Paul Kennedy - Preparing for the Twenty-First Century

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Preparing for the Twenty-first Century

[Preparing for the Twenty-first Century] is essential reading for anyone attempting to fathom the fundamental disease that plagues the world today.

Chicago Tribune

Paul Kennedy is the kind of thinker who gives scholarship a good name. Here is an academic who seizes upon strapping issues reads copiously, draws parallels with other countries and eras, and produces trenchant analysis in measured sentences. His book is full of insight and perspective, and the balanced cadences of his prose are a pleasure to read.

Newsday

In an era when knowledge is narrowly compartmentalized, Kennedy warrants praise for the breadth of [his] polymathic ambitions.

Time

Kennedys vision of the fate of the globe is laid out in disturbing detail.

Boston Globe

Provocative Preparing for the Twenty-first Century is a tour de force. The insights and penetrating analyses are a valuable help in understanding more deeply the forces of change.

Christian Science Monitor

Preparing for the Twenty-first Century has all the virtues that made The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers such a success. Its reach is global, and the questions it asks are large and pressing.

The New York Review of Books

Kennedys view is panoramic, and he wields it masterfully He brings together topics that have been disparately discussed and in different places, and molds them into a coherent, convincing whole. His book should be successful in awakening consciences to the dangers that threaten the planet Earth and the dilemmas the world community faces as a new century approaches. What is involved is nothing less than everyones future on Earth.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Books by Paul Kennedy

The Parliament of Man
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
Preparing for the Twenty-first Century

THE PARLIAMENT OF MAN

The Parliament of Man is the first definitive history of the United Nations, from one of Americas greatest living historians. Distinguished scholar Paul Kennedy gives us a thorough and timely account that explains the UNs roots and functions, while also casting an objective eye on its effectiveness and its prospects for success in meeting the challenges that lie ahead. Kennedy shows the UN for what it is: fallible, human-based, often dependent on the whims of powerful national governments or the foibles of individual admnistratorsyet also utterly indispensable. With his insightful grasp of six decades of global history, Kennedy convincingly argues that it is difficult to imagine how much more riven and ruinous our world of six billion people would be if there had been no UN.

Political Science/978-0-378-70341-6

PREPARING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

In Preparing for the Twenty-first Century, Paul Kennedy synthesizes extensive research in fields ranging from demography to robotics in order to draw a detailed, persuasive, and often shocking map of the very near future. How will the earths resources support a population that may reach 8.5 billion by 2025? What will happen to individual states as jobs and money cross borders in the wink of an eye? What new conflicts will arise from the growing disparity between the have and have-not nations? Region by region, and encompassing such trends as increased immigration, the collapse of old industries, and global warming, Preparing for the Twenty-first Century answers these questions. The result is a bold work that bridges the gap between history, prophecy, and policy.

Current Affairs/978-0-679-74705-5

VINTAGE BOOKS
Available at your local bookstore, or visit
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Paul Kennedy is the author or editor of thirteen books, including Preparing for the Twenty-first Century and The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which has been translated into more than twenty languages. He serves on the editorial board of numerous scholarly journals and has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic Monthly, and several other publications. Educated at Newcastle University and Oxford University, he is a former fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University and of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung in Bonn.

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, FEBRUARY 1994

Copyright1993 by Paul Kennedy

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1993.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kennedy, Paul M., 1945
Preparing for the twenty-first century / Paul Kennedy. 1st Vintage Books ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-77357-9
1. Twenty-first century. I. Title.
[CB161.K44 1994]
303 490905dc20 93-6327

v3.1

To the Hamden under-fifteen

Boys Soccer Team from their Coach

THIS BOOK HAD ITS ORIGINS IN A DEBATE which took place between me and a large group of economists at the Brookings Institution in Washington in the spring of 1988, and which centered upon my newly published work The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. In the course of a lively evening, one criticnot known to medeclared that he couldnt understand why such a fuss was being made about Rise and Fall by everyone. It was, after all, a very traditional sort of book, focusing upon the nation-state as the central actor in world affairs. Why hadnt I used my time better, to write about much more important and interesting issues, those forces for global change like population growth, the impact of technology, environmental damage, and migration, which were transnational in nature and threatened to affect the lives of us all, peasants as well as premiers?

I left it to others that evening to weigh in with opinions about why Rise and Fall might be of some pertinence, especially in the American presidential campaign of 1988, but I found my critics comment sufficiently arousing to begin initial readings in subjects (global warming, demography, robotics, biotech) that were then totally foreign to me. Before long, I was making clippings of newspaper and journal articles upon those subjects and filing them away. After a further while, I realized that I had the makings of a new book, very different from Riseand Fall in its subject matter and structure and yetas I explain in closely related in its concerns and purpose. Both are an attempt to write what David Landes calls large History. Whether the present work provokes the same interest as the previous study will be for the reader to say.

In the course of researching and preparing this book, I have become obliged to an embarrassingly large group of individuals, only a few of whom can be mentioned here. I am deeply indebted to Sheila Klein and Sue McClain, who once again typed repeated drafts of the manuscript with wonderful efficiency and dispatch. Old friends Gordon Lee and J. R. Jones read and commented on every aspect of the initial draft, then upon the revisions. Jonathan Spence, Richard Crockatt, David Stowe, W. H. McNeill, Paul Golob, Andr Malabr, James OSullivan, Bill Foltz, and Bill Cronon read and made notes on parts or all of this work. Kenneth Keller, Bill Nordhaus, and Maria Angulo tried to keep me from going too far wrong in my coverage of environmental issues.