In the world of software, a 2.0 release signifies an upgrade that has fixed flaws and generally improved upon the original edition. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case in the world of publishing.
When Fareed Zakaria wrote The Post-American World in 2007-08, the global and U.S. economies were booming. Zakaria painted a picture of an increasingly globalised, prosperous, and peaceful world in which rapid economic development trumped geo-political conflict as national differences were erased by convergence on a democratic, capitalist, free market/free trade oriented model. Whilst this world remained broadly under American hegemony, the United States was increasingly primus inter pares as evolution continued toward a peace-loving, multipolar world. Thus, the story was not about the decline of America but rather about the “rise of the rest” which, because it would increase mutual prosperity, would pose no threat to America.
Version 1.0’s fundamental assumptions about the dynamism of the U.S. economy, the sophistication of its capitalism and the absence of American decline were simply wrong, and proven so by the collapse of the bubble and the ensuing Great Recession of 2008-09. Zakaria was forced to justify his favourable blurbs and reviews as well as his bestsellerdom by quickly releasing 2.0.
Unfortunately, this update has only worsened the situation. To avoid admitting any problems with the current structure and dynamics of globalisation, Zakaria continues to insist on the “no decline of the U.S. but rise of the rest” formula. Thus, he opens version 2.0 as he did version 1.0 by boldly stating that “this book is not about the decline of the United States.” He then spends the rest of the book talking about the loss of American credibility caused by the bursting of its real estate bubble and the near collapse of its banking system, and concludes that America has become an enfeebled superpower with a hollowed out middle class – all things that sound uncannily like decline.
Nor does version 2.0 address 1.0’s fundamentally false assumptions. The fact is that the U.S. economy has been in decline for over 30 years. Globalisation is not a win-win proposition, as Zakaria and the orthodox economics establishment would have it. Rather, in its present form, globalisation has long been eroding the pillars of U.S. economic, technological, and industrial power. American policymakers compensated for this by blowing bubbles, first the dot.com bubble of the late 1990s and then the real estate/financial bubble of 2002-2008. Far from being signs of America’s economic power and sophistication, they were the symptoms of its decline.
Because he has the analysis wrong, Zakaria’s recommendations are mostly beside the point. We eagerly await version 3.0.