U.S Dopers, what do you think of Fareed Zakaria’s article ??
please state your views/comments…
Bookmarked for later. Seven pages ?! 
Yes ! I believe it is the coverstory for latest issue… 
I find his analytical skills good, and read his articles regularly.
I’ll be honest I didn’t read the whole thing, but I think I got the gist of it and I largely agree with it with a few points of disagreement.
I think that many countries are following the “American” model of empire building. There have always been Empires of various states tribes and countries, and to borrow a joke from Eddie Izzard, powerful people and states have always celebrated their growing status by starting a war of conquest that lasts until enough people are against them that they lose it all.
But by 1880 or so most of the conquerable had been claimed, and starting wars of conquest had started to become unfashionable. And that’s right about when(after the mess of the civil war had been cleaned up) a gangly adolecent with lots of potential,wanted to prove itself to the big boys(Mostly Europe at that time). Invention combined with ambition and America rapidly Industrialized and created a new type of global power based on sheer manufacturing capability. And demonstrating national-worth with grand creations and the tallest buildings being part of the psyche.
That Manufacturing capability combined geographical isolation spared from devestation in WWI and WWII, dumped the U.S. suddenly out in the 40’s-50’s as the most powerful nation in the world, threatened only by Russia. And it become a three pronged war of accidental conquest. The became the most sophisticated and powerful, leaving a sense of invulnerability. The Corporate economic model, bought and sold entire conutries almost, and the only way to compete was to create a similar economic model. And Hollywood and T.V, with the newest technology, spread the knowledge “American culture” all over the world in a way so much more effiecently than the ancient cutural centers of greece, Rome, or Venice, etc, cound never have done. And it all culminated in landing on the Moon, the ultimate achievement of humanity to date in many minds.
Then around '89 when the Soviet Union fell, We got to stand alone on top of the mountain, with no foreseeable threat. An increasing percentage of the population(of the world too)had never lived a moment of doubt in their lives that America was the most powerful in the world.
And we couldn’t figure out what to do, … Invent new threats to fight?( Drugs, terrorism, Aids), Improve culture?(gourmet food movement, micro-brew explosion, award winning domestic wine) etc.
Other countries are coming to power and looking to prove themselves in the same world in which territorial conquest is not an option. The tremendous natural and human resources in China and India. The enormous financial power of the Middle east.
It’s only a natural National instinct to bang on your chest and shout to the world you belong with the big boys. And the Internet is quickly destroying the entire idea of a cultural center anyway, with creativity being possble from anywhere to anywhere.
My only real bone to pick with the Article is the subtle fearmongering undercurrent of ‘Watch out, America will become a second rate nation!’. That’s bullshit, at least in the near future. What may happen, and in my opinion is inevitable and pretty much true now, is that America will not stand head and shoulders above everyone else. And I think that is probably a good thing.
I found the article to be thoroughly fixated with wealth as power, and it seems to assume that a continuation of peace is a function of prosperity, rather than the other way around. That’s an extraordinarily foolish approach, and one common to a particular strain of vaguely nouveau riche utopian idealism. It’s even more highlighted by his suggestion that countries be included in the UNSC based on…wealth? N___a, please. Get a real army, prove you can use it, call us back. I’d put Australia, Japan, Canada, or Poland at the UNSC before Brazil or India.
His focus on the China/Brazil/India economic rise seems to forget that Americans have seen all this before; Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia…every decade some nice foreign country takes advantage of global peace to enter the industrialized world and become prosperous, and every decade the West in general and America in specific is told by various media outlets that we must panic lest we be left behind. And every decade, that nice country goes back to what they were doing before they all owned microwaves, which is usually nothing of profound global importance. On a personal level, I’d be fine with the faltering of American global hegemony, even if economic collapse were the cause of it. Well, maybe that’s because I’m a corporate bankruptcy attorney, but still.
Anyway, decent article but, you know. Same old, same old.