A few days ago I watched Charlie Rose interview Fareed Zakaria. I’ve watched a lot of insightful conversations with Charlie Rose and this conversation with Zakaria is one of the most informative on the topics of geopolitics and globalization which are not typically talked about on mainstream U.S. media. Check it out. It’s a must see.
I think Zakaria is right. The U.S. needs to get its act together before the rest of the world pass it by. I’m optimistic that the next (Democratic) President would get the U.S. back on track. GWBush-style leadership and policies must go away if the U.S. is to adapt to rapid global changes.
ADDENDUM: Check out this excerpt from Fareed Zakaria’s book, The Post-American World. I’m looking forward to reading it.
""Whirl is king, having driven out Zeus," wrote Aristophanes 2,400
years ago. 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.
"Look around. The world’s
tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest
publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being
constructed in India.
Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest
investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie
industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American
icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in
Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in
gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its
favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted
that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn’t
make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world’s
ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit
silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would
have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.
"These factoids reflect
a seismic shift in power and attitudes. It is one that I sense when I
travel around the world. 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." [read more]
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