Wow. This article and the 317 letter responses kept me up all morning
to read. Now I wonder if it was worth the effort except that I
couldn't sleep anyway. In any case those who are up to speed on world
affairs will find little new or revealing in Zakaria's book. The main
theme is "Blame China." India is thrown in just to provide a modi***
of balance that China is not getting everything its way. Far more
interesting are the comments from American readers of the NY Times in
which the article appeared. A number I have reproduced in the
accompanying post otherwise this one will be too long. There is very
little that is not expected in their responses. Most have already
accepted that the days of American hagemony are over. But they
haven't quite come up with any ideas as to how the US can get out of
that funk. The current presidential primary front runners look
unpromising as agents for a makeover.
A Challenge for the U.S.: Sun Rising on the East
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: May 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/books/06kaku.html?_r=1&oref=login
What a difference five years - and one war - make!
Dan Deitch
Fareed Zakaria
THE POST-AMERICAN WORLD
By Fareed Zakaria
292 pages. W. W. Norton & Company. $25.95.
Related
First Chapter: 'The Post-American World' (May 6, 2008)
In a 2003 article in Newsweek, written on the eve of the invasion of
Iraq, Fareed Zakaria - a columnist for the magazine and the editor of
its international edition - wrote: "It is now clear that the current
era can really have only one name, the unipolar world - an age with
only one global power. America's position today is unprecedented." He
went on to declare that "American dominance is not simply military.
The U.S. economy is as large as the next three - Japan, Germany and
Britain - put together," adding that "it is more dynamic economically,
more youthful demographically and more flexible culturally than any
other part of the world." What worries people around the world above
all else, he wrote, "is living in a world shaped and dominated by one
country - the United States."
In his new book, "The Post-American World," Mr. Zakaria writes that
America remains a politico-military superpower, but "in every other
dimension - industrial, financial, educational, social, cultural - the
distribution of power is ****fting, moving away from American
dominance." With the rise of China, India and other emerging markets,
with economic growth sweeping much of the planet, and the world
becoming increasingly decentralized and interconnected, he contends,
"we are moving into a post-American world, one defined and directed
from many places and by many people."
For that matter, Mr. Zakaria argues that we are now in the midst of
the third great tectonic power ****ft to occur over the last 500 years:
the first was the rise of the West, which produced "modernity as we
know it: science and technology, commerce and capitalism, the
agricultural and industrial revolutions"; the second was the rise of
the United States in the 20th century; and the third is what he calls
"the rise of the rest," with China and India "becoming bigger players
in their neighborhoods and beyond," Russia becoming more aggressive,
and Europe acting with "immense strength and purpose" on matters of
trade and economics.
Many of this volume's more acute arguments echo those that have been
made by other analysts and writers, most notably, the New York Times
columnist Thomas L. Friedman on globalization, and Jimmy Carter's
national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, on America's growing
isolation in an increasingly adversarial world. But Mr. Zakaria uses
his wide-ranging fluency in economics, foreign policy and cultural
politics to give the lay reader a lucid picture of a globalized world
(and America's role in it) that is changing at light speed, even as he
provides a host of historical analogies to examine the possible
fallout of these changes.
The irony of the "rise of the rest," Mr. Zakaria notes, is that it is
largely a result of American ideas and actions: "For 60 years,
American politicians and diplomats have traveled around the world
pu****ng countries to open their markets, free up their politics, and
embrace trade and technology. We have urged peoples in distant lands
to take up the challenge of competing in the global economy, freeing
up their currencies, and developing new industries. We counseled them
to be unafraid of change and learn the secrets of our success. And it
worked: the natives have gotten good at capitalism."
But at the same time, he goes on, America is "becoming suspicious of
the very things we have long celebrated - free markets, trade,
immigration and technological change": witness Democratic candidates'
dissing of Nafta, Republican calls for tighter immigration control,
and studies showing that American students are falling behind students
from other developed countries in science and math.
While readers might take recent signs like recession at home, a
falling dollar abroad and a huge trade deficit as suggesting that the
American economy is in trouble, Mr. Zakaria asserts that the United
States (unlike Britain, which was undone as a world power because of
"irreversible economic deterioration") can maintain "a vital, vibrant
economy, at the forefront of the next revolutions in science,
technology, and industry - as long as it can embrace and adjust to the
challenges confronting it."
As Mr. Zakaria sees it, the "economic dysfunctions in America today"
are the product not of "deep inefficiencies within the American
economy," but of specific government policies - which could be
reformed "quickly and relatively easily" to put the country on a more
stable footing. "A set of sensible reforms could be enacted tomorrow,"
he says, "to trim wasteful spending and subsidies, increase savings,
expand training in science and technology, secure pensions, create a
workable immigration process and achieve significant efficiencies in
the use of energy" - if only the current political process weren't
crippled by partisan****p, special-interest agendas, a sensation-driven
media, ideological attack groups and legislative gridlock.
As for the United States' role in a world that is rapidly ****fting
from unipolarity into a far messier and more dynamic system, Mr.
Zakaria suggests that it should become a kind of "global broker,"
forging close relation****ps with other major countries, while
exchanging the peremptory, directive-issuing role of a superpower for
"consultation, cooperation, and even compromise" - in short,
repudiating the sort of cowboy unilateralism favored by the current
Bush administration and embracing a behind-the-scenes power derived
from "setting the agenda, defining the issues and mobilizing
coalitions."
The central strategic challenge for American diplomacy in the years to
come, Mr. Zakaria says, concerns China: how to deter its aggression
and expansionism, while at the same time accommodating its legitimate
growth. He suggests that in a world in which "the United States is
seen as an overbearing hegemon," China might well seek to position
itself as "the alternative to a hectoring and arrogant America,"
gradually expanding its economic ties and enlarging its sphere of
influence.
"How will America," he asks, "cope with such a scenario - a kind of
cold war but this time with a vibrant market society, with the world's
largest population, a nation that is not showcasing a hopeless model
of state socialism or squandering its power in pointless military
interventions? This is a new challenge for the United States, one it
has not tackled before, and for which it is largely unprepared."
There are some curious gaps and questionable assertions in this book.
While President Bush's controversial No Child Left Behind program has
put increased emphasis on test-taking, and college applicants worry
about their SAT scores in what Forbes magazine calls "a test-crazed
era," Mr. Zakaria writes: "Other educational systems teach you to take
tests; the American system teaches you to think," adding that
"American culture celebrates and reinforces problem solving,
questioning authority, and thinking heretically."
He skims lightly over the critical role that the Iraq war played in
shaping America's current problems on the world stage (he himself
sup****ted the effort to oust Saddam Hussein and wrote in March of 2003
that the war "will look better when it is over" and weapons of mass
destruction are found). And in sharp contrast to Qaeda experts like
the former C.I.A. officer Michael Scheuer (who argue that the Iraq war
has served as a recruitment tool for Osama bin Laden) and a new State
Department re****t (which notes the growth of Qaeda affiliates in the
Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and the growing ability of al
Qaeda itself to plot attacks from Pakistan), Mr. Zakaria contends that
"over the last six years, sup****t for bin Laden and his goals has
fallen steadily throughout the Muslim world."
Such dubious assertions distract attention from the many more
convincing arguments in this book and the volume's overall take on the
United States' place in a rapidly changing global landscape - a
provocative and often shrewd take that opens a big picture window on
the closing of the first American century and the advent of a new
world in which "the rest rise, and the West wanes."
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