41 pages • 1 hour read
The Post-American World
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Preface-Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Preface Summary
The first edition of this book was being written when the United States was still an unquestionably dominant power, with its military operating all over the globe, its economy roaring, and its culture setting a tone for the entire world. When it was published, the US financial system collapsed, and the Great Recession was underway. This development hastened the trend that Zakaria marked: the shifting of power from the West to non-Western powers. Zakaria has updated the book to discuss the implications of the financial crisis on powers like China, Brazil, India, and Indonesia, along with how the United States can adjust to a more globalized world in which no one state is dominant.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Rise of the Rest”
Zakaria posits a major change in global politics, on par with the great changes of the past half millennia. The first was the rise of Europe (also known as “the West”) as the central region of global politics, introducing technological innovations like industry and capitalism before spreading them around the globe. By the end of the 19th century, the United States achieved a degree of power unlike any other modern state by virtue of its enormous resources, population, and global reach. The beginning of the 21st century has seen a third new development, the “rise of the rest” (2), as countries outside the West experience rates of economic growth unthinkable in more developed countries. With that comes a massive shift in power and influence to countries that were once poor or colonized.
The primary force driving this shift is economic, but it has spillover effects into all aspects of political and social life. Power is also shifting from states to non-state actors, such as international organizations like the World Trade Organization, multinational corporations, and even malignant transnational actors like drug cartels or terrorist groups. Zakaria indicates how the hierarchal structure has evolved by writing, “In such an atmosphere, the traditional applications of national power, both economic and military, have become less effective” (5). As the heretofore dominant power, the United States must find a way to adjust to a much more decentralized world, where its traditional methods of securing and gaining power are bound to be less effective.
Preface-Chapter 1 Analysis
In this pair of brief chapters, Zakaria updates his thesis in light of contemporary events and then succinctly restates that thesis. The Wall Street crash of 2008, which plunged much of the developed world into the worst economic straits since the Great Depression, exemplifies many of the trends that Zakaria develops throughout the book. Most obvious is The Diffusion of Global Power. The collapse of the US financial system (largely because of overinvestment in real estate) destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth, so the US economy “contracted by 6 percent in the last quarter and shed almost four million jobs in six months” (xi). However, “[f]or China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia, this has not been much of a crisis” (xii), indicating a degree of economic resilience in developing countries that was utterly absent in traditional juggernauts like the United States or the European Union, the latter of which spent more than a decade trying to climb out of the recession. This confirms Zakaria’s thesis that “the rise of the rest is at heart an economic phenomenon” (4). It is the ultimate consequence of large, traditionally exploited nations that are finally able to participate in the modern global economy and have wisely chosen to adopt the principles of free markets and capital flows.
While economic forces are paramount, the financial crisis also stands as an example of Modernization Versus Political Traditions. Zakaria mostly addresses this topic in the context of developing nations struggling to reconcile Western ways with their own cultures. In the case of the financial crisis, though, the US arguably succumbed to its own cultural predilection for unregulated capitalism and extreme risk taking, to which it remained committed past the point of good economic sense. The utter repudiation of this model has now encouraged other countries, most notably China, to put forward their own models, which are as good if not superior to Western-style capitalism. Zakaria writes, “As countries become stronger and richer, we’re likely to see more challenges and greater assertiveness from rising nations” (4). These nations can point to their prosperity and resilience as proof that they must be doing something right, and they can perhaps teach a lesson to those from whom they have been traditionally expected to learn.
These trends will compel the United States to contemplate its own Power in a Post-Hegemonic World. Zakaria repeatedly clarifies that a post-American world is “one defined and directed from many places and by many people” (4). It does not necessarily mean the end of US power or an arrangement of anti-American entities, yet the US is so used to its dominant position that it may regard any decline or diffusion as tantamount to hostile challenges. Zakaria is very pleased that new nations, such as his native India, are rising in global power, but he also wants the United States to adjust to this trend and find the best possible position within it. To try to turn back the clock, or undermine rising powers, would be both foolish and counterproductive. There is a place for America in a post-American world.
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