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from the United States. New Delhi is grateful to Washington for its support in legitimizing India as a normal nuclear power, but it still pushed back on core security issues. Despite much American pressure, India simply does not see Iran as the threat that the United States does. India agreed to vote once with the United States at the International Atomic Energy Agency but continues to have extensive contact with Iran, including the conducting of joint naval exercises. India sees Iran as a commercial partner and refuses to isolate it in any way. In April 2008, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s pilots requested a refueling stop in New Delhi as the Iranian leader was returning home from a visit to Sri Lanka. The Indian government immediately issued a formal invitation and turned the six-hour stop into a state visit.

The current state of the IMF and the World Bank also provides a useful lesson. These institutions, dominated by U.S. ideas and money, have long been seen as vehicles for American influence. And today, Setser writes, “emerging economies like China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Korea, and even Brazil not only do not need the IMF; they increasingly are in a position to compete with it. Saudi Arabia already backstops Lebanon. Venezuela helped Argentina repay the IMF. Chinese development financing provides an alternative to World Bank lending.”

For an even better example of just how profound the changes associated with the rise of the rest will be, reread the coverage of the November 2008 G-20 summit in Washington, D.C., which took place during the tensest days of the global financial crisis. Every prior crisis had been handled by the IMF, the World Bank, or the G-7 (and, later, the G-8). In past crises, the West played the part of the stern schoolteacher rebuking a wayward classroom. The lessons the teachers imparted now seem discredited. Recall that during the Asian financial crisis the United States and other Western countries demanded that the Asians take three steps—let bad banks fail, keep spending under control, and keep interest rates high. In its own crisis, the West did exactly the opposite on all three fronts.

Economics is not a zero-sum game—the rise of other players expands the pie, which is good for all—but geopolitics is a struggle for influence and control. As other countries become more active, America’s enormous space for action will inevitably diminish. Can the United States accommodate itself to the rise of other powers, of various political stripes, on several continents? This does not mean becoming resigned to chaos or aggression; far from it. But the only way for the United States to deter rogue actions will be to create a broad, durable coalition against them. And that will be possible only if Washington can show that it is willing to allow other countries to become stakeholders in the new order. In today’s international order, progress means compromise. No country will get its way entirely. These are easy words to write or say but difficult to implement. They mean accepting the growth in power and influence of other countries, the prominence of interests and concerns. This balance—between accommodation and deterrence—is the chief challenge for American foreign policy in the next few decades.

Another Kind of Bubble

I began this chapter by arguing that the new order did not herald American decline, because I believe that America has enormous strengths and that the new world will not throw up a new superpower but rather a diversity of forces that Washington can navigate and even help direct. But still, as the rest of the world rises, in purely economic terms, America will experience relative decline. As others grow faster, its share of the pie will be smaller (though the shift will likely be small for many years). In addition, the new nongovernmental forces that are increasingly active will constrain Washington substantially.

This is a challenge for Washington but also for everyone else. For almost three centuries, the world has been undergirded by the presence of a large liberal hegemon