“The Post-American World” by Fareed Zakaria

By Dean Poling

August 18, 2008 04:54 pm

— Fareed Zakaria is a regular Newsweek magazine columnist and has a Sunday morning show on CNN. An Indian native who moved to the U.S. in the early 1980s, Zakaria has a unique outlook on American relations in regard to international events. In this book, he writes about the “rise of the rest,” referring to the economic rise of nations around the world in the past several years, from China to India to numerous other countries, and America’s diminishing role as a lone superpower in this new world and the changing world of the future. He notes that other nations aren’t anti-American but, rather, post-American, meaning that many countries now feel they do not have to politically or economically negotiate with or seek approval from the United States but can go around the U.S. to accomplish their aims. As has been noted repeatedly during the ongoing Olympic Games, Zakaria writes about how China has managed to retain its political outlook while switching from a communist to capitalist economy; however, he wonders how long such a closed political regime can remain viable in the face of ever-opening markets. He also reports how, with exception of the military, the U.S. has fallen behind other nations; how other nations have developed combinations of our markets within their cultures; how Americans refuse to learn at least a second language while most of the rest know their native tongue and English, at least, allowing them to fully understand and operate in both their market cultures and ours. He also notes that the United States has promoted openness, free markets, economic development, and freedoms in nations throughout the world and, now that America is achieving these goals, the U.S. is in danger of pushing away, and isolating itself, from the world it has long sought to create. “The Post-American World” is not an anti-American screed. It is a thoughtful book, an analysis of the United States’ still dominant role but in an ever-changing world.

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