America and the Major Powers: World Politics in the 21st Century

Author: Zbigniew Brzezinski
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Features: Shortly after the Cold War, people began to understand world politics from the perspective of the United States as the dominant superpower. However, with the occurrence of the September 11th attacks, U.S. foreign policy began to be perceived as shifting toward an imperial direction. Many started to question the methods, style, and substance of the U.S. approach to global leadership in the early 21st century. Why has the U.S. adopted the behavior people now see? Is the U.S. truly living in a hostile world? What can other major powers do to change U.S. behavior? What would be the consequences if these major powers' efforts fail? Can the European Union and China be considered comparable to superpower forces in relation to the U.S.? If the U.S. loses its superpower status, what would the world political landscape look like? In this work, Brzezinski attempts to address these pressing questions from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. He first explains the two core concepts used in the book—"pole" and "identity/identity"—in world politics, and employs these concepts to propose three possible scenarios for the future development of the international political system. The author argues that people are not living in a unipolar world; facing U.S. power, the forces of other major powers in the world are not powerless. Instead, it is a multipolar world where the forces of some major powers coexist with the superpower forces of the U.S. In reshaping the current and future world politics, the forces of these major powers play a crucial role. Their actions and inactions directly influence how long the U.S. can maintain its dominant position in world politics today. They also determine whether the current U.S. hegemony, over the past half-century, has been a force that promotes a multilateral international society or has acted as a destructive force.