From Wealth to Power ─ The Unusual Origins of America's World Role

What turns rich nations into great powers? How do wealthy countries begin
extending their influence abroad? These questions are vital to
understanding one of the most important sources of instability in
international politics: the emergence of a new power. In From
Wealth to Power, Fareed Zakaria seeks to answer these
questions by examining the most puzzling case of a rising power in
modern history--that of the United States.

If rich nations
routinely become great powers, Zakaria asks, then how do we explain
the strange inactivity of the United States in the late nineteenth
century? By 1885, the U.S. was the richest country in the world. And
yet, by all military, political, and diplomatic measures, it was a
minor power. To explain this discrepancy, Zakaria considers a wide
variety of cases between 1865 and 1908 when the U.S. considered
expanding its influence in such diverse places as Canada, the
Dominican Republic, and Iceland. Consistent with the realist theory of
international relations, he argues that the President and his
administration tried to increase the country's political influence
abroad when they saw an increase in the nation's relative economic
power. But they frequently had to curtail their plans for expansion,
he shows, because they lacked a strong central government that could
harness that economic power for the purposes of foreign policy.
America was an unusual power--a strong nation with a weak state. It
was not until late in the century, when power shifted from states to
the federal government and from the legislative to the executive
branch, that leaders in Washington could mobilize the nation's
resources for international influence.

Zakaria's exploration of
this tension between national power and state structure will change
how we view the emergence of new powers and deepen our understanding
of America's exceptional history.