I'm somewhat disappointed so far in my reading of Fareed Zakaria's latest book, the Post American World. It's leaving me with a bit of that feel I got from Maury Pauch. I know this is supposed to be invigorating and I get the appeal, but I'm really not learning anything here.
Zakaria is chock full of facts. In fact, the more I listen to him, the more I feel like I'm reading a journalist and not an historian or a foreign policy expert. And that's the difficulty. His narrative doesn't hold together in either an inspiring, challenging or theoretically coherent manner. Mind you, he's not as bad as Friedman, but it's rather the same.
My problem is that Zakaria's frames of reference go back and forth somewhat arbitrarily, and the ideas and events he chooses to highlight to support his points (though he actually makes few) are flattened to equal significance. They come together like talking points for a level of discourse that falls greatly shy of authority. In other words, he'd be a great blogger.
The 'sphere however, or at least the slice under my admittedly limited surveillance, doesn't say much about him or his work. So even I don't have a good deal of comfort in knowing that what I sense is objective. Nevertheless his contribution is substantial, for a journalist. The difficulty is that it has to come out as it does which is in my estimation rather scattershot, but I think that is the unavoidable consequence of his attempt to handle such a huge sweep. And so I think Zakaria is likely to become one of those futurists that Niall Ferguson says needs to study what historians need to know about their own biases. He's likely to be one of those unfortunate souls reality force to eat his words
In one of his opening chapters, for example, Zakaria speaks of the nation state as a relatively new construct and that the US' position as one accentuates, in its decline, the fundamental understanding that non-state actors, ethnicities and religions will play a greater role in the future. He doesn't seem to bother to suggest that nation-states will fight back and ultimately until such time that all these other entities grow standing armies and central banks, all of their political desires will be little more than noise. But then within a dozen pages he counts as a weakness the very insularity of Americans.
Americans rarely benchmark to global standards because they are sure their way must be the best and most advanced. The result is that they are increasingly suspicious of this emerging global era. There is a growing gap between America's worldly business elite and cosmopolitan class on the one hand and the majority of the American people on the other. Without real efforts to bridge it, this divide could destroy America's competitive edge and its political future.
and finally,
We are the only country in the world to issue report cards on every other country's behavior. Washington DC has become a bubble, smug and out of touch with the world outside.
And nobody else is smug, insular and unconcerned with - oh say Western Civilization, which is the point of this thesis, or so it seems to me. But making the world safe for an intellectual elite - those people who actually understand that global climate changes are mostly driven by the new 800 coal fired plants to be in the hungry BRIC world - is nobody's priority. So that puts Zakaria in the unfortunate position of what I think the rock group System of a Down calls 'self-righteous suicide'. Zakaria notes that there is no New World Order, but he doesn't seem (as of yet) appear prepared to throw any moral or civil harnesses around the ambitions of emerging nations. The G7 is stupid and arrogant for putting together a Kyoto Protocol that doesn't take into primary consideration the energy needs for the economic boom in the BRICs. Yeah, so what are the BRICs for preparing to unleash pollution hell on the world just to do what we already did?
Which brings me to my own interesting observation. As citizens we understand that we must defend and protect civil rights and behave with civility in order to be civilized. Note how the following sentence makes no sense. As globalens we understand that we must defend and protect global rights and behave with globality in order to be globalized. Exactly. It makes no sense. But this does. As humans we understand that we must defend and protect human rights and behave with humanity in order to be humanized.
Now it's awfully cosmopolitan to visit China and marvel at the astonishing creation of the Great Wall, and surely a journey to the great city of Benares has its spiritual rewards. But neither of those places generated that thing we understand to be human rights or humanism. And it seems to me that if we are to give license to there being anything better about this post American global future, all of that depends upon those emerging powers to take responsibility for humanism - to build upon what Britain and the United States have built as superpowers. This is not a standard that I percieve Zakaria to be much interested, fascinated as he is by decoupling of the Sierra Madre treasures of the third world. Yes they do have to show us their steenking badges. Let's see if he gets that.
The long arm of history does not necessarily bend towards justice, but it should. I worry that Zakaria's emerging world wants little more than payback and that fact bothers him little.
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