifth of the world's people, is exploding after centuries of stagnation. Could China, the EU, or perhaps some other contender—such as India—overtake the United States, or at least gain sufficient strength to reestablish a multipolar world order?
Whether America retains or falls from its hyperpower status is a question of immense consequence for both the world and the United States. Does the twenty-first century need an “American Empire,” as the British historian Niall Ferguson argues, to deal with genocide, rogue states, and “terrorist organizations committed to wrecking a liberal world order”?2 Or is an American hyperpower a threat to world peace and global stability, as others believe?3 From the U.S. point of view, would American decline mean unemployment, reduced standards of living, and increased vulnerability to attack? Or is America's role as hyperpower paradoxically leading the nation to bankrupt its future, incur the world's wrath, and make itself even more of a terrorist target?
This book is about hyperpowers—not great powers, not even superpowers, but hyperpowers. Many have written about empires, ancient and modern, despotic and beneficent.4 Explaining the rise and fall of empires has been a particularly venerable pastime, dating back to the Greeks. Thucydides hinted that democracy was to blame for the fall of Athens.5 Edward Gibbon singled out Christianity as a primary cause of Rome's decline.6 In recent times, Paul Kennedy attributed the fall of great powers more sweepingly to “imperial overstretch,” while Jared Diamond in Collapse identified “environmental damage” as a chief culprit.7 After 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, writing about empires and imperialism, whether hopefully or condemningly, has practically become an industry.8
To date, however, no one has systematically analyzed the far rarer phenomenon of hyperpowers, the remarkably few societies— barely more than a handful in history—that amassed such extraordinary military and economic might that they essentially dominated the world. This is a special category, acutely relevant to the present