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The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money WHAT HORRORS WILL THE twenty-first century bring? For many people, catastrophic terrorist attacks and prolonged guerrilla quagmires are chilling visions of things to come. Official signals, like omnipresent color-coded threat warnings and mystifying orders to stockpile duct tape and plastic sheeting, add to overall levels of anxiety. Six in ten Americans apparently think that a world war is “likely to occur” in their lifetime; others, including influential politicians and pundits, believe that one has already begun.1 Little wonder, then, that overwhelming majorities of people from all walks of life harbor the impression that the world is a far more chaotic, frightening, and ultimately more dangerous place than it was during the “simpler” times that came before.2 Pessimism dominates the academy as well. Senior scholars tell us that we will “soon miss the Cold War,” and that multipolarity and renewed great power rivalry are right around the corner.3 Global warming is likely to lead to one environmental catastrophe after another, which will spark resource competition and conflict galore. Civilizations will clash. Anarchy will come. Visions of the future are of tremendous importance for international relations , since all political choices are based on some perception of what is to come. Leaders face complex problems on a daily basis and must sort through a dizzying array of options and arguments as they go through the decision-making process. To bring order out of chaos, they often rely upon some combination of their instincts and experiences, shaped by historical analogy, metaphor, and deeply held (if sometimes nearly subconscious) theoretical frameworks to help construct a set of options and then forecast the outcomes that would probably follow each. Political decisions are therefore almost always based upon implicit predictions of future events. Anxiety, Danger, and the Ghost of Norman Angell Introduction 2 Introduction If, for example, one believed that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime was likely to produce a healthy, market-oriented democracy—a Japan—in five years, a nation that would present a shining example of American values for the region and that would decrease anti-Western hostility in the Arab world, the choice to go to war would have been an easy one to make. If, on the other hand, one believed that war in Iraq would create an untenable situation, a festering wound of a guerrilla war that would fan the flames of fundamentalism, who in their right mind would have lent support to it? The vision of a post-Saddam future that President Bush held was crucial to the decision-making process that took place in the lead-up to the war. One of the most important contributions that the academic study of international relations can make to society is to provide not only frameworks for the interpretation of events but also reasonable expectations of what the future is likely to bring. The public and policymakers alike seem to pay more attention to political scientists when they discuss the future than when they examine the present or the past.4 Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations,” for instance, is one of the few ideas to emerge from academia that has thoroughly permeated policy circles around the world.5 The “democratic peace” theory has direct implications about the future behavior of states, which is one reason why it made its way into the national security strategies of both the Clinton and Bush administrations .6 Grand strategy and foreign policy are in large part products of the future that each decision maker anticipates; to paraphrase Keynes, whether they knowitornot,policymakersareoftenguidedbyacademicscribblersofthepast.7 One cannot discern where the world may be heading without first understanding how it works, how states tend to behave, and how people can influence the course of events. This book is an examination of international politics in the twenty-first century . Along the way it will discuss the utility of predicting the future, the geopolitics of oil, the impact of ideas on state behavior, and the grand strategy of the United States. It will argue that there is a significant relationship between predictions and the theories from which they emerge, a relationship that can in some circumstances provide material for the advancement of our understanding of international politics. Anyone foolish enough to predict the future of the international system would seem to be undertaking an impossible and narcissistic task...

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