Still the one.(Book review)

The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakaria (Norton, 288 pp., $25.95)

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THUCYDIDES, Virgil, Toynbee, Macaulay, Gibbon, and other great chroniclers of rising and falling would probably agree that every great state, empire, civilization, or even system carries within itself the seeds of its own decline. But the modern colossus of the post-World War II international system that was created and dominated by the United States is surely a unique case: At the core of this system is the notion that, even as the U.S. creates and exports a set of rules and norms in its own interest, the country is forced to lose relative power and stature precisely so that it can continue to advance. The political and economic framework upheld by the U.S. over the past 60-odd years purposefully spurred the growth and prosperity of the partners whose increasing share of global power is the subject of Fareed Zakaria's new book.

Zakaria, big-think author and editor of Newsweek International, posits that in every possible sphere of influence and power outside of the politico-military, the age of American imperium is over and America will henceforth share the leadership role in world events with other players. Much as several professional-sports leagues tweaked their rules over the past 30 years to induce competitive parity, Zakaria's "post-American" world will feature an international system in which the U.S. will have to share the rule-setting role it controlled for so long.

What to do about it? Zakaria tells us, in essence, to get over it and enjoy it. "This hybrid international system--more democratic, more dynamic, more open, more connected--is one we are likely to live with for several decades." After all, the American push for free markets and political pluralism has produced a world trending steadily away from the major-state conflicts that made the last century so bloody, and a global economy in which almost all major players and most minor ones simultaneously benefit. The pie is growing for everyone, and while America's relative share is smaller as a result, its share is still enough to keep it on top, for now.

Zakaria's thesis has been unfairly bashed in some quarters as declinist, but I think he gives the U.S. more than its due in an increasingly competitive world. While he charts the economic and soft-power rise of the EU, India, and China, he notes the seemingly enduring American advantages in productivity, demographics, R&D, and overall economic and cultural vibrancy that will keep the other comers just that for a good half century or more.

More important, he notes that the U.S.'s relative decline "need not be large-scale, rapid, or consequential, as long as the United States can adapt to new challenges as well as it adapted to those it confronted over the last century." For Zakaria, that adaptation means policies that leverage America's economic advantages and minimize or fix its dysfunctional political tendencies. These latter give us bull-headed exceptionalism of several kinds, ranging from resurgent economic populism on one hand to unilateral crockery-breaking on the other.