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

Author: (British) Buzan (Buzan, B.) Author, Liu Yongtao Translated
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Features: Shortly after the Cold War, people began to understand world politics from the perspective of the United States as the dominant superpower. However, following the "9/11" attacks, U.S. foreign policy began to be perceived as shifting toward an imperial direction, and many started to question the methods, style, and substance of the United States' role as a global leader in the early 21st century. Why has the United States adopted the behavior it is now exhibiting? Is the United States truly living in a hostile world? What can other major powers do to change U.S. behavior? What would be the consequences if the efforts of these major powers fail? Can the European Union and China be considered comparable to the superpower forces of the United States? What would the world political landscape look like if the United States lost its superpower status? In this work, Buzan 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 United States. The forces of these major powers play a crucial role in reshaping the current and future world politics. Their actions and inactions directly influence how long the United States' dominant position in world politics can last today. They also determine whether the current U.S. hegemony is acting as a driving force for the multilateral international society that the United States has advocated for in its foreign policy over the past half-century or serving as a destructive force.