I read Mr. Khanna's article in the NYT magazine, and I have several problems with it.

(1) The EU is still more of an international organization than a state. As such, it is silly to argue that creation of analogous organizations, such as the African Union, represent a repudiation of the United States or Asia or whoever. The African Union is emulating the E.U. because that's the only choice available to it -- political union among various disparate African countries isn't in the cards. Now, could the E.U. morph into something like a state? Sure, and I'd even say that's probable. But that would require things like a common foreign and defense policy. That in turn will undermine the E.U.'s Obamaesque appeal to be "above politics" on the international stage, where it will act according to its national interests, like any other state.

(2) Khanna vastly underestimates the potential for conflict within Asia. I don't disagree that China is building up an "Asian co-prosperity sphere," and that relations have warmed between China and countries like Korea and Thailand. But I think that warming only continues to a point. And there is still vast potential for conflict between China and Japan, and between China and India. One trend that Mr. Khanna missed, for example, was increasing cooperation between Japan and India, which should probably be seen in the context of providing a counterweight to China. We don't similarly see Canada and Mexico ganging up on the U.S., for instance.

(3) Khanna is far, far too quick to dismiss Russia, which he seems to think will inevitably bow to the E.U. or become a vassal state of China. His chief evidence for this seems to be demographic decline, but I think that is far less a problem than most people make it out to be -- if anything, fewer people means a higher per capita GDP from all those oil revenues that Russia will command regardless of its population. If Russia cozies up to the E.U., it's because liberal thought in Russia shows a resurgence after Putin.

(4) And finally, Mr. Khanna overestimates the degree of decoupling of Europe from the U.S. I think that Atlanticism has shown itself to be far more resilient than we thought in 2003, and that -- while the Bush administration was far too reckless with the Atlantic alliance back then -- it has done much to repair relations since then. And there was a failure of leadership on the European side during those years, too -- Jacques Chirac, Gerhard "Gazprom is my middle name" Schroeder. The resurgence of Russia has drawn Europe and America back together, too. But fundamentally, I do think that these two regions, regardless of squabbles over things like commercial aircraft, see a common political destiny.

The disconcerting problem with that article is that it reads like a more subdued Tom Friedman.

B. Barber after a three day coke bender in Macao. LOL

but man, first we had Bennifer, then Billary, now Frenemies. The next editor that allows a novel concatenation to appear in print should be taken out and shot.

At some point, I expect I'll review the book (I have a pre-publication version). Obviously, I'm not entirely disinterested, as I've known Khanna for some time. I'm also disposed to treat it much like most of the other books on the Amazon top "International Relations" sellers, and it stacks up pretty well against such competitors as *The World is Flat*, various conspiracy theories about the North American Union, and the rest. Call that the "tyranny of low expectations" if you want, but I think my praise should be seen in that light.

That being said, what I like about the article and what you dislike about it are pretty compatible. The argument actually involves a number of distinct claims, some of which are very powerful, others of which are pretty strained. I'd prefer a more sustained focus on the ways in which US hegemony is being hollowed out by a variety of secular and political developments, with less of an attempt to construct a "big paradigm of the future" of the type that, while possible, risks rendering the argument a curiosity of the late 2000s.

All in all, though, I'd rather have these issues put on the table in a way that requires an "big, sexy travelogue" then the alternative.

Clarification: the alternative being "not at all."

Most of what temoc has to say upthread is sound. I'd only add that if I were Khanna, I would have given a little more thought to my terminology.

His article appears to suggest that a lot of countries we are used to thinking of as Third World are really Second World. The traditional understanding of Second World -- countries of the Soviet bloc -- is to be suspended, as some countries in the old Second World are now in the new Third World (and a few -- the Czech Republic? Poland? -- are really First World). A great many countries, if I understand correctly, are one part Second World and two (or three, or more) parts Third World. And Cuba, which used to be Second World, is still Second World even though that phrase means something completely different from what it used to mean.

This terminology is much too confusing to ever come into common use. I can think of other problems with Khanna's article, but honestly, if you're going to advance a system of thinking about international relations it's pretty important that your system put its own distinctive labels on its ideas, rather than borrowing an earlier system's labels and declaring they now mean something else.

Like many commentators on the decline of US power, he misses the point. America's strength was always in its alliances, and just objectively, there can be no dispute that over the past 10 years the greatest shift in power has been away from Europe and toward Asia. Afghanistan has proven that NATO can be defeated, largely because the European allies are unwilling or unable to fight.

It's quite telling that we have a Democratic frontrunner for President, Barack Obama, who has never once visited Western Europe, and no one seems to care about it...

Sure, there's soft power. Sure, there are limits--severe limits--on what military power can accomplish. For instance, it can't transform a society deeply divided along lines of hostility and distrust into a harmonious democracy. Bur military power does permit states to win wars, deter wars, and start wars, and wars can settle disagreements between states.
So if one sets about defining and measuring power, surely military capabilities thrust themselves to the top of the list of candidate criteria. And on these criteria the American lead has, since 9/11, been considerably increased--as for instance the increase in its expenditures on arms each year has exceeded the annual expenditures of many other fairly powerful states.