DEVIN STEWART: I’m Devin Stewart, from the Carnegie Council.
Welcome. Thank you very much for coming.
The "rise of the rest" is a huge topic in the academic world, as well as the policy world and the world in general.
What does the rise of other countries besides the United States—the rise economically, politically, and culturally—what does it mean for the international system? What does it mean for norms? What does it mean for United States foreign policy and, generally, for the international system?
This is a heated debate that’s going on right now between Fareed Zakaria, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Richard Haass, and Kishore Mahbubani, who was here recently. There are sides starting to be taken—people are kind of getting into teams—about the rise of Asia, what it means.
I personally think that we should look very carefully at this phenomenon, not as a monolithic phenomenon, but rather something to be broken down into its components, not only to understand the disparities and the differences within Asia, but also to be level-headed about what we mean by this Western concept of Asia itself.
We are very fortunate to have David Denoon from NYU here talking today about his latest book, which is going to look at some of the context to the rise of the rest. The book is The Economic and Strategic Rise of China and India. It’s particularly looking at this phenomenon since the 1997 financial crisis in Asia.
Just as a reminder, Dr. Denoon is also an author of this edited volume on China, which he might talk about in a bit.
If I can butcher your nuanced argument into a sound bite, in a sense, Professor Denoon is arguing that the 1997 financial crisis set the stage for something that the United States has not been paying attention to, particularly since 9/11.

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