By Fareed Zakaria
Fareed Zakaria does not have a crystal ball by which he views the future, but he does offer keen insight born of a global look and careful thought.
About the author:
Fareed Zakaria is the host of the CNN’s flagship international affairs show, Fareed Zakaria GPS, a weekly columnist for the Washington Post, and the best-selling author of The Post-American World and The Future of Freedom. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a doctorate in political science from Harvard University, and has received numerous honorary degrees.
The book in a sentence (or more):
Zakaria contends that life post-Cold War settled into an international system marked by three forces, one geopolitical (American power), one economic (free markets), and one technological (the Information Revolution). That “stable” system is not unalterable. Three “asymmetric shocks—things that start out small but end up sending seismic waves around the world—have upset the calm: 9/11, the crash of 2008, and the coronavirus (9). Global shockwaves are a part of living in a global community. 10 Lessons For A Post-Pandemic World is Zakaria’s attempt to understand the consequences of the pandemic for this international system in which we live.
My quick take on 10 Lessons For A Post-Pandemic World:
There is no denying the author’s grasp of world affairs and America’s challenges in them. Zakaria defies political labeling, but his views of the Trump administration’s handling of them are clearly negative. That said, this is not a book about Trump. It is one of the things I appreciate about Dr. Zakaria. Born in India, educated in the U.S., with a resume stuffed with high-level international assignments, Zakaria will take you across the globe, offering insight (well-researched insight, more than 70 pages of endnotes) and commentary from one who as an American citizen and enjoying the fruit of American hegemony, is not beholden or bowing to it.
Overview and Analysis:
With apologies in advance to the good doctor, here is my paltry summation of his 10 Lessons:
Lesson 1: Buckle Up
Our world system is open, fast, and unstable (14). Relentless change and increasing speed encourage greater risks. Zakaria notes antibiotic-resistant bacteria (a consequence of an attempt to “produce” 80 billion animals for world meat consumption), and diminishing topsoil coupled with decreasing water (a consequence of a growing agribusiness) are two challenges for a world moving at warp speed. We must not lose sight of prevention and preparation. We have built a super car without airbags and have given little thought to the horizon. Buckle up!
Lessons 2: What Matters is Not the Quantity of Government but the Quality
Zakaria (who is anti-big government) writes, “For many decades, the world needed to learn from America. But now America needs to learn from the world. And what it most needs to learn about is government—not big or small but good government” (55). This was an interesting chapter. The author offered a brief history of good government. He acknowledged American exceptionalism while pointing out the challenges inherent in our anti-statist tradition. “America is, in its DNA, an anti-statist country. The Right comes at it by defunding government. The Left does it by encumbering it with so many rules and requirements that it has a similar dysfunctional effect” (51). The Atlantic and Pacific coupled with our rich reserves and powerful military have shielded the U.S. “from the consequences of government that consistently executes badly” (54). Humble up! Learn from other countries.
Lesson 3: Markets Are Not Enough
If any talk of socialism is the proverbial fingernails on the chalkboard, get some ear protection. This chapter may seem a contradiction to the last, but I don’t think so. His premise is that the free-market economy, as good as it is, favors the upper-income sector. America has rescued big companies (e.g., GM) and “yet calls to spend a few billion on preschool or low-income housing are repeatedly met with concerns about . . . giving people handouts” (65). The pandemic revealed the inequity in American health care, the consequence of a pay-to-play society. Zakaria touts the social benefits of Denmark, but with taxes adding up to 45% of its GDP, no thank you. I would read this chapter with a copy of Thomas Sowell’s Discrimination and Disparities and Basic Economics by my side.
Lesson 4: People Should Listen to the Experts—and Experts Should Listen to the People
Zakaria pulls no punches here regarding President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus. He offers a smattering of praise and a heaping portion of criticism, essentially knocking (and with some good reason), the arrogance of Trump relative to the virus in general and responses from public health officials in particular. I would have loved for the author to apply the same criticism he did of Trump to alternative covid treatments (“I feel good about it”) and to the current situation surrounding gender dysphoria. I was disappointed that he signaled out FOX as a partisan source of news but did not offer similar criticism regarding partisanship of other networks, including CNN and CNBC. While I appreciated his criticisms and cautions regarding the current wave of populism, I felt his dependence on “experts” because they have aced tests, graduated from “the best schools” (no explanation as to what makes them the best) and work in places that value excellence was illogical. Bias ruins the ignorant and the informed.
Lesson 5: Life Is Digital
Digital is the new norm. Data is the new oil. But software is what gives data impact. Those that miss the technological trend (Kodak) are left behind. Technology has made a world interconnected. The pandemic only accelerated this shift, but not without drawbacks: Loss of jobs, loss of community, and loss of a bifurcated work/life balance. Artificial Intelligence (AI) gives concern to the rise of the machines. Do we really want the George Jetson lifestyle? The negative implications of digital mentioned above also include diminishing employment and purpose. Zakaria tips his worldview card here: “But if AI produces better answers than we can without revealing its logic, then we will be going back to our species’ childhood and relying on faith. We will worship artificial intelligence that, as was said of God, works in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform” (118). His conclusion about a digital impact: A smartphone in my pocket may let me reach out and touch the world, “And yet, I have never mistaken it for a friend” (121). Grow technologically, grow humanly.
Lesson 6: Aristotle Was Right—We are Social Animals
Cities can be a hotbed for virus spread, but they do not have to be. Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taipei all handled it well. In 1800, there were just two cities with a least one million inhabitants; there were 371 by 2000, and projections point to more than 700 by 2030. Aristotle said, man is by nature a “social animal,” seeing cities as the places where the fullest experience of humanity takes place. “Humans create cities and cities make humans—these are two sides of the same coin” (146). Covid-19 will not stop this. The American culture of independence will make it difficult to achieve the effectiveness of battling the pandemics of the future as well as more insular cultures, but we can and must learn to do so. People are social and the world continues to move toward the city.
Lesson 7: Inequality Will Get Worse
Pandemics should be equalizers as infectious diseases are “people blind,” but the income inequality gap between the rich and the poor indicates that is not the case. The poor were hit harder. Initially, under-developed countries were less affected by the virus initially, most likely due to distance and climate. But as the virus spread, it devastated poorer areas. Density and poor sanitation contributed to the spread. Zakaria identifies the inequality between rich and poor and bemoans the inequity of congressional tax breaks that favor the rich (160). He provides interesting statistics but fails to address any root cause of poverty other than poverty. Governmental responsibility is touted, but personal-responsibility is assumed. Income disparity is addressed, but not the family breakdown that contributes to it.
Lesson 8: Globalization Is Not Dead
Globalization—we are all connected. Writing of the pandemic and globalization, Zachary Karabell notes, “We are likely to find fresh confirmation of what we already know about globalization: that it’s easy to hate, convenient to target and impossible to stop” (169). Globalization isn’t going away. The pandemic fuels cries for isolation-minded policies and high tariffs (and Trump is highly criticized here), but global interconnectedness touted early by Adam Smith and made more essential due to digitization and off-shore manufacturing is here to stay. Investments, goods, information, and people are constantly in world-wide motion. We need to harness it, not run from it, even as the U.S. and China vie as the dominant players on the world stage.
Lesson 9: The World Is Becoming Bipolar
The bi-polarity he describes is that between the U.S. and China as the world superpowers, albeit America is the stronger economically and militarily and will be at least until 2060 (Zakaria’s latest projection). What makes it a bi-polar world is that the U.S. and China are so far ahead of their competitors. I found his discussion of “declinists” very intriguing. Samuel Huntington coined the world in response to cries of American decline. He cites five waves to which the author adds a sixth: (1) Soviet launch of Sputnik, (2) The 1960’s US quagmire in Vietnam, (3) Oil shock of 1973, (4) Watergate hangover and stagflation of the late 70s, (5) Rise of Japan in the late 80s (when Huntington wrote), (6) Iraq War, 2008 financial crisis, and Covid-19. For the first five, no matter the dire predictions, they never came true. America bounced back. Signs point to America’s continued strength due to its economic heft. The problem lies in “soft power,” its appeal and capacity to set the world agenda. That is in decline. How does that bode for America in the days ahead, with China more and more a global player with a desire for a global voice? Is a new Cold War with China inevitable? This was a very interesting chapter, especially as Zakaria got “into the weeds” on geo-political trade and economics. His conclusion: “Bipolarity is inevitable. A cold war is a choice” (209).
Lesson 10: Sometimes the Greatest Realists Are the Idealists
The pandemic has separated nations that have enjoyed seventy-five years of relative peace into pockets of “cynics, contemptuous of the idealism that got us to where we are” (211). “The United States was the most powerful country in the world when it built the UN and the web of associated international organizations, all of which constrained America’s unilateral power.” It acted very selflessly to create a stable global system, a system that is now being erased by cries of “America first.” America of the past helped construct a world system that was more equitable even as it faced opposition from the Soviet Union. A similar scene is being played out today, this time with China as the primary competitor, but our response has been more insular and unilateral under the Trump administration. Will America retreat, adopting an isolationist mindset, or will it work globally and cooperatively as the leading world player as it has in the past seven decades? “It is not a flight of fancy to believe that cooperation can change the world. It is common sense” (233). A very interesting chapter.
Conclusion: Nothing Is Written
Fareed Zakaria closes his book with a nod to the film, Lawrence of Arabia. At two points in the film, the chief Arab leader, Sherif Ali (played by Omar Sharif) says of a future which appears bleak, “Nothing is written.” In other words, there are many futures in front of us. He quotes Otto von Bismarck, “The statesman’s task is to hear God’s footsteps marching through history, and to try and catch on to His coattails as He marches past” (240). So it is our opportunity and challenge to take the opportunity in front us and forge a better post-pandemic world.
The author piqued my curiosity about these books:
Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War
McEwan, Ian, Machines Like Me
Forster, E.M. The Machine Stops
Words to ponder:
1. Conflict: “War made the state and the state made war.” Charles Tilly in “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” in The Formation of National States in Western Europe, edited by Charles Tilly (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), 45.
2. Government: “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” Ronald Reagan
3. Understanding people: FDR was the most powerful man of his times. He also knew what it was like to feel powerless. A story (apocryphal?) captures his ability to connect with the common man. During FDR’s funeral procession, a mourner collapsed overcome with grief. Someone helped him up and asked why he was in such pain. Did he know the president? “No,” the man replied. “But he knew me” (95).
4. The Enlightenment: “Man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.” Immanuel Kant in “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” (September 30, 1784), trans. Marcy C. Smith
5. Life and death: “At the end, regardless of whether you are white, dark, rich or poor, we all end up as skeletons.” The Skull of Morbid Cholera: Jose Guadalupe Posada, La calavera del colera morbvo (1910, accessed via Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/picurws/item/9961...)
6. On America: “We are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future” Madeline Albright (202)
7. Statesman’s Task: “The statesman’s task is to hear God’s footsteps marching through history, and to try and catch on to His coattails as He marches past.” Otto von Bismarck – A slightly different formulation of this Bismarckian dictum was offered by Henry Kissinger in “Otto von Bismarck: Master Statesman,” New York Times, March 31, 2011.
Summary Conclusion:
My summary is just that, a brief review of three-hundred well-researched pages and consequently, is subject to the omissions of clarity brevity can bring. Zakaria’s grasp of the world stage is impressive. He raises insightful questions. Draws impressive conclusions. His research is solid. He consistently argues against the disparity between the haves and have not’s.
There is much to ponder here, but I was left tasting a demand for the fruit of American exceptionalism for all, without addressing the corresponding root of American exceptionalism that rewards it to some, i.e. hard work and a lifetime of sacrifice. Sadly, that was missing. In a couple of places, I felt statistics were cherry-picked to back a presupposition, rather than deliver a convincing proof. As all worldviews are not the same, neither are economic philosophies. He gave us one that tended to a narrative of inequity of distribution rather than an equal distribution of sacrifice.
Despite my disappointment in places, I will continue to read Fareed Zakaria. He is a brilliant observer of world affairs. Our worldviews differs, but not our interest in or concern for the world.
