Book Reviews: Fareed Zakaria’s “The Post-American World” and David Horowitz’ “The Party of Defeat” Part 1/2

October 21, 2008

Fareed Zakaria’s book reminds me of Zibigniew Brzezinski’s long-ago book, Between Two Ages, from the 1970’s. In that book, Brzezinski counseled an essentially passive foreign policy for America. Brzezinski informed us that the angry, revolutionary changes taking place globally are inevitable, and America’s role is to play merely the midwife to these ineluctable movements. Zakaria’s book is in this tradition.

To be sure, though, Zakaria updates Brzezinski by getting rid of the concept of potentially violent revolutionary change and replacing it with the alternative explanatory concept of economic change. Zakaria nevertheless, like his predecessor, still outlines a more passive international role for America than it has at present. That is, Zakaria posits that America should be merely the “global broker” between regionally feuding nations. I didn’t like Brzezinski’s book, as interesting as it was, and neither do I like Zakaria’s, as elegantly written and erudite as it is. Passive, coalition-based foreign policy is mostly a difficult thing to succeed in, and Zakaria never succeeds in decisively making the case that America should adopt such a policy. It’s only Zakaria’s preference, and there’s no necessity to it.

David Horowitz’ book (with Ben Johnson), on the other hand, is more closely argued, with copious footnotes (489 to Zakaria’s 99), a much smaller time-frame under discussion, and contains sensible arguments that one does not rebel against. Horowitz does truly make his case that America’s foreign policy should be active and vigilant, and he very convincingly shows what happens otherwise. Horowitz goes back to the era of George McGovern and to the administration of Jimmy Carter to provide a focused, step-by-step analysis of international relations and what takes place when America is not strong.

Horowitz never wavers or strays from his subject. But Zakaria’s scope is so sweeping and larger-than-life that he quite often strays from his purpose with interesting, but irrelevant anecdotes. Horowitz is Hobbesian in that he advises America to be alert in foreign relations, whereas Zakaria is more akin to Rousseau in calming our irrational fears of rogue nations.

Zakaria’s book, like Brzezinski’s, has a sort of dialectical materialism motif to it, in that Zakaria explains that “the rest” (mainly China, India, Brazil, and Russia) are coming up fast economically, and that consequently the historical eras can engage in dialogue with one another on this point. That is, the American century is in twilight, and America needs to know how to survive into the next page of history.

There is no such wide-ranging or all-comprehensive interpretation of history in the Horowoitz book, but there are indeed empirically verifiable cause-and -effect processes brought to light. The book seems to ask: why should America give up its strength for some ethereal theory about history? Zakaria makes arguments about FDR and Truman being more cooperative in foreign relations than George Bush fils, but those arguments are unconvincing to me. For example, the cooperativeness of FDR and Truman was either wholly naive (in discussing with Stalin as if he were from the nontotalitarian world), or it just wasn’t there at all (domestic internment camps and strong, aggressive military actions).

Further, Zakaria writes that America is now arrogant in that it rejects coalition-building. But that claim is just not supported by the facts. America would love to have more help in fighting the criminal regimes, and goes to enormous lengths, usually to no avail admittedly, to obtain partners. Horowitz, alternatively, makes a clear case that America actually suffers not from arrogance, but from a major fifth-column element, now mainstream, that works to undermine any attempt at action whatsoever. America is besiged with criticism for taking unilateral action, but that self-interested criticism by itself is not sufficient to establish any “arrogance” in America’s behavior in international relations.

Zakaria apparently accepts the notion of moral equivalence between America and ”the rest” in order to scold America for believing in its own exceptionalism (we are scolded for not being on the metric system and for possessing nuclear arms while simultaneously trying to stop their spread to other countries). But couldn’t it be the case that America is right in trying to stop the spread of WMD? Isn’t America right in insisting on a clear command structure? Horowitz points to what happened in Vietnam and in Cambodia when the U.S., under the pressure of moral equivalence theories, left Southeast Asia to its fate under the communists; he points to the needless loss and humiliation in Mogadishu when the forces were too few and the international command structure too confused. So, Zakaria has a sweeping scope, but he puts forth a limited vision and policy; Horowitz has a more circumscribed scope and objective, but he provides a more well-rounded and comprehensive viewpoint. That Zakaria is disconcerting and Horowitz reassuring is testimony to which speaks to reliable common sense. 

To be continued very soon…..

T.D.