Yale historian Paul Kennedy’s 1987 best-seller, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, has been getting renewed attention these days, because the book carries a message of interest to Americans in 2010. Kennedy demonstrated that many of the great nations of earlier history made expensive military commitments. Eventually, the cost of defending vast interests weakened their economies. Kennedy said the United States appeared to be engaging in “overstretch” as well.
Recently, Piers Brendon challenged Kennedy’s interpretation in a New York Times op-ed. Brendon, a Cambridge University scholar, noted that some of Paul Kennedy’s predictions had not been realized. Kennedy was wrong, he charged, in assuming that Japan would continue to boom and Russia would remain tied to communism and suffer economically. These points, however, represented minor exercises in speculation. Kennedy’s principal thesis in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers about the danger of overreaching is still relevant.
Paul Kennedy tied economics to foreign affairs, showing that discussions of the two ought to be integrated, not separated. He suggested that leaders who contemplate large-scale military intervention ought to ask: What will the actions cost? What can the nation afford? Could expensive actions create enormous deficits and ultimately weaken rather than strengthen national security?
