Zakaria’s title sits uneasily on the book’s jacket. It doesn’t quite belong there. The book actually espouses a spirited thesis that the 21st century can, should and will certainly be an American century. He assesses the decline of the U.S. as a political failure rather than economic. It is possible to correct politico-diplomatic deficiencies. The rise of multiple powers does not necessarily mean loss of U.S. power and influence because the U.S. has enormous reserve potential – economic, scientific, cultural, technological – that will enable it to lead and shape the world. Essentially, therefore, “The world is going America’s way.”

This may sound Victorian optimism straight out of Robert Browning, but Zakaria logically, patiently deduces that even as power centres like China or India emerge, “new points of tension will emerge among them” – historical animosities, border disputes, and contemporary quarrels. Their nationalism will grow. These factors provide a window of opportunity to the U.S. to play a “large and constructive role at the centre of the global order” – simply by advancing its credentials as an “honest broker”, as Bismarck once famously claimed as Germany’s destiny.

Of course, it entails consultation, cooperation, compromise and coalition-building. It is somewhat like how General Electric adapted to globalisation. Don’t insist on 100 per cent ownership. Accept joint ventures. Just realise that there is still a strong market for American power – “even more centrally, there remains a strong ideological demand for it.” Go get it, by choosing six “simple guidelines”: choose the priorities; pursue interests via projecting broad principles; engage all and eschew “balancing”; resort to À la carte multilateralism instead of crude hegemony; capitalise on key advantages; ensure exercise of power to invariably enjoy international legitimacy.

What elevates the book to a contemporaneous level of discussion for Indian readers are two chapters of 40 pages each devoted to China and India. Zakaria makes insightful observations regarding China’s “peaceful rise.” He juxtaposes the “spiralling decentralisation” in China and the future of the Communist Party of China – “actually one of the most elite organizations in the world” comprising three million largely urban educated men and women forming a group that is “thoroughly unrepresentative of the vast peasant society that it leads.” He puts a question mark on their ability to engage in mass politics.

But such uncertainties cannot still mar China’s march. “Today, China’s leaders, businessmen, and people in general have one desire in common: they want to keep moving ahead. They are unlikely to cast aside casually three decades of relative stability and prosperity.” Equally, therefore, China’s foreign policy will continue to remain non-interfering and non-confrontational. China’s dealings with the world are practical and based on Confucianism: “reliance on reason rather than on divinity as a guide to human affairs.” Therefore, China may never acquire a sense of destiny like Britain or the U.S, since “simply being China, and becoming a world power, in a sense fulfils its historical purpose. It doesn’t need to spread anything to anyone to vindicate itself.”

Zakaria doesn’t visualise the dealings between the dragon and the eagle in apocalyptic terms. He sees Chinese foreign policy as “geared toward satisfying the United States.” Indeed, there is likely to be tension in the relations, but for now, forces of integration and mutual dependence have triumphed in both Beijing and Washington. “That’s why, despite [George W.] Bush’s speeches on liberty and his meeting with the Dalai Lama, Beijing is largely content with the [U.S.] administration.”

Our strategic community might ask: where does that leave India? India does fit in. China poses a formidable challenge also to the U.S. by being an “asymmetrical superpower”, which projects the example of its model in terms of the strength of its economic system and its robust defence of national sovereignty rather than by virtue of its brute military power or interventionism.

It may sound an almost Gandhian dialectic. And the U.S. needs to evolve an altogether new conceptual framework to ward off China’s asymmetrical strategy. This is where India could be useful. If Beijing “slowly pushes Washington to the sidelines in Asia”, if Beijing tries to “wear out America’s patience and endurance”, if Beijing “quietly positions itself as the alternative to a hectoring and arrogant America”: just how does the U.S. cope in such a scenario? It is a kind of Cold War where the “challenger” possesses a vibrant market economy, the world’s largest population, and happens to be a nation that isn’t “showcasing a hopeless model of state socialism or squandering its power in pointless military interventions.”

Zakaria concludes, “In thinking through how to approach China, American political elites have fixed their gaze on another rising power, close to, and close on the heels of, China – India.”

But, India cannot be a match for China, either. Lamentably, the Indians’ Hindu worldview; the “diversity and division” complicating the Indian state; the “structural reality” in Indian politics – all these hold India back. Also, if ever there was a race between India and China, that’s over, and China will stay well ahead of India. The result is, India will dominate South Asia but it may not become a global power.

Unsurprisingly, Zakaria strongly pitches for the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal. Indeed, he is honest about it. He doesn’t beat around the bush or stake claim that from an economic point of view, the deal is crucial for India. The deal can only be a “small part of its [India’s] overall development trajectory.” In fact, he argues, the deal could have waited. If India paid greater attention to the “incentives of globalization”, that would have been more profitable. Nonetheless, “the nuclear deal is actually a big deal. If successful, it will alter the strategic landscape, bringing India firmly and irrevocably onto the global stage as a major player, normalizing its furtive nuclear status, and cementing its partnership with the United States.” It is about “national pride and geopolitical strategy” and about the “inequity with China.”

To be sure, this strategic reality figures in American calculations: “Were India to be forced to cap its nuclear force – without corresponding constraints on China – the result would be a vast and growing imbalance of power in China’s favour.” The UPA government may not like what a quintessential “insider” in the U.S. strategic community writes about the nuclear deal. But, then, unvarnished truth never pleases.

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