On Empire: America, War, And Global Supremacy

摘要

Short books, especially brilliant and incisive ones, set an example, and should prompt their reviewers to be brief themselves. On Empire: America, War, and Global Supremacy, by Eric Hobsbawm, is just such a book. In four essays, the famous British historian surveys the fate of empires and the future of war and hegemony in the post-Cold War era. A must-read, this small volume clarifies in a trenchant way issues often confused in public debate and academic works alike.rnEmpires no longer exist, and their demise is one of the great stories of the twentieth century. We should not regret their disappearance, nor retrospectively embellish their accomplishments for, as Hobsbawm points out, the twentieth century was one of the most murderous in history, witnessing a constant rise in the number of civilian versus military casualties, a record only offset by a significant decline in the number of inter-state wars since the 1960s. War in the next century will be different and depend on the stability of states rather than on rivalry among them. The disappearance of the great-power system has lifted a source of restraint on intervention in other states' affairs, and encouraged the fragmentation of states, which command less authority than they did before.