![]() ![]() The creation of 24-hour news and the voracious media appetite for scaremongering has utterly distorted the nation's perception of itself. Zakaria's message to America is simple – Don't Panic! America's perceptions of the real risks and dangers it faces are massively out of kilter with any known reality. After listening to his victory speech in Minnesota at the end of the Democratic primaries, I can tell you he's been reading it. In this Presidential election year, Zakaria is talking to America and America is taking note all the more since Barack Obama was snapped, his thumb marking a page in the middle of this book. Europe has done more than enough shaping of the world as it is, and look where it got us. ![]() As events in Ireland show, we are also unable to stomach the creation of federal European institutions that might allow the continent to be a real player. We will be rich and stable but demographically in terminal decline, unable successfully to absorb African and Asian migrants on our peripheries. One key element of the post-American world is that we – the Europeans – will be marginal players. He is not, however, talking to you and me. Fareed Zakaria has started us off with a thoughtful, reasoned and hopeful sketch of global power and politics in the 21st century. ![]() ![]() If the Roman and British experiences are anything to go by, the literature of American decline has only just begun. ![]()
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