ABSTRACT
Essentially, J. L. Richardson’s critique is that Paul Kennedy can explain history only as it happened. He cannot account for wars averted, only wars that were waged. According to Kennedy’s Yale colleague John Lewis Gaddis, a notable historian in his own right, the work seized the American national consciousness because it highlighted that “the condition of being a great power is in fact transitory,” and may prove transitory for the United States as well. Moreover, Kennedy suggested that the Cold War’s end would not be peaceful. Scholars usually define “great powers” as those that have a significant amount of industrial and financial power. Black argues that, by definition, this excludes non-Western states; indeed, the list of attributes required for a state to be a “great power” merely describes certain Western states. “Thus, Japan, and then China, in the twentieth century are considered” great powers, but only because they merit the definition on Western terms, “earlier they are ruled out.”.
