2007-03-22 Compelling but obvious

Paul Kennedy's thesis is disarmingly simple - that economic muscle underpins military strength and political power among nations. He applies this analytical model to 500 years of European history, charting the decline of the Iberian powers, the rise of the British Empire and the eventual emergence of a bipolar world order after the Second World War.

Kennedy's prose is refreshingly candid and readable and the study is meticulously organised, making the central tenets of his argument easy to grasp and digest. His thesis is not overly simplified - he accepts that other factors, such as geographical location and the quality of a country's leaders, also influence the course of history.

At times, however, it's tempting to think that Kennedy's argument is too obvious to really be of much use as an analytical model. In great power struggles, the side with the most resources generally wins - this much is hard to refute.

But this really is all Kennedy tells us. History is so complex [North Vietnam's victory over a vastly superior America, for example] that it's not always possible to make simple connections between resources and power. Kennedy accepts this and restricts the applicability of his analysis to struggles between great powers, but then one is entitled to ask - is this really surprising or even worth saying?

Overall, 'Rise and Fall...' is worth reading, partly for the compelling panorama of modern history it presents us with, partly for the welcome demolition of certain myths through the merciless application of raw economic data [the invincible Nazi war machine, for example, seems pretty much doomed from the start if we examine the statistics]. Nevertheless, don't expect modern history to be suddenly illuminated by Kennedy's deceptively simple argument.