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Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the triumphant celebrations of the West, a new chapter of history has opened featuring the rising powers of Asia, led by China. Though embracing free markets, China has looked to its Confucian traditions instead of liberal democracy as the best route to good governance.Will China manage to achieve high growth and a harmonious society through a strong state and long‐range planning that puts messy Western democracy and its short‐term mindset to shame? Or, in the end, will the weak rule of law and absence of political accountability in a one‐party state undermine its promise?Francis Fukuyama and Kishore Mahbubani, the Singaporean thinker who has become the apostle of non‐Western modernity, debate these issues.In this section we also republish a collective memoir by George H.W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand, recalling their fears and hopes two decades ago as they brought the Cold War to an end.

As the global financial crisis emanating from the United States shuts down world markets, can globalization survive? Will the resurgent intrusion of the state—and thus politics—into the market lead to protectionism and collapse, as was the case in the early 20th century? Or will the new interconnectivity of climate change and mutual economic dependence—especially between China and the US—deepen global links?The former mayor of Shanghai, legendary Nobel economist Paul Samuelson and Third Way guru Anthony Giddens ponder those questions in this section.

America is more a creed than a nation. Our promise has always been that all individuals, despite race, religion or gender, have the equal chance to make it. The election of Barack Hussein Obama as president of the United States is thus a "soft power" coup for America's global image, which had lost its luster during the Bush years. Obama is the anti‐Bush who will lead by the power of example instead of the example of power. Yet, there are real limits. Can the power of example stop the North Korean or Iranian nuclear programs? Can it stop jihadists bent on establishing a new Caliphate across South Asia? Can it limit China's ambitions as the new power in Asia? In this section commentators from across the world offer their views.

The United States has the world's most sophisticated intelligentsia, including the finest universities to spawn the very best ideas. Despite this advantage, however, it can be seized by absolutely foolish notions. The liberation of Iraq was one such idea. Many influential American policy-makers and opinion-makers believed that an army of primarily U.S. and European soldiers (perceived, no doubt, as 'Christian' soldiers) marching into an Islamic land in the twenty-first century would be received with rose petals thrown at their military boots. The price that America has paid for this delusion has been a huge loss in lives and cash, and deep national divisions. The Iraqi people have suffered even more. Adapted from the source document.

American‐led globalization has enabled the third great powershift of the last five hundred years—the "rise of the rest" following on the rise of the West and then the rise of the US as the dominant power in the West.When China, India, Brazil, Turkey and the rest sit at the table of global power with the West what will the world order look like? Will it be post‐American? Will it be culturally non‐Western, but play by the same rules of an open international order laid down by the American's after World War II?In the following pages, leading American and Asian intellectuals ponder these questions.

The moment has come for fresh US policy on East Asia. This should be priority number one for the next president.