Peering Into The Global Future

Abstract

C Kupchan has written a bold book designed to answer what is arguably the biggest question in international affairs: where is the global system headed? Although political scientists and policy makers have always paid close attention to this matter, it has taken on heightened intellectual importance since the end of Cold War. Now that the United States has manifestly become the world’s most powerful state, how will this unipolar situation affect U.S. behavior and the behavior of other states that can justifiably be called great powers, but not superpowers? How will the global system evolve, especially in view of the West’s faltering economic performance vis-a-vis rising countries such as China, India, and Brazil? To what extent will the international practices and domestic institutions established by the U.S. and its allies shape the behavior of these rising states at home and abroad? These questions are vitally important, but attempting to answer them requires us to accept two fundamental assumptions. The first is that the ablest scholars and analysts have the intellectual capacity to make worthwhile assessments of this kind about the global future. The second is that, whatever the deficiencies of particular forecasts, such foresight is at least possible in principle. But are these assumptions valid? Could it be that the patterns of the future are not only undecipherable but undetermined—that is, that they hinge in substantial measure on decisions that statesmen and ordinary people have yet to make? Kupchan is not a determinist, and he believes that choices by future leaders will have important consequences. In my view, however, he does not treat the problems of social causality and historical contingency with sufficient caution. To see why, we must first consider the book’s central arguments.