Articles

Richard W. Maass and Carla Norrlof respond to Daniel W. Drezner's Summer 2013 International Security article, "Military Primacy Doesn't Pay (Nearly As Much As You Think)."

After World War II, "trading states" seemed to be charting a new path forward. But small was not beautiful. Even great powers found themselves negotiating larger markets through economic associations with others. It's time the United States became such a power.

"For a time, [Chimerica] was a symbiotic relationship that seemed like a marriage made in heaven. Put simply, one half did the saving, the other half the spending. Comparing net national savings as a proportion of Gross National Income, American savings declined from above 5 percent in the mid 1990s to virtually zero by 2005, while Chinese savings surged from below 30 percent to nearly 45 percent. This divergence in saving patterns allowed a tremendous explosion of debt in the United States, for one effect of the Asian "savings glut" was to make it much cheaper for households to borrow money than would otherwise have been the case."

As a result of the recent financial crisis, the United States has grown increasingly dependent on foreign sources of credit. U.S. policymakers worry that China, in particular, could use its financial power to influence U.S. foreign policy. However, two case studies (the contestation over the regulation of sovereign wealth funds and the protection of Chinese investments in the United States) demonstrate that their concerns are somewhat exaggerated. The current relationship between the United States and China is one of mutual dependency. Unless the balance shifts, China will be able to resist U.S. entreaties, but not coerce the United States into changing its policies.

"As the American political system hurtles toward its quadrennial encounter with the oracle of democracy, it is worth our while to take stock of the country's place in a world beset by bewilderingly rapid change. (Heaven knows none of the candidates will bother to do this.) I want to suggest that an old yet generally neglected subject remains particularly relevant: the relationship between the size of political units and the effective scale of systems of economic production and exchange. Another way to describe this relationship is by recourse to the hoary scholarly phrase "political economy", a term of art that has unfortunately gone out of style...."