------------------------------
From: "chris chase-dunn " <chriscd@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu>
Fri, 21 Apr 1995 12:41:05 EDT
To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu
Cc:
BCc:
Subject: US decline and the rise of the East Asian region
I agree with what Mark Selden has said about the continuing importance of
the US in the East Asia region and that this is likely to continue for some
time to come. There are now two regions in the world that control enough
resources to contend for hegemonic power with the declining hegemon --
Europe and East Asia. I have just finished reading Karen Rasler and William R.
Thompson's _The Great Powers and Global Struggle 1490-1990_ (U of Kentucky
Press, 1994). This is an excellent book that adds greatly to our
understanding of how the world-system has worked and how it will probably
continue to work. Rasler and Thompson develop a model of how cycles of
concetration and deconcentration of power at the global level interact with
regional cycles to produce global wars and transitions among "system
leaders" (their term for hegemons). While I disagree with their vocabulary
and while they miss some important things by not considering the role that
the periphery plays, I think Rasler and Thompson have it mostly right
regarding the causes of world wars and the rise and fall of hegemons. And their
analysis has important implications for the future -- in about 20 or 30
years. They conclude that a powerful regional challenger could emerge out of
either Europe or East Asia to bring another round of warfare among core
states. This means that the whole system to could well self-destruct, and
that means that we have to figure out how to alter this 500 year old dynamic
before it gets us all.
chris
Prof. Chris Chase-Dunn
Department of Sociology
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD. 21218 USA
tel 410 516 7633 fax 410 516 7590 email chriscd@jhu.edu