Endnotes for Great Powers, Coda

Coda: the Future Perfect Tense

417. Richard Nixon believed that nations aspiring to great power . . . great ideas.

Nixon said this to Kissinger in a phone conversation on May 11, 1969, according to David S. Patterson, editor, Foreign Relations, 1969-1976:  Volume I, Foundations of Foreign Policy, 1969-1972 (Washington, DC:  Government Printing Office, 2003), p. 142; cited in MacMillan, Nixon and Mao, p. 10.

419. The critical-mass reality . . . most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Attributed to Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

420. Karl Marx believed that . . . a notion he himself proved.

As Marx argued in the preface to his 1859 book, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, "The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life," and thus "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness"; find the preface online at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm.

421. Which brings me to . . . The Shape of Things to Come.

H. G. Wells, The Shape of Things to Come (New York: Penguin Books, 2005).

Comments

[stuart abrams]

I enjoyed seeing the Marx quote here. I have a saying: There are 2 kinds of fools in the world - those who were never Marxists and those who never stopped being Marxists. My wife doubts that this is original with me, but what the hell. Any serious historical analysis has to start with Marx - just don't end with him.

[Tom Barnett]

I agree. Brilliant diagnostician, terrible prescription-writer.