Zakaria Book Report

Overview : Hey it’s a pretty good book!

Complex historical phenomena are not easily broken down into neatly summarized segments, fit for mass consumption. It is even more difficult to link these intricate webs of interaction into a coherent linear narrative that can be published in a “New York Times” best-seller format. Fareed Zakaria however seems to have managed this task beautifully in his new book “The Post American World”. As a history major, desensitized to slogging through hours of dense and dry historical analysis, I rarely give credence to books that are designed for popular consumption. While some of this attitude is certainly nothing more than intellectual snobbishness, I usual feel that is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to capture even a glimpse of the countless levels of correlation and inter-connectivity that stand behind what Zakaria and others term “paradigm shifts” While the use of this term itself has become almost cliché (in no small part due to the number of business authors who misuse it), Zakaria is able to do an incredible job of summarizing the well-studied events and people in the past few centuries while at the same time capturing a very decent picture of the driving forces behind them.

Zakaria is by no means flawless at this process and there are many places in which he glosses over or downplays significant factors. This is especially true when he is discussing the Middle East. Zakaria may want to purposely downplay his analysis of this area due to his Muslim heritage. However, I think that sections describing both the British administration of the area and the current American difficulties in the region, were simplified to the point of being non relevant to his argument. In fact these weak points would be perfect areas for critics of Zakaria’s point of view to attack.

Significance….
Zarakia attempts in this book to convince Americans that we should not fear greater immigration, the “rise of rest”, and the inexorable trends toward increasing global inter- connectivity. By doing this he argues (locking our nation into a defensive closed and hostile land, aka. “Fortress America”), we are robbing ourselves of some of the most vital sustenance to America's one and only remaining global advantage: Creativity. Rather, the country should position itself to be an international mediator and knowledge broker, using its leverage on the global stage to facilitate trade, cooperation and collective progress between countries. Zakaria calls this the “Bismarck” example, maintaining that only America has the power become the world’s “fair broker”.

This book has made me feel more patriotic than I have in YEARS. While much is heard regarding the degradation of America’s public school, declining math scores, and tales of derangement and decrepitude from all corners of society, we very rarely hear the things that we ARE good at. Innovation, research, ingenuity, persistence, good will, the list of positive American attributes that Zakaria brings to his book is long. But far from merely patting the American public on the back, he is able to clearly analyze and articulate the primary reason for Americas inability to translate these positive national attributes into tangible gains on the world stage.

And The Reason IS…
The US Government. More specifically Washington D.C., and the decrepit, ignorant, and
provincial partisans who run it. Historians have long been cynical enough to step beyond the idolatry of the ancient and creaky two-party system that America lauds as “democracy”. If our type of dysfunctional democracy is the brand that America wishes to export, the world will be in grave danger should it actually adopt it. Despite the clarity of this knowledge, history professors, in conjunction with all other educators, seem to fall all over themselves in their desire to get young people involved in politics… to “get out the vote”. If the vote is for one dysfunctional backward politician over another, red over blue, may we ask why? More importantly, if willing and capable politicians are not able to make forward progress due to the dysfunction of the system itself, can the system even be changed by voting? Can our system act upon itself in a democratic manner, evolve and change itself? This cynic thinks it is not likely, however lest this digress into a diatribe regarding the American political system, I will end by saying the Zakaria has come to the very heart of the grave danger that is facing our nation.

If we are not able to oust these graying relics of the Victorian Era from our government
and institute policy based on rational progress rather than manipulated popular opinion, we will most certainly be known to history as a nation that went extinct because it could not adapt. An overly rigid bureaucracy has been the cause of the destruction of many great empires… the Romans most notably come to mind. If political systems are not able to shift and evolve over time they are not able to survive. American “democracy” is not different in this regard and America would do well to take a lesson from China which in 1979 was able successfully adapt its political ideology and open itself to more capitalism. If China had not hybridized it would have followed the Soviet Union into quick oblivion. What America has not yet learned is that the forces that worked on the destruction of the Soviet empire are also at work on its own. With the “rise of the rest” global hegemony has become a dream made impossible, regardless of ideology.