Highly readable and informative . . . Macdonald's history of the past two centuries gives us an insightful view of the past and provides a helpful guide to what the future might hold for the forces of geopolitics, which, as the author elucidates, are always at work.” —John Steele Gordon, The Wall Street Journal
“Macdonald squeezes a lot into a book of some 250 pages. He traces, from the 1820s to the present, the pendulum swings between open economies at one end and closed, protected ones at the other. Because mainstream economics today—with its central tenet of the pursuit of comparative advantage by economic actors such as states—favors free trade, and because the benefits of free trade over the past 25 years seem so obvious, we see relatively little discussion of the benefits of autarky or of protectionism. Macdonald corrects this. He is by no means against trade or globalization, nor is he arguing for protection. He approaches the topic as a historian . . . simply trying to see the world as it is and to describe it with clarity . . . Macdonald has the courage to follow his own evidence and logic wherever they lead.” —Scott Malcomson, The Huffington Post
“Timely . . . Macdonald argues that the world is at a geo-political/geo-economic tipping point where the unipolar post-Cold War world, with the United State's unchallenged preeminence in global affairs, will soon be superseded by a new international order where America and China will square off against one another. Whether this new state of affairs bodes well or ill for the rest of us is the big question. To answer, Macdonald looks to the history of the 20th century for guidance.” —Robert Collison, Toronto Star
“Macdonald returns with a two-century history, noting how, continually, events and violence have shattered the notion that trade will bring peace among nations . . . He focuses on economic factors throughout: the hunger for coal, the thirst for petroleum, the passion for raw materials . . . Macdonald concludes with accounts of the rises (and increasing sways) of India and China and the enduring contention and concern in the region about access to the Strait of Malacca and the control of key Pacific islands . . . sharply focused, closely reasoned.” —Kirkus
“Contrary to the liberal dream, globalization does not lead to One World, but to disruption. Globalization reached a peak in 1913; one year later, the world was at war. In his grand sweep through history, Macdonald makes a crucial point: The global commons does not organize itself; it needs a guardian and guarantor. When Britain shed that burden, the United States took over. Macdonald argues correctly that there is nobody else-neither Russia nor China, which are revisionist, not responsible powers. Only liberal empires take care of the whole. With global conflict rising, the United States has begun to grasp Macdonald's compelling logic: no protector, no peace. So the twenty-first century need not be a repeat of the twentieth. A smart book that skewers the conventional wisdom.” —Josef Joffe, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and the author of The Myth of America’s Decline
“Macdonald presents a compelling thesis: Free trade and peace can prosper only under the protection of a single benign hegemon and a multipolar world is unstable. This is a book of great scope and ambition, and one of the most important to be published in recent years” —Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England
“James MacDonald offers a most interesting and detailed analysis of the connections among war, peace and trade in the course of the past two centuries.” —Giuseppe Ammendola, American Foreign Policy Interests
2014-11-04
The tattered history of the notion that free, international trade ensures the permanence of peace and the disappearance of war.Macdonald—a former investment banker, now an author (A Free Nation Deep in Debt: The Financial Roots of Democracy, 2003)—returns with a two-century history, noting how, continually, events and violence have shattered the notion that trade will bring peace among nations. He begins in the 19th century and describes Pax Britannica, a time, he writes, when "it all seemed so simple." But history is not static, and France began its steady return to power after Waterloo while the United States, following the Civil War, began its own journey to the pinnacle of world power. Macdonald then devotes chapters to our major wars (world wars I and II) and shows how and why the trade-peace theory just did not obtain. He focuses on economic factors throughout: the hunger for coal, the thirst for petroleum, the passion for raw materials. He revisits the post-World War I failures of Versailles (France wanted Germany's resources; Germany wanted them back) and Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II—a move that, had it been successful (as it nearly was), would have considerably altered subsequent world history. The second half of the text deals with Pax Americana: how the United States achieved it, how it has attempted to administer it and how current events are fracturing it. The author concludes with accounts of the rises (and increasing sways) of India and China and the enduring contention and concern in the region about access to the Strait of Malacca and the control of key Pacific islands. Macdonald concludes with an eight-point list of factors in the more-or-less enduring post-World War II peace among the world's powers. He does not believe America can afford a new isolationism. Sturdy, scholarly, sharply focused, closely reasoned.
