emmanuel todd - after the empire

[Manu]

Does anyone read this book?
I'm starting to read and it seems very interesting.

"After the Empire
The Breakdown of the American System

Emmanuel Todd Translated by C. Jon Delogu

The efforts of the United States to sustain its position as the planet's only post-Cold War superpower show serious signs of back-firing. The current American method of operating in the world will lead to a gradual downsizing to normal nation status as the United States' military, economic, and ideological tendencies continue to anger allies and enemies alike, according to Emmanuel Todd. Todd anticipates that American hegemony will wane and an enhanced role for what he calls Eurasia will emerge, bringing together in common cause the world's two most productive industrial centers, Japan and Europe, and two regions of military and demographic force, Russia and the Arab-Islamic world.

A historian and demographer, Todd compiles and analyzes an astonishing breadth of data about birth and infant mortality rates, literacy levels, and marriage practices in the United States to uncover deep trends of decline. Against this backdrop, Todd points to a number of factors, including increasing resistance among the nations of the world to militant American unilateralism -nowhere more evident than in Iraq -and the faltering supremacy of the U.S. dollar, that suggest that the American century has come to an end.

About the Author

Emmanuel Todd is currently a researcher at the French National Institute for Demographic Studies. He is the author of numerous books, including The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere, The Making of Modern France: Ideology, Politics and Culture, and The Explanation of Ideology. He lives in C. Jon Delogu is an associate professor of English at the Université de Tolouse-Le Mirail."

 

[Manu]

This is another review:


"Emmanuel Todd's Apres l'empire (After the empire) looks at what the author calls the "decomposition of American hegemony".

Todd, a renowned social scientist who predicted the end of the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, bases his conclusions on the US dependency on foreign capital. Todd says that the US commercial deficit more than quadrupled during the 1990s. "In the period from 1973 to 2000, during which the US enjoyed its longest economic expansion, the commercial deficit went up from $100 billion to $450 billion," Todd says.

"To pay for this deficit, the US needs to keep importing foreign capital," he says. "If this capital flow were to stop, the US economy would collapse. Despite the repeated claims about US power, the truth is that this country is both a beggar and predator. This cannot last very long."

Todd says that US militarism is nothing more than "fuss" aimed to impress the world. "When you think that the US government only dares to wage war against military gnomes such as Iraq, you have to realize that the whole thing is only to pretend that they are mighty."

Todd says that the US isolation in its war plans against Iraq (give or take a few not so might nations) is an indicator that the world has begun to see the US decline as a superpower. "The fact the Germany, for the first time since World War II, has dared oppose a US military project especially shows this awareness.""