Acharya - The End of American World Order

Table of Contents

Copyright Amitav Acharya 2014

The right of Amitav Acharya to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2014 by Polity Press

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Tables

Overview of BRICS: 1990 and 2010

Economies of G20 members (2009 estimated)

Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

An entire first draft of this book was completed while I was a Christensen Fellow at St Catherine's College, Oxford, during the Trinity term of 2013. I am grateful to the fellows of the College, especially my academic host Louise Fawcett, for electing me to this prestigious fellowship and making my stay with them highly enjoyable and intellectually rewarding. Andrew Hurrell and Yuen Foong Khong indulged me by critically discussing and reacting to some of the themes of the book.

A lecture at Oxford's Department of Politics and International Relations on June 6, 2013, moderated by Duncan Snidal, allowed me to have the ideas and arguments of the book debated among a lively audience of faculty, students, and visitors, and brought closure to the book.

The encouragement of Louise Knight of Polity Press is what got me to write this book in the first place. Discussions with my students in the course of my graduate seminar on New Multilateralism at American University, Washington, DC, during the Fall of 2012 helped shape and sharpen the book's arguments. I thank Louis Goodman for his constant encouragement and for reading and commenting on the entire manuscript, as well as Allan Layug, my faculty assistant at American University, and copy-editor Helen Gray and production editor India Darsley for editorial assistance and management.

Summaries or parts of the key arguments of this book were presented at Rhodes University in South Africa on March 7, 2013; the University of Cape Town on March 11, 2013; the Transworld Conference at Chatham House, London, on April 26, 2013; Meiji University, Japan, on July 1, 2013; and the Conference on Rising Powers and Contested Orders in the Multipolar System in Rio de Janeiro on September 1920, 2013. I thank the organizers of these events for helping to generate valuable feedback (and controversy) on my arguments.

A Multiplex World

Pundits and policymakers have described the emerging world in a variety of ways: multipolar, polycentric, non-polar, neo-polar, apolar, post-American, G-zero, and no one's world. At the heart of these phrases are differing and often uncertain beliefs about America's position and role in world affairs. Some of them address the issue of America's decline, which remains a matter of intense and inconclusive debate. Many Americans and some outsiders vigorously contest the decline thesis. Among those who accept it, sometimes with a dose of reluctance, are those who optimistically argue that the order established by the United States has been so widely accepted, deeply rooted and legitimate that it will continue to define the twenty-first-century world and might even co-opt its potential challengers. They also warn of the dangers that await the collapse of that order, including multipolar rivalry, regional fragmentation, and other evils.