BOOKS
Apocalyptic
Thought
PREPARING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY. By Paul
Kennedy.
Random House. $25.00.
THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND THE END OF
THE MODERN AGE. By John Lukacs.
Ticknor and Fields. $21.95.
171
With the approach of the end of a century (and
a fortiori
a millennium),
apocalyptic thought has been the historical fashion, manifesting itself in
theology, philosophy, literature, and the arts. During the 1890s books that
were (or could have been) entitled
The End
cif .
..
(or
The Decline
cif .
.. )
were frequent. There may be no particular reason why these round fig–
ures have had such an effect. Perhaps it is the result of a too-literal inter–
pretation of certain passages in the Book of Revelation. In all probability
it has been quite accidental, but once a certain pattern has been
established, it seems to perpetuate itself The two books reviewed here are
mild cases of this
fin de siecle
literature .
Before the publication of his book
Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
(1987), which became a best seller, Paul Kennedy was known in the his–
torical profession mainly for his fine work on the period before World
War
I.
Written in measured, moderate terms,
Rise and Fall
nevertheless
generated a great deal of passion: The declinists embraced it with great
enthusiasm as their most learned manifesto; the opposite camp produced a
whole literature to refute Kennedy. That empires have risen and declined
all
throughout history can hardly be denied; if it were different, we would
still live under the sway of the Mongols or Assyrians or all speak
Portuguese or Dutch. ("Rome fell, Babylon fell, Scarsdale's turn will
come.") It is a different question to what extent imperial overstretch had
to do with excessive military spending, except perhaps in such cases as
Napoleon and Hitler, but these were hardly classical empires. These issues
should certainly be explored: If the United States had spent on military
expenditures, for example, three percent of its GNP in the period after
World War II instead of five to seven percent, would it be essentially
better off today? I doubt it; even in the case of the Soviet Union (which
spent four times or more on a per capita basis), it is far from certain that
excessive military spending was the single most important factor for the
disintegration of the empire.
In
Rise and Fall,
Kennedy ranged widely over many countries and
historical periods. In his new book, he casts his net even wider, dealing
with the demographic explosion, global warming, biotech agriculture, air
and water pollution, robotics, the globalization of finance, the impact of
