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''The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000'', by Paul Kennedy, first published in 1987, explores the politics and economics of the Great Powers from 1500 to 1980 and the reason for their decline. It then continues by forecasting the positions of China, Japan, the European Economic Community (EEC), the Soviet Union and the United States through the end of the 20th century. ==Summary== Kennedy argues that the strength of a Great Power can be properly measured only relative to other powers, and he provides a straightforward and persuasively argued thesis: Great Power ascendancy (over the long term or in specific conflicts) correlates strongly to available resources and economic durability; military overstretch and a concomitant relative decline are the consistent threat facing powers whose ambitions and security requirements are greater than their resource base can provide for (summarized on pages 438–9). Throughout the book he reiterates his early statement (page 71): "Military and naval endeavors may not always have been the ''raison d'être'' of the new nations-states, but it certainly was their most expensive and pressing activity", and it remains such until the power's decline. He concludes that declining countries can experience greater difficulties in balancing their preferences for guns, butter and investments.〔Kennedy, Paul, ''The Rise and Fall of Great Powers'', page 535, New York: Vintage Books, 1987. ISBN 0679-720197〕 Kennedy states his theory in the second paragraph of the introduction as follows. :The "military conflict" referred to in the book's subtitle is therefore always examined in the context of "economic change." The triumph of any one Great Power in this period, or the collapse of another, has usually been the consequence of lengthy fighting by its armed forces; but it has also been the consequences of the more or less efficient utilization of the state's productive economic resources in wartime, and, further in the background, of the way in which that state's economy had been rising or falling, ''relative'' to the other leading nations, in the decades preceding the actual conflict. For that reason, how a Great Power's position steadily alters in peacetime is as important to this study as how it fights in wartime.〔Kennedy, Paul, ''The Rise and Fall of Great Powers'', page xv, New York: Vintage Books, 1987. ISBN 0679-720197〕 Kennedy adds on the same page. :The relative strengths of the leading nations in world affairs never remain constant, principally because of the uneven rate of growth among different societies and of the technological and organizational breakthroughs which bring a greater advantage to one society than to another.〔Kennedy, Paul, ''The Rise and Fall of Great Powers'', page xv, New York: Vintage Books, 1987. ISBN 0679-720197〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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