Synopses & Reviews
Will markets, investments, and technology--rather than tanks and missiles--be the bargaining chips of the new world order? This timely and sobering analysis explores how the momentous dislocations of economic power in the world--the growing might of Asia, the impending unification of Europe, the relative decline of the United States--will reshape global security issues. The authors contend that the United States is especially unprepared for a twenty-first century in which the control of markets and technology is a principal battleground. They go on to demonstrate how America's loss of industrial and technological leadership is slowly but surely eroding its influence abroad, and how America will soon have to accept the kinds of constraints it has been so accustomed to imposing on others.
This joint research project by seven members of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE)--a group influential in national trade development and security debates--moves beyond a discussion of America's decline to examine how the emergence of regional trading blocs may carve out new international security arrangements. Complementing another project produced by BRIE, Laura D'Andrea Tyson's acclaimed Who's Bashing Whom?, The Highest Stakes convincingly argues that "only a cooperative government-industry effort to restore U.S. economic might can guarantee Washington's pre-eminence."
Synopsis
Will markets, investment, and technology--rather than tanks and missiles--be the key elements in the new world order? When politics catches up with the global whirlwind of shifting economic capabilities, the international system will look very different than how it does today. This book explores how the momentous dislocations of economic power in the world--the might of Asia, the unification of Europe, the relative decline of the United States--will reshape global security issues. The authors explain power and interests are changing and how the loss of industrial and technological leadership is undermining the exercise of American power. They demonstrate how these changes may presage an entirely new era that would reconceive the very nature of security, redefine the international power game, and resituate its players. This volume first sets the stakes--drawing the links between economic capacities and security. Then the players are covered, detailing the relative positions of Asia, Europe, and United States. The book concludes with a warning that the emerging distribution of economic capabilities does not insure a natural extension of the present international security arrangement. At least two other directions are possible, each implying not only new security concerns at home, but a transformation in the international security system as a whole.
About the Author
About the Authors: The authors are all members of BRIE (Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy), a research program at the University of California, Berkeley, co-directed by Michael Borrus, Stephen Cohen, and John Zysman.