Swat Valley, Pakistan
Learning to Live With Radical Islam
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek, March 9, 2009
Edited by Andy Ross
Pakistan's Swat valley is often compared to Switzerland for its stunning
landscape of mountains and meadows. Over the past two years, as Taliban fighters
waged fierce battles against Army troops, Swat became a war zone.
The militants are bad people and this is bad news. But how exactly should we
oppose them? It's worth stepping back and trying to understand the phenomenon of
Islamic radicalism.
It is not just in the Swat valley that Islamists are on the rise. But not all
Islamists advocate global jihad, host terrorists, or launch operations against
the outside world. Most Taliban want Islamic rule locally, not violent jihad
globally.
Radical Islam has gained a powerful foothold in the Muslim imagination. The
chief reason is the failure of Muslim countries to develop, politically or
economically. Pakistan cannot provide security, justice, or education for many
of its citizens.
The Swat valley was historically a peaceful place that had autonomy within
Pakistan and practiced a moderate version of Sharia. In 1969, Pakistan's laws
were formally extended to the region, but dysfunctional rule meant that the
government lost credibility.
American Predator strikes in Pakistan have convinced much of the local
population that it's under attack from America and produced a nationalist
backlash. A few Qaeda operatives die, but public support for the battle against
extremism drops.
Our armed opposition to Muslim fundamentalists has made this whole enterprise
feel very much like a clash of civilizations. Across the entire North African
region, the United States and other Western powers are supporting secular
autocrats who claim to be battling Islamist opposition forces. In return, those
rulers have done little to advance genuine reform.
Many Islamists might prove useful in the broader struggle against Islamic
terror. Having invaded Iraq, the Americans searched for local allies. But 30
years of Saddam had left only hard-core Islamists as the opposition. The Bush
administration partnered with these groups and acquiesced as they took over most
of southern Iraq. The strict version of Islam that they implemented was quite
similar to what one would find in Iran today.
A strategy like this might work in Afghanistan. Beyond Afghanistan, too, it is
crucial that we adopt a more sophisticated strategy toward radical Islam. This
should come naturally to President Obama, who spoke often on the campaign trail
of the need for just such a differentiated approach toward Muslim countries.
That does not mean we should accept the burning of girls' schools, or the
stoning of criminals. Recognizing the reality of radical Islam is entirely
different from accepting its ideas. We should mount a spirited defense of our
views and values. We should pursue aggressively policies that will make these
values succeed.
Time is on our side. Bin Ladenism has already lost ground in almost every Muslim
country. Radical Islam will follow the same path. Islamists lack answers to the
problems of the modern world. They do not have a world view that can satisfy the
aspirations of modern men and women. We do.
The Rise of the Rest
By
Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek, May 12, 2008
Edited by Andy Ross
Large and disruptive forces are coursing through the world. Americans see that a
new world is coming into being, but fear it is one being shaped in distant lands
and by foreign people.
We are living through the third great power shift in modern history. The first
was the rise of the Western world. It produced science and technology, commerce
and capitalism, the industrial and agricultural revolutions. The second shift
was the rise of the United States. Once it industrialized, it soon became the
most powerful nation in the world. The third great power shift of the modern age
is the rise of the rest.
The post-American world is the result of a series of positive trends that have
created an international climate of unprecedented peace and prosperity. For the
first time ever, most countries around the world are practicing sensible
economics. Poverty is falling in countries that house 80 percent of the world's
population. The global economy has more than doubled in size over the last 15
years. The expansion of the global economic pie has become the dominating force
of the current era.
Global growth is also responsible for some of the biggest problems in the world.
We have witnessed a series of bubbles in East Asian countries, technology
stocks, housing, subprime mortgages, and emerging market equities. Growth also
explains soaring commodity prices. The effect of more and more people eating,
drinking, washing, driving, and consuming will have seismic effects on the
global system.
The most immediate effect of global growth is the appearance of new economic
powerhouses on the scene. For the last several centuries, the richest countries
in the world have all been very small in terms of population. The United States
is the biggest of the bunch and has dominated the advanced industrial world. But
now China and India are on the move and they will have a large footprint on the
map of the future.
In dozens of big countries, one can see the same set of forces at work. But a
growing economy, a resurgent society, a vibrant culture, and a rising sense of
national pride can morph into something uglier. As economic fortunes rise, so
does nationalism. Imagine that your country has been poor and marginal for
centuries. Finally, things turn around and it becomes a symbol of economic
progress and success. You would be proud, and anxious that your people win
recognition and respect throughout the world.
Such divergent national perspectives always existed. But today, thanks to the
information revolution, they are amplified. This raises a conundrum. The
traditional mechanisms of international cooperation are fraying. Arriving at
solutions when more countries and more non-governmental players are feeling
empowered will be hard.
The rise of the rest is one of the most thrilling stories in history.
From:
The Post-American World
By Fareed Zakaria
Norton, 292 pages
After America
By Ian Buruma
The New Yorker, April 21, 2008
Edited by Andy Ross
Fareed Zakaria states that his book is "not about the decline of America but
rather about the rise of everyone else." He argues that the newly rich powers
should be embedded quickly and snugly in international institutions such as the
G8, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization.
Zakaria points out that the world has been getting much richer. Global
capitalism has been a huge success. Far from menacing local cultures, as some
fear, globalization has, by his accounting, been good for cultural diversity.
The problem, Zakaria writes, is that "as economic fortunes rise, so does
nationalism." This is apparent in Russia but it is equally so in China. Zakaria
is inclined to think that rational calculation will ultimately prevail. He
maintains that the Chinese are by nature a pragmatic people.
In fact, ideology has always played a large role in Chinese politics. Like the
Russians, the Chinese leaders are convinced that the chaos and uncertainties of
democracy pose threats to their nation. Chinese and Russian leaders believe in
autocracy.
Zakaria says that China, like India, wants "to gain power and status and
respect, for sure, but by growing within the international system, not by
overturning it. As long as these new countries feel they can be accommodated,
they have every incentive to become 'responsible stakeholders' in this system."
But can powerful autocratic regimes really be accommodated in global economic
institutions?
Zakaria's answer is "consultation, cooperation, and even compromise." What's
needed to perpetuate American supremacy is greater knowledge of the world
outside, a willingness to open the borders to new immigrants, and a policy of
consulting foreign leaders instead of lecturing them or going it alone.
The Chinese may see themselves as a traditional rising power, like Germany and
Japan in the nineteenth century. Compared with Russia and China, the United
States still has overwhelming military might. But a rising power no longer needs
a strong military to secure natural resources.
Russian and Chinese leaders are right to worry about international institutions.
Autocracy has some appeal. The Chinese experiment has antecedents. It's not
surprising that Third World dictators should be attracted to this model. More
worrying is the allure it has even in the democratic West.
In foreign policy, China has a distinct advantage over the United States,
especially after the Iraq misadventure. In some Asian countries, China's
economic success has strengthened the notion that democracy is just another
outmoded Western idea.
India has been a democracy for some six decades, and its relations with the
United States used to be much frostier than America's relations with Pakistan
under military dictators. But things changed after the Cold War. India no longer
needs to play the United States off against the Soviet Union. Instead, it needs
the United States as a counterweight against China.
Japan has also edged closer to India, and shows little sign as yet of wanting to
break away from America's nuclear embrace. If anything, the Japanese are even
more suspicious than the Indians are of a resurgent China.
However fast the economies of new powers are growing,forecasts of their world
domination leave out a great deal. China has a demographic problem compounding
its potentially catastrophic ecological problems. Russia's wealth is dependent
on the price of oil. India might well have staying power, but no one sees it as
a threat to the United States. And Asia could still be violently disrupted by
conflict.
The one nation whose presence still guarantees a measure of stability in Asia is
the United States of America.
Sun Rising on the East
By
Michiko Kakutani
The New York Times, May 6, 2008
Edited by Andy Ross
In 2003, Fareed Zakaria wrote: "It is now clear that the current era can really
have only one name, the unipolar world — an age with only one global power.
America's position today is unprecedented." What worries people around the world
above all else, he wrote, "is living in a world shaped and dominated by one
country — the United States."
Zakaria writes that America remains a politico-military superpower, but "in
every other dimension — industrial, financial, educational, social, cultural —
the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance."
With the rise of China, India and other emerging markets, "we are moving into a
post-American world."
Zakaria uses his wide-ranging fluency in economics, foreign policy and cultural
politics to give the lay reader a lucid picture of a globalized world (and
America's role in it) that is changing at light speed, even as he provides a
host of historical analogies to examine the possible fallout of these changes.
The irony of the "rise of the rest," Zakaria notes, is that it is largely a
result of American ideas and actions. At the same time, America is "becoming
suspicious of the very things we have long celebrated — free markets, trade,
immigration and technological change."
While readers might take recent signs like recession at home, a falling dollar
abroad and a huge trade deficit as suggesting that the American economy is in
trouble, Zakaria asserts that the United States can maintain "a vital, vibrant
economy, at the forefront of the next revolutions in science, technology, and
industry — as long as it can embrace and adjust to the challenges confronting
it."
As Zakaria sees it, the "economic dysfunctions in America today" are the product
not of "deep inefficiencies within the American economy," but of specific
government policies: "A set of sensible reforms could be enacted tomorrow to
trim wasteful spending and subsidies, increase savings, expand training in
science and technology, secure pensions, create a workable immigration process
and achieve significant efficiencies in the use of energy."
Zakaria suggests that the United States should become a kind of "global broker,"
forging close relationships with other major countries, while exchanging the
peremptory, directive-issuing role of a superpower for "consultation,
cooperation, and even compromise."
The central strategic challenge for American diplomacy in the years to come
concerns China. Zakaria suggests that in a world in which "the United States is
seen as an overbearing hegemon," China might well seek to position itself as
"the alternative to a hectoring and arrogant America." As he remarks, "This is a
new challenge for the United States, one it has not tackled before, and for
which it is largely unprepared."
Zakaria contends that "over the last six years, support for bin Laden and his
goals has fallen steadily throughout the Muslim world." Such dubious assertions
distract attention from the many more convincing arguments in this book and the
volume's overall take on the United States' place in a new world in which "the
rest rise, and the West wanes."
The New New World Order
By Stanley Reed
BusinessWeek, May 8, 2008
Edited by Andy Ross
Fareed Zakaria notes that China, India, Brazil, Turkey, and even Saudi Arabia
are growing faster economically than the U.S. They are developing elites and big
corporations that soon will be able to hold their own against American
competitors. Their peoples are gaining access to quality education. In the
coming years, these countries will demand a greater say in how the world is run.
Zakaria argues that the U.S. has squandered opportunities in the past few years.
As a result, he argues, the U.S. is now an enfeebled superpower, and
anti-American sentiment is high "everywhere from Great Britain to Malaysia."
What went wrong? Zakaria says the preeminence of the U.S. following the collapse
of the Soviet Union in 1991 has "made Washington careless, arrogant, and lazy."
He compares U.S. foreign policy to General Motors' 1970s business strategy.
But to thrive in the new global order, the U.S. will have to change its behavior
substantially, becoming more of a "global broker," he argues. "It is not a
top-down hierarchy in which the U.S. makes its decisions and then informs a
grateful (or silent) world."
Can the U.S. adjust? It has great strengths, Zakaria notes, including a
nonpareil higher-education system, which is even better than we give it credit
for being. But he worries that the dysfunctional politics of Washington is
turning Americans against the ideas they have been preaching to the rest of the
world for 60 years.
Zakaria frets that the U.S. will go the way of the British Empire. He fears
historians will someday dwell on the great irony that the rise of other powers
was a result of U.S. actions.
The New New World
By Josef Joffe
The New York Times, May 11, 2008
Edited by Andy Ross
This is a relentlessly intelligent book that eschews simple-minded projections
from crisis to collapse. Yet Zakaria's point is not the demise of Gulliver, but
the "rise of the rest."
The real problem, Zakaria argues, is the rise of China, trailed by India.
China's is indeed the most incredible success story in history. As Zakaria
memorably puts it, "China today exports in a single day more than it exported in
all of 1978." Authoritarian modernization just hums along. The Party's message
reads "Enrich yourselves, but leave the driving to us," and most of 1.3 billion
Chinese seem happy to comply.
Zakaria rightly takes on the old saw to the effect that China produces 600,000
engineers a year, India 350,000 and the United States only 70,000. This is true
if you include "auto mechanics and industrial repairmen" in the Asian totals.
Subtract them, and America "actually trains more engineers per capita than
either India or China does." The larger point is that "higher education is
America's best industry."
China, Japan and Europe are aging rapidly but the United States will remain a
young country way into the 21st century. America has blown wads of political
capital, but it is still better positioned to manage the "rise of the rest" than
its rivals. Europe is rich, but placid and graying. Resurgent Russia is too
grabby. China is more subtle in its ambitions, but still a classic revisionist
that wants more for itself and less for the whole.
The United States retains a "considerable ability to set the agenda," to quote
Zakaria. Maybe it takes a Bombay-born immigrant like Zakaria, who went from Yale
to Harvard and to the top of Newsweek International, to remind this faltering
giant of its strengths.
The Rise of the Rest
Edited by Andy Ross
Fareed Zakaria declares that this is the post-American age. He says his thesis
is not "the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else." America
will retain a prominent position in military and educational realms, but the
rest have already risen.
Zakaria cites the familiar statistics about the growth of India and China, but
also argues that the shift is more than material. For hundreds of years the
definitions of "modernity" and of "Western life" have overlapped heavily —
liberal democracies and open civil society, to name just two components. But
Zakaria argues that the two concepts are splitting.
Zakaria's writing is clear and strong. Zakaria cites a dazzling array of
anecdotes, incidents, quotations, and statistics from individuals around the
world. But when it comes to political analysis, he sticks close to his Manhattan
base. Zakaria could have written a more original book about the power of the
people living beyond America's shores if he had sought out and found more
sources among them.
AR I am a huge fan of Zakaria's GPS show on CNN every Sunday. He has a really sharp mind.
