The Highest stakes

About this book

Will markets, investment, and technology--rather than tanks and missiles--be the bargaining chips 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 it does today. This book explores how the momentous dislocations of economic power in the world--the burgeoning might of Asia, the unification of Europe, the relative decline of the United States--will reshape global security issues. The authors believe that the United States is especially unprepared for a 21st century in which the control of markets and technology is a principal battleground. They demonstrate how America's loss of industrial 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. Representing over six years of research by seven scholars, this timely analysis also goes beyond the discussion of America's decline to examine how the emergence of regional trading blocs may carve out new international security arrangements. The authors warn that a natural extension of the postwar security system is only one possibility. The emerging distribution of economic capabilities suggests at least two others, each of which would reconceive the very character of security, redefine the international power game, and re-situate the players.