Book review: War or Peace: The Struggle for World Power

Richards, Julian J (2019) Book review: War or Peace: The Struggle for World Power. Economic Affairs, 39 (1). pp. 158-159. ISSN 1468-0270

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Abstract

At the beginning of the third chapter of this book, Lal makes reference to the political historian, Francis Fukuyama, and his highly influential “End of History”, published in the heady days following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. This is apt, as, in many ways, Lal’s “War or Peace” is reminiscent of that earlier analysis of the state of the world at a major geopolitical turning point. In Lal’s words, Fukuyama presented a thesis of “the global victory of the market over the plan” (p.111). While things have not quite turned out the way Fukuyama expected, in the sense that authoritarian powers such as China and Russia have not only survived the fin de siècle but arguably flexed their muscles on the international stage with renewed confidence, Lal advocates a similar formula for the way ahead in no uncertain terms.

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