From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role

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Fareed Zakaria, the managing editor of Foreign Affairs, tries to understand why the United States decided in 1898 that it was time to start acting like a world power. His answer lies in the transference of the government's main power from Congress, which was concerned primarily with the needs of its individual constituencies, to a presidency occupied by dynamic leaders such as Benjamin Harrison and Theodore Roosevelt, who once declared that "when the interests of the American people demanded that a certain act should be done, and I had the power to do it, I did it unless it was specifically prohibited by law."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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 in which the U.S. considered expanding its influence in such diverse places as Canada, the Dominican Republic, and Iceland. Taking a position 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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Walter A. McDougall - The New York Times Book Review

[This book's] tightly argued thesis addresses a question sure to be revisited during this anniversary of the Spanish-American War....its conclusions are both provocative and full of implications for the world today...[and] convey important lessons for our post-cold-war world.

Peter Trubowitz - Political Science Quarterly

Zakaria's study has considerable strengths and deserves to be read by a wide audience.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Beautifully conceived; dazzlingly executed: Zakaria's theoretical penetration is matched by his mastery of the process of America's coming of age as a great power. The book casts a bright light on the past and the future--and the future of international politics. — Kenneth N. Waltz