Synopses & Reviews
The efforts of the United States to sustain its position as the planet's only post-Cold War superpower show serious signs of backfiring. According to Emmanuel Todd, the current American method of operating in the world will lead to a gradual downsizing to normal nation status as the United States's military, economic, and ideological tendencies continue to anger allies and enemies alike. Todd anticipates that American hegemony will wane and an enhanced role for what he calls Eurasia will emerge, bringing together in common cause the world's two most productive industrial centers, Japan and Europe, and two regions of military and demographic force, Russia and the Arab-Islamic world.
A historian and demographer, Todd compiles and analyzes an astonishing breadth of data about birth and infant mortality rates, literacy levels, and marriage practices in the United States to uncover deep trends of decline. Against this backdrop, Todd points to a number of factors, including increasing resistance among the nations of the world to militant American unilateralism nowhere more evident than in Iraq and the faltering supremacy of the U.S. dollar, which suggest that the American century has come to an end.
Review
"This is easy to dismiss as the rant of Old Europe....But that would miss the point: his sense of betrayal is widely shared around the world....I have heard too many people of good will express profound disappointment with the United States to reject Todd as an extreme or isolated voice." Serge Schmemann, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"[M]ay be the most important work since Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man....Already a best-seller in Europe, this book is destined to be much talked about and analyzed." Allen Weakland, Booklist
Review
"The most effective and most talked about of the new anti-American texts....Todd's book is actually rather compassionate. It's all over, and has been for years. We're just too dumb to know it." Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
Review
"Slic[ing] the globaloney pretty thin...Todd argues that a New World Order really is emerging, as country after country experiences the rising literary rates and falling birth rates that precede a shift toward modernization." Newsday
Review
"A powerful antidote to hysterical exaggeration of American power and potential by American triumphalists and anti-American polemicists alike. A best-seller in Europe, Todd's book should be read by all thoughtful Americans for its provocative and well-informed analysis of their nation and its prospects." from the foreword by Michael Lind
Synopsis
Widely reviewed and critically praised, Emmanuel Todd's After the Empire predicts that the United States is forfeiting its superpower status as it moves away from traditional democratic values of egalitarianism and universalism, lives far beyond its means economically, and continues to anger foreign allies and enemies alike with its military and ideological policies. As America's global dominance evaporates, Todd foresees the emergence of a Eurasian alliance bringing together Europe, Russia, Japan, and the Arab-Islamic world.
Todd calmly and straightforwardly takes stock of many negative trends, including America's weakened commitment to the socio-economic integration of African Americans, a bulimic economy that increasingly relies on smoke and mirrors and the goodwill of foreign investors, and a foreign policy that squanders the country's reserves of -soft power- while its militaristic arsonist-fireman behavior is met with increasing resistance. Written by a demographer and historian who foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union, this original and daring book cannot be ignored.
Synopsis
In this original and daring book, the author who foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union predicts the United States will lose its super-power status in the near future. A historian and demographer, Todd compiles and analyzes an astonishing breadth of data about birth and infant mortality rates, literacy levels, and marriage practices in the United States to uncover deep trends of decline.
About the Author
Emmanuel Todd is currently a researcher at the French National Institute for Demographic Studies. He is the author of numerous books, including
The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere,
The Making of Modern France: Ideology, Politics and Culture, and
The Explanation of Ideology.
C. Jon Delogu is an associate professor of English at the Université de Tolouse-Le Mirail.
Table of Contents
List of Tables
Foreword
Preface
Introduction 1
1 The Myth of Universal Terrorism 23
2 Democracy as a Threat 45
3 Imperial Dimensions 59
4 The Fragility of Tribute 79
5 The Movement Away from Universalism 101
6 Confront the Strong or Attack the Weak? 123
7 The Return of Russia 145
8 The Emancipation of Europe 169
Conclusion: Endgame 191
Notes 203
Index 213