After America #
From the large stack of reading I should have done earlier, I found this fascinating review by Ian Buruma of the growing body of work seeking to define and cope with America’s decreasing importance. He’s rather even-handed, but broadly skeptical of the whole thesis:
However fast the economies of new powers are growing, then, forecasts of their world domination leave out a great deal. China has a demographic problem—too many boys—compounding its potentially catastrophic ecological problems. Russia’s wealth is dependent on the price of oil. India, with its messy democratic system, might well have staying power, but no one sees it as a threat to the United States. And, besides, the “Harmonious Society” of Asia could still be violently disrupted by conflicts over Taiwan, North Korea, Tibet, Kashmir, and various islands, some of them sitting on oil reserves claimed by Vietnam, India, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. China is frightened that Japan might become a nuclear power, and makes every effort to keep it down, or at least out of the United Nations Security Council. Russia and China watch each other tensely across the Siberian border. North Korea periodically lobs missiles in the direction of Japan. And the South Koreans and the Southeast Asians are stuck between a democratic Japan they don’t trust and an autocratic China they must warily accommodate.