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.
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