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THE SYMBOL WARS.
Ross calls Fareed Zakaria's itemized list proving America's decline "lapse into Friedmanesque blather." And, let's be clear, some of it is a bit silly:
The world's tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn't make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world's ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.But there's more here than "the casino and ferris wheel gap." Zakaria's point, as I took it, was not that we should race to build ever taller buildings or ever larger carnival rides, but something more fundamental: The fact that the ostentatious, useless symbols of affluence and excess in other countries are beginning to mirror, and even exceed, ours, suggests that we're facing potent competition on grounds where we're unused to challenge.
We are no longer the only country with an internet, or a Sears Tower, if we ever truly were. And as more Americans come to realize that, it could have fairly profound psychological effects. After all, these symbols are how many folks have always understood our affluence, The reason the World Trade Center was a crucial American symbol wasn't because most folks understood it housed much of our financial sector. It was because they were two really tall, really impressive, buildings. They were a visual heuristic for power. But now other countries are developing their own entries into that genre, and they're no longer pale imitations of ours. As the world develops, America is going to start to look less exceptional -- as that's the inevitable result of being less exceptional. The point of Zakaria's book, as I understand it, is that whether we see that shift as an opportunity or a threat is probably the most important foreign policy question of the 21st century.
Image used under a Creative Commons license from Shuttering2Think.
COMMENTS (10)
Ezra,
Good use of 'heuristic'. I would add that how countries are now displaying their power is by copying us, and that shows the power we retain. It is when other countries find other heuristics (I prefer rubric) and then other countries still copy those new symbols, will our epoch have past.
Posted by: William Smith | May 12, 2008 4:12 PM
I'd call it a metonym.
Posted by: rm | May 12, 2008 4:38 PM
How about "symbol", or, if we must be pretentious, "synecdoche"? "Heuristic" is just wrong. Why does this shift have to be either a threat or an opportunity? Unless maybe an opportunity for Americans to at long last shut up about their exceptionalism.
Posted by: gordonminor | May 12, 2008 4:42 PM
Did anyone notice how little in that article there is about Europe? That's because Europe dominated by socialistic, nanny-state, freedom-crushing, job-destroying, pc regimes. The future is not to be found on the Continent. So why do progressives want to reconstruct America along European lines? Is it idiocity or self-loathing or just plain old treason?
Posted by: Lamps gone out | May 12, 2008 5:41 PM
Sorry about the numerous solecisms in the previous post--I'm the sorry product of American pop culture and liberal-bedeviled public schooling.
Posted by: Lamps gone out | May 12, 2008 5:44 PM
But who has the biggest SUV?
Posted by: jayco | May 12, 2008 7:57 PM
But who has the biggest SUV?
It's all about demonstrating, symbolically, who has the biggest penis.
Posted by: rea | May 12, 2008 11:27 PM
So then does it mean that Chinese and Indian penises have been getting longer / bigger lately? It is very tempting to use 'phallic comparisons'; the same temptation which led Zakaria his route of shallow nation state comparisons.
Though Zakaria's main thesis merits attention - how USA should take advantage of economic improvements globally instead of paraphrasing these developments as threats to its power; his whole argument sounds non-rigorous. It so because he adopts cheap thriller option of over dramatizing international events at the cost of ignoring concrete underpinnings of changes happening.
A British writer (they are always British who sing the only rare praises of America outside of America - some inferiority complex?) writes that anyone who prefers Chinese Communist Party leaders as 'global leaders' must be out of his or her mind; because of adamantly non-democratic political system.
Do Zakaria list that? To what an extent Zakaria is ready to point out deep rooted faults like 'caste' system of India and the kind of havoc extreme 'affirmative action' plays on India's future growth? Will he ignore when Castist politicians of India start making 'caste based reservation' compulsory in Indian Private Sector? Anyone who ignores these real dangers to stories of India's growth or environmental and demographic challenges to China; is way too naive. Zakaria gives that impression instead of a learned expert who is incisively unfolding all the complex layers of contemporary international relations.
Posted by: Umesh Patil | May 13, 2008 1:14 AM
Zakaria, he admits "these lists are arbitrary and a bit silly". Really, I just think he's driving home a point, more than making a subtle one.
Posted by: Brian Rose | May 13, 2008 7:36 AM
Have to import steel for nuclear power plants.
Can no longer manufacture to that high standard.
Probably outsourced even he capital equipment, I betcha.
Posted by: has_te | May 13, 2008 1:48 PM