Summary of Age of Revolutions by Fareed Zakaria: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present E-Book
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Summary of Age of Revolutions by Fareed Zakaria: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present
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Summary of
Age of Revolutions
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Summary of Fareed Zakaria’s book
Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present
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Summary of Age of Revolutions by Fareed Zakaria: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present
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INTRODUCTION
A MULTITUDE OF REVOLUTIONS
Politics, originating from ancient Greek, has evolved over the millennia to become a contest between the Left and the Right. The left-right divide traditionally defined elections, public debates, and policies, but this division has broken down in recent centuries. Donald Trump, for example, broke with traditional right-wing ideology by advocating nationalism, chauvinism, protectionism, and isolationism. Trump's campaign speeches were characterized by slogans like "Chinese are taking away your factories, Mexicans are taking away your jobs, Muslims are trying to kill you."
This shift is part of a global trend where right-wing populists and left-wing populists share a dismissive attitude toward norms and practices like free speech, parliamentary procedures, and independent institutions. Liberal democracy is about rules, not outcomes, and upholds freedom of speech. However, there are those who want to ban what they regard as "bad" speech, make policy by fiat, or even manipulate the democratic process. This dangerous illiberalism is more prevalent on the right, but there are examples on both sides of the aisle, such as Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico.
In conclusion, politics has evolved over time, with the Left and Right now defining elections, public debates, and policies. However, the ideological divide between the two has broken down, with Donald Trump's departure from traditional right-wing ideologies and the rise of left-wing populists.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair predicted that the twenty-first century would see a shift from traditional left-right lines to "open versus closed" politics. This divide is not easily traced onto the old left-right one, as politics becomes scrambled along new lines. Steve Bannon, a controversial and volatile personality who served as Donald Trump's chief strategist in the White House, was in Rome in June 2018 to encourage a coalition of two different populist parties that had collectively won half the vote in the recent Italian elections. They both embraced "closed" policies toward trade, immigration, and the European Union, opposed to the established left- and right-wing parties that had dominated Italy for decades.
Bannon was drawn to Giordano Bruno, a philosopher-monk who was put to death at the same spot in 1600 AD. He believed that radicalism was the only option in times of turmoil, and that we live in revolutionary times. The word "revolution" has two almost opposite definitions: the steady movement of a body around a fixed axis, and a sudden, radical, or complete change, fundamental change, or overthrow. The Copernican Revolution, proposed by astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, was a "revolutionary" theory in both senses of the word.
Our times are revolutionary in the commonly used sense of the word, with dramatic, radical change in society, the upending of the old political order, and deep uncertainty about how societies and economies should navigate these uncharted waters. The digital revolution and the coming of artificial intelligence will bring new and disruptive consequences to our world.
The current moment is a revolution in the other sense, a nostalgic desire to return to where we began. This pattern has been seen throughout history, with aristocrats pined for knightly chivalry even as the gunpowder age dawned, and politicians touting family values and promising to turn back the clock to make their countries great again. Modern history has seen several fundamental breaks with the past, including intellectual, technological, economic, political, and social revolutions.
The world has experienced accelerating technological and economic change, fluctuating conceptions of identity, and rapidly shifting geopolitics. The Cold War yielded to a new order that began to crack just a few decades after it formed. Many have celebrated the pace and nature of these changes, but above all, we need to understand just how disruptive they have been, physically and psychologically.
These revolutions within nations are happening at the same time as a revolution among nations—a fundamental reordering of global politics. From 1945 onward, the world has been remarkably stable, with the two nuclear-armed superpowers deterring each other. After 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, we entered an era in which there was just one superpower. This unipolar world created an era of global stability, no major geopolitical struggles, no arms races, and no great-power wars.
American ideas became global ideas, encouraging the rest of the world to globalize, liberalize, and democratize. However, these forces were undergirded by America's overwhelming military and economic power as the global, unipolar anchor.
The proliferation of liberal democracies around the world has been influenced by classical liberalism, an ideology that emerged from the Enlightenment in opposition to monarchical and religious authority. This ideology typically includes individual rights and liberties at home, freedom of religion, open trade and market economics, and international cooperation within a rules-based order. However, new populists from both the right and left are attacking the entire liberal project, questioning neutral procedures like freedom of speech and attempting to discard electoral democracy rules for higher goals.
An international system dominated by a liberal hegemon encourages the spread of liberal values, but this can also work in reverse. As American dominance started to erode, openness and liberalism came under pressure. The first major challenge to American hegemony was the 9/11 attack, which broke the mystique of America's military might and violated the rules-based order it had long championed. The global financial crisis of 2008 dispelled the aura of America's economic might, and political stability was also cracking.
The rise of the rest, including countries like China, India, Brazil, and Turkey, has led to new challenges and tensions in the international realm. The rise of China and the return of Russia have sabotaged the forces that seemed to be binding us all together, as new barriers spring up every day. The war in Ukraine has returned to an age of geopolitical conflict, and regional powers have tried to fill the power vacuum in the Middle East. Asia has seen the return of classic balance-of-power politics, as China searches for greater influence and many of its neighbors court America's assistance to balance against the rising Asian hegemon.
The author discusses the rise of a new atmosphere after three decades of liberalization, democratization, and openness. Market economics has been losing its halo, and politics now trumps economics. Countries like the United Kingdom, China, and Trump prioritize resilience, self-sufficiency, and national security over growth and efficiency. Immigration has become a dirty word, and cultural shifts have been reversed.
The author examines previous ages of revolution, beginning with the first liberal revolution in the Netherlands in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. The French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution have both shaped the world in different ways. The present age is a period when revolutionary change has torn through multiple realms at once—economics, technology, identity, and geopolitics.
Broad structural changes, such as technological advances and accelerations of economic activity and globalization, trigger a significant shift in identity. People begin to face new opportunities and challenges, defining themselves differently. This identity revolution can be positive or negative, instilling pride in one's background.
These three forces—technology, economics, and identity—together almost always generate backlash that produces a new politics. Politicians scramble to adjust, modifying their views and finding new coalitions. The result is reform and modernization or crackdown and revolt, or sometimes a combination of both.
Geopolitical revolutions have also produced transformations within nations, with several countries challenging the US-led liberal order, especially China and Russia. China's rise is due to economic and technological revolutions, while Russia under Vladimir Putin has harnessed identity politics and jingoism as a response to his nation's structural decline.
The world is currently experiencing a revolutionary era, with dramatic changes and backlash often occurring. These changes interact and reinforce one another, leading to both progress and backlash. Successful management of changes leads to stable outcomes, while mismanaged changes can lead to failure. In the past, there has been movement towards greater collective prosperity and individual autonomy and dignity, but forceful reactions have occurred as those left behind fight back.
