By Fareed Zakaria
“Today’s world is different from the world of 1914 in several important ways,” writes Joseph Nye for Project Syndicate. “One is that nuclear weapons give political leaders the equivalent of a crystal ball that shows what their world would look like after escalation. Perhaps if the Emperor, the Kaiser, and the Czar had had a crystal ball showing their empires destroyed and their thrones lost in 1918, they would have been more prudent in 1914. Certainly, the crystal-ball effect had a strong influence on US and Soviet leaders during the Cuban missile crisis. It would likely have a similar influence on U.S. and Chinese leaders today.”
“Another difference is that the ideology of war is much weaker nowadays. In 1914, war really was thought to be inevitable, a fatalistic view reinforced by the Social Darwinist argument that war should be welcomed, because it would “clear the air” like a good summer storm.”
“[W]ho has come out ahead in this unparalleled global free-for-all? Indians,” writes Kishore Mahbubani for Yale Global. “Their per capita income now ranks as the highest of any ethnic group in the United States: In 2010, Indians earned $37,931 annually, compared to a national average of $26,708. If India’s population of 1.2 billion could achieve only half of the per capita income of Indian immigrants in the United States, the country’s GDP today would be $24.65 trillion instead of a relatively trifling $1.85 trillion, less than Italy’s. The gap between India’s potential and its actual performance is huge, perhaps the biggest of any country in the world.
“India’s performance in the U.S. arena is not exceptional…Sadly, few Indian leaders or policymakers seem to have understood the meaning of this comprehensive global data on the economic competitive abilities of Indians. If they did, India would become the top champion of more rapid globalization. Instead, even though the evidence shows that Indians could benefit from globalization’s acceleration, the Indian government continues to put its foot on the brakes whenever globalization is discussed.”
“Poor and working-class Americans already live in the surveillance future,” argues Virginia Eubanks in American Prospect. “The revelations that are so scandalous to the middle-class data profiling, PRISM, tapped cell phones – are old news to millions of low-income Americans, immigrants, and communities of color. To be smart about surveillance in the New Year, we must learn from the experiences of marginalized people in the U.S. and in developing countries the world over. Here are four lessons we might learn if we do.”