How the Great Powers Shape the World BOOK REVIEW essays

How the Great Powers Shape the World BOOK REVIEW essays "A centurys journey: How the great powers shape the world" For all the claims of globalization, says Robert A. Pastor, a handful of countries still define the world at the end of the 20th centuryand will continue to do so in the 21st. This statement infuses new blood into the current foreign policy discussion about the likely arrangement of the foreign policy stage in the 21st century. Many foreign policy analysts have suggested that new powers will arise in a big way and push aside and steal the limelight form the usual stars of the foreign policy theater. In A centurys journey, Robert A. Pastor Along with six other foreign-policy scholars, argues that the current foreign policy heavyweights will continue to wield considerable influence, despite the new set of circumstances they are presented with. Pastor examines the recent history of the world's seven "great powers" (France, Germany, Russia, Great Britain, China, Japan, and the United States) to demonstrate how they have influencedand adapted tothe upheavals of the 20th century. T hey also offer some thoughts on what the "Liberal Epoch" to come will bring: if Russia and China are not fully welcomed into the community of great powers, Pastor warns, conflict is inevitable. And while international law and tribunals will continue to play an important role, they will require strengthened means of monitoring and enforcement if they are to be effective. This point is particularly important, because it outlines the new framework that needs to be developed by the international community to be able to deal with an increasingly integrated world and the effects of that integration. A Century's Journey offers some carefully considered insights into how the nations of the world will deal with each other in the coming decades. This incisive study of the evolving world order argues that seven countries have changed the wo ...