Customer Reviews

The Post-American World

5 star:		(159)
4 star:		(83)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

Mr. Zakaria has written a short primer (250+ pages of text) about where the world is today and the role he sees the United States playing in the future. His assessment, for the most part, is fair, balanced and nonpartisan. And though the title of his treatise--The Post-American World--sounds pessimistic, in reality Mr. Zakaria sees the glass half full.

The principal weakness of the book is a product of its brevity: the author paints in broad strokes, providing a sweeping assessment of the dynamic changes that have unfolded on the world scene over the past twenty-five years. This invariably results in some over-generalizations and assessments that are not sufficiently nuanced. For example, in responding to concerns about China's growing power and influence, he quotes several Chinese officials who repeatedly reassure the listener that, notwithstanding its recent advances, China still lags behind the United States in so many areas; consequently, it poses no real threat to America or its neighbors. Instead of taking these sentiments at face value, Mr. Zakaria should remember, as Margaret Macmillan astutely noted in her recent book, "Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World," that the Chinese are the past masters at using self-effacement to lure their adversaries into a state of complacency.

The greatest strengths of the book are explaining to the reader how much the world has changed over the past 25 years (did you know that China now exports more goods and services in a single day than it did in all of 1978?), while illuminating the course corrections the United States needs to make so that it can continue to influence the evolution of globalization. I was surprised to discover that the simple truths taught by Adam Smith have lifted more people above the poverty line in the last 25 years (400 million in China alone) than all the government assistance programs of all the countries in the world since the beginning of time. But I was dismayed to learn that the polices of free trade, liberal immigration, technological change and open government that are the source of this global revolution are no longer warmly received in the United States. Mr. Zakaria notes that in 2007 the Pew Global Attitudes Survey polled citizens in 47 countries for purposes of measuring the extent to which they have positive views about free trade and open markets. Guess where the U.S. came in? Dead last. Mr. Zakaria observes that in the five years the survey has been done, no country has seen as great a drop-off as the United States. It's as if, he says, that for the past sixty years we have extolled the virtues of free markets, immigration, technological change, competition, and democracy, and now that the rest of the world has finally decided to take our advice, "we are becoming suspicious of the very things we have long celebrated." (p. 48).

If you want to look in the mirror and see the warts and disappointments, along with the beauty and promise, of America, read this book. You and our country will be better for it.

A lot of books have been appearing recently about the rise of China and India, the decline of the United States, and so forth. This is the one to read, and the one that will last.

Zakaria's last book was about "The Future of Freedom," a study of liberalism and democracy. This new one--which is even better, I think--is about the shape of the emerging international system. It's called "The Post-American World," but a better title would have been the one he gives his first chapter, "The Rise of the Rest." That's because Zakaria's central thesis is that the world is changing, but the change is largely for the better and caused by the benign development of other power centers, not some collapse or decline of the United States. The biggest challenge for America, he argues, is not terrorism or nuclear proliferation or a rising China, but rather our own ability to adapt successfully to the new environment. He favors confidence and openness rather than insecurity and barriers, and makes a convincing case.

The book has chapters on each of the major international players, and they're really well done: amazingly, he manages to paint a full portrait of, say, China or India that is intelligent, succinct, subtle, and comprehensive all at once. If you want to get a flavor of what the book has to offer, there's an article based on it in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, and there should be another one coming out in Newsweek too, apparently. The man might be a superachieving bigshot, but he sure can write--each page is lively and interesting.

So forget the angry neocons, the wild-eyed optimists, the gloom-and-doom pessimists, and the glib amateurs who don't really know anything. Read this instead, and get insight into what's actually going in the world and what should be done about it. Plus, there's just a ton of fun little nuggets you'll be itching to drop in every conversation you have about anything related.

Fareed Zakaria writes that three great global power shifts have occurred in the last 500 years: the first was the rise of the West with its advances in science, technology, and commerce; the second was the rise of the US, to superpower status after World War II and to hyperpower status after the Cold War; and the third - the one we are currently experiencing - is the "rise of the rest." The global dominance that the US has enjoyed is rapidly coming to an end, not because of its own missteps - there were many - but because of the extraordinary economic growth in countries such as China, India, Russia, and Brazil. Except for a few pockets of poverty, globalization has been largely successful.

The Post-American World points to the need for America to adopt new ways of doing business with the world, one that is based on "consultation, cooperation, and even compromise" as opposed to go-it-alone unilateralism. American success in the 21st century will depend on how these newly ascendant powers will be integrated into existing institutions such as the G8, the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO. Even though some of these countries do not meet Western liberal democratic standards they should not be shut out as Robert Kagan suggested in The Return of History and the End of Dreams.

Integrating autocracies such as China, Russia, and the Central Asian republics in the international liberal order will be one of the greatest challenges in international relations in the years ahead. After all, autocracies have been very successful, producing 7-10% annual growth rates. They produce great investment opportunities for foreigners. And their foreign policy of non-interference with the sovereignty of other countries has made them welcome almost everywhere. This purely pragmatic approach, although successful in economics, has many shortcomings in the political realm. Zakaria believes that although they have been successful and even popular, it is important for Western democracies to have solidarity to prevent further backsliding.

Economic growth is only one of the components that keep autocracies in power, another is nationalism. One need only look at the popularity of Putin when he defies the West or China's reaction everytime they feel slighted by foreigners. Nationalism will rise as economic fortunes rise. Zakaria, who is always reasonable and optimistic in his views, believes that nations will be reasonable too. He believes that the newly ascendant powers will not be aggressive militarily if they are embedded in the current system. China, for example, does not need to invade neighboring countries when it can buy whatever it needs. For the time being this is working, but what happens "the rest" become much more powerful and resources become even more scarce? Will the the international order hold or will nationalist impulses rule the day? Zakaria is optimistic, but he still believes that the US will have an indispensible roll in keeping this system in place.

His conclusion is that the rest is rising relative to the US. Well, this has been happening more or less since WWII. So the whole argument is not original to start with.

Similar to S. Huntington, he refers to "West" as Western Europe and the US. Such definition is flawed, and even S. Hutingon revised his to include southern regions in Latin America and Eastern European nations.

His analysis of Asia has some merit, but some of his statements come accross as very naive. For instance at one point he mentions "Samba is booming in Latin America". What is that supposed to mean?

Overall, it looks like Fareed the journalist has buried Fareed the scholar, at the cost of sounding superficial and naive. That makes it very hard to get to the end of the book.

Having read his article on the same subject on Foreign Affairs, which I thought was very good, I was very dissapointed with this book.

So I recommend read the article, and skip the book.

The author makes the case that the world of the 21st century will be multipolar, with the U.S. not declining in absolute but in relative terms. Zakaria documents his opinions well and makes for good reading. However, I remained unconvinced of two of his assertions: one, that India will be one of the global powers of this century, based on niceties such as its democratic system and the imagined fascination about all things Indian that he attributes to Americans; judging by the evidence stemming from overwhelming poverty, India's inclusion in Zakaria's wishful list may be the product of his upbringing in that country rather than cold facts. The other missing point is his almost total exclusion of the European Union as one of the world's powerhouses of the near future. Particularly when considering Europe's output, social indicators and expansion to the East and the rest of the globe, making almost no mention of the importance of the EU in the world to come seems as glaring a flaw as the absence of evidence to support his forecasts about India. We may not have to wait 100 years to confirm it.

First and foremost, there is an elephant in the room.

Fareed Zakaria is a member of the PNAC: Project for the New American Century. The PNAC advocates using the US military to overthrow foreign governments to enforce American economic interests around the globe, no matter how negative the consequences. The PNAC advocates this foreign policy because there is no check on the United States after the collapse of the USSR. After the PNAC-Iraq campaign didn't turn out to be as cheap and easy as the PNAC and Zakaria thought it would be, Zakaria "changed" his opinion. How interesting; how convenient. A journalistic version of the Peter Principle. This author's PNAC membership is relevant to his latest book.

In "the Post-American World" Zakaria reinforces his points by noting globalization and changes 500 years ago, historically and adequately linking the past with our truly globalized civilization of today. In the latter 18th Century America rose steadily. The Spanish-American war brought territory far off the the shore of the US. After WWII, the US emerged as one of two superpowers, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, became what the author calls, a "hyperpower." This hyperpower status is when many nation-states do what nation-states historically do: get greedy, become selfish, and over-reach diplomatically, economically, and militarily.

To echo other readers, yes this book is optimistic. Why wouldn't it be? The focus is on the global economy and emerging markets, basically. Zakaria claims American influence isn't declining, but that the rest of the world is rising. Where is the evidence that the US is not declining? The evidence of US decline is everywhere, domestically and internationally.

The Post-American world noticeably started emerging in the early 1990s and it's obvious across the globe now. Zakaria accurately focuses on the past 25 years, citing many facts. In my opinion, not only is the rest of the world ascending *economically* (China, India, Brazil, Vietnam, and others) but the US is in a state of slow and steady decline. This is historically normal, and natural. Over the the course of history, all superpowers grow, peak, and then decline. This is not negative. It's the evolution of the nation-state. Just like people. We're born, we grow, we age, and we die. The Roman empire declined over the course of 300 years. The USA is diminishing much faster.

It's not surprising that Americans in the Global Pew survey recorded the lowest of all countries in their opinions about globalization and "free trade" according to Zakaria. Yet, this has been the official policy of the US government for several decades.

With the current economic ascension of several nations, do international organizations accurately represent the current world population and economic strength of the world? Look at the G8: why is Canada in the G8 and Brazil, not? Why are France and Italy members? As for outsourcing, is outsourcing jobs all positive, having no negative ramifications at all? Is chasing the cheapest labor the success of "globalization?" Is opening the door for immigration not only for menial low-paying jobs, but highly skilled ones via the H1-B visa, success of our international global economy in the USA?

Only a couple of complaints about this book: author Zakaria is stating things anyone who follows current events already knows. Many of the global economic facts, especially pertaining to China and India, are already common knowledge. The author could have dug deeper. This book was also very short. Perhaps this book was aimed at readers who don't pay attention to international affairs. "The Post-American World" is for neophytes, and that's OK. Any information, with accurate research, is worthy information. Whatever the author's objectives, the book did reach some of a American public that casually watches the conglomerate American mainstream media, as there were discussions about this book when it was released.

The more Americans become aware, the more frugal, more humble, and less nationalistic they may become.

The book reads much like magazine articles from Newsweek or such. This can be seen as a compliment for some, but it was a disappointing read for me.

The chosen topic of discussion is magnificent, but this book does little more than string together international trivia and point to glossy analogies to the rise of America and fall of Britain. Even though Mr. Zakaria's thesis is not new, a good-faith effort requires more substantiation. The book invariably assumes what it should set out to show (eg, Britain was insular and 'Bismarck' was engaging; America should be like 'Bismarck') and brushes off the inconvenient (eg, average American students score lower than most industrialized countries, but well scoring Americans rank competitively). Mr. Zakaria also distances himself from neoconservative policies and points out that America's marginalization was inevitable.

Although this issue is becoming ever more pressing, 'The Post-American World' doesn't do justice to the topic. People better versed in history or seeking more substance should look elsewhere. On the other hand, it's a glossy read with catchy phrases for the faithful.

I arrived in the city pictured on the cover of this book -- Hong Kong -- two years after Zakaria came to the United States. Watching Asia change, year after year -- I spoke at several churches in Hong Kong this summer, and the skyscrapers of Central spread out before the window of my hotel room are now the most impressive on earth -- Zakaria puts into words, and hard statistics, realities that I have been pondering for many years now.

In 1984, I remember watching people in a small town outside Hong Kong snapping together little pieces of plastic to make Christmas toys. It's hard to imagine seeing that sort of poverty there today. Education, hard work, the export of technology, and free enterprise have brought increasing prosperity to countries around the world, as Zakaria shows. He does a wonderful job of melding stats, telling facts, quotes from statesmen, to present a case for a reality that Americans need to get used to: there will be no "second American century." The United States will be one of several great powers within a few short years.

I don't much agree with Zakaria's politics. He's a moderate democrat, I'm a conservative Republican. To me, the greatest American blunder is not anything George Bush did overseas, but the suicidal binge spending the Bush, and especially Obama, administrations have engaged in. But nothing we can do could have stopped the laws of mathematics anyway, and as free trade and the spread of techonology evens out per capita production, "we must decrease (relatively) and they must increase."

I think if anything, Zakaria underestimates the extent of that change. Within a few years, China will be the world's richest superpower in GDP. (As I predicted 25 years ago.) Our vast borrowing from the Chinese has probably excelerated the transition. With 4-5 times our population, in a generation we will be roughly to China what the UK is to us, and India will surpass the US as well.

Zakaria is right to look at the last time such a transition occurred, from the UK, to put this in context, but wrong in some of the conclusions he draws. It is unreasonable to blame the moralizing of British evangelicals for weakening British power, for example. Was Britain weaker because it banned the slave trade and began to educate Indians instead of merely exploit them? Such policies were largely responsible for the "soft power" Zakaria admires, and did not cause Britain's relative decline.

What Zakaria says on page 109 about East Asian religious beliefs is also misleading, IMO. (See David Aikman's Jesus in Beijing for a more reasonable discussion, or my True Son of Heaven.) Strangely, Zakaria expresses surprise that 72% of Chinese deny that one must believe in God to be moral. Doesn't he know that young Chinese have been educated by communists, who are atheists, for the past 60 years? What's remarkable is that it's only 72 % -- the real story is the renewel of and spread of religion in China, including Christianity -- and what Zakaria says about Confucianism is mostly nonsense. (The Chinese don't even call it that -- they call it the "teaching of the scholars," so Zakaria's point about Confucius not believing in God is moot -- besides, Confucius did believe in God, and the writers of the Classics he edited, and that were the basis for "Confucianism," really are rather theistic -- I've been pouring over them for the past few months.)

But Zakaria gets the big picture mostly right. He demonstrates that we are in a transition phase, entering not into a world in which America is irrelevant, but in which America is just one great power of many. On the off chance that the greatest of those new powers behaves itself (one can dream), perhaps we Americans can go back to minding our own business again pretty soon. (And start paying back all that massive debt our foolish politians have accumulated.)

Zakaria is a great writer whose produced a highly readable book. Its impossible to go through the pages without feeling a great surge of hope for what the future isabout to bring, courtesy the miracle of free markets. Liberally annotated with anecdotes.

The problem is that at the heart of it, this is just more of the Thomas Friedman "Lexus and Olive Tree" rising-tide-lifts-all-boats theory with the same prescriptions so beloved by bipartisan Washington since 1988: more trade, more immigration, more outsourcing.

Zakaria's picture omits big pieces of the puzzle: devastated rural America, the loss of those jobs with nothing to replace them: what IS the unemployed American worker supposed to train for? And just who is going to buy all the products that corporations are producing so cheaply in India in China?

And what happens when those stellar immigrants (like Zakaria), or more likely, their children, become disaffected Americans and make up the "bitter" folks who live in ghettos - urban or rural - like dying Appalachian towns or the immigrant high rise projects of Bradford or Marseille?

Zakaria does try to factor in nationalism, but ignores the human implications of people who are going to lose in his Brave New World. And ultimately, his prescriptions, however entertaining and promising, are ultimately just more of the NYT/WSJ op-ed page.

Contrary to the title, this book is not about the demise of America. It is about the rise of the rest of the world and its global implications.

The author makes somtimes contradictory statements. For example, he firmly believes that India will economically surpass China mainly because India is a democratic country (democracy is better for long term economic growth he says). His conclusion ignores his own data that India is growing at 6.9% versus China's 9%, the China's economy is about 3 times as large, and there is no indication China is slowing down anytime soon. And he ignores some major long term problems in India, such as its decisively 3rd world literacy rate (around 60%).

The same goes for his purported demise of America. He says that America has too many long term competitive advantages (democracy, top notch universities, market flexibility, willing to accept immigrants, demographic trends etc) to be relegated to anything less than a superpower in the next few decades. So how does that translate into a "Post American World"? America just will not be AS influencial, says the author, since it must share its power with the rest of the world.

It appears the author has trouble coming to a firm conclusion on most subjects except that there is an unprecedented global economic growth.