Grand explanations of how to understand the complex twenty-first-century world have all fallen short-until now. In The Second World, the brilliant young scholar Parag Khanna takes readers on a thrilling global tour, one that shows how America's dominant moment has been suddenly replaced by a geopolitical marketplace wherein the European Union and China compete with the United States to shape world order on their own terms. This contest is hottest and most decisive in the Second World: pivotal regions in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and East Asia. Khanna explores the evolution of geopolitics through the recent histories of such underreported, fascinating, and complicated countries as Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Colombia, Libya, Vietnam, and Malaysia-nations whose resources will ultimately determine the fate of the three superpowers, but whose futures are perennially uncertain as they struggle to rise into the first world or avoid falling into the third. Informed, witty, and armed with a traveler's intuition for blending into diverse cultures, Khanna mixes copious research with deep reportage to remake the map of the world. He depicts second-world societies from the inside out, observing how globalization divides them into winners and losers along political, economic, and cultural lines-and shows how China, Europe, and America use their unique imperial gravities to pull the second-world countries into their orbits. Along the way, Khanna also explains how Arabism and Islamism compete for the Arab soul, reveals how Iran and Saudi Arabia play the superpowers against one another, unmasks Singapore's inspirational role in East Asia, and psychoanalyzes the second-world leaders whose decisions are reshaping the balance of power. He captures the most elusive formula in international affairs: how to think like a country. In the twenty-first century, globalization is the main battlefield of geopolitics, and America itself runs the risk of descending into the second world if it does not renew itself and redefine its role in the world. Comparable in scope and boldness to Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man and Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Parag Khanna's The Second World will be the definitive guide to world politics for years to come. "A savvy, streetwise primer on dozens of individual countries that adds up to a coherent theory of global politics." -Robert D. Kaplan, author of Eastward to Tartary and Warrior Politics "A panoramic overview that boldly addresses the dilemmas of the world that our next president will confront." -Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor "Parag Khanna's fascinating book takes us on an epic journey around the multipolar world, elegantly combining historical analysis, political theory, and eye-witness reports to shed light on the battle for primacy between the world's new empires." -Mark Leonard, Executive Director, European Council on Foreign Relations "Khanna, a widely recognized expert on global politics, offers an study of the 21st century's emerging "geopolitical marketplace" dominated by three "first world" superpowers, the U.S., Europe and China... The final pages of his book warn eloquently of the risks of imperial overstretch combined with declining economic dominance and deteriorating quality of life. By themselves those pages are worth the price of a book that from beginning to end inspires reflection." -Publishers Weekly
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Easy to read, well explained:
There are easy to read, well explained ideas about the state of the world in this book, it is enjoyable and informative.
Good Overview but...:
This is a "useful" book that reads more like a travel guide of the post-American pre-Chinese-hegemonic world. It promises more than it delivers, offering tantalizing vignettes of different countries dealing with internal problems and external players without really giving you anything to chew on. In truth, the book's title should be "101 Ways China is Kicking America's ..." It spends a great deal of time telling readers how China is playing its diplomatic and economic cards (really the same thing) to the... more info
Insightful, yet light in some chapters:
I liked this book, complements contemporary readings on world affairs.
Each chapeter is dedicated to a different world arena, I found Asia, Europe and North America well documented and with depth analysis. But as true as for me that is, I tought the Middle East and Latin America chapteres were not at the same level as the rest. I don't think just one book has to cover the whole depth analysis of current global affairs, a wide books can complement. But again is a good read.
Not as bad as some say:
From the introduction, Khanna distances himself from other current theorists. In Khanna's description of the world, there are three empires which are competing with each other for influence and power - the US, the EU and China. Each of these empires has differing ways of maintaining empire - the US through coalition; the EU through consensus and China through consultation. Where this new imperial game is played is in the "second world" - states that lie in the income brackets between the first and third... more info
