I like it. It is an excellent exposition of the world today.

I manage to travel a lot, and it is such a pleasure to go to another country where people are concentrating on living their own lives and not trying to control others' lives. I went to Belfast a year ago, a city now at peace with the pubs full of happy people, and next week I'm going to Croatia where I expect to see a similar transformation and some more friendly people.

The terrorism scare in the US has truly been mega-hyped. On the freeways in the Southwest one has to go through Border Patrol checkpoints manned by rude, poorly trained guys in brown uniforms with a large sign overhead proclaiming "Threat Level -- Elevated" which is baloney. The terrorism statistical threat to Americans is way lower than real threats from cancer, heart disease, auto accidents, bee stings and bath-tub slips. The US is now under fourteen, fourteen, national emergencies annually renewed by George W. Bush. There is not a peep from Congress on any of this hoqwash because it means more money for aircraft carriers and troop bases in their districts to counter the "elevated threat."

The story is that "they hate us for our values," when polls show that no, other people in the world hate Americans for their behavior.

Currently there is growing anti-Chinese movement, with the Dem presidential candidates particularly sounding off on a boycott while the Pentagon gets ready for the next "big one" against the Chinese people. Imagine, a country that is currently brutally occupying two other counties and bombarding a third picking on another country for repressing internal dissension, as is their sovereign right. But there has been anti-Chinese racism in the US for a long time, going back to the Chinese Exclusion Act and before.

There are signs hope that current problems will ease and the general peace will continue as the declining fortunes of Americans contribute to some national humility and a more realistic outlook on the world. Fareed Zakaria's book should be helpful in this regard, from the looks.

@Zakaria

I think it is you who lack historical perspective. The most dangerous times are those which occur when major wealth and power shifts are under way...and the most peaceful times normally precede them.

Great book. Fareed Zakaria has the kind of smart mind America sorely needs today at the highest levels of the State Department and government.

Ignore the ignoble OTY commenter.

I don't know who you mean by "we". Are you referring to the press or to Americans in general? In poll after poll, Americans say that the worst problems we face are the economy, the war in Iraq and the cost of health care. Unless prompted few Americans name security or the threat of terrorist attacks to be major problems for the nation.

If the media is concerned with security both national and international, and see all other countries as threats, it is because their source of information comes from other news pundits and the media. It is not the American people who are so concerned, so worried about national security and see every other country as a threat, it is the media who constantly enforce and re-enforce each others' superficial concept of the world.

The major reason for this is the inflated egos and conceited belief that their opinion actually matters, that they really are writing the first draft of history (which of course they are not) and that they should have an influence on outcomes and decisions made by the people and the government. They no longer feel it necessary to inform readers and viewers of what happened, they now think it their duty to speculate as why something happened and what might happen in the future because of it. This fulfills the need of the media to be "players" in events, instead of observers and avoid reporting on the much more difficult to understand issues such as the economy and health care. It is also far more glamorous to offer opinion and speculation on worldly events than to write articles that require slogging through government reports and textbooks explaining the workings of, say, health care or free trade agreements.

I wonder at your claim that the left's argument that Bush is incompetent creates more fear in Americans - why do suppose people think that? Bush is not incompetent, Bush is doing exactly what Bush said he was going to do, from the invasion of Iraq to the withholding of federal help to areas destroyed by Katrina - anyone who had paid attention to the 2000 debates would have been able to predict this outcome. Instead, we had a press fixated on candidate Gore's wardrobe, or recycling reports of other journalists on the "lies" told by Gore, or complaints of journalists who were "bored" during the debates because to them, Gore was boring, too cerebral, not beer buddy material and too ambitious.

You now argue that McCain is using those fear tactics of the right and the left to scare Americans and yet Americans aren't scared of China and Russia, it isn't even on the radar screen and instead of informing Americans that despite what McCain says, no other country is going to support McCain's policy and the chance that he might enact such a policy is zero, you choose to re-enforce his fear tactics. McCain is brazenly lying to the American people and instead of informing the public that this policy will be impossible to enact, you yourself frighten Americans with the specter of an alienated America, bereft of friends and a surfeit of enemies.

Frankly, there is no "we" or "ours" here - there is a you and your cohort who endlessly speculate in the echo chambers of book launchings and cocktail parties and foundation seminars and lectures, who have no idea as to what really worries Americans because you no longer have to worry about them. You have jobs, you have health care, you have pension plans - what you don't have is the fear that you won't have a job, you won't be able to make a living, you won't be able to afford health care and you will never be able to retire. It would seem that instead of speculating on which side is striking the most fear in Americans' hearts over foreign policy, you might want to know what it is they really fear and why they rightfully fear it. You needn't fear that "we" Americans have a "maximalist view of international security" because "we Americans" don't have this view, we're too busy worrying about making mortgage payments and filling the gas tank and feeding our children to form "maximalist views".

@Andrew Golis

"Ignore the ignoble OTY commenter."

Hello, Andrew. Where are you? Don't tell me you've fallen asleep so quickly?

This comment is particularly rude since - it turns out - I like Fareed Zakaria most of the time. I just disagree with him here because I think he is being particularly obtuse and partisan.

The idea I mentioned is one advanced by Niall Ferguson in "The War of the World" and Paul Kennedy in "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers". The authors are mainstream figures of great stature and I'm sure Zakaria is well-aware of their ideas. No need to mention them to him. Nor is it necessary to tell him that in the last 40 or 50 years the United States has passed from oil independence to absolute dependence, from the world's greatest creditor to the world's greatest debtor, that the dollar's position as reserve currency is steadily eroding (most recently noted yesterday in a Bloomberg article), that manufacuring is largely done elsewhere, and that the process seems to be accelerating.

Is it my fault that NobleCommentDecider is both ill-mannered AND ignorant?

Wow - I would not have published that last OTY post. You are a more patient man than I. One would think that more people would understand that it is not an easy role to play - moderator - and at least put on that hat themselves, even if just metaphorically.

Onto Mr. Zakaria: this might be an interesting tome. What we do not have - even almost eight years after we were attacked - are real metrics on just whom we are fighting and how many of them are there?

My consulting days taught me that "what gets measured, gets done". If we have no metrics for this "war on terrorism", how can we ever hope to win it?

We do not know how many members al Qaida had in 2001 or how many it has today; we do not know what the delta in their membership is from year to year - or even if that time period is too broad or too narrow and that we should be tracking their growth (decrease) from quarter to quarter or month to month. I could fill several pages of metrics that I might think we need - but I am not a terrorism "expert" (should any actually exist); how is it we are closing in on a decade into this war and we are so far away from progress on "the known unknowns"?

Condition orange? Spare me.

there were no terrorists on 11/09/01

there are no terrorists now.

other than the two ultimate terrorist states: the usa and israel.