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The Post-American World
The Post-American World
by Fareed Zakaria
Generally, I think Fareed Zakaria is a pretty smart cookie. But this book falls kind of flat. Basically, it's a "Don't worry, be happy" look at Americas future, but that hardly helps all the people that are losing their jobs and homes in the current dismal economy.
For example, in a chapter entitled "The Problems of Plenty," Zakaria writes, "But focusing on the gloom has left us unprepared for many of the largest problems we face: which are not the product of failure but of success." Like I said, tell that to the millions who have lost their jobs to outsourcing.
Having said that, Zakaria presents a masterful analysis of a world where America is no longer the economic top dog that it was up until the new millennium.
The fact that new powers are more strongly asserting their interests is the reality of the post-American world. It also raises the conundrum of how to achieve international objectives in a world of many actors, state and nonstate.
Zakaria answers that conundrum by positing that America must use its soft power to cajole and inspire other actors into doing what we want.
The book takes a hard look at the rise of China as a competitor. Zakaria writes,
For now, the forces if integration have triumphed, in both Beijing and Washington. The Chinese-American economic relationship is one of mutual dependence. China needs the American market to sell its goods; the United States needs China to finance its debt -- it's globalization's equivalent of the nuclear age's Mutual Assured Destruction. ... The reality of a globalized world forces America and China into an alliance that pure geopolitics could never countenance.
Zakaria also deals with the rise of India, but basically dismisses that country as far smaller, both in terms of population and GDP, than China. But again, how does that help the people put out of work when their programming and tech support jobs got shipped over there?
So how should America cope with a post-American world? Zakaria lays out six guidelines:
- Choose: America needs to make some choices about its priorities. For example, we need Russia to cooperate against Iran and securing loose nukes, but we've taken a hard line on its lack of real democracy.
- Build broad rules, not narrow interests: America needs to back -- and follow -- international rules and institutions so that, even as China and India become more powerful, they're encouraged to play by the rules, rather than set an example of cowboy foreign policy.
- Cultivate good relations with all states: Pretty self explanatory.
- Work with different institutions to solve different problems: "No one institution or organization is always right, no one framework ideal. The UN might work for one problem, NATO for another, the OAS for a third. And for a new issue like climate change, perhaps a new coalition that involves private business and nongovernmental groups would make the most sense.
- Think asymmetrically: Don't resort to military force to resolve all our problems.
- Legitimacy is power: "Legitimacy allows one to set the agenda, define a crisis, and mobilize support for policies among both countries and nongovernmental forces like private business and grass-roots organizations. ... American ideals still dominate the debates over Darfur, Iranian nuclear weapons, and Burma. But Washington needs to understand that generating international public support for its view of the world is a core element of power, not merely an exercise in public relations."
But, Zakaria continues, and rightly so,
Before it can implement any of these specific strategies, however, the United States must make a broader adjustment. It needs to stop cowering in fear. It is fear that has created a climate of paranoia and panic in the United States and fear that has enabled our strategic missteps.
Having spooked ourselves into believing that we have no option but to act fast and alone, preemptively and unilaterally, we have managed to destroy decades of international goodwill, alienate allies, and embolden enemies, wile solving few of the major international problems we face.
To recover its place in the world, America first has to recover its confidence.
No truer words were ever written.
So all in all, Zakaria's book is worth reading. It's just his, "What, me worry?" attitude that bugs me. He almost had me convinced that America's best days are still ahead, with all his talk of the underlying "vigor of its society" -- and I'd like to believe that, but...