Shaper Nations: Strategies for a Changing World

by William I. Hitchcock (Editor), Melvyn P. Leffler (Editor), Jeffrey W Legro (Editor)

Shaper Nations provides illuminating perspectives on the national strategies of eight emerging and established countries that are shaping global politics at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The volume’s authors offer a unique they live and work primarily in the country about which they write, bringing an insider’s feel for national debates and politics.

The conventional wisdom on national strategy suggests that these states have clear central authority, coherently connect means to ends, and focus on their geopolitical environment. These essays suggest a different conclusion. In seven key countries―Brazil, China, Germany, India, Israel, Russia, and Turkey―strategy is dominated by nonstate threats, domestic politics, the distorting effect of history and national identity, economic development concerns, and the sheer difficulty, in the face of many powerful internal and external constraints, of pursuing an effective national strategy.

The shapers represent a new trend in the international arena with important consequences. Among them is a more uncertain world in which countries concentrate on their own development rather than on shared problems that might divert precious resources, and attend more to regional than to global order. In responding to these shaper states, the United States must understand the sources of their national strategies in determining its own role on the global stage.

224 pages, Hardcover

Published April 5, 2016

Reviews

[Regina Bangun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rated it 4 stars because it truly added tons of knowledge while I was reading the book.

The book itself talks about all the strategies one country possesses in order to survive the status quo competition that’s tangled in a very perplexing complexity. The countries mentioned are the ones thought to become the shaper nations in the future, mostly emerging countries with a potentially high economic growth. I was quite stunned by some of the facts mentioned in this book including China’s effort in sending 700 paratroopers called “the peacekeeping” force to South Sudan in order to help them solving the conflict and the fact that China did all that to maintain its prestige internationally and also to maintain worldwide collective security to while I was reading them was like ☺️. Also the JDP in Turkey and how JDP’s ostentatiously strong relationship faltered with its other constituency named Gülen because of their difference in looking at the key issues.

This book taught me a lot and it’s really helpful for me to understand more about the struggles of seemingly perfect countries. I really do like this book because of not only the tons of informations given in each page but also the way it simply just takes readers to the reality of the world. Where everything can change, like the polarity of our world for example. Started off as a bipolar world with Soviet and US held most of the control and they started the Cold War which eventually ended in 1991 then it’s time for America Primacy (Pax Americana, which actually had already started post world war 2) or unipolarity then, again, somehow the world has turned to multipolarity with China’s economic on the rise with an even higher GNI than those from developed countries per year. With that being said, China’s now able to challenge America in terms of economic and not that long perhaps till China is able to also compete with America in terms of armaments and military competence.

Nevertheless, that’s all my review for this book. It’s a lil bit here and there I know but hopefully you’ll get it just how plentiful informations are contained inside this single book and I just hope that you’ll able to also read them like what I just did. Thanks for reading this and again, happy reading to all my fella readers out there! Stay safe and stay sane, bye love. <3

[Mills College Library]

327.101 S5291 2016