The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century

This is a remarkable book in its scope and insight into the future of the world. Khanna is a true world citizen and brings with him a fresh perspective, meticulous research and engaging writing skills. Personally, I found the conclusion of the book worth the price of the book itself, although the entire book is valuable for anyone wanting to understand the world in the twenty-first century. The author's take on geopolitics is fresh and realistic. Khanna's view of the United States is a chilling look at what the future may hold for this great nation, as it slowly loses its world dominance in education, manufacturing, infrastructure and technology. As one who has traveled and lived abroad, it's true that many parts of the world seem to be passing the U.S. by. The future, according to Khanna, relies on three global powers: the United States, the European Union and China. Little will be accomplished by the Second World unless one or more of the three superpowers is on board. Geographic regions and dominant nation-states (Brazil, India and Japan, for example) will be forced to align their interests with one or more superpower, with the stronger playing off each other to serve themselves. This is the closest thing I have read to a new world order and should be recommended reading for all college students in the United States.

Can you judge a book by its cover? The dust jacket map emphasizes all the countries that really matter; sub-Saharan Africa is left literally Dark. Pages devoted to that region add up to approximately zero. For someone (like me) who has focused a decade on the politics, economics and culture of our oldest continent, that omission at first seemed glaring. No post-apartheid South Africa, which had the bomb and could again? No Congo, with its unsurpassed natural wealth? No Nigeria, the world's fourth largest democracy and sixth largest oil producer? No Angola, one of three countries (with Russia and the US) to hold such a diverse resource portfolio that it need not trade across borders? Nope. And Khanna offers no apologies. I found just two pages at the end of a chapter on Libya, boiled down to a sentence about China backing Mugabe's Zimbabwe while the U.S. bankrolls the equally despicable regime in Equatorial Guinea. Yet that, of course, is the author's whole realpolitik and neo-imperialist point. He is not unsympathetic to the 800 million souls floundering in these underdeveloped countries. He just states what most people won't: Africa's states are expendable pawns, limited to plod one square at a time, sacrificed if necessary but mostly bypassed. And while the Great Game of the 20th century tended to obsess on the psyche of America's noble white king vs a dark king of the Evil Empire, Khanna shows not only how there are now three amoral players in the fast-paced game, but that that game will be won or lost on the unexpected lateral and diagonal moves made by rooks, knights, bishops and queens of the Second World. And therein lies hope for countries left off the map. Perhaps as Africa's disadvantaged pawns survive their slow shuffle to the other side of the board, they can learn new moves, and transform themselves into chess pieces with more flexibility and clout.

This is the book I have been waiting years for - it is the clearest picture I have yet seen of the 21st century's nascent Great Game; the Game as played by three Great Powers with very different styles: the United States, the European Union, and China. Khanna has developed an original view of a tripolar world, and effectively balances the force of geopolitics with the complementary trend toward globalisation. The book has several persistent and gnawing weaknesses. Khanna persistently focuses on traditional land power geopolitics, an easier thing to describe and a well trodden path in International Studies, but perhaps an increasingly less potent matrix with the emergence of new realms of competition in this century: low Earth orbit (mentioned briefly in one paragraph of the book); the emerging Internet culture and electronic world; enduring naval power and new oceanographic frontiers; the growing diasporas and transnational, nomadic elites who owe no geographical national allegiance. In particular, he who rules lower Earth orbit rules the planet, regardless of who predominates upon the "World-Island" of Eurasia. The author, like many intelligent NRI Indians, seems disillusioned by the failure of Indian democracy to overcome poverty and wealth disparity on the subcontinent (at one point stating, "It could be argued that China is a freer country than democratic India", ignoring some obvious differences in number of political prisoners, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free access to the Internet . . . ). Though often pointing out the environmental and cultural devastation that Chinese dominance has visited on its satellite countries, Khanna as frequently stumbles in his lavish praise of the authoritarian Singapore model that China is now following, hinting that China will allow a free society once it has acquired enough wealth, and understates the potential power of chaotic, creative, "undisciplined" (read: free) India and "Bollystan" (Khanna's term) in this century. Freedom of speech and protection of a counterculture are more than just abstract features of a Western liberal morality. Freedom of speech and protection of "deviants" comprise essential economic infrastructure in the twenty-first century. As we move into an Information Age, societies that offer strong protection of freedom of speech and individual expression will trump those Confucian societies that emphasize obedience and silent submission to authority. As unlikely a winner as oft-benighted India may seem to be, I would still put good money on India and the individualistic U.S., in collaboration with the European Union, as the future leaders of the non-local sphere of Information and Cyberspace, leaving the Confucian societies not yet visited by glasnost far behind. Freedom of information should be treated by Khanna as one of the most important traits of an economic superpower, far more important than good roads, canals, and oil rigs. Confucianism, as it exists today, is

Thumb through any section of The Second World and it will become clear that Khanna has read more books, been to more countries, and interviewed more people than most leading authors put together. You name the place, Khanna has been there - and within the past few years. Only Sub-Saharan Africa is purposely left out of this consistently high-energy global tour, which stops only to make unquestionably profound commentary on the state of entire continents and regions in the grand sweep of history. Packing in essential histories, key thinkers, recent trends, and on-the-ground reportage, encyclopedic Second World is the definitive Cliff's Notes for the entire planet in the early 21st century. The most important stylistic fact of this book is that unlike just about every other travel book I've ever read, the author does not appear in a single sentence after the two-page Preface. This book is all about place, with absolutely no pretense or narcissism. You never hear about food poisonings, armed hold-ups, or other maladies of travel, but judging from the places Khanna has been, all these must have happened. Instead you get only useful social, cultural, and political knowledge and insights. The next time you turn on the TV and there's a coup in Kyrgyzstan, bombings in Lebanon, an earthquake in Indonesia, or some oil-rich despot threatens America's energy supply, you'll know exactly why after reading this book.