Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World

I finished skimming Zakaria's Post-American World. He offers a few stinging criticisms of the US and domestic and foreign policy decisions, but one leaves the book with a positive impression on the US and its role in the future. China and India will overtake the US, he argues, and the US, nevertheless, will remain an sizable international figure economically, politically, and as a beacon for the world. Zakaria, an immigrant from India, offers a fascinating perspective as one who emigrated with high hopes for a new life in the US, and those impressions have not dulled in twenty years. In fact--as he lists the ways China, India, and the "rest" will rise over the US and generate a multi-polar world--he notes specific unique cultural values (e.g. critical thinking in schools, spectacular higher education, and entrepreneurial spirit) and demographic strength that separates the US from the surging "rest" will allow it to remain a virile state in the future.

For a reader who spends his or her time staring blankly into books or obsessing over blogs, much of this material won't break new ground. Zakaria's final chapter, "American Purpose," lists policy prescriptions addressing how the US can remedy the recent poor policy directions and systemic economic issues plaguing the US. The author points to a less hypocritical diplomacy and one based less on expansionism and exceptionialism as keys for the US to remain the central broker for international affairs. He correctly insists that the US model of capitalism is winning the world over. I'm not so sure about his claim that the style of government is taking hold everywhere. Still, the final chapter is one of the better and thought-provoking.

Of course, I have problems with specifics and larger themes, and the criticisms are interrelated. Like Thomas Friedman, Zakaria thinks big and examines overarching themes with glimpses of nuance interspersed in the text. Additionally, like Friedman, Zakaria misses the human element and skirts the negative effects of globalization, development, rising, or whatever one wants to dub the adherence to the neoliberal model. When colonialism or exploitative capitalism, American or European, appears it does so ephemerally without any exploration of how it ravaged countries in the past or present. In other words, he neglects to balance the negative with the positive in his effusive lauding of American free market capitalism and globalization. And why not? Negativity doesn't sell books or spread your views on the future from outside of policy circles to the reading public.

I won't snip at him for commenting on the dispossession of farmers in eastern India, thanks in part to the local communist party, for a Nano car plant. (OK, maybe I will a little bit.) At this point, it's difficult to read The Post-American World positively. My assumption is that President Obama's foreign policy meets his desires, for the most part. Despite his prescience on a variety of issues, one cannot fault him for failing to predict the pits of this global recession. He casts off the abysmal household savings rate, credit card debt, mortgages, health care, and poor American economic practices. I would guess that he would rescind those statements. Still, the glossy, cheerful forecasts don't seem as bright, even if the US can right the ship and rein in the rampant foolhardy capitalism practiced in the US in favor of a sustainable vision for the country that partners oversight and ample encouragement for innovation and invention.