Is America the world's greatest country?  Well, consider this list.

The world's tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn't make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world's ten richest people are American.

Sure, none of these things is really an important measure of a nation, and even taken as a whole the Ferris-Wheel/Shopping Mall Index isn't likely to convince anyone that America has really slipped.  But the point that Fareed Zakaria makes in his Newsweek column is that all these things -- and the list could be a lot longer -- are indicators of a new status in world affairs.

But while we argue over why they hate us, "they" have moved on, and are now far more interested in other, more dynamic parts of the globe. The world has shifted from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism.

With something like 195 nations in the world, 65% of them have been growing at a rate faster than the US.  The next set of "world companies" are emerging in nations that Americans have, and still do, looked on with disdain.  Whether it's finance or science, health care or education, America isn't leading the way -- it's not even pointing the direction.  Instead, we're on the sidelines, trying to squeeze the grip of our still considerable military leadership ever tighter, only to have more and more of our influence slip away.

There are directional changes that could have been made to make America a moral and intellectual leader in this new structure, but instead we've been running on bluster and bombs.  Now, for the most part, America is simply being ignored.

Zakaria's right to say that this is not the disaster it might seem.  First of all, though from the cable news pundit point of view this world looks suddenly scary and dangerous, it's actually a lot less frightening that it was in decades past.  If we notice more terrorism, it's only because we're looking for it and reporting on every incident.  It's because we have an administration that makes sure to pin the word terrorist on everyone who ever contemplated running a stop sign.  It's the same phenomenon that makes us see a surge in crime because a child who goes missing in Salt Lake City gets immediate 24/7 coverage in Des Moines and a college student lost on vacation becomes the centerpiece of national news.  There is no enormous threat out there.  There's no organization, no nation, and no coalition that threatens to contend with the United States.  Terrorists can do in the United States.  China and Russia simply aren't interested -- they're too busy selling us electronics and oil.

As the GOP works hard to scare us to death (and gets assistance from the ringing of 3AM phones) we are as safe right now as we are ever likely to be -- even though the actions we've taken as a nation might justifiably be seen as a kind of death wish.

But while Zakaria is quick to point out that the Republican fear mongers are blowing gun smoke when it comes to the threats we face on the battlefield, he's equally quick to join the hallelujah chorus when it comes to defending the economics of globalization.  The US has lost jobs, lost skills, lost whole industries, and become debt-bound both at the national and personal level.  Somehow, this is taken as a good thing.  

Over the last 20 years, globalization has been gaining depth and breadth. America has benefited massively from these trends. It has enjoyed unusually robust growth, low unemployment and inflation, and received hundreds of billions of dollars in investment. These are not signs of economic collapse.

That same period, and the last seven years in particular, have seen stagnation in the median wage, a loss of nearly two million jobs, loss of real purchasing power for the average consumer, and sharp rises in the cost of basic commodities.  It would be nice to think that the "rising tide" was sweeping in to lift all boats, but for many people it seems that the tide was actually stored in an American bucket -- a bucket that's been shot full of holes by our economic and diplomatic missteps.

Low, low prices at the local big box and trading manufacturing jobs for those that include the phrase "do you want fries with that" do not a great economy make.  Over the last weekend, anyone visiting one of my favorite places in LA, Dutton's Bookstore, would have found that it, like the US, was in the midst of furious activity, with all hands on deck and customers pouring through the door to enjoy low prices.  It might have been the very model of the US economy that Zakaria describes.  Unfortunately, it was a going out of business sale.  

On top of the troubles that are plaguing us now is the knowledge that we do not enjoy an unbounded system.  Food riots in two dozen countries, and $123 oil are only the first signs of what will happen as more and more contend for less and less.  These fights may be handled with Euros now, but when it comes to basic commodities, it's doubtful that the pocketbook alone will rule.  There's also the secondary effects generated by increasing demand -- global warming, increasing desertification, general pollution.  These problems are likely to be cause of future conflicts, and globalization makes them all kick harder.

What's more, the happy talk of millions lifted from poverty into the waiting arms of consumerism is really little more than talk.  That worldwide tide hasn't exactly been coming in evenly.  In most countries -- hell, all countries -- what's been happening is that more and more of the resources are being accumulated by a very small percentage of the people.  As in the US, the average wealth has increased, but the median wealth is a very different story.  Around the world, inequality between the richest and the poorest has been moving sharply higher.  Historically, that's been a big flashing red light on the road to instability.

Finally, if the last twenty years have proved anything, it's that capitalism is not the exclusive partner of democracy.  Authoritarian governments have shown that they too can play the greed game.  Western exploitation of Africa has long demonstrated that bribery and cronyism can actually out compete regulation and law in the marketplace.  Governments unconcerned with such non-monetary concepts as safety, workers rights, and the environment have done quite well.  Globalization has been placed in the service of governments with no interest in democracy, who have discovered that consumerism can be a far more effective means of controlling the populace and squeezing out opposition than any propaganda film.  

That America has no current or dawning military threat is to be cheered.  That some number of people across the planet are no longer bound to poverty is to be celebrated.  That the United States no longer sets the rules in the game must be accepted.  But globalization seems to be providing rapid increases in demand, rapid increases in inequality, rapid increases in prices, and no matching increase in freedom or democracy.

Rather than being worried about the arms stored in distant caves, we need to be more concerned about the food available in distant kitchens.  The latter will have much more to say about the future security of America, and the storm of globalization that we've unleashed may well be more dangerous to our survival than every militant on Earth.

Generations from now, when historians write about these times, they might note that by the turn of the 21st century, the United States had succeeded in its great, historical mission—globalizing the world.

So the "great historic" accomplishment of the United States turns out to be not acting as a beacon for freedom, or demonstrating the worth of democracy.  It's teaching the rest of the world to consume as we do.

If that's true, it would be better for all of us if that tea had never gone into Boston harbor.