Related Stories Rule the WavesHeavy MetalSCHLOCK AVATARAMNARCO ANALYSISAmerican Innings

The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria, Norton, $25.95

Fareed Zakaria is feisty and immensely readable as he surveys the rise of the rest of the world
Almost immediately after America’s invasion of Iraq started to go horribly wrong, an exercise began to try and identify the new, emerging world order. Some have called it the age of non-polarity, with the United States now vying for influence with other countries, blocs and non-governmental organisations.
Others have spoken of a Second World, large swathes of territory around the globe over which the US, the European Union and China are waging bids for influence. Yet somehow, even with deepening perceptions of erosion in American power and purpose, these theses appear to underestimate America’s place in the world.

In talking of the post-American world, Fareed Zakaria presents a more plausible and credible portrait of the current order. As his opening line goes, “This is a book not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everybody else.” Zakaria thereby sidesteps the pointless exercise of tabulating hierarchies and mapping the world by its nodes of power (pointless because it involves far too much speculation). Also, this way he expands on the intuitive point that diminishment of influence is as much a factor of momentum.
By Zakaria’s reckoning, the US is still not equalled by any country: “The United States occupies the top spot in the emerging system, but it is also the country that is most challenged by the new order. Most other great powers will see their role in the world expand. The process is already underway. China and India are becoming bigger players in their neighbourhoods and beyond. Russia has ended its post-Soviet accommodation and is becoming more forceful, even aggressive. Japan, though not a rising power, is now more willing to voice its views and positions to its neighbours. Europe acts on matters of trade and economics with immense strength and purpose. Brazil and Mexico are becoming more vocal on Latin American issues. South Africa has positioned itself as a leader of the African continent. All these countries are taking up more space in the international arena than they did before. For the United States, the arrow is pointing in the opposite direction.”

Geopolitics, Zakaria agrees, is not a zero-sum game. But America must now accommodate, at the very least, the increasing influence of other countries. Therefore the title, post-American world, since it describes the era we are moving away from, instead of labouring to describe the era we are heading towards.
Among the rest, Zakaria focuses on India and China. Making the point that today economics is trumping politics and that we are actually living through a period of unusual calm, he calls their rise the third great expansion of the global economy. The previous two occurred in the 1890s-1900s and in the 1950s-60s. Much of the current expansion is, incidentally, aided by the US. Ironically, however, “just as the world is opening up, America is shutting down”.

Zakaria spends a while considering how India and China will pursue their interests in the post-American world and how the US should engage internationally. He calls China the “challenger”. China, which in 2007 contributed more to global growth than the US did (importantly, he points out, the first time any country has done that since the 1930s), is keen to avoid conflict and given to terming its ascent as “peaceful rise” (or the even more innocuous sounding phrase, “peaceful development”). But Zakaria notes that great powers that purport to be driven by the noblest of intentions often take extraordinary measures to protect their interests. China is a country with rapidly expanding interests.
He argues that in relations between the US and China, an economic equivalent of the MAD (mutually assured destruction) theory of nuclear weapons during the Cold War could be playing out. China needs American markets to sustain its boom in manufacturing; the US is heavily dependent on China to finance its debt. They have little interest in doing anything that could destabilise the other.

India, for Zakaria, is the “ally”, but a confused one. It is now in a phase of strong economic growth, its democracy is vibrant and sorting out social conflicts, and it has demonstrated its human capital. But the Indian elite, he argues, has not come to terms with the country’s rise: “They understand how to operate in that world (in which it was a poor Third World, detached and neutral), whom to beg from and whom to be belligerent with. But a world in which India is a great power and moves confidently across the global stage, setting rules and not merely being shaped by them, and in which it is a partner of the most powerful country in history — that is an altogether new and unsettling proposition.” India, the land of Zakaria’s birth, is for him “a strong society with a weak state”: “It cannot harness its national power for national purpose.”
America, for its part, needs to play by the rules it set itself during its brightest hours — for example, in the closing stages of World War II, Franklin Roosevelt — by then quite sick — undertook arduous journeys to Tehran and Yalta to meet lesser leaders. Zakaria says the US has to reach back into its past to work out a role as honest broker: “This new role is quite different from the traditional superpower role. It involves consultation, cooperation, and even compromise. It derives its power by setting the agenda, defining the issues, and mobilising coalitions.” These are ideas we are sure to hear a lot more of as Barack Obama and John McCain debate each other.