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Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World, New York: W.W. Norton, 2008Andrei Miroiu
The editor of Newsweek and the former managing editor of Foreign Affairs, Yale and Harvard-educated Fareed Zakaria recently published his third book, on the coming of the post-American world, or, in his own words “on the rise of the rest”. There are many reasons to respect Zakaria`s scholarship. His first book, “From Wealth to Power”, detailing American foreign policies between the Civil War and the Great War is not only very informative, but is also a pioneering work of one of the trendiest currents in IR, neoclassic realism. His balanced views at Newsweek help to keep the educated part of the American public aware of the existence of the outside world, a difficult task in an otherwise self-centered and nationalist culture. But unfortunately this latest book fails to qualify as significant scholarship, being only another piece in the growing sensationalist literature focused on “global history” with big generalizations based on a few common-sense truths and shaky economic analysis. The bookshelves are filled nowadays with the likes of The Post-American World. If one wants to read a sensationalistic account of a supposedly two-millennia long armed struggle between West and East it is only too easy to find Anthony Pagden`s Worlds at War. The 2500 – Year Struggle Between East and West, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. If the growth of empires from Tamerlane to George W. Bush is of interest to the reader, he or she can always find John Darwin`s award-winning After Tamerlane. The Global History of Empire since 1405, New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008. If you want an economic explanation of current hegemonic patterns you can easily pick either William J. Bernstein`s A Splendid Exchange. How Trade Shaped the World, New York: Grove Press, 2008 or, if you seek a monetary explanation, the latest Niall Ferguson TV-show turned into book, The Ascent of Money. A Financial History of the World, London: Penguin Press, 2008. If one is interested in futurology and military speculations about a possible 2050 world war between the evil Turkey-Japan coalition and the US-Polish alliance, the book of STRATFOR founder George Friedman The Next 100 Years. A Forecast for the 21st Century, New York: Doubleday, 2009 is a good pick.
What do all this works, together with Zakaria`s have in common? First, the assumption that the world was more or less always hegemonic, with one great power struggling to maintain its economic and military lead against all contenders. Secondly, a contemporary outlook in which the authors discuss the challenges to American power, usually with initial sensationalist predictions of doom – meant to attract readers – followed by reassurances that American dominance of the world will continue well into the 21st century – meant to calm the buyers and insure the respectability and patriotism of the authors (which too often in the US is the same thing). From a scientific point of view these books are rather unrewarding. They all implicitly or explicitly accept Robert Gilpin`s theories of the hegemonic cycle as well as Paul Kennedy`s vision of the rise and decline of the great powers as connected to their relative economic strength. One the other hand, in small doses, they are entertaining readings and sometimes even contain provocative ideas.
Zakaria doesn`t claim to provide a new approach on the decline of American power: he takes for granted the thesis that this emerges from the decrease of the relative share of world economy held by the United States. The decline was precipitated by a bad management of international affairs, especially under George W. Bush, whose misdemeanor caused an unnecessarily quick loss of soft-power for Washington. The rise of the others was another cause that pushes the world towards at least an economic and cultural multipolarity. Zakaria uses China`s and India`s examples to discuss the possible roles of others in the new world order, but also to highlight the difficulties these two great powers will face in the new few decades (especially China`s incoming demographic crisis and India`s inefficiency crisis caused by… its democratic political system!). Somehow conveniently the Indian-born author leaves out most references to Russia and he completely ignores, in good American academic fashion, the European Union, using the oft-told story of how Europe is poised to become a third-rate economic and military region of the world.
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