Introduction to Geopolitics

Modelski
phase
Preference for
world order
Availability of
world order
Global war
World power
Delegitimation
Deconcentration
High
High
Low
Low
Low
High
High
Low
Figure 2.2
Preference and availability of world leadership.

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certainties that it had provided, global geopolitics had to be interpreted in new ways. In
this section we will briefly introduce three writers who attempted to explain, and perhaps,
influence, US foreign policy through the 1990s.
The first is Francis Fukuyama (1992) who, while employed by the State Department,
argued that “history” had ended: meaning that all ideological conflict had been resolved
because the superiority of liberalism was generally accepted. In the framework of
Modelski’s model, no delegitimation and deconcentration were going to take place.
Fukuyama’s notion that the US had triumphed to such an extent that no challenge was
likely was short-lived. The doubters soon had the audience’s ear. Robert Kaplan’s contri-
bution to the 
Atlantic Monthly
, “The Coming Anarchy” (1994) and subsequent pieces
were notifications that the world leader’s agenda had failed in many parts of the world.
Promises of development and national self-determination, the essence of the US’s world
leadership innovations, had not been fulfilled. People were playing by another set of
political rules. Samuel Huntington’s, a political scientist at Harvard University, provoca-
tive and empirically inaccurate, 
Clash of Civilizations
(1993) thesis was directly opposed
to Fukuyama’s message, by mapping out the forthcoming phase of global war. Far from
the US’s period of leadership never-ending, Huntington was providing a call to arms by
identifying potential challengers to world leadership.
Other authors were challenging the “benevolence” of world leadership. Michael 
Hardt and Antonio Negri’s (2000) book 
Empire
was one of numerous books and 
articles, primarily by critical academics, that identified the United States post-9/11 
as an imperial power, controlling territory through its economic and military might 
for its own material self-interest. The beginning of the twenty-first century was desig-
nated as the new American and imperial century. Perhaps, these authors are correct. 
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Navy expenditure
Equal expenditur
e
Equal expenditur
e