The Highest Stakes: The Economic Foundations of the Next Security System

Will markets, investments, and technology--rather than tanks and missiles--be the bargaining chips of the new world order? This timely and sobering analysis explores how the momentous dislocations of economic power in the world--the growing might of Asia, the impending unification of Europe, the relative decline of the United States--will reshape global security issues. The authors contend that the United States is especially unprepared for a twenty-first century in which the control of markets and technology is a principal battleground. They go on to demonstrate how America's loss of industrial and technological leadership is slowly but surely eroding its influence abroad, and how America will soon have to accept the kinds of constraints it has been so accustomed to imposing on others.
This joint research project by seven members of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE)--a group influential in national trade development and security debates--moves beyond a discussion of America's decline to examine how the emergence of regional trading blocs may carve out new international security arrangements. Complementing another project produced by BRIE, Laura D'Andrea Tyson's acclaimed Who's Bashing Whom?, The Highest Stakes convincingly argues that "only a cooperative government-industry effort to restore U.S. economic might can guarantee Washington's pre-eminence."