Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony by Kori Schake
| Author | Robert Bothwell |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020702019876381 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
suspensions, generally, in international organizations. If valuable as a survey piece,
though, an article about Russia’s relationship to the G7/8 would have been far
more valuable. This gap is reinforced, furthermore, by an inability to separate the
G7 from the G7/8 in terms of compliance. Given the trajectory of Russian relations
with the G7, some speculation at least about the implications of this trend with
respect to like-mindedness would have been useful as well. The implications of Ben
Cormier’s chapter on G8 compliance reinforces this line of inquiry. If, as Cormier
suggests with good reason, compliance increases with more ministerial meetings,
and more specific policy coverage (p.193), what does this mean for the future not
only of the G7 but also for the BRICS?
Despite this critique, the Kirton and Larionova collection showcases the cer-
tainty that informal summit processes continue to be at the centre of debate in
international relations, and that these processes deserve nuanced treatment. At the
same time, in a very different environment in 2018, as in either 2008 or 2015, little
disagreement can be made about the co-editors’ final suggestion for future
research. For all the deserved focus on the summit processes from an international
perspective, specific countries stand out in terms of their critical importance: above
all, China and the United States (p.275).
Kori Schake
Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony
Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 2017. 400 pp. $29.95 (cloth)
ISBN: 9-780-6749-7507-1
Reviewed by: Robert Bothwell (bothwell@chass.utoronto.ca), University of Toronto, Canada
About 30 years ago, the distinguished Yale historian Paul Kennedy published a
work on the rise and fall of great powers. It tapped into the rich vein of pes-
simism and dread that ran through the study of international relations at the
time, for the Cold War was still a going concern, and all kinds of illusions
fluttered, bat-like, around national security establishments. Soviet power still
loomed, East Germany was a prosperous communist state, and the Soviet
Union was a stable and accepted part of the international system. So, there
was something powerful to dread, something that might supersede the West,
and its leader, the United States.
Kennedy, a skilled and very learned historian, could draw on hundreds if not
thousands of years of history, as the question of why one nation rose and another
fell—and the conflicts that this process engendered—went as far back as
Thucydides’ analysis of the wars between Athens and Sparta in the 5th century
BCE, while the 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon chronicled The Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire, while worrying, as a member of the British Parliament,
about the fragmentation of the British Empire during the American Revolution.
Wars and civil wars adjusted the balance of power, as one country rose, and
another fell.
488 International Journal 74(3)
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