ABSTRACT
Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers is an epic exploration of history. Kennedy’s academic career swiftly took him to Yale University in the United States. Kennedy had originally planned to release Rise and Fall in 1986. If he had, the book would have dealt with great power dynamics only up to the end of World War II. The imbalances Kennedy mentioned stem in many ways from the “Reagan doctrine,” named for US president Ronald Reagan and implemented with the aim of increasing pressure on the Soviet Union. Soviet spending on its military, matching US commitments, consumed up to one-quarter of its total national income. In this period, with an internationally committed United States and a wobbling Soviet Union, Kennedy wrote his history of great power politics. In certain ways, the historical patterns he had identified as far back as the 1500s still held true at the time he published the book.
