Scenarios for China's Role in a Post-American World

Zakaria provides a measured, reasonable and very reassuring vision for the future world order. He expects that the post-American international geopolitical regime will build on the “open, market friendly and democratic” ¹ liberal values that are the heritage of the United States having prevailed over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. He suggests that this post-American world order will be based on “a new architecture that ensures peace, growth and freedom for the world,” ² an open rules-based international order of responsible stakeholders. “New narratives,” informed by newly arising non-Western cultures and languages and the attendant variant interpretations of history, will be integrated into the international discourse. Zakaria is therefore optimistic that this new global architecture will be able to accommodate China's deeply felt national aspirations. On this basis, China will be prepared to conform to a post-American global consensus that an “open, friendly and democratic” international regime is essential to continuing political stability and economic prosperity throughout the world. ³ As Zakaria puts it quite unequivocally, “China's leaders, businessmen, and people in general have one desire in common: they want to keep moving ahead. They are unlikely to cast aside casually three decades of relative stability and prosperity.” ⁴