1. The Study of Global Politics and Economics Today

This introduction lays out the theoretical concepts and postulates upon which the arguments developed in this book rest, and vice versa: historical and empirical evidence backing up this Introduction can be found in the chapters that follow. Thus, these postulates are neither arbitrary nor they constitute an imposition upon reality and history. In addition, they draw from findings included in our previous work, namely The New American Imperialism (2005) and The Fall of the US Empire (2012). Having said this, this introductory chapter aims to accomplish two tasks: first, to set out our approach to international relations, modern history and political economy, looking at structural/constant features while exemplifying the notion of global fault-lines (GF) and assessing critically some other approaches; second, to introduce the framework in which the notion of (global) power-shift should be placed and understood.