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The Post-American World

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The Post-American World

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"This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else". So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling "The Future of Freedom", Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest" - the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others - as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.

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Product Details

Author:	Fareed Zakaria
Hardcover:	304 pages
Publisher:	W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Date:	April 17, 2008
Language:	English
ISBN:	039306235X
Product Width:	162.5 centimeters
Product Height:	232.5 centimeters
Product Weight:	1.25 pounds
Package Length:	9.3 inches
Package Width:	6.2 inches
Package Height:	1.2 inches
Package Weight:	1.25 pounds
Average Customer Rating:	based on 305 reviews

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review: 4.0

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632 of 684 found the following review helpful:

Where We Are Today and Where We Go From Here Apr 29, 2008 By Eric F. Facer "E. Facer"
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.

266 of 306 found the following review helpful:

Even better than his last book Apr 30, 2008 By a reader
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.

101 of 121 found the following review helpful:

The Return to a Multipolar World May 15, 2008 By Izaak VanGaalen
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.

117 of 143 found the following review helpful:

Read the article in Foreign Affairs, and skip the book. Jun 24, 2008 By ALAC
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.

56 of 67 found the following review helpful:

OK, BUT... Jul 31, 2008 By Panatlas "Panatlas"
The author makes the case that the world of the 21st century will be multipolar, with the U.S. not declining in absolute but in relative terms. Zakaria documents his opinions well and makes for good reading. However, I remained unconvinced of two of his assertions: one, that India will be one of the global powers of this century, based on niceties such as its democratic system and the imagined fascination about all things Indian that he attributes to Americans; judging by the evidence stemming from overwhelming poverty, India's inclusion in Zakaria's wishful list may be the product of his upbringing in that country rather than cold facts. The other missing point is his almost total exclusion of the European Union as one of the world's powerhouses of the near future. Particularly when considering Europe's output, social indicators and expansion to the East and the rest of the globe, making almost no mention of the importance of the EU in the world to come seems as glaring a flaw as the absence of evidence to support his forecasts about India. We may not have to wait 100 years to confirm it.

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