Paul Kennedy's Prophecy

Summary

History As It Happens: "Paul Kennedy’s Prophecy"

Host: Martin Di Caro
Guest: Jeremy Suri, historian, LBJ School, University of Texas at Austin
Date: May 5, 2026
Main Theme:
How Paul Kennedy’s 1987 book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers foresaw the pattern of U.S. power, the concept of imperial “overstretch,” and the enduring challenges facing any top global power.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Martin Di Caro examines Paul Kennedy’s influential prophecy—the warning that the United States, despite its extraordinary dominance at the Cold War's end, risked the classic downfall of an overstretched global power. With historian Jeremy Suri (a former Kennedy student), Di Caro traces Kennedy’s core arguments, public reactions in the 1980s and 1990s, and how the book’s lessons apply to the current state of American power, debt, and military commitments, especially in the Middle East.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Public Impact and Core Ideas of Kennedy’s Book

[04:30, 11:58]

• The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers burst into public consciousness in 1987, connecting economic power, military strength, and the inevitable pattern—through history—of empires rising and falling.
• Kennedy’s thesis: Even as the U.S. appeared unmatched, its growing commitments and relative decline in economic and technological competitiveness would challenge its global position.
  • Jeremy Suri: "Paul Kennedy is one of the monumentally important historians... Integrating economics with an understanding of military power and understanding international societies and how they interrelate." [11:58]
• The term “imperial overstretch” enters the lexicon: the notion that a power’s military and global commitments outpace its economic capacity.
  • Martin Di Caro: "Aligning means with ends was a major theme of Kennedy's work... the gap between our commitments and our capacities." [05:31, 06:25]

The 1980s: Debt, Competition, and Decline Anxiety

[13:17, 14:08, 15:06]

• Kennedy was both lauded and criticized for suggesting the U.S. faced relative decline, especially as economic anxieties (debt, manufacturing decline) and Japanese competition loomed.
  • Jeremy Suri: "He was mentioned by President Bush and by others discussed on the floor of the US Senate because he predicted...the United States was in jeopardy of going into decline. Many politicians wanted to argue against that and were offended..." [13:17]
• Japan’s rise and American debt: Kennedy’s focus on Japan as the likely next “Great Power” makes sense against the era’s context but did not fully account for Japan’s coming stagnation.
  • Jeremy Suri: "Japan really was a very influential powerful country in the 1980s, economically...not just economically, though also in terms of foreign aid..." [15:06]

Overstretch, Debt, and Economic Realities

[17:13, 20:12, 21:48]

• Kennedy’s historical argument: great powers inevitably become overextended; economic strain follows military commitments.
  • Jeremy Suri: "What was different from Paul's argument was he made the case that, structurally, over the course of history... empires and large, great powers... rise and they fall. And in some ways, this is something you can't reverse. You can do better in managing it, but you cannot reverse it." [17:13]
• The debt spiral: U.S. national debt, already alarming in the 1980s, explodes in subsequent decades—crowding out productive investment and creating vulnerability.
  • Jeremy Suri: "The United States begins this upward trajectory in indebtedness…and that we have now reached the point under Donald Trump... where our indebtedness now exceeds our annual GNP..." [21:48]
  • "Today, in the US Budget, I think one out of every seven dollars goes to paying interest on the debt." [21:48]

Industrial Base Erosion & Globalization

[24:02]

• The loss of U.S. manufacturing—portrayed in the discourse as “inevitable”—highlights how technological change and the search for cheap labor reshape economies.
  • Martin Di Caro: "We have this maybe nostalgia for the factory job... That is actually not the norm... it was just inevitable that those jobs were going to start migrating to other parts of the world." [24:02]

Collapse of Empires and Aftermath

[25:15]

• Kennedy’s caution on the Soviet collapse: transformations are costly and their consequences linger—the “wars of Soviet succession” (Kimmage’s term, e.g. Ukraine).
  • Jeremy Suri: "Old empires don't go away, they decline. But as they decline, they leave lots of scar tissue around them...the Soviet Empire, which is the story of the war in Ukraine..." [25:15]

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Contemporary Parallels: Applying Kennedy’s Insights Now

Relative Decline: Apparent Then and Now

[25:37, 27:23, 30:06, 32:44]

• The decline of great powers isn’t always obvious in the moment—but patterns are visible, even if progress or new strengths periodically arise.
  • Jeremy Suri: "Although decline might be somewhat inevitable, it can be a very slow process and it can be an uneven process..." [25:43]
• U.S. military might vs. rapid technological shifts: the U.S. faces costly attempts to maintain dominance, challenged by disruptive, inexpensive innovations elsewhere (e.g., $50,000 drones outmaneuvering billion-dollar weapons).
  • Martin Di Caro: "Who would have thought that the breakthrough in military innovation, a $50,000 drone." [27:35]
• Policing global choke points has become both more expensive and more difficult due to emerging asymmetric threats.
  • Jeremy Suri: "Empires...become more and more dependent on these choke points around the world, and they become more and more expensive to police...inexpensive drones and inexpensive missiles...can easily cause damage to our ships..." [28:37]

The 1990s Illusion of Unipolarity

[30:17, 30:35]

• After the Cold War, the U.S. believed itself “immune from history”—echoing Fukuyama’s “End of History”—which bred complacency and exceptionalism about debt and global responsibilities.
  • Jeremy Suri: "Americans came to believe...that we were immune from history, that history didn't matter, that it was an end of history..." [30:35]
• Politicians, once alarmed over debt, moved to minimize its dangers as U.S. exceptionalism.

The Gap Between Security Commitments and Capabilities

[32:01, 32:44]

• Kennedy highlighted, even before the U.S. entrenched itself in the Middle East, how overseas commitments could easily outstrip U.S. capacity to sustain them.
  • Martin Di Caro: "The difference or the gap, you might even call it a chasm, between our security commitments and what we're actually able to do..." [32:01]
  • Jeremy Suri: "Every empire takes on commitments it cannot cover...the more vulnerable you become, no matter how strong you are." [32:44]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• George H.W. Bush (1988): "America is not in decline. America is a rising nation." [01:16, 08:08]
• Jeremy Suri: "What Paul was saying in his book was, if you put us in the context of the British Empire in the 19th century and the Habsburg Empire of the 17th century, we're entering a similar period...we are going to be in decline and there's really nothing we can do to reverse it. We just have to manage it." [17:13]
• Martin Di Caro: "We can't have guns and butter..." [27:21]
• Jeremy Suri: "Some of the happiest countries in the world, by most surveys, are some of the former empires, not current empires." [34:37]
• Martin Di Caro: "Are you saying Norway is jealous that they don't have bases that are being shot at...? ...But okay, in that sense, Donald Trump might be a world historical figure. He might be the one who actually brings the bases home inadvertently." [34:42]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | | ---------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 01:01 | Episode title and setup: “Paul Kennedy’s Prophecy” | | 04:30 | Introduction of Kennedy’s book and its central thesis | | 11:32 | Jeremy Suri introduced; overview of Paul Kennedy’s biography and influence | | 13:17 | Kennedy's emergence into public debate, political backlash | | 17:13 | Discussion of the provocative nature of Kennedy's argument on U.S. decline | | 21:48 | Debt, economic overstretch, and contemporary consequences | | 25:15 | Lessons from Soviet collapse and the enduring scars of imperial retreat | | 27:21 | Military innovation, drones, and "guns vs. butter" debate | | 28:37 | Geography, choke points, and the new vulnerability of U.S. global commitments | | 30:35 | 1990s: Unipolar moment, end of history fallacy, and enduring lessons | | 32:01 | The ever-widening gap between security commitments and actual capacity | | 34:32 | Should the U.S. bring military bases home? Streamlining strategy in an overstretched era|

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Conclusion: Kennedy’s Warning for Today

• Kennedy’s thesis, controversial in its era, appears prescient as U.S. debt, global friction, and military commitments strain the foundations of American primacy.
• The episode suggests empires must match means to ends, avoid the trap of endless expansion, and recognize that decline, while inevitable, can be managed for the public good.
  • Jeremy Suri: "Empires cannot rule the world forever. They have to make choices." [33:49]
  • Martin Di Caro: "Decline doesn't have to be feared. We can be a prosperous, happy country without bases in the Middle East." [34:32]

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For further listening:

• The next episode will revisit the 1936 Arab uprising during the British Mandate—its roots and enduring significance.

Transcript

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[Martin DeCaro]

it happens May 5, 2026 Paul Kennedy's prophecy.

[Narrator/Voice Actor (Historical Readings)]

We the people starting the third century of a dream. Standing up to some cynic who's trying to tell us we're not going to get any better, are we at the end?

[George H.W. Bush]

But America is not in decline. America is a rising nation.

[Political Commentator]

And it's not the $2 trillion debt. It's the terrible prospect by 19, our deficit being 3 trillion.

[Economic Analyst]

Japan comes over to this country. They're buying up Wall Street. They're buying up all of Manhattan's real estate. If you ever go to Japan right now and try to sell something, forget about it.

[Martin DeCaro]

This is the recurring image of the Japanese industrial success.

[Jeremy Surrey]

Cars like these have forced the Americans to concede first place to the Japanese.

[Martin DeCaro]

As the world's top car manufacturers, we

[George H.W. Bush]

stand tonight for a new world of hope and possibilities for our children. A world we could not have contemplated a few years ago when the States united.

[Martin DeCaro]

The United States seemed to be at the pinnacle of global power. As the Cold War came to an end, as the Internet boom fueled a new decade of economic growth, a wise historian was warning of imperial overstretch and relative decline. Forty years later, we can say Paul Kennedy was right. That's next, as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.

[Historian/Analyst]

We ought to ask this question about relating ends and means in a very thorough way every so often and for one profound reason, that the world outside is constantly changing.

[Jeremy Surrey]

So in the early 80s I think Paul was very well known among historians and among foreign policy specialists, but this book, the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, really burst him into the public consciousness, and he was mentioned by President Bush and by others.

[Narrator/Voice Actor (Historical Readings)]

We can also be heartened by our progress across the world. Most important, America is at peace.

[Martin DeCaro]

Tonight, early 1987, Ronald Reagan delivers his State of the Union address with his usual sunny optimism about where America was heading.

[Narrator/Voice Actor (Historical Readings)]

Well, I can't tell it any better than the real thing, a story recorded by James Madison from the final moments of the Constitutional Convention, September 17, 1787. As the last few members signed the document, Benjamin Franklin, the oldest delegate at 81 years and in frail health, looked over toward the chair where George Washington Daily presided. At the back of that chair was painted the picture of a sun on the horizon and turning those sitting next to him. Franklin observed that artists found it difficult in their painting to distinguish between a rising and a setting sun. I know if we were there, we could see those delegates sitting around Franklin leaning in to listen more closely to him. Then Dr. Franklin began to share his deepest hopes and fears about the outcome of their efforts. And this is what he said. I have often looked at that picture behind the President without being able to tell whether it was a rising or setting sun. But now, at length, I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.

[Martin DeCaro]

Also in 1987, a British historian who taught at Yale named Paul Kennedy wrote a surprise bestseller, the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, in which he. Although the United States is at present still in a class of its own economically and perhaps even militarily, it cannot avoid confronting the two great tests which challenge the longevity of every major power that occupies the number one position in world affairs, whether in the military strategical realm, it can preserve a reasonable balance between the nation's perceived defense requirements and the means it possesses to maintain those commitments. And whether, as an intimately related point, it can preserve the technological and economic basis of its power from relative erosion in the face of the ever shifting patterns of global production. So aligning means with ends was a major theme of Kennedy's work. And in the 1980s, the national debt exploded. Unlike today, members of both parties in Congress would talk about it.

[Political Commentator]

You know, what bothers me the most, my colleagues, is that it isn't the one trillion dollar debt, and it's not the two trillion dollars debt. It's the terrible prospect by 1990 of our deficit being three trillion. And the interest or carrying charge on that debt isn't going to be 1/9 of our current fiscal budget. It's going to be one fifth of the budget by 1990.

[Narrator/Voice Actor (Historical Readings)]

The economic plan that we're following has doubled the national debt in four years and that we are not willing to do what is really necessary to bring the budget into balance and keep it there. And it's a massive sham.

[Martin DeCaro]

The year after the publication of his book in 1988, Professor Kennedy testified before a congressional committee about the inevitable challenges awaiting the United States as its global power relative to other countries diminished.

[Historian/Analyst]

So at the economic and technological level. I'm submitting that the world has changed greatly since 1950. But what has not changed is the absolute array of commitments and obligations which we have to NATO, to Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and new commitments in the Middle East. The United States relative share of world power is less than it was 40 years ago. Its absolute commitments have not shrunk. And that, I think, brings us back briefly to the question of ends and means, of closing the gap between our commitments and our capacities.

[Martin DeCaro]

On the campaign trail that year, George H.W. bush, Reagan's vice president, mentioned the book. And as historian Jeffrey Engel notes in when the World Seemed his history of the Bush presidency, the candidate publicly rejected the notion the US was in decline. That kind of talk was for his weak Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis.

[George H.W. Bush]

There is a profound difference between me and my opponent in this election, a difference not only of policies but really of fundamental values.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yet, as Engel notes, the country Bush was elected to lead appeared, according to Kennedy's quantifiable measures, a classic example of an empire afflicted by overstretch. Its military knew no immediate rival, yet its treasury was empty and its factories faced stiff competition from abroad, in particular from those whose most recent investments in had flourished under the very shadow of American protection. Engel goes on to say James Baker knew enough to be worried, noting before leaving his post as Treasury Secretary in 1988 to run Bush's campaign, that the scope of the national security debate has been brought in to include the economic dimension.

[George H.W. Bush]

My opponent's view of the world sees a long, slow decline for our country, an inevitable fall mandated by impersonal historical forces. But America is not in decline. America is a rising nation.

[Martin DeCaro]

So I thought of Paul Kennedy's big book, which I read about 10 years ago because of what's happening now in the United States and in the Middle East. Imperial overstretch. The US could not defend its bases in the Persian Gulf from Iranian attacks. And now the Trump administration, in all its incompetence is asking for hundreds of billions more for defense without raising taxes as the national debt soars toward $40 trillion. It was about $3 trillion when Reagan left office. Speaking of the Middle East in his 1987 book, Paul Kennedy, who is now 80 years old and still teaches at Yale, noted all of those decades ago that the Middle east has been viewed as requiring constant American attention, whether of a military or a diplomatic kind. Yet, he says, the memory of the 1979 debacle in Iran and of the ill fated Lebanon venture of 1983, the diplomatic complexities of the antagonisms and the unpopularity of the United States among the Arab masses all make it extremely difficult for an American government to conduct a coherent long term policy in the Middle East.

[Narrator/Voice Actor (Historical Readings)]

And the strategic purpose behind the terrorism sponsored by these outlaw states is clear. To disorient the United States, to disrupt or alter our foreign policy, to sow discord between ourselves and our allies, in short, to cause us to retreat, retrench, to become Fortress America. Yes, their real goal is to expel America from the world.

[Martin DeCaro]

So with us now to discuss Paul Kennedy's prophecy is one of his old students, historian Jeremy Surrey, an expert on US Foreign policy at the LBJ School of Public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the co host of this Is Democracy podcast and the Democracy of Hope newsletter on Substack Tap. Subscribe now in the show Notes to skip ads, get early access and enjoy all of our bonus content or go to history as it happens.com Ryan Reynolds

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[Martin DeCaro]

Jeremy Suri, welcome back, my friend.

[Jeremy Surrey]

Good to be with you, Martin.

[Martin DeCaro]

You know, I've done so many episodes about the war in Iran, the historical origins, Middle East, Israel, Palestine over the past two months. I feel like all those episodes were leading to this conversation, which could be titled the Emperor has no Clothes. But I'm going with Paul Kennedy's prophecy. Tell us, who is Paul Kennedy?

[Jeremy Surrey]

So Paul Kennedy is, I think, one of the monumentally important historians of international relations, of great power, politics of empire, monumentally important in the work he's done over the last 50 to 70 years. And it's an incredible opus. He's most famous for his book the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, but he published some of the most important work on Anglo German rivalries before World War I. Some of the most important work on the history of the British Navy that's very relevant for thinking about the US Navy today. Work on grand strategy, work on British imperialism, and work on American foreign policy as well. And he's probably best known for integrating economics with an understanding of military power and understanding international societies and how they interrelate to one another. Paul also trained many of us in the field. I think there's a very large group of us who are historians today because of Paul. He was our teacher and remains our teacher in many ways.

[Martin DeCaro]

So before the mid to late 1980s, when this book came out, did anyone really know in the United States who Paul Kennedy was? Because the president of the United States mentioned him in this period, referring to Bush, George H.W. bush, after he won election in late 88.

[Jeremy Surrey]

So in the early 80s, I think Paul was very well known among historians and among foreign policy specialists. But this book, the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, really burst him into the public consciousness. And he was mentioned by President Bush and by others discussed on the floor of the US Senate because he predicted that the United States, or he analyzed at least that the United States was in jeopardy of going into decline. And many politicians wanted to argue against that and were offended, quite frankly, that he made that argument.

[Martin DeCaro]

How dare you say we're in decline? We are the world's superpower. Although the Cold war was still happening 86, 87, Gorbachev has only been on the scene for a short time. His reforms are taking hold, and it's not clear at all that the Soviet Union's gonna be gone when this book comes out.

[Jeremy Surrey]

That's true, though. The rival for the United States in this book is Japan, not the Soviet Union. He sees the Soviet Union as the strategic counterweight to the United States. But Paul's argument, and this is evident from the original cover, which I have here, is the Japanese challenging the United States because of, at that time, their greater economic productivity. This is the time when Japanese vehicles are outperforming as quality vehicles. This is when the Japanese economy, Sony and various other companies seem to be doing so much better than American companies. And most significantly, the United States seems basically mired in debt and unable to cover the costs of managing its large presence around the world.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, I want to return to that issue, the fact that the United States was drowning in debt. But about Japan, that's one prediction. He's not alone there. That didn't work out. He said that China and Japan would be the two Capital G, capital P, Great powers.

[Jeremy Surrey]

No, but Japan really was a very influential, powerful country in the 1980s, economically,

[Martin DeCaro]

I mean, all those novels that came out about how Japan's taking over the Go ahead.

[Jeremy Surrey]

Yeah. And not just economically, though also in terms of foreign aid. Much of the foreign aid that flowed in the 1980s and still does into countries and Southeast Asia, other parts of the world, actually come from Japan. And so Japan was using foreign aid in addition to economic activity to build influence.

[Martin DeCaro]

But its economy's been stagnant for a while now.

[Jeremy Surrey]

That's not something Paul predicted. That's right.

[Martin DeCaro]

Well, you know, I'm reading from our friend Jeffrey Engel's book here. I'll move on to Paul Kennedy's book in a second. But he cites how the Mitsubishi group in late 1989 bought Rockefeller center in New York. And I do remember a book that came out, Michael Crichton Rising Son. There was a movie about that, too, with Sean Connery. From the number one bestseller, Sean Connery,

[Jeremy Surrey]

you should know I'm a black belt. But of course you are there.

[Martin DeCaro]

Wesley Snipes.

[Narrator/Voice Actor (Historical Readings)]

Don't lose your temperature.

[Jeremy Surrey]

I don't lose my temper.

[Martin DeCaro]

Even Donald Trump used to talk about Japan in those days.

[Economic Analyst]

But we don't have free trade right now because if you want to go to Japan or if you want to go to Saudi Arabia or various other countries, it's virtually impossible for an American to do business in those countries.

[Jeremy Surrey]

So actually, it's an interesting story when Paul Kennedy's book came out, the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, alongside another bestseller, which was the Art of the Deal by Donald Trump.

[Martin DeCaro]

Trump, yeah. It was a surprise bestseller. I mean, think today, how often does a 600, 700 page history book become a bestseller?

[Jeremy Surrey]

I keep trying. It's not. It's really hard to do.

[Martin DeCaro]

I haven't tried. So the end of his book is a chapter in the conclusion. The United States. The problem of number one in relative decline. Jeremy, tell us why this was so provocative.

[Jeremy Surrey]

So it was a startling argument, not because it was new. In fact, many who had lived through the 1970s, including people like Ronald Reagan, were fearful that we had entered decline during the years of stagflation and oil crisis. This should all sound familiar to people. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at

[Historian/Analyst]

the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.

[Jeremy Surrey]

What was different from Paul's argument was he made the case that structurally, over the course of history, that empires and large, great powers like the United States, they rise and they fall. And in some ways, this is something you can't reverse. You can do better in managing it, but you cannot reverse it. Others who thought we had been in decline, like Ronald Reagan, wanted to argue that we could reverse decline with the right policies, with a stronger military. And the argument within American politics in the 80s was how to reverse decline. And what Paul was saying in his book was, if you put us in the context of the British empire in the 19th century and the Habsburg Empire of the 17th century, you know, we are entering a similar period when we're going to be in decline and there's really nothing we can do to reverse it. We just have to manage it. That's not what the Reagan people wanted to hear.

[Narrator/Voice Actor (Historical Readings)]

Now there are those in our land today, however, who would have us believe that the United States, like other great civilizations of the past, has reached the zenith of its power. That we're weak and fearful, reduced to bickering with each other, and no longer possessed of the will to cope with our problems. Much of this talk has come from leaders who claim that our problems are too difficult to handle. We're supposed to meekly accept their failures as the most which can humanly be done. They tell us we must learn to live with less and teach our children that their lives will be less full and prosperous than ours have been.

[Martin DeCaro]

Relative decline. The first word in that term is the most important.

[Jeremy Surrey]

All international politics is relative because it's about your power in relationship to others. And the United States benefited after World War II from this extraordinary, extraordinary gap in its power and the rest of the world, including the Soviet Union. One of the things Paul has shown in the subsequent book is how much larger the US Navy was than all the other navies in the world coming out of World War II. Something like 7,000 ships we had. We only have like 300 ships today. And so that gap, which gave us the ability to open markets and the ability to ensure security in so many areas of the world, even though we had a rival in the Soviet Union, that relative gap had closed. And certainly economically, the Japanese were getting very close to us and what we could do.

[Martin DeCaro]

It has to close. Right? You can't have a static situation where the United States States is that much more powerful than everybody else. The problem, I guess, is when you don't pull back then from your security commitments.

[Jeremy Surrey]

The really brilliant part of Paul's book is to recognize exactly what the causal factor is there. And he articulates it better than anyone had before and anyone has since, which is that what happens when you're a huge relative power like the United States is you start spending more and more of your resources on maintaining that empire that you've built. And a country like Japan, which is an ally, which does not have to invest in maintaining a large empire, can actually focus its smaller resources on more productive activities. And those more productive activities allow that country in the long run to outperform the larger country that is spending resources on more things. Paul called this imperial overstretch. And his argument was because the United States was so big, it had overstretched itself in its commitments. Japan was not overstretched, so it was able to invest in production companies and various other things that allowed it to produce more economic growth.

[Martin DeCaro]

He took the words out of my mouth. Imperial overstretch. Let's talk about the debt in those days, because we think back to the 1980s, or maybe some people do, and remember it for a better time than it actually was. Kennedy brought this up in his book. Our friend Jeff Engel has brought it up as well in his scholarship about the George H.W. bush presidency. That president was left with a terrible bill to pay. The 1980s weren't as prosperous and as great as the Reaganites would want us to believe. Can you address that, Jeremy, and how it relates to this conversation about too much debt, too much overextension?

[Jeremy Surrey]

Overall, the American GNP grew during the second half of the 1980s. The early part of the 80s saw actually a terrible recession, and particularly in 1981 and 1982, with unemployment that reached up to 10% in the United States. So it depends which part of the 80s we're talking about. Two things, though, that are significant that come out in Paul's book. Many of the investments the United States was making to fuel economic growth were in areas that were not always productive for the economy as a whole. So military spending is a way of creating jobs, and it is a stimulus of a sort, but it doesn't stimulate and filter into all of American society. And so what we saw in the 1980s and continue to see in the United States are waves, wages that stagnate for those in the middle. So those who have access, those who work for management consulting companies that consult for the Pentagon, do very well. Many of those are my students. But those who don't have a fancy education and are working in ordinary jobs in small towns and elsewhere, even in large cities, their wages stagnate relative to the cost of living. And so they're not actually living better. And this has been the case since the 1970s. That's a point that Paul gets at, because it's a matter of what you're investing in. The second issue is the debt issue. As the United States borrows more, and during the Reagan years, the United States begins this upward trajectory in indebtedness, and that we have now reached the point under Donald Trump today, it just happened a few days ago, where our indebtedness now exceeds our annual GNP. It's 100% of our GNP. It was never that high since 1946. This begins with the Reagan years at a lower scale. And that indebtedness, according to Kennedy's argument, raises the cost of capital. So it means that when you need to borrow more money to build new factories, to invest in innovation, it becomes more expensive, and that crowds out innovation and investment. That's exactly the problem that other empires had before. The more you borrow, the more you have to pay to borrow. The more you're paying to borrow, the less money you then have to invest in other things. Today, in the US Budget, I think one out of every seven dollars goes to paying interest on the debt. So that's one out of seven dollars every seven dollars that we're not using as investment, but we're instead using to pay the Chinese or whoever else holds

[Martin DeCaro]

our debt, the industrial base. He mentions how that is starting to fritter away. That's. I hate using the term inevitable, but in global capitalism, in a globalized economy, it was a matter of time before labor starts or capital starts looking for cheaper sources of labor right outside the US and factory jobs. This. We have this maybe nostalgia for the factory job and the boom the quarter century after the end of the Second World War, 1945-1970. That is actually not the norm. That's not the norm. Right. And it was just inevitable that those jobs were going to start migrating to other parts of the world. So one other note about the Soviet Union before we go to the US in his final paragraph about the Soviet Union as of the mid-80s, he says, those who rejoice at the present day difficulties of the Soviet Union and look forward to the collapse of that empire might wish to recall that such transformations normally occur at very great cost and not always in a predictable fashion. Saying that the collapse of the USSR, if and when it happens is going to be very violent. That process is still playing out in what I call, and really, Michael Kimmage, our friend, has introduced to me this term the wars of Soviet succession still happening.

[Jeremy Surrey]

Old empires don't go away, they decline. But as they decline, they leave lots of scar tissue around them. And that's true with the Austro Hungarian Empire, which is part of the story of World War I, and it's certainly true with the Soviet Empire, which is the story of the war in Ukraine. Now Vladimir Putin is trying to salvage the Soviet empire and Ukraine is the victim of that effort.

[Martin DeCaro]

How do you view decline? Is it apparent only in retrospect? Can you detect it while it's underway?

[Jeremy Surrey]

I think you can. I mean, as a historian, and this is again, Paul's own work shows this. People within the society see it happening as it happens. But I also think, and this is really, if you read Paul's work carefully, what you realize is that although decline might be somewhat inevitable, it can be a very slow process and it can be an uneven process. So you can be an overall decline, but still have moments when you don't reverse the decline, but you find other areas of achievement. And that's sort of where Paul Kennedy comes together with Henry Kissinger. Because this is also Kissinger's view, that the United States could not maintain the gap in power that it had benefited from for so long, but it could do things to create new situations of power, new situations of strength. And to some extent that's what happens after the 1980s, right? The growth of Silicon Valley and Austin, where I Live, Route 128. And digital technology gives the United States another bump, at least for a while. We're seeing now that that bump actually makes us dependent on places like Taiwan for microchips. But there are ways in which in the process of relative decline, there can be new sources of power that emerge. But you have to be willing to Invest in those. And the challenge today, applying Paul's project to today, would be that we are actually not making those investments. If we say we want to put $1.5 trillion into the military, which would be more than 50% more than we already invest in the largest military in the world at a time when we're in more debt than we've ever been. That money is coming from investments in human capital and investments in other capital that are necessary for our future sustenance. It's eating our seed corn, which is exactly what he predicts.

[Martin DeCaro]

We can't have guns and butter, and

[Jeremy Surrey]

we cannot just keep building the same old guns when the Iranians and others are showing us that our fancy guns are susceptible to the smaller drones that Smaller, cheaper ones that they've built.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, who would have thought that the breakthrough in military innovation, a $50,000 drone.

[Jeremy Surrey]

So this now brings, you know, the work on disruption from Clay Christensen and others. And this is always what happens, right? I mean, Sony, the great Japanese electronic company of the 1980s, they. They end up getting undermined, right, by smaller Korean electronic companies that make stuff less expensively that's lower quality but far less expensive. And people want to buy the less expensive stuff about that. And that's exactly what's happening now.

[Martin DeCaro]

Lots of rerun from the 80s when you could buy an American television. When was the last bought an American. What's an American television? What's an American radio, What's an American stereo?

[Jeremy Surrey]

Have you noticed how inexpensive televisions are now, too? I mean, it's amazing, right? I mean, that's the whole point, right? We have this beautiful, expensive military and we're going to spend more and more on it. But it's being undermined by these cheap militaries. All they need to do in the Strait of Hormuz is damage a few ships, and they've shut it down.

[Martin DeCaro]

Geography remains undefeated. I mean, that's an issue then. It's an issue today.

[Jeremy Surrey]

So this is another important point in Paul's work, the geopolitics. And he did a lot of work on Half Old Mackinder, the Eurasian land mass. Yeah, the heartland, as Mackinder called it. Really prominent and important British intellectual of the early 20th century who wrote about these issues. Paul's work shows, especially in the rise and fall of the great powers, that one of the challenges empires have is they become more and more dependent on these choke points around the world, and they become more and more expensive to police. And that's what we're doing now. There are about five or six major choke points in the world. I just did a piece on this in my substack. They're harder and harder for us to police. We've policed them for the last 70 years. But they're harder to police because inexpensive drones and inexpensive missiles that the Houthis and the Iranians and others have can easily cause damage to our ships and other ships. The Houthis and the Iranians don't have to control the choke points. They just have to jeopardize ships going through them to make it really hard to manage.

[Martin DeCaro]

There's even a chance that your ship might get attacked. You're not going to send it through there.

[Jeremy Surrey]

The issue is an insurance company won't insure it. If your ship's not insured, you won't sail it.

[Martin DeCaro]

And I read that edition of your newsletter, Democracy of Hope, and I was very happy to see there was a map at the top of it. What's one of my biggest complaints about history books is not enough maps.

[Jeremy Surrey]

I've learned that as a teacher because I've learned. I'm always astounded at how little my students know about geography and how important maps are for them.

[Martin DeCaro]

1990s arrive early 90s. Cold War's over. The United States comes out on top. George H.W. bush, president of the United States, gives a televised address on Christmas Day 1991.

[George H.W. Bush]

The Soviet Union itself is no more. This is a victory for democracy and freedom. It's a victory for the moral force of our values.

[Martin DeCaro]

So we're in the early to mid-90s, the unipolar moment. What were the key illusions about that? Because it seemed right. Everything was going in our favor, everything was going our way. But I think Paul Kennedy was still right. You could see the seeds of today's problems in those years.

[Jeremy Surrey]

The biggest problem, and you've actually talked about this on other shows, was that Americans came to believe in the late 1991, 92 period that we were immune from history, that history didn't matter, that it was an end of history, as Francis Fukuyama had written in 1989. And what did that mean for most Americans? It meant that, yeah, Paul Kennedy was right about other societies, but not us, that we were exceptional, we were different. This didn't apply to us. And people still say that it's now extraordinary. Republicans who cared about debt when Obama was president now say debt doesn't matter because. Because for the United States, we can go into debt and it doesn't matter. It matters for everyone else, but not for us. Just not True, history matters to everyone. It does not repeat, but it doesn't go away.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's something that's so striking about when you revisit these years how much politicians talked about the debt and how something had to be done about it.

[News Anchor]

Total debt of the United States. This is where we began $5.7 trillion in 2001. That's where the total debt of the United states stood when Mr. Bush came to office. Substantial sum, but every year that number went up and up and up to the point where when he left office a couple of weeks ago, the deficit, the amount of debt stood at $10.7 trillion, nearly doubled in an eight year period of time from $5.7 trillion to $10.7 trillion. And as a consequence of that, that we're feeling the effects of it in all sectors of our economy.

[Martin DeCaro]

You know, I'm thumbing through the pages here of Paul Kennedy's book, his conclusion about, you know, the problems facing the United States and the one that comes up in all areas of the world that he's discussing is the difference or the gap, you might even call it a chasm between our security commitments and what we're actually able to do. And he, he notes that when these commitments were undertaken, there were very good reasons for them. And this is even before late 1980s, before there's more than one permanent military base in the Middle East. And he already says at this juncture that the United States is potentially overstretched in the Middle East. Take what he was saying then and compare it to what's been exposed over the past two months in the war against Iran.

[Jeremy Surrey]

Well, yeah, and I think this is a great place to close and bring this full circle. Because what Paul was arguing was that every empire takes on commitments it cannot cover. You have to secure so many areas of the world. The larger you become, the more vulnerable you become, no matter how strong you are. Right. And there's so many places where small groups can attack you. And so you have to defend all this area. And most of that defense is out of deterrence. You're deterring people from attacking you, but if you were attacked in all those areas, you could not cover them all.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's right. He brings it up.

[Jeremy Surrey]

The Middle east is precisely this.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah. He says it's unlikely the United States is going to have to defend all these places at the same time. But already we can see that we're moving stuff around, we're shifting assets. We just saw that over the past couple of months, the United States moving aircraft carriers from other parts of the world, from the Pacific all the way to the Middle East. But even so, the United States today was only being attacked in one area. Iran was firing missiles at the bases in the Middle East. We're not at war anywhere else and still could not defend those bases in the Middle East. Is it time to bring those bases home?

[Jeremy Surrey]

Yes. I mean, the United States has, I think it's more than 700 military facilities around the world. And each of them is an extension of American power, but each of them is also an extension of American vulnerability. And we would be better now in a world where there are more peer competitors to make some really tough choices about places we care about and where we think we can act effectively. I think Western Europe is one of those places. The South China Sea is one of those places, and the Middle east where we have never been effective and where we are so vulnerable and where, quite frankly, we should be less dependent on those regions. And that's a choice we have to make. And I think that's one of the lessons from Paul's book, that empires cannot rule the world forever. They have to make choices.

[Martin DeCaro]

Decline doesn't have to be feared. We can be a prosperous, happy country without bases in the Middle East.

[Jeremy Surrey]

Some of the happiest countries in the world, by most surveys, are some of the former empires, not current empires.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's right. Are you saying Norway is jealous that they don't have bases that are being shot at, bases in Qatar that are being shot at? I mean, we're laughing, but still, it's like one of these things. I mean, the whole framing of this conversation, right, is about, oh, decline and, oh, no. But okay, in that sense, Donald Trump might be a world historical figure. He might be the one who actually brings the bases home inadvertently.

[Jeremy Surrey]

Inadvertently.

[George H.W. Bush]

We stand tonight before a new world of hope and possibilities for our children, a world we could not have contemplated a few years ago. The challenge for us now is to engage these new states in sustaining the peace and building a more prosperous future. And so today, based on commitments and assurances given to us by some of these states concerning nuclear safety, democracy, and free markets, I am announcing some important steps designed to begin this process. First, the United States recognizes and welcomes the emergence of a free, independent and democratic Russia, led by its courageous president, Boris Yeltsin.

[Martin DeCaro]

On the next episode of history. As it happens, the first Palestinian uprising began in 1987, the second in 2000. But what about the Arab uprising during the British mandate period of 1936? We'll explore its enduring consequences next as we report History as it Happens. Make sure to sign up for my free newsletter. Just go to Substack and search for History as it Happens.

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