Book Review - Unrivaled: Why America Remains the World's Sole Superpower.

Michael Beckley is Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, Medford, MA. His book, Unrivaled, asserts that America will remain the sole superpower for at least for the rest of the 21'' century. This is contrary to what most scholars and pundits have been saying: that China Has Won (2020) by Kishore Mahbubani, and Eastemization: Asia's Rise and America's Decline From Obama to Trump and Beyond (2017) by Gideon Rachman. Beckley also claims that the US is not the greatest country in the world, and that its global advantages are not written in stone, but his findings are the present facts and realities when we compare the US with China. Beckley argues that in looking at US-China relations, we must not limit our sights only to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We must also include the broad range of indicators such as: technological innovation, per capita income, and military power, etc., thus making the US having many more advantages in competing with China in the globalized world economy.

However, in our time the one lesson that the more than a year Covid-19 pandemic is teaching humanity is that now we are all in the same boat (albeit in different cabins). Unless we get together to solve our common global issues, of which global warming is the most imminent, we will surely sink together. In the recent TomDispatch article by a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin (Feb. 28, 2019) entitled "Global Warming is the End Game for US Global Power," referring to his book, In The Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of American Power(2017), Alfred McCoy asks the question "What Does It Take to Destroy A World Order?" He states that since the European exploration of the world in the 15th century, some 90 empires, large and small, have come and gone. Only three are left:

1) The Iberian (1494-1805), 2) The British Imperial Era (1815-1914), and 3) Washington world system (1945-2025). He asks if these three entities will also disappear because of global warming.

McCoy suggests that by the year before 2040 global warming would reach 1.3 degrees Celsius, as the suggested maximum by the Paris Accords. He concludes his essay by saying that "Climate change, if not brought under some kind of control, threatens to create a new and cataclysmic planet in which the very word 'order' will lose its traditional meaning." Such a dismal picture of our world would render irrelevant any debate on which country is ahead and which is behind. Beckley also cites Aaron L. Friedberg of Princeton in the latter's book, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia. (2011 ), in which he recommends America to upgrade its arsenal to counteract the rise of China, despite the fact that the US is facing an economic meltdown, because, he says, when we discover China's real intention, it would be already "too late." In a more conciliatory tone, Friedberg also suggests that the problems that the world is facing are: Islamic terrorism, nuclear threats, global warming, energy security, and deadly diseases. He adds that "perhaps one of these, or several of them in combination will someday prove sufficiently threatening to force the United States and China into closer cooperation, regardless of their mutual suspicion and animosities, and no matter what goes on between them in the economic domain. At least, to date (2011), this has not happened." (However, under President Biden's commitment to address the issue of climate change at the G-7 meeting in June 2021 in Wales, things would be significantly different.)

Franklin Woo