Fareed Zakaria Post American World Book Review

Few would disagree that the previous U.S. administration of George W. Bush Jr. plunged America’s international reputation to an all-time low. Even as the country staggers to recover international goodwill under President Barack Obama, a homegrown credit crisis, captured most strikingly in the collapse of several iconic institutions of American industry like Citigroup and General Motors, has brought the U.S. economy to a standstill. Few would doubt that America will eventually recover from both crises. Be that as it may, the unipolar moment, centered on the preeminence of American power, purse, and presence may well and truly be over, or so we are often told. What powers will take the place of the U.S and how will these new players and forces be configured? This is the question that Fareed Zakaria attempts to answer in his latest tome, The Post-American World.

The continued viability of American global dominance has been the subject of great intellectual debate over the past decade or so. Fareed however, is not interested – at least not explicitly – in contributing to the debate on whether America is still the sole superpower, nor is he keen on using that debate as a point of entry. Indeed, as he makes poignantly clear in the first sentence of the book, his interest is in “the rise of the rest,” and it is only in the final third of the book (circa p.182 onwards) that Fareed ponders “how America will fare in the new world.” The Post-American World begins with the observation that over the last five hundred years, the world has seen three tectonic power shifts: (1) the rise of the Western world that resulted in modernity as we know it (brought on by science and technology, commerce and capitalism, and the agricultural and industrial revolutions); (2) the rise and dominance of the United States towards the end of the