In the last two to three years, there has been deluge of books written on how the world order that we have witnessed in the post WW-II era is no longer tenable...How no single country can superimpose its political, social or moral hegemony on others...
Much of this discourse harps on the theme of the demise or decline of the American Power.
Some like Fareed Zakaria and Kishore Mahbubani however differ. I personally like Zakaria's intellectual slant on this better. Zakaria posits that it is not so mu
ch as the decline of the United States as what he calls the "rise of the rest". 
May be Obama agrees, and that explains why he was seen lugging around the same during the Presidential Primaries last year.
Mahbubani however brings a distinctively Asian flavour to the argument. Yes, Asia has risen. But Asia to me is still defined by the two Asian giants-India and China. The rest of Asia,including Singapore, the country that Mahbubani himself represent is yet to make significant geo-political dent in the American stance till now.
However, I really like one hypothesis that Mahbubai said in his interview with Stephen Sackur on Hard Talk.
He says, that for the last 1800 years the two foremost powers that the world had known were India and China- this balance shifted in the last two hundred years towards a decidedly Anglo Saxon axis. Now it is shifting back again.
It is interesting to see how Sackur who is normally dispassionate is almost riled!!!!!
And this shift is generating its own set of reactions from the Western Intelligentsia, some of them acknowledging but most of them skeptical and even disbelieving.
Here is Mahbubani's article that he wrote in the Wilson Quarterly this Spring.But do watch Sackur's Anglo Saxon prejudice coming out!! I like Sackur though!!!
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=518042
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