Wallerstein in a Nutshell

Immanuel Wallerstein, writing about the way the huge discrepancy in speed and cost of broadband net access between Japan and the US reflects their different positions vis-à-vis the hegemon position in the world system (yes, I know that's a mouthful!), sums up his theory quite nicely:

This is the way that hegemonic decline builds on itself. The leading country concentrates on the short-term situation, and overinvests in unfruitful military expenditure. Speculation replaces innovation as the source of profits. And before one knows it, the others (in this case the Japanese, but not they alone) speed ahead controlling the technology of the future. This is what the United States did when it was, oh so long ago, an ascending economic power.

Read the rest of the commentary here.

Comments

[Jon Cogburn]

Also within thirty years all of the other strong countries have caught up to the difference in military technology. This certainly happened with Napolean's use of large drafted armies and then later the German use of railroads for mass troop movements and supply. The use of rifling caught on so fast after the Crimean war that neither side in the American Civil War was stuck with muskets. The tank and air superiority of the Israelis was completely smashed by the Yom Kippur war (and the way they won after losing over half of their air and tank resources in a couple of days is one of the best illustrations of how novel tactics and technologies (here pickup mounted machine guns to disrupt Egyptian wire guided anti-tank weapons; each tank got two such pickup trucks to accompany) filter up from below in armies of democracies, the other great one being American grunts correcting for Eisenhower's calamitous mistakes after D-Day (the battlefield mods to tanks so that they could get through the hedgerows, and jury rigged refridgerators to carry whole blood).

Anyhow, it would be absolutely unprecedented if the gain in stealth, satellite, and night vision we made since the 1980's weren't equaled or surpassed by Japan, China, India, and Europe in the next decade. France is destroying the United States right now in both high speed rail production and satellite launching. Japan and China are putting scads of money into their space programs too.