| The Post-American World | 
 enlarge | Author: Fareed Zakaria
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $14.44
You Save: $11.51 (44%)
New (63) Used (24) Collectible (2) from $12.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  153 reviews
Sales Rank: 141
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
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Easy reading, very informative, interesting insight May 19, 2008
3 out of 12 found this review helpful
Interesting insight into the the "Post Amercian" World. Unfortunately, much of what the author says is true.
 GOOD WRITING & SUBJECT; VERY BAD ANALYSIS; TRUMPETS RISE OF REST 50 YEARS TOO EARLY May 18, 2008
159 out of 226 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.
One World May 17, 2008
8 out of 16 found this review helpful
An excellent book in predicting how the world will look like in 20-30 years. Globalization is the story of our age. Mr. Zakaria's background and world travel gave him an advantageous vintage point in assessing the world affairs and the trend for the next few decades.
Average reader will greatly benefit from reading the book. For example, the rise of China and India will affect the world in a very fundamental way because of the combined population of 2.5 billion. Globalization is not a blessing for everyone, it is rather harmful for the standard of living for 80% of the people in the developed world. But it is important to realize that it is not possible to stop such a trend, just as it is not morally correct to deny the right to development for China and India. Chinese and Indians are equal humans as the people in the west, they are not sub humans, they have every right to pursue happiness in life, to get rich, to produce, to consume, to release CO2 just like all of us living in the west. Even though all this CO2 will accelerate climate change which is harmful for all, how can we ask the Chinese or Indian to maintain one fourth to one tenth the amount CO2 released per person as we Americans? Should they take bus while they can drive, should they not take warm bath while they can?
If you are not happy with such a trend (rise of the rest), the most important thing that you can get from this book is the realization that it is inevitable. We must come to grips with the reality and try to make the best of it. The optimism he projects in his book is not the key point, he may not even really believe in it. Dislocations are wide spread in rural America and the small towns of America, he must know about it. But again, what can you do? Why should a worker in Oklahoma make 10 times the salary than the worker in Zhejiang, China while they both make 100 pairs of socks a day? They should be paid about the same - as long as the socks can be moved around, meaning "free trade".
Whither Go American Dreams? May 16, 2008
25 out of 44 found this review helpful
Fareed Zakaria, a brilliant journalist, maybe the last honest one left of a very sorry lot, has found a way to maneuver around America's immense but infinitely fragile egg-shell like ego to tell us indirectly what we already know about ourselves but don't want to hear: that our nation, the American Empire, is in a precipitous decline, due mostly of our making.
Sadly, for the author, this is work that must be left unsaid and insinuated from deep within the subtext of the book, unsaid and insinuated in "metaphorical relief." As he puts it, it is not "the "fall of America, but the rise of the rest."
Anyone who takes that backhanded insult at face value, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you? This demeaning backhanded way of telling us that our country is in very serious decline sounds like the kind of reverse psychology one uses on a young child who will not eat his vegetables. But it is the only way to get any kind of self-criticism down the ultra-sensitive American palate. Its the same maneuver that Denish d' Souza, one of the darling of the rightwing, used so deftly in his equally insulting "What's so Good About America?" Again, under the pretext of praising America, he too had to tuck the truth in between the lines amid so much insincere "pro-American groveling."
And why not? Somehow, no matter how untrue or how superficial, we tend to eat fawning compliments like they are breakfast cereal. But any criticism is un-patriotic and un-American. Fareed is no ones fool.
As brilliant as he is, the author has never been allowed to tell the full truth, even on the weekend news pundit shows. The inferior minds among his colleagues just keep censoring him into non-existence. I notice that even though he is clearly the most brilliant in our generation of journalists, his appearances are becoming less and less frequent. I wonder why?
This is not a "Zakaria problem," but an "American problem." And to paraphrase Jack Nicholson in one of the most famous lines in all movie-dome: "Americans can't handle the truth!" Fareed, to repeat another of my favorite cliches from the movie Munich, is just "the voice in our heads telling us what we already know: That while America has led the world into the 21st Century it has suddenly and abruptly made a u-turn ducking its head back into the sands of its own dark ages. Beating its breast with all kinds of new weapons but scared to come out of its hole: [The world is going off and leaving us in the dust: Is this really the way we want to go down? Has anyone seen Kuala Lumpur, or Dubai, or even Singapore or Seoul lately? They all make America cities look like something from the Middle Ages.]
The evidence of our decline is everywhere: (1) In the 21st Century, we are still fighting the Scopes trial, and are losing? Intelligent Design is slowly gaining an undeserved prominence on par with the Science of Evolution. Four of the Republican candidates admitted in the Presidential debates on international television that they do not believe in evolution. (2) Like the most famous modern day Neanderthal we love to hate, Saudi born, Osama bin Laden, we too love our guns, god, and hate gays, and just for good measure, also throw racism into that mix. (3) The very fact that GW Bush was elected for two terms should have been a strong enough hint that something is terribly wrong with the "last standing superpower." Even if we were trying to, we could not have picked a worse representative of the best America has to offer. (4) But worse of all, America has become a "fair weather democracy." It no longer completely believes in it founding ideas and ideals. It only believes in them when they benefit certain protected American subgroups, otherwise, all bets are off. To wit, we will cheat to win elections; torture prisoners and throw away due process; neglect our own poor; turn the clock back on hard won civil rights; and sell out not just our democracy, but all of our seed corn too -- our future -- to the highest bidder. Our politicians have become whores for the moneyed interests.
If we were half the nation we tell ourselves we are, then Fareed Zakaria would not have had to "dumb-down" this book and write in reverse psychological diplomatic code to tell us what we already know.
Fifty stars.
The Return to a Multipolar World May 15, 2008
58 out of 68 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.
|
|
|
