In “Hegemony and After”, Robert Keohane provides a carefully constructed analysis of two antideclinist books, Robert Kagan’s The World
America Made and Robert Lieber’s Power
and Willpower in the American Future. Keohane accuses both authors of making assertions without supporting evidence, failures to address the usefulness of multilateral institutions to the hegemon, as well as ” overconfidence in
making assertions about the future”. I find Keohane’s arguments convincing in the sense that it considers the possibility that the international system, in its current shape and form, was developed in part by the hegemon, and thus may serve important functions in contributing to the hegemon’s power. Keohane also make cautious remarks with regard to making unsubstantiated claims about future behaviours: “Given the mix of the
known and the unknown, the safest
conclusion for readers interested in the
next era of world politics is probably the
physicist Niels Bohr’s injunction not to
make predictions, especially about the
future.” While I do agree that there are many factors that Kagan and Lieber have overlooked in their analysis, I do find it problematic to suggest that political scientists not to make any predictions at all, since it reduces the usefulness of theories in providing indications of future behaviour, thus failing to ground theories in reality.