The American Globe
July 1st, 2008 -- Posted in American Politics | 2 Comments »I was having breakfast this morning when I stumbled upon a discussion Fareed Zakaria was having with a presenter on Sky News about his latest book entitled: “The Post-American World.” This is not an American bashing book otherwise I would not even think about mentioning but rather a critical look at the changing world we find ourselves in and how the United States needs to adapt to this new world order. I have not read the book otherwise I would have written a more comprehensive review but rather I did a quick Google Search after breakfast and found a speech given by Mr. Zakaria at the Commonwealth of California Club on May 27th, 2008. This speech is fairly long so I encourage you to break out the popcorn or at least some sort of snack, but it is most enlightening and informative in terms of content so please do watch the whole discussion.
The author makes a host of valuable points in this video and if I decided to talk about all of them, I would be forced to write another dissertation which I am not inclined to do so at this point. For the next few days I will touch on a few points that he has mentioned in more detail but for today I want to talk about the position of America in the world. It is an undisputed fact that the world is not what it used to be 20 years ago, America used to be the sole power on the global throne but is now forced to share that throne with the likes of China, India and Russia.
This is not a bad change as the author mentions but he correctly calls the media out for fanning the flames of anti-globalization. There are two phrases in this speech that really mean a lot to me: “inter-dependent” and “work together.” Too often every nation put’s its own national interest above those of the global village so much so that we have reached a stalemate with regards to the climate crisis because no matter how much the West goes green, the Indians and the Chinese are going to continue setting up coal power plants to meet the needs of their burgeoning economies. Discussion is never considered because the current administration only talks to countries whose actions affect the national interest which is not global warming since the GOP does not believe in that “hullabaloo.”
Mr. Zakaria suggests and I agree with him on this point that the leadership of America needs to work with the global powers to counter-act threats like global warming, terrorism, and economic depression. America also needs to treat everyone equally rather than holding a standard for it’s allies and a different standard for everyone else. It is throug this change in foreign policy and attitude that America will grow as well as those countries currently driving the global economy.
