Document created: 20 August 02
Air & Space Power Journal - Fall 2002

The Global Century: Globalization and National Security edited by Richard L. Kugler and Ellen L. Frost. National Defense University Press (http:// www.ndu.edu/inss/press/ndup2.html), Fort Les- ley J. McNair, Washington, D.C. 20319, 2001, 1,125 pages, $59.00. Available on-line at http:// www.ndu.edu/inss/books/GlobalCentury/globcencont.html.

With 1,125 pages and 49 chapters organized into five parts in two volumes (three inches thick and weighing in at five and a half pounds), this ambitious project can almost serve as an encyclopedia of American perspectives on globalization and US strategic interests. The collected essays are thorough, to be sure, and the contributors are established heavyweights in the field of security studies, with some new but qualified faces. However, a bias exists, which remains undetected until one reads the foreword and acknowledgments.

The US Navy undertook this project, and Jerry MacArthur Hultin, that service’s undersecretary and author of the foreword, charges the analysts with examining how the current globalization trend will affect the United States and how the use of naval power can respond to globalization. This service bias continues in part three, “Military Power: The Challenges Ahead,” with most of its 10 chapters devoted to the naval perspective. This specific focus needs to be acknowledged up front. The volumes ignore airpower by omission even though it has become a more prominent feature in recent warfare. The Navy will not face the challenges of the global century by itself.

With so many chapters, the reader encounters many individual elucidations of what globalism is, as well as much overlap, and the editors could have reassigned some of the chapters to different parts. The study also lacks some kind of concluding or summarizing chapter. As it stands, the book merely ends with Canada, the last country addressed in part five, “Regional Trends: Promise or Peril?” Given the authoritative qualifications of the contributors, there is a lot of nonnaval information presented for a wider audience. The Global Century is well written and attractively packaged but too voluminous to serve as a university textbook; furthermore, the title is too misleading, the intended audience has not been clearly identified, and the volumes are too heavy for reading while waiting for your flight to depart.

Dr. Karl P. Magyar
Montgomery, Alabama

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.