The purpose of this research is to examine Preparing for the Twenty-First Century by Paul Kennedy. The plan of the research will be to set forth the position of the book's author in respect of his background and qualifications to write the book, and then to discuss the analytical approach Kennedy uses to elaborate his idea that the twenty-first century will emerge from a host of transitional forces that are even now at work on the international scene.
Kennedy may be seen as an expert whose emphasis is on the future of international relations by reason of his scholarly research. In The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Kennedy established credentials as a serious analyst of the cycles of international political, economic, and social power in a historical analysis of the way in which competition among empire builders has shaped the present and future. Kurth (1993) describes Kennedy as a respected diplomatic historian. Kennedy's analytical pursuits are ongoing, as evidenced by his frequent contributions to the literature of international relations.
The methodology that Kennedy uses involves a systematic examination of political history with a view toward developing a theory that can contain relevant future policy. He makes a controlled comparison of the principal components of the global political and social economy in light of a range of selected problems that evidence indicates affect the entire world, irrespective of national boundaries or ideologies. He specifies the research problem in a way that takes ineluctable forces of global change into account vis-a-vis the inadequacy of traditional responses of nation states. Then he projects a cause-and-effect cycle of global human development from the current period into the twenty-first century, based on such factors as adult literacy, gross domestic product, and regional environmental and political status. This approach involves examination of a variety of roughly equival...