What turns rich nations into great powers? How do wealthy countries
begin extending their influence abroad? These questions are vital to
understanding one of the most important sources of instability in
international politics: the emergence of a new power. In From Wealth to
Power, Fareed Zakaria seeks to answer these questions by examining the
most puzzling case of a rising power in modern history--that of the
United States.
If rich nations routinely become great powers, Zakaria asks, then how do
we explain the strange inactivity of the United States in the late
nineteenth century? By 1885, the U.S. was the richest country in the
world. And yet, by all military, political, and diplomatic measures, it
was a minor power. To explain this discrepancy, Zakaria considers a wide
variety of cases between 1865 and 1908 when the U.S. considered
expanding its influence in such diverse places as Canada, the Dominican
Republic, and Iceland. Consistent with the realist theory of
international relations, he argues that the President and his
administration tried to increase the country's political influence
abroad when they saw an increase in the nation's relative economic
power. But they frequently had to curtail their plans for expansion, he
shows, because they lacked a strong central government that could
harness that economic power for the purposes of foreign policy. America
was an unusual power--a strong nation with a weak state. It was not
until late in the century, when power shifted from states to the federal
government and from the legislative to the executive branch, that
leaders in Washington could mobilize the nation's resources for
international influence.
Zakaria's exploration of this tension between national power and state
structure will change how we view the emergence of new powers and deepen
our understanding of America's exceptional history.
