Post-Americanism

My global wanderings have taken me to just four countries outside the "Western" world. In Thailand, I saw a country that was rapidly developing and "Westernizing", but still clinging to many of its Eastern traditions and characteristics. In Cambodia, I saw a poor nation still trying to rise up and start again from the murderous Pol Pot regime, a nations still struggling after 30 years of civil war. But, even in Cambodia, where (according to Wikipedia) 50 percent of its highways are still not paved, I saw pockets of developed wealth. I noticed, too, how the Chinese ($448 million in 2005) and Japanese ($22 million in 2007) governments were investing in Cambodia's millions of acres of undeveloped land and in the country's prized and ancient ruins of Angkor. Vietnam is on the crux of a boom in development (named a developing hot spot by a new CoreNet Global report). Laos seems to be the only country in that corner which, though influenced by Western travelers, still retains a seemingly pristine and untouched, native atmosphere. Raw, rich, beautiful. Yet, not for long I fear. Laos is getting its fair share of investment and I think it's only a matter of time before what's going on behind the scenes starts reshaping and developing this natural wonder. Luang Prabang is one city already ruined by tourists, save the street-side, all-you-can-eat veggie buffet that costs pocket change.

That's just my small understanding of what's going on in one small corner of the non-Western world. And it just goes to show, Fareed Zakaria is on to something when he speaks of post-Americanism in Newsweek. We're seeing movings and shakings in the rest of the world, many of which are occurring far outside America's sphere of influence:

Americans are glum at the moment, but the facts on the ground-unemployment numbers, foreclosure rates, deaths from terror attacks -- are simply not dire enough to explain the present atmosphere of malaise, writes Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria in his forthcoming book, "The Post-American World," which is excerpted on the cover of the current issue of Newsweek. "American anxiety springs from something much deeper, a sense that large and disruptive forces are coursing through the world," Zakaria writes. "In almost every industry, in every aspect of life, it feels like the patterns of the past are being scrambled ... And-for the first time in living memory -- the United States does not seem to be leading the charge. Americans see that a new world is coming into being, but fear it is one being shaped in distant lands and by foreign people."

He writes, "In America, we are still debating the nature and extent of anti-Americanism. One side says that the problem is real and worrying and that we must woo the world back. The other says this is the inevitable price of power and that many of these countries are envious -- and vaguely French -- so we can safely ignore their griping. But while we argue over why they hate us, 'they' have moved on, and are now far more interested in other, more dynamic parts of the globe. The world has shifted from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism."

Over the last two decades, lands outside of the industrialized West have been growing at rates that were once unthinkable, Zakaria writes in the excerpt in the May 12 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, May 5). "While there have been booms and busts, the overall trend has been unambiguously upward ... This is something much broader than the much-ballyhooed rise of China or even Asia. It is the rise of the rest -- the rest of the world," he writes.

"We are living through the third great power shift in modern history. The first was the rise of the Western world, around the 15th century. It produced the world as we know it now -- science and technology, commerce and capitalism, the industrial and agricultural revolutions. It also led to the prolonged political dominance of the nations of the Western world. The second shift, which took place in the closing years of the 19th century, was the rise of the United States. Once it industrialized, it soon became the most powerful nation in the world, stronger than any likely combination of other nations.

"For the last 20 years, America's superpower status in every realm has been largely unchallenged -- something that's never happened before in history, at least since the Roman Empire dominated the known world 2,000 years ago. During this Pax Americana, the global economy has accelerated dramatically. And that expansion is the driver behind the third great power shift of the modern age -- the rise of the rest.

"At the military and political level, we still live in a unipolar world. But along every other dimension -- industrial, financial, social, cultural -- the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance. In terms of war and peace, economics and business, ideas and art, this will produce a landscape that is quite different from the one we have lived in until now -- one defined and directed from many places and by many peoples."