The world's tallest building rises in Taipei, while the largest factory and shopping mall sprawls in China. Nine of the globe's 10 biggest shopping centers aren't in the United States. The planet's largest casino isn't in Las Vegas -- it's in Macao. Bollywood's bigger than Hollywood -- both for the number of movies made and tickets sold.
So what are Americans to make of these indicators that we're lagging behind? For Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and a frequent guest and commentator on an array of broadcast news programs, these are signs of a global trend of other nations threatening to surpass the United States. And, he says, we'd better do something about it.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, May 30, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 57 words Type of Material: Correction
Fareed Zakaria: An article about Fareed Zakaria in the May 23 Calendar section quoted the author as saying that California "has not built a new campus in decades; meanwhile, it has built new prisons." In fact, California State University opened its Channel Islands campus in 2002 and the University of California opened its Merced campus in 2005.
In his new book, "The Post-American World," Zakaria argues that the U.S. remains the lone global military and political superpower, but, "in every other dimension -- industrial, financial, educational, social, cultural -- the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance."
This, he says, will be the third global "tectonic power shift" in the last 500 years. The first was the rise of Western Europe in the 15th century, producing modernity, science, commerce and the agricultural and industrial revolutions. Then, he says, the world witnessed the American ascent in the late 19th century, with the U.S. domination of global economics, politics, science and culture.
Now Zakaria sees a third great transformation, with China, India and many other developing nations experiencing enormous economic growth, creating a "truly global order" in which huge swaths of the planet no longer serve as others' objects but become players in their own right. Further, power not only will be diffused among nations but also from them to international bodies and nongovernmental organizations. This hybrid system will be more democratic, open, dynamic, free and interconnected, he says, adding that it will prevail as the post-American world for decades.
"Nothing lasts forever," Zakaria said in an interview. "In the late '90s and early 2000s, I was writing of an age of American unipolarity and of the single superpower world. It was a very accurate description of the world that we lived in then. American power has been unrivaled. What I point out now is that this age is coming to an end."
