American power and the prospects for international order

253 Pages·2008·3.79 MB·English

by  Bromley, Simon

American Power and the Prospects for
International Order

AMERICAN POWER AND
THE PROSPECTS FOR
INTERNATIONAL ORDER
SIMON BROMLEY
polity
Copyright © Simon Bromley 2008
The right of Simon Bromley to be identifi ed as Author of this Work has
been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
First published in 2008 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4238-3
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CONTENTS
List of Tables and Figures vii
Preface viii
Introduction: The American Project for a Liberal
International Order 1
1 The American Ideology: Modernization Theory and
the Neo-Conservatives 8
Introduction 8
What Was Modernization Theory? 10
Containment and ‘Development’ 14
Modernization Theory and World Order 20
Modernity Is Not the ‘End of History’ 31
Modernization Theory, the Neo-Conservatives and the
Bush Doctrine 37
Conclusions 50
2 America’s Transatlantic Empire: Where in the World
Is America? 52
Introduction 52
The American Empire 54
Imperialism 61
Anarchy, Rivalry and Interdependence 66
US Power and the Liberal Capitalist International Order 82
Conclusions 97
vi Contents
3 American Oil, World Oil: Resources, Confl icts, Control
and Scarcity 101
Introduction 101
Reasons for War? 103
America’s Oil, World Oil 106
OPEC and World Oil 115
The United States and Middle East Oil 118
Reshaping the Greater Middle East 122
The Role of Oil in the New Middle East Strategy 135
Carry on Driving? 143
Conclusions 148
4 American Power, the Future of the Dollar and
the Challenge of China 149
Introduction 149
International Money 151
From Fixed to Floating Exchange Rates 160
Resurgent Asia 173
Containing China? 185
Conclusions 199
Conclusion: The Prospects for a Liberal International Order 202
Notes 211
Bibliography 226
Name Index 237
Subject Index 240
TABLES AND FIGURES
TABLES
3.1 World oil demand changes by region, 2006–8
(thousand b/d) 111
3.2 Top twenty oil companies, by reserves, 2003 139
3.3 Fossil fuel resources, 2000 146
3.4 Comparative costs of (carbon-neutral) electricity
generation (cents per kilowatt hour [c/kWh], in $US, 2000) 147
3.5 Projected hydrogen costs ($/GJ in $US, 2000) 148
4.1 International money 156
4.2 US military power in comparative perspective 185
FIGURES
2.1 USA–European Union liberalization 72
3.1 The changing balance of world oil production,
1945–2003 108
3.2 The distribution of world oil reserves by region,
2003 109
3.3 US Department of Energy projected increases in
world oil production (Series 1) and world oil
production at current rate of expansion (Series 2) 110
3.4 World oil consumption and refi nery capacity and
throughput, 2003 112
3.5 Major oil importers and principal suppliers 113
3.6 World oil production, 1997 and 2003 116
3.7 Expansion of proven and declared reserves,
1982–2003 (bn barrels) 138
PREFACE
The nature of American power and its place in shaping the interna-
tional order is a large and and complex question and I did not exactly
set out to write a study of it. This book is, rather, the product of a series
of smaller projects that worried away at bits of the puzzle for long
enough for me to realize that if I put some of the pieces together a
picture might emerge that helps us to see American power and its role
in the world in new ways. In retrospect the basic claims of the book
seem obvious enough to me, but since they took a while to uncover and
because they are suffi ciently different from those found in most other
studies of the subject, I hope that their publication contributes to the
debates on these questions. For I fi rmly believe that the future relation-
ship of the United States to the rest of the world is one of the key ques-
tions facing the lives of many people, and that public debate about that
role – in the United States and elsewhere – needs not only to be better
informed but also to be guided by a genuine understanding of what
American power might and might not be capable of achieving. If the
present study prompts readers to question some of the assumptions
about American power that I explore and to see the pertinence of some
of the different questions I ask, it will have served its purpose.
Writing a book like this is not easy in the present research-
assessment-driven climate – very little of what follows draws on work
published in scholarly journals – and it is a tribute to the collegial,
relaxed and genuinely open academic culture of the Open University
and especially its Faculty of Social Sciences that I have had the space
to complete the project. I cannot imagine how I would have written
this anywhere else.