The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (Hardcover)

by Parag Khanna (Author)
Key Phrases: geopolitical marketplace, pan region, United States, Latin America, World War (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Khanna, a widely recognized expert on global politics, offers an study of the 21st century's emerging geopolitical marketplace dominated by three first world superpowers, the U.S., Europe and China. Each competes to lead the new century, pursuing that goal in the third world: select eastern European countries, east and central Asia, the Middle East Latin America, and North Africa. The U.S. offers military protection and aid. Europe offers deep reform and economic association. China offers full-service, condition-free relationships. Each can be appealing; none has obvious advantages. The key to Khanna's analysis, however, is his depiction of a second world: countries in transition. They range in size and population from heavily peopled states like Brazil and Indonesia to smaller ones such as Malaysia. Khanna interprets the coming years as being shaped by the race to win the second world—and in the case of the U.S., to avoid becoming a second-world country itself. The final pages of his book warn eloquently of the risks of imperial overstretch combined with declining economic dominance and deteriorating quality of life. By themselves those pages are worth the price of a book that from beginning to end inspires reflection. (Mar. 11)
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Review
“A fascinating, colorful, and always intelligent tour through a new world.”
–Fareed Zakaria

“A savvy, streetwise primer on dozens of individual countries that adds up to a coherent theory of global politics.”
–Robert D. Kaplan

“Confident in his predictions and bold in his recommendations . . . Khanna’s book is written with ambition, scope, and verve that sets it apart from the usual foreign policy tome.”
–Andrei Cherny, The New York Sun

“A panoramic overview that boldly addresses the dilemmas of the world that our next president will confront.”
–Zbigniew Brzezinski

“Khanna is something of a foreign policy whiz kid.”
–Raymond Bonner, The New York Times Book Review

“[A] sweeping, often audacious survey of contemporary geopolitics . . . moves at lightning speed.”
–William Grimes, The New York Times


From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (March 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400065089
• ISBN-13: 978-1400065080
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #90,452 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What about India?, March 6, 2008

By	Jeffrey Benner "Keenly watching the 21st cent... (Chicagoland, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the book I have been waiting years for - it is the clearest picture I have yet seen of the 21st century's nascent Great Game; the Game as played by three Great Powers with very different styles: the United States, the European Union, and China. Khanna has developed an original view of a tripolar world, and effectively balances the force of geopolitics with the complementary trend toward globalisation.

The book has several persistent and gnawing weaknesses. Khanna persistently focuses on traditional land power geopolitics, an easier thing to describe and a well trodden path in International Studies, but perhaps an increasingly less potent matrix with the emergence of new realms of competition in this century: low Earth orbit (mentioned briefly in one paragraph of the book); the emerging Internet culture and electronic world; enduring naval power and new oceanographic frontiers; the growing diasporas and transnational, nomadic elites who owe no geographical national allegiance. In particular, he who rules lower Earth orbit rules the planet, regardless of who predominates upon the "World-Island" of Eurasia.

The author, like many intelligent NRI Indians, seems disillusioned by the failure of Indian democracy to overcome poverty and wealth disparity on the subcontinent (at one point stating, "It could be argued that China is a freer country than democratic India", ignoring some obvious differences in number of political prisoners, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free access to the Internet . . . ). Though often pointing out the environmental and cultural devastation that Chinese dominance has visited on its satellite countries, Khanna as frequently stumbles in his lavish praise of the authoritarian Singapore model that China is now following, hinting that China will allow a free society once it has acquired enough wealth, and understates the potential power of chaotic, creative, "undisciplined" (read: free) India and "Bollystan" (Khanna's term) in this century.

Freedom of speech and protection of a counterculture are more than just abstract features of a Western liberal morality. Freedom of speech and protection of "deviants" comprise essential economic infrastructure in the twenty-first century. As we move into an Information Age, societies that offer strong protection of freedom of speech and individual expression will trump those Confucian societies that emphasize obedience and silent submission to authority. As unlikely a winner as oft-benighted India may seem to be, I would still put good money on India and the individualistic U.S., in collaboration with the European Union, as the future leaders of the non-local sphere of Information and Cyberspace, leaving the Confucian societies not yet visited by glasnost far behind. Freedom of information should be treated by Khanna as one of the most important traits of an economic superpower, far more important than good roads, canals, and oil rigs. Confucianism, as it exists today, is a mimicry engine producing only commodities; free societies such as India have the potential to become creativity engines, producing entirely new economic niches.

Unless we are driven into a new Dark Age by war or resource disasters, the relentless Information Age will reward societies with strong creative classes (Richard Florida's term); reward societies with a protected counterculture and bohemia; and will punish societies ruled by conformity and fear of "deviance"; will punish societies without their equivalent of Mad Magazine; will punish societies that imprison dissidents. Until Chinese glasnost emerges, the United States, Europe and India will rule cyberspace, and hence the future.

India will not be destroyed by wealth disparities. The caste system will provide structural stability for some time to come, giving India a prolonged safety interval in which to grow a strong middle class. India is a nation of jatis, but a nation nonetheless. Its diversity and syncretic ability to adapt and absorb culture is a strength that the Chinese lack.

One final point before I go. Khanna's occasionally obsequious praise of Singapore-style authoritarianism is almost matched by the fault of his dismissive critique of United States foreign policy. As another reviewer has stated, the only reason the European Union can focus on building networks and economic bridges is that the United States is providing all the muscle. Without U.S. military presence, the EU would find itself much constrained and forced to be the "bad cop" more often. This is in no way an endorsement of what I agree is largely clumsy and inappropriate U.S. policy, but how the U.S. got to this point is much the result of an inadequate European security policy.

The book, on balance, is a good start.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Geopolitical Marketplace, April 26, 2008

By	Izaak VanGaalen (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Parag Khanna of the New America Foundation draws his inspiration from Arnold Toynbee's 12-volume history of the world. Toynbee wrote his books first, and then embarked on a trip around the world to check the acurracy of his work. Khanna, however, did it the other way around: he spent two years travelling to forty countries, talking to people and getting a first-hand look at the facts on the ground, then writing this book. The result makes this volume a very pleasurable read, mixing policy recommendations, historical analysis, and traveller's eye for local color.

Khanna argues that there will be three superpowers in the 21st century - China, the European Union, and the United States. He sometimes calls them empires as in the subtitle of the book, but that term is confusing since the Big Three will not resemble the empires of old. These superpowers will have their own unique approach for extending their power and influence. The main objectives of the Big Three are essentially the same: they want to be in the good graces of energy- and resource-rich second-tier countries such as those of the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Khanna calls this the second world. And as more and more countries become nuclear, military muscle becomes less of a tool. The superpowers are developing non-military means to win allies and influence. According to Khanna, winning in the 21st century will not take place in the battlefield but in the geopolitical marketplace.

Of the three, Khanna finds the European model the most attractive. The European practice of offering the prospect of membership in the world's richest market is a very powerful incentive for countries to reform themselves and comply with EU standards. Europe has successfully assimilated many countries on its periphery. Khanna, however, glosses over Europe's problems, such as an ageing population and unassimilated minorities.

Khanna also speaks glowingly of the rising influence of China. By the shear thrust of their economic growth, China has been able to buy friends and influence in the second world. And with their indifference to human rights, they acquire some very unsavory friends. This practice however, is now backfiring as people everywhere are rallying for Tibetans as the Olympics approach. Khanna's praise for "Asian values" amounts to accepting enlightened despotism.

The most scorn, however, is reserved for the United States. With the war in Iraq in its fifth year, America is starting to look like an overstretched empire and an object of global resentment. He excoriates America for neglecting its poor as well as its physical and financial health. This may hold some truth at the present, but Khanna has forgotten that America is resilient and has a great capacity to renew itself.

Critics of Khanna, however, should not write him off as anti-American or a pessimist. At the end of the book, he has a long list of recommendations for transforming the military-industrial complex into a diplomatic-industrial complex. He would like to see the resources that we now invest in the Pentagon go to the State Department. A new muscular foreign service is needed to further American interests and make globalization work for us. If this book sounds like it's written by an international relations graduate student, that's because it is.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rooks, knights, bishops and queens on the global chessboard, March 26, 2008

By	James G. Workman (San Francisco, CA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Can you judge a book by its cover? The dust jacket map emphasizes all the countries that really matter; sub-Saharan Africa is left literally Dark. Pages devoted to that region add up to approximately zero. For someone (like me) who has focused a decade on the politics, economics and culture of our oldest continent, that omission at first seemed glaring. No post-apartheid South Africa, which had the bomb and could again? No Congo, with its unsurpassed natural wealth? No Nigeria, the world's fourth largest democracy and sixth largest oil producer? No Angola, one of three countries (with Russia and the US) to hold such a diverse resource portfolio that it need not trade across borders? Nope. And Khanna offers no apologies. I found just two pages at the end of a chapter on Libya, boiled down to a sentence about China backing Mugabe's Zimbabwe while the U.S. bankrolls the equally despicable regime in Equatorial Guinea. Yet that, of course, is the author's whole realpolitik and neo-imperialist point. He is not unsympathetic to the 800 million souls floundering in these underdeveloped countries. He just states what most people won't: Africa's states are expendable pawns, limited to plod one square at a time, sacrificed if necessary but mostly bypassed. And while the Great Game of the 20th century tended to obsess on the psyche of America's noble white king vs a dark king of the Evil Empire, Khanna shows not only how there are now three amoral players in the fast-paced game, but that that game will be won or lost on the unexpected lateral and diagonal moves made by rooks, knights, bishops and queens of the Second World. And therein lies hope for countries left off the map. Perhaps as Africa's disadvantaged pawns survive their slow shuffle to the other side of the board, they can learn new moves, and transform themselves into chess pieces with more flexibility and clout.