The future of American power: how America can survive the rise of the rest.

Mattox, Henry E.

www.foreignaffairs.org/20080501facomment87303/fareed-zakaria/the-future-of-american-power.html

By Fareed Zakaria

Reviewed by Henry E. Mattox, contributing editor

Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International, presents in this lengthy essay a comparison of the British Empire at the turn of the twentieth century and the United States in the early 2000s. Given that there are a number of special circumstances and exceptions to all rules, the author opines that Great Britain faced economic competition and financial demands that ultimately led to Britain's loss of its world leadership position. Despite the apparently heavy demands of defense expenditures--including the current costs associated with the Iraq War, the rise of foreign economic competition, and increased U. S. indebtedness abroad--these factors are not comparable to the case of Great Britain a century ago.

The author seeks, rather, in this analysis based on his recently published book The Post-American World, to show that U. S. problems center on political, not economic factors. "[T]he United States is not fundamentally a weak economy or a decadent society. But it has developed a highly dysfunctional politics." The crisis for Britain a century ago had economic origins; the crisis for America, contrary to frequently proffered analyses, has politics as its fundamental basis. The reader will, of course, make his or her own determination as to how convincing Dr. Zakaria makes his perhaps counterintuitive argument.