I say China should add targeting coordinates at NEWSWEEK. China and India have traded places as the world's largest economy multiple times in their milleniums of history. At its peak China held 30% of world total economic output. At its peak (since past), the US held 25%. With that historical perspective, we can understand why the west is nervous. After all, the west is worry of the evils it did to the world, including unleashing weapons of mass destruction on Japan. I say built more naval facilities and drive the US out because it Asia is for Asians and that is Chairman Deng doctrine. Now tell me what was Monroe Doctrine over at the US. The US has started more wars in its short life than all the wars China started in the last millenium. Seek truth from facts (Deng), and from that the US is the world's greatest threat.
The Rise of the Rest
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
To bring others into this world, the United States needs to make its own commitment to the system clear. So far, America has been able to have it both ways. It is the global rule-maker but doesn't always play by the rules. And forget about standards created by others. Only three countries in the world don't use the metric system—Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States. For America to continue to lead the world, we will have to first join it.
Americans—particularly the American government—have not really understood the rise of the rest. This is one of the most thrilling stories in history. Billions of people are escaping from abject poverty. The world will be enriched and ennobled as they become consumers, producers, inventors, thinkers, dreamers, and doers. This is all happening because of American ideas and actions. For 60 years, the United States has pushed countries to open their markets, free up their politics, and embrace trade and technology. American diplomats, businessmen, and intellectuals have urged people in distant lands to be unafraid of change, to join the advanced world, to learn the secrets of our success. Yet just as they are beginning to do so, we are losing faith in such ideas. We have become suspicious of trade, openness, immigration, and investment because now it's not Americans going abroad but foreigners coming to America. Just as the world is opening up, we are closing down.
Generations from now, when historians write about these times, they might note that by the turn of the 21st century, the United States had succeeded in its great, historical mission—globalizing the world. We don't want them to write that along the way, we forgot to globalize ourselves.
Adapted from The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria. © 2008 by Fareed Zakaria. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
© 2008
Discuss