The Left is Coming? "This talk connects to the world beyond America in two ways. First, some inside the US are beginning to see a global picture. A new book, Second Chance by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the cold war hawk who served as national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, includes a startling phrase. No leftist, Brzezinski detects what he calls a "global political awakening", a stirring across much of the developing world, among those who are "conscious of social injustice to an unprecedented degree and resentful of its deprivations and lack of personal dignity". Thanks to television and the internet, the global have-nots can now see all that the haves are enjoying at their expense. The hard-headed Brzezinski sniffs revolution in the air. The second (and related) impact is on the status of the US as a model to the rest of the world. Last weekend a clutch of political scholars gathered in Oxford for a New York Review of Books conference on "The new face of American capitalism". Several suggested that, thanks to a weakening dollar and a narrowing in the performance gap between the US and Europe, the US model was beginning to lose its shine. The debacle in Iraq had also badly damaged American prestige."