The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-First Century [Hardcover]

He begins his book by addressing the shortcomings of other recent major conceptual frameworks of global politics as conceived by Frances Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Paul Kennedy and Robert Kaplan (who Kupchan groups together), John Mearsheimer, and Thomas Friedman. The flaw in all of these thinkers, according to Kupchan, is that none of them have recognized the most important fundamentals of the present global system, which is America's current overwhelming power and the fact that its hegemony cannot last.

If the U.S. is in decline, who will take its place? Kupchan believes a united Europe is rising and that East Asia (China and Japan) is not far behind. In this global environment, and because of U.S. domestic tendencies towards isolationism, he thinks a grand strategy is necessary for the U.S. to smoothly make the transition from a unipolar world to a multipolar one. While Kupchan is not entirely clear about the timing of this transition, in at least one area of the book he says Europe is about a decade away from forming a credible alternative axis of world power and East Asia about three decades away. Other countries - mostly Russia, sometimes India - are also mentioned in places throughout the book as potential poles, but without much detail.

Europe is the main object of Kupchan's attention. According to his argument, Europe's ever-growing economic and political solidarity will soon naturally give rise to geopolitical power. If the U.S. cedes some of its power to Europe now in preparation of that development, a healthy relationship will grow between the two; if not, then we can expect a bumpy ride on the way to multipolarity.

While I agree with some of Kupchan's premises, such as the inevitable relative decline of U.S. power and the likelihood that the new world will be multipolar, I disagree with both his vision of what that new world will look like as well as his suggestion for a grand U.S. strategy on how to handle it.

Contrary to Kupchan's thinking, Europe has neither the will nor the military to become a geopolitical force within the next decade. If economics and some shared values were all that was required, Europe would have become an alternative axis of power rivaling the U.S. years ago. Instead, as the crisis over the U.S.-led war in Iraq makes clear, if the Europeans are ever going to be a geopolitical force, they will need institutions to make common and *binding* diplomatic and defense policies that override the national priorities of their constituent states. And even if they have these institutions, the money will have to be found to build a first-rate military. With many European nations heavily in debt, and a demographic crisis looming on the continent, where will this money come from? Kupchan brushes aside these difficulties.

Europe's common military does not have to rival America's, but it must have power projection capabilities to both Eastern Europe and the Middle East. If it doesn't, then Europe will still require the United States to enforce stability in those areas using its military power when other measures have failed. After all, a resurgent Russia might still haunt the future of Eastern Europe, and Europe, as a whole, is far more dependent on Middle East oil than the U.S. Nothing we see today shows Europe will be ready to handle those responsibilities any time soon.

The less said about Kupchan's thoughts on East Asia, the better. His brief sections on the region and the countries in it are surprisingly thin, devoid of fresh thinking, or even proof he did anymore than just remedial reading on the area. What's more, his vision of how U.S. strategy fits into the region is shockingly naïve, envisioning the United States leading the way towards a sort of united East Asia by - among other things - helping Japan and China to forsake old enmities. That's not strategy; that's fantasy. Even Kupchan admits as much.

There is a common theme to this book. No matter what the region or area - whether it's to Europe, East Asia, or international institutions - Kupchan's strategy calls for the U.S. giving up power. This seems an odd strategy for what is still by far the most powerful country in the world and what is likely to remain the most powerful country in the world for the foreseeable future. Wouldn't a realist at least call for giving up power in one region where it is less needed so that it could be at least partially redeployed somewhere else where it is more needed? Instead, Kupchan seems to think that U.S. power is a cheap currency to be spent on dubious schemes such as pushing Chinese/Japanese reconciliation.

By showing he has only one general prescription to fit every region's future, Kupchan signals he is less interested in seeing the shifting balance of world power as it is, and putting forth a strategy to deal with it, than he is in pushing an ideology of world power that he feels comfortable with. The final section of the book gives a clue as to why, showing he is highly downbeat about America's future. Interestingly enough, having dismissed Robert Kaplan's vision of a splintering world divided between north and south, he buys into Kaplan's view of the United States as a splintering country. Kupchan believes that even as the U.S. helps the rest of the world come together (Europe and Russia/China and Japan/north and south), regions within the states themselves are destined to grow apart. This ending is a contradictory and absurd coda to an already faltering book.

One thing should be clarified based on comments/reviews I have heard or read about this book: in my opinion it is not about what country or set of countries will replace the United States as the only world superpower, it is about how the U.S. should accompany and help shape a more stable world as new world powers rise.

In response to a previous review:

As a European citizen, I believe that the E.U. will be a superpower (but not the only one) once its constitutional foundations have been laid.

Contrary to the author of a previous review full of clichés and misunderstandings about the EU, I know that the EU has the economical, technological and human potential to compete on the world stage with the US (and anybody else in the world). However, I do not see how the EU could replace the US as the only superpower: it has neither the will nor the interest to do so.

Anyway, in 50 years the US will probably have less to worry about the EU than about China, India or, why not, some kind of new pan-Arabic federation ... depending on how it shapes the world today.

That is the image of the future conjured up by Charles Kupchan, a professor at Georgetown University, in the "End of the American Era." The thesis is built on a historical journey, which turns out to be both an asset and a liability -- at times, history captures the reader and elucidates contemporary trends; often, the historical narratives seem irrelevant, over-emphasized or under-analyzed (i.e. distorted to support a hypothesis rather than used to form one). And, the recitation of obvious or familiar points is likely to bore those with a sound background in foreign policy.

If the geopolitical image painted in this book is interesting, the geo-economic one is less so. That is mainly because Professor Kupchan has spent little to no time analyzing economics -- either in their own might, or in their relation to international politics. Where economic analysis is found, it is usually too superficial to impress.

The books' recommendations -- broadly speaking, multilateralism and humility in conducing foreign policy -- are neither novel nor counterintuitive. The highpoint rests in the rationale Professor Kupchan provides for his policies: the inevitability of America's relative decline and the need for the United States to ensure a peaceful transition rather than try hold on to its power indefinitely. Whether anyone in Washington takes these ideas at heart is a whole other story, especially since implementing his ideas could be a self-fulfilling prophesy.