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The Post-American World
This buttresses Fareed Zakaria’s theory that the great story of our times is "the rise of the rest" – the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa and Kenya, which has been generating a new global landscape. He is not one of those who argue that the US will have to give way to countries like China and India, which have better and sustained growth rates. Nor is he like those who feared that Japan would overtake the US as the world’s largest economy when Japanese companies began buying landmark American buildings like the Rockefeller Center. Far from that, he argues, pretty convincingly, that the US will remain the world’s largest economy for decades to come. In terms of the quality of higher education, the money spent on research, the number of patents registered and the values the American people cherish, the US will continue to remain in the vanguard. The recent Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) waiver for India would not have happened if the US had not put pressure on all those countries, including China, which tried to block India’s admission to the world’s elite nuclear club. If anything, it showed Pax-Americana was still at work. Zakaria, a first-generation immigrant to the US, grew up in India at a time when a telephone connection was considered a sign of prosperity and allotment of a Bajaj Chetak scooter under the NRI quota was considered an achievement in life. Today nobody would bat an eyelid when a ragpicker is found chatting on the mobile while doing his job in Mumbai where the author grew up. Similarly, Zakaria would have faced some problem in getting adequate foreign exchange when he first shifted to the US as a student. Today anybody going abroad can buy substantial sums of foreign exchange from any bank at the airport. These dramatic changes in India were made possible by the economic liberalisation and the consistent 8 per cent-plus growth rate. Of course, India is not the only country that has been growing in this manner. China, which underwent a revolution around the time India got Independence, has overtaken India in all economic spheres. Any visitor to that country would be dazzled by the construction activity there; the fastest trains would soon be in China, not Japan. If, in the 19th century, Britain was considered the workshop of the world, in the 21st century, there is hardly an item that is not "Made in China". However, China cannot be said to have arrived until things "Designed in China" and "Imagined in China" become a reality. Yet the sweeping changes that occurred are too glaring to go unnoticed. Says Zakaria, "Once quintessentially American icons have been appropriated by foreigners. The world’s largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. Its No. 1 casino is not in Las Vegas but in Macao, which has also overtaken Vegas in annual gambling revenues. The biggest movie industry, in terms of both movies made and tickets sold, is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Even shopping, America’s greatest sporting activity, has gone global. Of the top 10 malls in the world, only one is in the US; the world’s biggest is in Beijing." Zakaria uses his historical grasp to argue that one reason why Great Britain lost its leadership position was on account of the failure of its education system to keep up with the trends. While it focused on art, classical literature and history in the 19th century, the New World took to science and technology, like Europe did during the Industrial Revolution. He blames the evangelicals who forced the British government to pursue an agenda that was not exactly in its economic interest. Take the case of William Wilberforce (1759-1833), dubbed the "God’s politician". Convinced of the importance of religion, morality and education, he championed causes and campaigns such as the Society for Suppression of Vice, British missionary work in India, the creation of a free colony in Sierra Leone, the foundation of the Church Mission Society and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The underlying conservatism of the evangelicals led them to support politically and socially repressive legislation, and resulted in criticism that they were ignoring injustices at home while campaigning for the enslaved abroad. Zakaria’s thesis is that if Britain had continued allowing the Warren Hastings and the Robert Clives of the East India Company to loot, it would not have suffered any economic decline. Doubtless, he does not see any such signs of decline in the US, except, perhaps, in the political sphere. The drubbings the US receives in Iraq and Afghanistan have been at the cost of its image as the world’s policeman. Equally important, more and more countries are now depending less and less on the US for their growth. The Tatas can produce the world’s cheapest car Nano, sell it only in India and still make a profit. "Increasingly, the growth of newcomers is being powered by their own markets, not simply by exports to the West – which means this is not an ephemeral phenomenon". Unlike many Western commentators, Zakaria does not see the Islamists as a great threat. For all its bravado as the most ferocious Islamic outfit challenging the West, the Al-Qaida has been reduced to no more than a communication agency producing videos of threat. "When Muslims travel, they flock by the millions to see the razzle-dazzle of Dubai, not the seminaries of Iran. The minority that wants jihad is real, but it operates within societies where such activities are increasingly unpopular and irrelevant". For all its fear of the unknown and insularity, he says the US "will remain a vital, vibrant economy, at the forefront of the next revolutions in science, technology and industry – as long as it can embrace and adjust to the challenges confronting it". The question is how the US adapts to the changing realities of a multi-polar world in which countries like India and Brazil would successfully question the US in forums like the WTO.
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ONE
significant lesson from the recent Beijing Olympics was that the rise of
China had not been at the expense of the US. While China scored a
perfect century with the maximum gold medals, the US made a larger haul
of 110 medals. If at all any nation had challenged the US supremacy, it
was tiny Jamaica, whose performance in athletics had been nothing but
spectacular.