The Post-American World

By Henry Hilton

TOKYO —

The greatest guessing game in town centers on the virility of Uncle Sam. Television programs in Tokyo keep claiming that China will soon be overtaking Japan in the GDP stakes and that within a generation, it will have the U.S. in its sights. The red dragon with its Beijing Olympics, space rocketry and bids for influence in Africa is seemingly on a roll.

The latest addition to the debate on whether the United States is getting past its sell-by date comes from the respected journalist Fareed Zakaria. Taking advantage of past interviews with VIPs and after a decent pause for reflection, he comes up with a highly readable thesis that reckons how the U.S. might still act as “chairman of the board” in a more fragmented international system.

The result is a mixture of good news and bad news for policymakers in Washington and Tokyo. Before the reader gets to the post-American world, though, there is a spot or two of historical background that draws on Paul Kennedy’s bestseller of the late 1980s, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.” The message is that others, too, thought they were set to run the planet for eternity but ended up as little more than spear-carriers when events caught them out.

Zakaria reckons that the United States can do better than Britain and somehow keep on being No. 1 for decades to come. America, as the new Rome, can seemingly learn from the faults of others and, provided its economy stays lean and creative, maintain its extraordinary political and military power. You can’t be running 750 bases in 40 different countries unless there is a decent economic cushion in place - something that the British failed to maintain in the face of multiple industrial competitors from the late 19th century onwards.

Yet the question as to whether American public opinion will continue to stomach these huge global commitments does not really get asked. There have to be doubts when President George W Bush insists that his Iraq venture will “succeed unless we quit” and when both presidential contenders are suggesting this summer that the present levels of U.S. troops on the ground need to be reduced. To argue, as Zakaria does, that “the real test for the United States is political - and it rests not just with America at large but with Washington in particular” does not get us very far. To ask if Washington can accept the need for “shifts in economic and political power” and “can it thrive in a world it cannot dominate?” is merely to begin the debate.

Crucial to the “The Post-American World” is the idea of “the rise of the rest.” This assumes that there will continue to be slippage in the United States’ political, military and economic strengths as others, notably, the People’s Republic of China, develop new power. Yet - here comes the muted good news for American readers - this is likely to be incremental and the shift ought to be beneficial to everyone as “the world is going America’s way” through the general acceptance of more open markets and more open government.

Provided the U.S. gets its act together (and Zakaria provides a worthy shopping list of what he hopes this would entail), it will “remain the pivotal player in a richer, more dynamic, more exciting world.” It’s a confident claim. Yet it assumes a willingness on the part of both American elites and the broader public to cooperate and compromise with other states, particularly in East Asia and the European Union, in a manner that some may find highly uncomfortable.

Unipolarity, by definition, earns the U.S. unpopularity but you tend to get your own way: sharing power with others is a very different ball game. If attempting to remain the world’s only superpower proves to be an impossibility long before the mid-21st century, the United States may soon be looking back with nostalgia at the end of an era when it was the boss of Global Inc. Declinism could be the Eagle’s fate - just ask the Brits.

Additional Information:

Fareed Zakaria
4,338 yen
Simon & Schuster
ISBN-10: 0743576853

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12 Comments

KMGuru at 12:00 PM JST - 8th July

It is difficult to foresee the future based on the past. Paradigm shifts, natural and manmade disasters can change the game. Though America is moving away from merit based technical society to hype based lawyers and politicians, it will take a generation for the society to die unless there is a change back to the that merit base. Time will tell.
KMGuru at 12:36 PM JST - 8th July

The idea of Armageddon makes good movies. The reality that a national guard person have access to nuclear weapons or enriched plutonium is farfecthed. Do not forget, the Soviets have a lot of them too and may want the glory days...anything is possible but improbable...iceage is more probable.
PepinGalarga at 02:30 PM JST - 8th July

China will never catch up to the US, Japan, EU or Korea or Singapore. They may have the mass talent and productivity, but they are spending too little on R&D. I am trying to work with leading Chinese companies but they just don't feel like they need to spend a single cent in real R&D to make a difference. Nanotechnology and biotechnology will result in the real paradigm shift, and the companies that usually set up labor intensive projects will keep their capital intensive projects back home to protect their IP.

Anybody out there read the first 200 pages of "The Singularity is Near" from Ray Kurzweil and you will get the point.

Anyway i ordered this book. this cliff notes they put here is too convoluted to even finish reading.
tkoind2 at 05:48 PM JST - 8th July

Empires rise and fall. Anyone who thinks a dynasty will last forever was sleeping in history class. Do you think ancient Egyptians or Romans imagined their empires as archiological sites? Or the Han Chinese considering what China has become today? Or the Soviets imagining the fall of Soviet Russia?

Things change for better or worst. China may rise next. Or maybe India. The US may reign another hundred years. But sooner or later things will change. Add in climate change, global oil scarcity and the related conflicts and the maps may be VERY different 100 years from today.
tkoind2 at 05:49 PM JST - 8th July

One other note. Never is a REALLY long time. And look at how much power shifting has taken place since 1908.
PepinGalarga at 12:13 AM JST - 9th July

oil will cease to be an issue 10-15 years out as renewable energy systems are put in place. The countries with the technology to develop it will prolong their position.

there's a new solar panel out that can do 3Kw at 70% efficiency, this is 10 times what the best solar panel can do now. there's other solar technologies out there that don't rely on photovoltaics. Once the oil companies realize they can make as much or even more money by getting into the renewable business then there will be few barriers to develop these new ideas on a large scale.

Generating ethanol from corn was a huge mistake that should have been foreseen. There's 200 different things you can make ethanol and diesel from. The US pushed corn so their farmers would have something to plant, and now food prices are way too high.

Look to India for some feasible projects in this area, they really need to get their power infrastructure developed right away or be left behind. I have visited many business in India that have diesel generators running 24x7 outside, its really not feasible long term, but neccesity will drive them to leverage on their agricultural advantages.
pathat at 01:16 PM JST - 9th July

A large section of the May/June 2008 edition of Foreign Affairs is devoted to this book by Fareed Zakaria. I was not particularly impressed, and I would suggest to anyone interested in what he has to say to pick up a Foreign Affairs copy at a bookstore and read it before putting down 4338 yen on the whole book.
Natadiem2 at 02:44 PM JST - 11th July

Pepingalarga, Also waiting for the singularity, looks closer and closer.

Have you read the Human Phenomenon from Teilhard de Chardin?

This man was one of the greatest paleontologist of last century and he was also a monk. Believed that they were no contradiction between life of Jesus and evolution he tryed to answer the meaning of "I am alpha going to omega" all his life and I think he made it.

He spent 20 years in China making research on human fossiles and he concluded that human was evolution itself and we were heading to omega point that Kuzweil calls singularity. The Vatican asked him to never release his book(which he did, it was release by his friends after his death), because they were affraid how convincing it was especially for young generations. He arrived in the same conclusion of Kurzweil and Neuman... If they are right the USA will be the last superpower before the singularity comes and then...only god knows ;)
GW at 02:34 PM JST - 12th July

This god dude, if he/she/it exists, really likes to screw around with this planet dont they, must laughing he/she/its ass off
teaabe at 05:37 AM JST - 21st July

everyone has their ups and downs. there are no exceptions. china and india are supposed to be the largest economies on earth because they are so friggen populous...
westurn at 10:16 AM JST - 21st July

The USA is the worlds most powerful nation not because of anything it produces, but because of the ingenuity and creativity of the people and the laws and freedoms that make up it culture. The US is a multi-raced nation that works better than any other on the planet. Until other nations come to grips with their closet racist attitudes (see the Brits and Germans for example, or the Japanese and Koreans) they will never be able to become a powerful influence on this planet !