Event Summary
The Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings (CUSE) hosted Fareed Zakaria, editor of
Newsweek International, for a discussion of his new book
The Post-American World (W. W. Norton & Company, 2008).
In his new book, Zakaria argues that we are experiencing a global transformation on par with the rise of the West beginning in the fifteenth century and the ascent of the United States that began in the nineteenth. According to Zakaria, today we are experiencing “the rise of the rest,” the shift in political and economic power to other nations, particularly China and India, that is reshaping the international order. He looks closely at how both Western and indigenous influences are shaping the emergence of these powers, and considers the impediments to American leadership and strategies for overcoming those obstacles.
Mr. Zakaria was joined by Brookings President Strobe Talbott, author of the recently published The Great Experiment: From Tribes to Global Nations (Simon & Schuster, 2008), which examines the history of the ideas and reality of global governance and the needs for adaptation to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. CUSE Director and Brookings Senior Fellow Daniel Benjamin moderated the discussion.