Grundlage dieser Rezension (in Arbeit) ist die englischsprachige Version.
p. 13: NIALL FERGUSON: "Let me quote from Dr. Kissinger’s outstanding new book on the topic of China: “China’s quest for equal partnership with the United States is no longer the outsized claim of a vulnerable country; it is increasingly the reality backed by financial and economic capacities.” Or I could quote from Fareed Zakaria’s excellent book The Post-American World: “China is a country whose scale dwarfs the United States. China is hungry for success.”
It’s fascinating that these two great geopolitical thinkers agree that China’s economic challenge is also a challenge to the hegemony of the United States. Once again let me quote Dr. Kissinger: “An explicit American project to organize Asia on the basis of containing China or creating a bloc of democratic states for an ideological crusade is unlikely to succeed.” He hopes, as he concludes in his book, for peaceful co-evolution. But he fears a repeat of what happened a hundred years ago when the rise of Germany challenged the predominance of the United Kingdom.
But it’s not just about China for me. The key to China’s dominance during the 21st century ultimately lies in the decline of the West. A financial crisis caused by excessive borrowing and subsidized gambling; a fiscal crisis that means the United States will soon be spending more on debt interest than on defence; a political crisis exemplified by a game of Russian roulette over the U.S. federal debt ceiling; and a moral crisis personified by a legislator named, implausibly, Weiner, sending miscellaneous women pictures of his naked torso. The 21st century will be China’s because an overweight, over-leveraged, oversexed America, not to mention a dysfunctional Europe, are on the slide."
