Review of Paul Starobin’s Five Roads to the Future

Book Review of Five Roads to the Future

Paul Starobin’s Five Roads to the Future uses a very interesting organic view of history to make a convincing argument about what could be the future of America. First he makes the case that America is in decline and that it needs to get beyond the overhyped myth of American exceptionalism. I believe his notion that America is like any other empire that ebbs and flows and will eventually decline. The question is what could happen after America’s fall, Starobin makes the case for five different futures; chaos, a multipolar world, Chinese dominance, city-states, and universal civilization. All five seem like viable prospects for the future of the world; however I have more trouble believing in the last two. In most of these scenarios the future of America, or at least for parts of it, seems to look fairly optimistic. What is important to remember about these scenarios is that they are not definite and I believe we could see that the real future is actually a blend of two or more of these proposed futures.

Starobin begins the book by reviewing how the myth of American exceptionalism became so dominant. The U.S. borrowed many aspects of its culture from Europe such as the protestant religion and the enlightenment tradition. The myth of exceptionalism came about from Americans wanting to set themselves apart from these other countries in their own minds. He then goes on to describe Americas rise to power, how it happened very rapidly with the help of population growth and crude capitalism, and became a global exporter of culture. And then, when America came out of World War I favorably it became,” the most powerful and vital nation in the world” (48). However after World War II America accidentally turned itself into an empire by making tough decisions when major opportunities arose. For example, the U.S. decided to take over for Great Britain in sending aid to Greece and Turkey in order to stop the spread of socialism....