Easternization
Asia's Rise and America's Decline From Obama to Trump and Beyond
-
-
3.8 • 5 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
**NAMED NPR "BEST BOOKS OF 2017""**
From the winner of the 2016 Orwell Prize and the European Press Prize for Commentator of the Year, a provocative analysis of how a new era of global instability has begun, as the flow of wealth and power turns from West to East.
Easternization is the defining trend of our age — the growing wealth of Asian nations is transforming the international balance of power. This shift to the East is shaping the lives of people all over the world, the fate of nations, and the great questions of war and peace.
A troubled but rising China is now challenging America’s supremacy, and the ambitions of other Asian powers — including Japan, North Korea, India, and Pakistan — have the potential to shake the whole world. Meanwhile the West is struggling with economic malaise and political populism, the Arab world is in turmoil, and Russia longs to reclaim its status as a great power.
As it becomes clear that the West’s historic power and influence is receding, Gideon Rachman offers a road map to the turbulent process that will define the international politics of the twenty-first century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rachman (Zero-Sum Game), chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times, takes a cue from the tide of Westernization that gradually spread over the globe from the 15th century onward, and is only now being beaten back by the growing economic, strategic, and military power of Asia, with China at its fore. "Easternization," Rachman contends, is the central problem with which the U.S. will have to contend in the 21st century; the much-vaunted "pivot to Asia" notwithstanding, the rise of Asia will have myriad and far-flung consequences for regions as seemingly disparate as Russia, the Middle East, and Africa. Weaving a smattering of history with insights gleaned from his interviews with global power players, Rachman offers a fast-paced and diverting analysis of the challenges facing U.S. foreign policy in the Pacific. His account, however, is short on research and long on exposition, with the nuances of history and ideology largely whizzing by. More problematically, Rachman, like many observers of international politics, seems to view Asia, and particularly China, as a mysterious and opaque civilization whose rise should automatically send global alarm bells ringing, when it's clear that the pursuit of what Chinese president Xi Jinping extols as the "China Dream" is not all that different from its American counterpart.
