The Fall of the US Empire: Global Fault-lines and the Shifting Imperial Order

Offering the theoretical concept of "global fault lines" as a more heuristic and all-encompassing concept than the earlier, Eurocentric notion of "combined and uneven development," Fouskas (international relations, Richmond U., England) and Gokay (international relations, Keele U. England) provide a theoretical analysis of the global decline of the US empire. They argue that the US, unable to escape the structural crises of over-accumulation and the fall of the rate of profit theorized by Marx in Capital, has been in continuous decline since the late 1960s and that the responses to this decline--globalization/financialization and neoliberalism or "financial statecraft I (1971-91) and II (1991-2011)"--has failed to arrest this decline, as they have just led to increased dependence on consumer debt and speculative bubbles. Meanwhile, the operations of the "constantly shifting tectonic plates of historical and social development" (the aforementioned "global fault lines") is leading to a massive shift of economic power and activities to the East. Distributed in the US by Palgrave Macmillan. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)