“The Rise and Fall” revisited: Paul Kennedy and the American Empire: 1987-2025

Abstract

The debate on American decline, first triggered in the 1970s by the collapse
of Bretton Woods and the defeat in Vietnam, gained momentum with Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987). Although part of a longer intellectual tradition on the fate of empires, Kennedy’s book had a remarkable impact by situating the United States within the historical cy-cle of great powers and introducing the problem of “imperial overstretch.” This article examines the reasons behind the book’s success, the economic and political context of the 1980s, and the criticisms it provoked, while also considering subsequent developments from the 1990s “unipolar moment” to renewed declinist narratives after 2008. It argues that Kennedy’s work, rather than offering deterministic predictions, reframed the debate on the cyclical nature of power and the ability of the United States to face systemic challenges in an increasingly multipolar order.