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| The Post-American World | 
 enlarge | Author: Fareed Zakaria
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  158 reviews
Sales Rank: 148
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 039306235X
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.49
EAN: 9780393062359
ASIN: 039306235X
Publication Date: May 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Read the article in Foreign Affairs, and skip the book. June 24, 2008
22 out of 24 found this review helpful
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.
Interesting, but Overly Optimistic! May 9, 2008
18 out of 23 found this review helpful
Zakaria quickly grabs readers' attention by pointing out that the tallest building, largest publicly traded corporation, biggest planes under construction, leading refinery, largest factories, most richly endowed investment fund, largest casino, largest Ferris wheel, movie industry, and shopping mall are no longer American.
He also provides useful perspective with which to view Islamic terrorists - Islam is fractured into numerous groups with a mostly local focus, and nowhere near the scale of impact reached by Stalin, Mao, and Hitler. Meanwhile, killing civilians has sharply reduced support for Al Qaeda. Further, Muslims constitute only 3% of Europe's population and will probably plateau at 5-8%. Finally, statistics on terrorism attacks include those killed in Iraq; excluding those, terrorism activity is markedly down, as well as Islamic support for such.
What has brought the "rise of the rest?" Zakaria identifies the fall of the U.S.S.R. and its centralized economy, control of hyperinflation (largely thanks to cheap alternatives in India and China), and new technology (cell phones, large ships, the Internet). Goldman, Sachs predicts that China, India, Brazil, Russia, and Mexico will outproduce the Western G-7 by 2040.
Zakaria then goes on with an overview of China and India, and then on to the U.S., where he grossly oversimplifies the impact of globalization. He finds comfort for the U.S. by pointing out that most profits come from development, finance, and marketing - not manufacturing. Unfortunately, the Chinese and others are well aware of this and can be expected to make significant inroads in these areas. Nanotech is envisioned as a future major source of strength for our economy - yet, he fails to also envision China, etc., moving into these areas, or wonder how many people a U.S. nanotechnology field could absorb (not that many).
Another contribution is Zakaria's pointing out that statistics comparing the number of Asian and American engineering graduates are grossly misleading. A large proportion of the Asian graduates are from technical schools (eg. mechanics), and the education of the rest does not hold up to those from good American schools. Again, however, Zakaria is too optimistic about how long it will take Asia to correct this. As for our disappointing comparative high-school test scores, Zakaria alleges these are due to poor minority results; other writers, however, challenge this conclusion with data.
Finally, Zakaria identifies America's failure to fund health care through government sources as another significant problem, and our dysfunctional political system as another major concern.
My major concern is that Zakaria does not address the most important long-term implication of globalization for the U.S. - a severe decline in our standard of living.
 This books is more at macro level May 23, 2008
17 out of 24 found this review helpful
The strongest objection I have about Zakaria's observations is this. The rest of the world emulating USA and its capitalist society doesn't necessarily mean it is all good. The rush to create wealth at the cost of millions of people, environment, social and human values is not a good scenario for the world. The scenario is that USA is exported blue collar jobs (manufacturing), now it is exporting white collar (service sector) jobs. Neither the government, nor the society leaders are thinking in terms of how these millions of people are going survive losing their livelihood? Sure, bio-technology, hi-tech, space industries will continue to be the leading industries of this country. Do we realize how much actual employment these industries are going to generate for a huge country like USA? We are automating as much as we can. We are sending away jobs. Sadly, the corporations are only interested in numbers and the govt. is interested in GDP. How about the millions of people? This is what the rest of the world is trying to emulate. Create wealth for a small segment of the population; increase GDP, defense budget, # of corporations, and highways. Not the real people. Because, for the govt. and corporations, when they look at macro level, individuals are like dots. They do not matter.
The Post-American Zakaria August 26, 2008
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
A lot of what he has written is interesting and useful, but I have two areas of disagreement. The two are connected:
The first is the nature of the Islamist Threat. Zakaria seems still to be living in the world of Edward Said and John Esposito. Esposito wrote The Islamic Threat, Myth or Reality? Esposito argued that the threat was largely a myth. He was the expert on the Middle East most invited to the White House until 9/11. After that, he was replaced by Bernard Lewis. The Esposito view was considered discredited in the White House, but it hasn't been discredited in Europe and elsewhere. Modern exemplars are Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel. They acknowledge a certain sort of threat coming from alienated over-educated young men, but they don't consider the threat much wider than that.
Why do some of us consider the 1/3 of the Islamic world (perhaps 400,000,000) that holds to Islamism a threat and others do not? Perhaps I am more inclined to credit the religious fervor of the Islamists because I am a Christian and recognize religion as a motivation. I suspect that Roy, Kepel, Fukuyama and Zakaria are not religious. Perhaps that is why they dismiss the Islamist ideology as a serious motivation.
I spent some time studying Islamist theology. I read some of the writings of Maududi, Qutb and Khomeini. Zakaria criticizes the Bush administration for lumping Shiite and Suni together, but the Islamism of Maududi and Qutb is consistent with the Islamism of Khomeini. Zakaria dismisses Iran's religious under-girding when he speculates about the military threats bordering Iran and thinks any sane person would want nuclear weapons if they were in that predicament. He thinks we ought to treat Iran like any other nation. If we can dismiss Iran's Islamist ideology as a motivation, then Zakaria would be right, but if Said, Esposito, Roy, Kepel and Fukuyama are wrong about the nature of the threat, then it would be the height of foolishness to treat Iran like any other nation.
The idea that America is overreacting and running scared is popular in Europe. Again, if all we have to worry about are the actual Terrorists, the actual Jihadists as Fukuyama terms them, then indeed we are overreacting, but if we have to worry about the 400,000,000 Muslims who subscribe to the teachings of Islamism, then we are not overreacting. Not all 400,000,000 need to be willing to strap on bombs for them to be a coherent threat. Are Jihadists alienated from the body of Islam as Roy and Fukuyama suggests? Or do they come fully instructed and motivated out of an Islamist milieu made up of the 1/3 of all Muslims who subscribe to the Islamist ideology?
I have been assuming that the Islamist threat is real, and that it comprises the approximately 400,000,000 Muslims who embrace Islamism. To treat actual Jihadists as aberrant and atypical would, if my assumption is correct, be naive. Zakaria would have us go back to treating the Islamists the way they were treated during the Clinton administration, as criminals, not as the spear-tip of a much larger Islamist theat.
Given Zakaria's view about America's over-rating the Islamist threat, we can now move to my second area of disagreement. Zakaria is unhappy with the Bush Administration for invading Iraq (although he says he supported it when it happened). Bush wanted to begin draining the swamp to make things more difficult for the Islamists. But for Zakaria, there weren't enough Islamists to be worried about; so Bush's actions were wrong.
Zakaria is guilty of some errors of fact when he considers Bush, errors that come from the Leftist press - not that Zakaria is guilty of Leftism that I can see - but he is influenced by the press and he is influenced by statistics. Large numbers oppose Bush, therefore Bush must be wrong. The press says Bush was a unilateralist, therefore Bush must be one. Zakaria knows that a multilateral force accompanied American forces into Iraq, but he dismisses them. On what grounds? He says some were coerced and some were from Eastern Europe and didn't want to offend the U.S.
Here is a Wikipedia list of the troops in the Multinational force: U.S., UK, Poland, Australia, South Korea, Romania, El Salvador, Czech Republic, Azerbaijan, Denmark, Mongolia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine, Estonia, Macedonia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Bulgaria, Armenia, Georgia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Japan, Thailand, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Hungary, Nicaragua, Norway, Portugal, New Zealand, Philippines, and Iceland. Most of them didn't send many troops and some of these nations withdrew after awhile, but no objective person would describe this force as comprising American unilateralism. There was widespread support.
And as part of this second disagreement we must mention the UN Security council disapproval that caused the US to select its own multinational force. The two nations who were the chief roadblocks to U.N. approval of the Iraq invasion were France and Russia. These two nations, along with a relative of Kofi Annan, were implicated in the Oil for Food Scandal. It was in their interests to stop the U.S. from invading Iraq a second time. Zakaria doesn't discuss this complexity. For after all, if there is no Islamist threat then what does it matter that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator or that important French and Russian politicians colluded with him?
But if, as many have argued, the war against Islamism is serious; then Saddam Hussein was a major impediment: He intimidated nations such as Saudi Arabia that we needed in our pursuit of Al Qaeda members, and he supported terrorism. In addition he portrayed himself as the hero who had backed down America. He fired regularly on American and British planes who had since the truce been flying over Iraq to make sure he didn't take out his First Gulf War loss against the Northern Kurds or Southern Shiites.
There is much in Zakaria's book I agree with but the flaws I mention above are fatal if my assumptions are correct. My assumptions would require an explanation of our current situation consistent with Huntington's thesis. We are engaged in a clash, a major clash, with the Islamic Civilization. This isn't a small matter that can more readily be treated as criminal. The Islamic Civilization is shot through with an antagonistic ideology that demands our destruction. It won't be opposed by diplomacy or wishful thinking. It demands the very sort of confrontation that Bush supplied.
How do Jihadists know that Allah is blessing them, a saying goes? Allah gives them victory. If Allah didn't give Saddam Hussein victory, then Allah didn't bless him, and he was being touted far and wide as a great Islamic hero. To topple him was a very good thing if we want to fight this Huntington Clash in the best possible way, in a way that makes the most sense to our enemies. We will be doing very poorly in this "Clash" if we treat Iran and other nations as if they are just like a typical European nation. We won't understand Iran or Islamism or the Islamic Civilization if we insist on looking at it, as I believe Zakaria does, through a European lens.
Lawrence Helm
www.lawrencehelm.com
Summary with little Analysis and Insight June 2, 2008
13 out of 16 found this review helpful
While I am a great fan of Fareed Zakaria as a journalist, his book reads like a summary of many of his articles. While the content is solid and deals with many important issues, such a broad issue as the future leads him to ramble about interesting, yet not always relevant issues.
I mostly take issue not with this style nor content, but with the fact that the book is simply a summary of world events and brief commentary on changes. It has little original insight for anyone who's up to date on current affairs and it sorely lacks deep analysis.
For someone who doesn't follow foreign or current affairs very closely, this book will be a valuable and accessible read. For serious readers, it is a waste of time.
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