Free The Post-American World: Release 2.0 by Fareed Zakaria Page B

refueling stop in New Delhi as the Iranian leader was returning home from a visit to Sri Lanka. The Indian government immediately issued a formal invitation and turned the six-hour stop into a state visit.
    The current state of the IMF and the World Bank also provides a useful lesson. These institutions, dominated by U.S. ideas and money, have long been seen as vehicles for American influence. And today, Setser writes, “emerging economies like China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Korea, and even Brazil not only do not need the IMF; they increasingly are in a position to compete with it. Saudi Arabia already backstops Lebanon. Venezuela helped Argentina repay the IMF. Chinese development financing provides an alternative to World Bank lending.”
    For an even better example of just how profound the changes associated with the rise of the rest will be, reread the coverage of the November 2008 G-20 summit in Washington, D.C., which took place during the tensest days of the global financial crisis. Every prior crisis had been handled by the IMF, the World Bank, or the G-7 (and, later, the G-8). In past crises, the West played the part of the stern schoolteacher rebuking a wayward classroom. The lessons the teachers imparted now seem discredited. Recall that during the Asian financial crisis the United States and other Western countries demanded that the Asians take three steps—let bad banks fail, keep spending under control, and keep interest rates high. In its own crisis, the West did exactly the opposite on all three fronts.
    Economics is not a zero-sum game—the rise of other players expands the pie, which is good for all—but geopolitics is a struggle for influence and control. As other countries become more active, America’s enormous space for action will inevitably diminish. Can the United States accommodate itself to the rise of other powers, of various political stripes, on several continents? This does not mean becoming resigned to chaos or aggression; far from it. But the only way for the United States to deter rogue actions will be to create a broad, durable coalition against them. And that will be possible only if Washington can show that it is willing to allow other countries to become stakeholders in the new order. In today’s international order, progress means compromise. No country will get its way entirely. These are easy words to write or say but difficult to implement. They mean accepting the growth in power and influence of other countries, the prominence of interests and concerns. This balance—between accommodation and deterrence—is the chief challenge for American foreign policy in the next few decades.
    Another Kind of Bubble

    I began this chapter by arguing that the new order did not herald American decline, because I believe that America has enormous strengths and that the new world will not throw up a new superpower but rather a diversity of forces that Washington can navigate and even help direct. But still, as the rest of the world rises, in purely economic terms, America will experience relative decline. As others grow faster, its share of the pie will be smaller (though the shift will likely be small for many years). In addition, the new nongovernmental forces that are increasingly active will constrain Washington substantially.
    This is a challenge for Washington but also for everyone else. For almost three centuries, the world has been undergirded by the presence of a large liberal hegemon—first Britain, then the United States. These two superpowers helped create and maintain an open world economy, protecting trade routes and sea lanes, acting as lenders of last resort, holding the reserve currency, investing abroad, and keeping their own markets open. They also tipped the military balance against the great aggressors of their ages, from Napoleon’s France, to Germany, to the Soviet Union. For all its abuses of power, the United States has been the creator and sustainer of the