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| The Post-American World (Unabridged) | 
 enlarge | Author: Fareed Zakaria
Publisher: audible.com
Category: Book
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ASIN: B00192BYJE
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 Where We Are Today and Where We Go From Here April 29, 2008
333 out of 347 found this review helpful
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.
Even better than his last book April 30, 2008
153 out of 166 found this review helpful
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.
 Friedman with a hint of Huntington May 8, 2008
131 out of 184 found this review helpful
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.
 GOOD WRITING & SUBJECT; VERY BAD ANALYSIS; TRUMPETS RISE OF REST 50 YEARS TOO EARLY May 18, 2008
91 out of 154 found this review helpful
Fareed Zakaria rose to prominence on account of the terrible Sept 11 tragedies, he the rare Muslim journalist at the top levels of the American press. Through this book he seeks to broaden his claim to expertise, not merely as an analyst of the war on terrorism but as a seer in every sense. For that ambition alone, this book is fatally flawed. It attempts a subject so stupendous that even a lifelong expert like Paul Kennedy came up short with his 'Rise and Fall of Great Powers.' So Fareed surely does, especially since his commentary on the Iraq war was dead wrong to begin with and has only turned critical once the country became so. Yet the writing is fluid, flowing far better and faster than any writer other than Thomas Friedman.
The book covers the rise of India, China, and the 'rest.' It never really focuses on other countries though, but gives a lot of hard evidence of how and why the world has speeded up its growth and how and why the US is falling behind. Not because Americans are doing something wrong but because the rest of the world is doing so much right.
The book is well written and likely to be popular and in all probability will end up on college curriculums, much like Thomas Friedman and Howard Zinn and Niall Ferguson have. Yet it is flawed to the point of being dangerous and is so for the following reasons.
1. It stands to teach political economy to millions of people who shall never take a class in political economy. So they would never realize that the author lacks the big picture thinking which the great historians and political economists usually have. Fatally, he compares the 'Rise of the Rest' with the 'rise of the United States' and the 'rise of the Western World.' There is a problem here. The US rose upon a stunning technological revolution which it itself produced, at home, starting with the telegraph, telephone, airplane, the radio, the TV and the Internet. Neither China nor India nor Egypt has ever produced any substantial technology except body shopping. Some have cited about how mathematics was invented in India but so was much invented in Rome. There is no reason to go back thousands of years to prove a country's genius. All that matters is what they do today.
To this date, there is no evidence that a power can rise without such innovative intrinsic achievements. AND IT MUST DO THAT ON ITS OWN AT HOME. In that sense then, China and India are more like Spain, building palaces out of the gold of the New World, and headed to become like Japan, rich and capable but rarely a leader in any domain. That is a lesson of political economy Fareed Zakaria should have read before embarking on this book.
2. Fareed Zakaria obviously reads vigorously and cuts newspaper articles voraciously. That is obvious in his sources and anecdotes. But those are really clumsy ways to attempt a subject so significant as the rise and fall of nations. Here may I recommend Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of Great Empires for the historical perspective and if one must know about the Rise of the Rest then all the books on 'Chindia,' any one of which is better than this one. Those books focus on what the ground reality is, which is impressive, without jumping to strategic insights which are off the mark.
3. The author lacks perspective. Yes China's Macao is bigger than America's Las Vegas, but who but the poor of the world ever go to Macao. Yes India has the world's largest refinery, but the machinery and technology is all bought from the West. Yes Dubai is building the world's tallest building, but who cares, Silicon Valley has no building taller than 20 stories! Yes Singapore has the largest Ferris Wheel, but they are copying American culture. Yes a Mexican is the world's richest man but his cell phone empire has never produced a half way decent cell phone or transmission technology. Yes India has more billionaire's than any country outside the US, and no Fareed, you have it wrong, few if any are self made. I read it in Forbes. A large number of Chinese successes are kids of communist party officials and a large number of Indian successes are kids of very corrupt families, which have had a history of intellectual property theft and bribing governments.
In sum thus, both for its historical misjudgments and its static economic analysis, Fareed's book should be avoided. Centralized systems like China and India, which have a strong culture of corruption, and which are growing fast only because they are just getting around to provide food and water to their people, can never take command. That is not to say that the Rest can never rise, but they must innovate and develop and build something of their own before doing so. VS Naipaul the Nobel Prize Winner, and who is ethically Indian, has just released a book that there is no domestic intellectual artistic community in India, and he did not mean how many movies are being produced in India, or books written, but the lack of independent creative production.
In sum, what Fareed Zakaria's book does is to add fuel to a fire that should have been put out long ago. Simply because the stock market is silly enough to value America's Dupont less than India's Reliance, or Mexican cell phone companies more than American ones, or value Bombay more valuable than New York City, is no reason to believe that is the reality for the next fifty years. And if the argument is that in a hundred years they would overtake the US, then again the reader has no reason to read this book for the next fifty years.
The Return to a Multipolar World May 15, 2008
47 out of 54 found this review helpful
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.
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