Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Josef Joffe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 26, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0393061353 | ISBN-13: 978-0393061352 | Edition: 1

"Lucid, literate and tough-minded."—William Grimes, The New York Times

Überpower effortlessly mixes military history with keen diplomatic analysis to provide one of the most important assessments of America's international standing in years. Josef Joffe examines the gargantuan burdens brought on by singular power, arguing that the new Bush foreign policy doctrine has failed to convert fabulous strength into consent and leadership. In contrast to most of his European colleagues, Joffe does not paddle "Mr. Big" for his new überpower status, but traces the roots of Europe's (and the world's) new anti-Americanism to envy, fear, and the failure to keep up. But history whispers that power will generate counterpower, and the handwriting is already on the wall. How can the überpower escape the fate of earlier hegemons who were all laid low by lesser nations ganging up on No. 1? Überpower promises to be discussed and debated in the corridors of power on both sides of the Atlantic.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While not the first or even the thousandth evaluation of America as the world's sole superpower, Joffe's version is more insightful than many and less unflattering. The editor of Germany's Die Zeit and author of The Future of the Great Powers offers an educated European's vantage point on America's role as the first nation in history so powerful that no alliance could challenge it. While American mass culture dominates the world, our universities, scientific advances, medical technology, entrepreneurial vigor and even our immigration policies are the subject of considerable envy, he asserts. Equally universal is anti-Americanism, which the author defines in several perceptive chapters as obsessive stereotyping, demonization of our entire culture and accusations of moral inferiority. Yet as great powers go, the U.S. inspires remarkably little fear, largely because it exhibits no overt interest in acquiring territory, he argues. The worldwide U.S. military presence suppresses half a dozen regional disputes, allowing potential rivals (Russia, Japan, the European Union) to skimp on their defense budgets. Ironically, the author points out, this is a sign they accept U.S. leadership. He concludes by suggesting the U.S. avoid defying international opinion, and that invading Iraq was a mistake for which we are still paying. Still, he argues, if the world requires a policeman, it could do worse than look to America. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Joffe is a prolific international relations analyst and an editor of Die Zeit, an influential German newsweekly. His focus in this book is familiar--America's dominance in a "unipolar" world and the foreign-policy challenge of European anti-Americanism--but his thesis is both bolder and more sympathetic than most. Arguing that post-cold war political shifts have rendered the U.S. "giant unbound," able to take military action without fear of mutually assured destruction, Joffe explains both American foreign policy and anti-Americanism as caused by a fundamental disagreement about reroping Gulliver. Although critical of the Bush administration's failure to use its strength wisely, Joffe is likewise critical of Europe's willingness to cede the costliest tasks to the U.S. Like Niall Ferguson in Colossus (2004), Joffe sees broad American power as a source of great potential good, capable of guaranteeing security by taking on dangerous tasks beyond the means of other nations. His account, however, replaces Ferguson's nostalgia for nineteenth-century Britain with a Bismarckian perspective and a touch of Kissingerian realpolitik, and the difference is dramatic. Astute and historically informed. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (June 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393061353
• ISBN-13: 978-0393061352
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,406,568 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Keeping America on top, June 9, 2006

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America (Hardcover)

Joffe is one of the most respected and most pro- American European intellectuals. Editor of a major German newspaper he also studied at a number of American universities and knows the society well. In this work he looks at the US largely in terms of its relationship to Europe.He is a defender of the US and concerned about its preserving its position as dominant world power.

As Brad Stephens writes in 'Commentary' " He devotes much of Überpower to tallying up the "objective" political, economic, military, and cultural strengths of the U.S. vis-à-vis its current and prospective competitors.

This approach is not without its benefits, not least because Joffe, cutting against the grain of much conventional wisdom, underscores just how weak America's competitors are. Beijing? Even if China's gross domestic product were to keep doubling every decade--historically an unprecedented feat--Joffe calculates that it would only reach parity with current U.S. GDP in 30 years. Moscow? Russia's population shrinks every year by 0.5 percent, hardly a sign of national vitality."

Moreover the European Union despite being fifty - percent larger in population is no real match for the U.S. especially as its own citizens have minimal loyalty to it.

Stephens points out that Joffe recommends the US maintain a policy of balancing and bonding , of warding off enemies and making new friends that will enable it to strengthen its position.

However Stephens criticizes Joffe for ignoring many of the dangers facing the world today, including the possibility of a radical Islamic nuclear strike. He points otu that is that Joffee does not really consider the full range of threats America faces.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Handbook of Superpower Etiquette, July 18, 2006

By 

Izaak VanGaalen (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America (Hardcover)

While it is a truism that certain nations are more powerful than others, never has the post-Westphalian balance of power been more lopsided than today. The political, economic, cultural, and military resources of the United States outweigh all other nations and even any imaginable alliance of nations. Being the uberpower, however, it not all that it is made out to be, as Josef Joffe points out in this book.

As an editor and publisher of the high-brow German newspaper "Die Zeit" and as German Jew educated in America, Joffe occupies a unique position to counsel on superpower conduct.

During the postwar years of bipolar superpower rivalry, the Europeans derived comfort from the stability it afforded, but with the demise of the Soviet Union, the Europeans are starting to feel uneasy with the new uberpower - or hyperpuissance as former French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine would say. The current balancing of power in Europe is putting the United States on one side and everyone else on the other, not to mention the fact that it is also giving rise to anti-Americanism. Joffe, who is a "realist" thinker on international affairs, tells us this is natural occurence in the balancing of global power relations.

The Iraq war was a case in point. It was not so much an issue of Saddam Hussein or weapons of mass destruction that caused France, Germany, Russia, and China thwart US efforts, it was the fact that the US was undertaking a war of choice. (Afghanistan was seen as a war of self-defence.) It looked to them as an attempt an attempt to control the world's oil supplies, making the superpower even more powerful. Joffe correctly and sympathetically notes that if the war had been only about oil, the US could easily have made a deal with Saddam and gotten all the oil it needed, and at a much better price.

The European anti-Americanism that Joffe speaks of is only partially due to America's outsized power, it is also, he claims, about a certain European insecurity and sense of powerlessness. This is where Joffe plays psychotherapist and puts the Europeans on the couch. He goes through and refutes an entire list of reasons why they think America is morally deficient, and socially and culturally retrograde. This is probably the best part of the book.

In Joffe's view, America will be the undisputed superpower in the foreseeable future, neither China, Russia, nor the European Union will come close in the years ahead.

His advice for superpower conduct is very similar to that of Zbigniew Brzezinski, another foreign policy realist. As Brzezinski pointed out in "The Choice", a superpower can undertake unilateral action, but it cannot succeed without building consensus and alliances. The realist school argues that we should be more concerned about great power alliances and stability rather than the internal nature of the regimes. This practice, however, was discredited after 9/11 when confronted by a non-state actor (Osama bin Laden) operating from a failed state (Afghanistan).

The main problem with this book is that it is Atlanticist. There is little mention of the world outside of the US and Europe. China now has the world's third largest economy, and with the price of oil over $70 a barrel new regional powers and alliances are forming. Also, Joffe's account of superpower etiquette fails to explain why the tried and the true realist policies were abandoned after 9/11.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gets beyond cliches, July 6, 2006

By 

John - See all my reviews

This review is from: Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America (Hardcover)

There is so much cliched writing about Europe and the U.S., along the lines of: "the French can't be trusted", "America wants to take over the world", etc. In a time of Michael Moore-type books, it is nice to see that there are writers out there who really can think originally and deeply about the U.S. and Europe, beyond all the cliches. One example that comes to mind is the discussion in Joffe's book about American culture: whereas European films are mostly stuck in twisted complex "introspective" themes, American Hollywood films still dare to delve into "big" themes: good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, etc. Good point, and this book is full of them. Most European thinkers totally miss points like this. The "naive" Americans make films like "Titanic" and Bruce Willis movies with a hero (horrors !), and the masses of Europeans flock to them and watch them. Why ? Because they are open and honest enough to have these types of themes, unlike most European movies, which dance around some kind of navel-gaving introspection. Europeans claim to hate American culture, but yet, as Joffe points out, U.S. culture is everywhere in Europe (I was in Germany in the fall of 2005, and saw more and more English signs, for example: "Call Center", "City Card", etc.. Europeans claim to dislike America, but their kids eat at McDonalds, and watch Angelina Jolie films, and use I-pods to listen to American jazz and hip-hop and pop music. When pressed, Europeans will admit that what they hate is the freedom and the vast choices that American culture gives the world (would you want to use European computers without the graphical user interface and mouse and all the other stuff invented in America ?). I lived in Germany for 8 years, so this is not new to me, but the author does a great job at highlighting this. And the English and French disdain military power these days, as the author points out, not because they are against military force (the French militarily intervened 47 times in Africa without UN mandate, since 1945, to give just one example), but because only the U.S. is able to do it in the 21st century. No other nation can "project power" so well as the U.S., and instead of the French and Brits saying that they just resent the U.S. being so powerful and having taken their place on the world stage, what they do is say that they disdain "military force", and that the "UN should solve all problems". This is a very good book that to me highlighted European hypocrisy, while at the same time warning the U.S. from turning too arrogant.