Engelsberg Ideas
When it was first published in 1987, your magnum opus, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, made the central argument that a great power’s relative military and strategic position is inextricably linked to its productive and economic power. Given that, and drawing on your analysis of global geopolitics since then, who do you think will be the great powers by the middle of the 21st century?
I was intrigued by a future chart projection of the share of world total economic output by the year 2050, which would see three very large economies at the top of the pile, namely, the United States, the People’s Republic of China, and, because of a vastly higher rate of growth between the 2000s and 2050, India.
Now those three countries, the US, China and India, would have GDPs approximately six to eight times bigger than any of the ones directly beneath them – the middle-ranking powers such as Japan, Britain, Russia, and France. That would be the rough and ready order of the world in the year 2050. So the world of the nation states and national economies has not altered, just the nation states. And those three, if they wanted to, in total defence spending, would be way above anyone else
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