Bülent Gökay – författare

Despite Washington's military supremacy, its economic foundations have been weakening since the Vietnam war – accelerated by the great recession and credit-rating downgrade – and its global authority dented by the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan.This book intervenes in the debates surrounding America's status as an empire. It analyses Immanuel Wallerstein and others who argue that the US is in decline, to those who maintain that it remains a robust superpower. By explaining how America's neo-imperial system of governance has been working since WWII, it links the US's domestic and foreign vulnerabilities. The Fall of the US Empire argues that the time has come to understand the US empire not by its power but by its systemic vulnerabilities of financialisation, resource depletion and environmental degradation.

Since the late-1990s Turkey has emerged as a significant economic power. Never colonized and straddling the continents of Europe and Asia, it plays a strategically important role in a region of increasing instability.Bülent Gökay examines Turkey’s remarkable domestic political and economic transformation over the past two decades within the context of broader regional and global changes. By situating the story of Turkey’s economic growth within an analysis of the structural changes and shifts in the world economy, the book provides new insights into the functioning of Turkey’s political economy and the successes and failures of its ruling party’s economic management.

Since the late-1990s Turkey has emerged as a significant economic power. Never colonized and straddling the continents of Europe and Asia, it plays a strategically important role in a region of increasing instability.Bülent Gökay examines Turkey’s remarkable domestic political and economic transformation over the past two decades within the context of broader regional and global changes. By situating the story of Turkey’s economic growth within an analysis of the structural changes and shifts in the world economy, the book provides new insights into the functioning of Turkey’s political economy and the successes and failures of its ruling party’s economic management.

Initiated in response to the 9/11 attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan formed part of the Bush Administration’s War on Terror but they were also a strategic response to the United States' long hegemonic decline. In its chaotic withdrawal some 20 years later, the US had accelerated the disorganization and chaos in the very societies it sought to pacify and rebuild.Whereas much has been written about the military campaigns, this book focuses on the occupations of Iraq (2003–11) and Afghanistan (2001–21) as part of the processes of global political economy. Private contracts for reconstruction projects were lucrative, unregulated and unsupervised and largely led to the further degradation of infrastructure and immiseration of the occupied territories. Corruption and neoliberal accumulation thrived. Neoliberalism is shown to have been a core driver of the rationalization of America's wars of intervention, which presented an economic opportunity too good to miss.

The book will appeal to students, scholars and policymakers across the fields of International Political Economy, European Politics and Critical Social and Political Theory.