Paul Starobin at Baker Institute

Start: October 1, 2009 - 6:00pm

End: October 1, 2009 - 7:30pm

The world is now at a hinge moment in its history, according to veteran
international correspondent Paul Starobin in his new book, After America: Narratives for the Next Global Age. A once-dominant America has
reached the end of its global ascendancy, and the question of what will
come next, and how quickly, is not completely clear. Already the global
economic crisis, in exposing the tarnished American model of unfettered
free-market capitalism, is hastening the transition to the next After America phase of global history.

According to Starobin, the After America
world is being driven less by virulent anti-Americanism than by
America’s middling status as a social, economic, and political
innovator; by long-wave trends like resurgent nationalism in China,
India, and Russia; and by the growth of transnational cultural,
political, and economic institutions. While what is going to come next
has not been resolved, we can discern certain narratives that are
already advancing. In this sense, the After America age is already a
work in progress—pregnant with multiple possibilities.

In this
book, which masterfully mixes fresh reportage with rigorous historical
analysis, Starobin presents his farsighted and fascinating predictions
for the After America world. These possibilities include a global chaos
that could be dark or happy, a multipolar order of nationstates, a
global Chinese imperium, or—even more radically—an age of global
city-states or a universal civilization leading to world government.
Starobin feels that the question of which narrative will triumph may be
determined by the fundamental question of identity: how people
determine their allegiances, whether to the tribe, nation-state,
city-state, or global community.

There will be surprises, Starobin thinks. In the After America
world, both the nation-state and the traditional empire may lose ground
to cosmopolitan forces like the city- state and the universal
civilization. California—the eighth largest economy in the world and
the most future- oriented place in America—is becoming an After America
landscape, as illustrated by postnational, multicultural Hollywood.
Prestigious educational institutions like Harvard are migrating from an
American to a global identity and thus becoming part of an After
America universal civilization. While these changes may feel
unsettling, our best hope for adapting to an After America world is by
becoming better borrowers of the best ideas and practices developed all
around the planet.

Thought provoking and well argued, After America
offers a way to think about a dramatically changing world in which the
United States is no longer number one. Starobin’s tone is sober but in
the end hopeful—the age after America need not be a disaster for
America, and might even be liberating.

Paul Starobin is a staff correspondent for the National Journal and a contributing editor to The Atlantic Monthly. He was Moscow bureau chief for BusinessWeek from 1999 to 2003 and has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Geographic.

Location:

Baker Institute at Rice University
6100 Main St.
Houston, Texas 77005