Acknowledgments

Eric Chinski is one of the world’s very best editors, and while it is very clear that that is just what I require, I’m not sure why I got lucky enough to have the opportunity to work with someone who possesses such skill, wisdom, wit, and infinite reserves of patience. However, it’s the kind of good fortune life has taught me to accept without questioning. I’m immensely grateful for the opportunity to work with him again on this book, and the same can be said for all his colleagues at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, led by Jonathan Galassi and including especially Jeff Seroy and his team and Gabriella Doob, who provided guidance, essential humor, and encouragement at critical junctures.

I would probably not have met Eric, the folks at FSG, or anyone else involved in the publishing community were it not for my friend and agent, Esmond Harmsworth. It was his idea that I start writing books a while back, and it was his guidance that made fulfilling that particular lifelong aspiration possible. The more books I write, the more I owe him, but that’s a business model we both can live with, and more a reflection of sincere gratitude than any commercial transaction.

I must also thank Jessica Mathews and the wonderful people at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for providing such terrific support throughout the writing of this book. It has been a privilege to be a visiting scholar at Carnegie for so many years—this being my fourth book written during the decade or so I have been affiliated with the endowment.

Not only has Carnegie continued to offer the ideal work environment, excellent resources, and a great team of researchers, but much of my interest in the area that is the subject of this book was inspired by thinking done by Jessica herself. As I mentioned earlier in the book, her Foreign Affairs article “Power Shift” made a very important contribution in this area, almost as great for me as did the conversations I have been fortunate enough to have with her over the years on that and related subjects. She has been a great president at Carnegie, built the organization into being truly the first global think tank, and remained a leading thinker in her own right, and she has done all that while cultivating exceptional work and great loyalty from her team. Among the members of that team, great thanks go to my dear friend Moises Naim, who first led me to Carnegie; to Uri Dadush, who offered especially pertinent ideas regarding this book; and to Paul Balaran, who is Carnegie’s secret weapon, masterfully overseeing its daily operations.

In the same vein, I must also thank at the outset Bernard Schwartz, whose generous contribution has made my work and that of my research team at Carnegie possible for the last several years. Having been a remarkably successful and visionary businessman, Bernard has also devoted many years to providing sage advice to America’s leaders. He is humane, insightful, and fearless, and I’m even more grateful to have him as a friend than as a benefactor.

The real work behind this book was done not by me but by a team of researchers who have made the process of writing Power, Inc. such a pleasure that I (almost) hate to see it end. While these young, gifted rising stars undoubtedly signed on to this job to learn something or to burnish already excellent academic credentials, they should know that over the course of this project, I have learned far more from them than they may accidentally have gleaned from me.

Leading this team was Chris Zoia, who persevered during those long spells when we were digging into distant history and who regularly found nuggets of solid gold near those veins of copper along which we were excavating. He brought to the project editorial gifts, humor, grace under pressure, and management abilities he probably didn’t know he had at the outset. He is destined for great things, and I’m exceptionally fortunate to have had the opportunity to collaborate with him these past couple of years.

Chris had a number of especially effective associates throughout the process, and all made material contributions to this book. One was Jonathan Ross, now a practicing attorney, who came to us during a year off between his time at law school and his job and who was both a research star and someone who offered great insights and lively discussions that helped improve the book in myriad ways. Another was May Sabah, who put in not one but two tours of duty and contributed sound, smart, skillful research as well as uplifting energy and unfailing good spirits throughout. Heather Horn also made great contributions during her time as the project’s lead researcher, especially in the area of European history, in which she excels, as did Robyn Mak, who made terrific contributions on everything from the history of Sweden to the story of rising economies in Asia. Jared Miller and Susanne Mueller also provided important research papers and useful perspectives during their briefer but nonetheless much appreciated associations with the project.

Elly Page, lead researcher on my last book, Superclass, kicked off the process on this one too, and frankly, we wouldn’t have gotten here without her. She’s a terrific friend, now also an attorney; I am proud to have had the chance to be associated with her over two projects and hope there will be more in the future.

Beyond this team, a small group of friends have played an absolutely essential role as advisers, confidants, and inspirations throughout the process of preparing this book. My business partner, Dr. Jeffrey E. Garten, has forgotten more about business, government, and the relationship between business and government than I will ever know, and I am grateful beyond words for having had the opportunity to work with him in the Clinton administration; at our company, Garten Rothkopf; and most of all, over countless breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, talking, schmoozing, contemplating the world, and getting the chance to see where his great mind has been—especially since he usually arrives at those places well ahead of the rest of the world. Truly, working with him over the past two decades has been one of the singular privileges of my life.

In the same vein, I am exceptionally grateful to my other colleagues at Garten Rothkopf, led by the smart and capable Claire Casey, and our partners at the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson, notably Ambassador Susan Esserman, Alfred Mamlet, and the indefatigable Harold Freilich (also my tennis partner, so I know just how indefatigable—and charitable—he really is), for their support.

For the past several years, I have had the privilege of writing for Foreign Policy, blogging daily for their award-winning website. I certainly don’t do this for the money. The main reason I do it is that I enjoy so much working with the great editors there, notably the wonderful and gifted Susan Glasser, the mastermind of Foreign Policy’s recent successes, and the especially great and pop culturally attuned Becky Frankel. Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg, Mary Choksi, Deb Boedicker, and the team at Strategic Investment Group, as well as Antoine van Agtmael at Emerging Market Management, have also been both valued friends and colleagues whose thinking has helped shape key ideas in this book.

While my other friends don’t face my colleagues’ burden of having to work with me daily, they have all done more than their fair share to provide me with guidance, ideas, and counsel during the preparation of this book. Tom Friedman of The New York Times has been an intellectual coconspirator and great pal for many years now and was especially helpful in working through some of the core ideas of this book. So too was his colleague and another great friend for the past nearly two decades, David Sanger, who offered many great ideas and a much-needed acid wash to peel away what was unnecessary in some of mine. Completing the New York Times trifecta was Helene Cooper, still another much-valued friend who happens to work at that newspaper. I have known Helene just as long as I’ve known the other two guys, and she was also very generous in sharing her very good thoughts and ideas throughout this project. Ed Luce, Financial Times columnist and terrific author, probably had to endure more conversations about this project than anyone else, and he was helpful in every one of them. Displaying similar generosity and also offering vital advice and insights were (in alphabetical order): Nancy Birdsall of the Center for Global Development; Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation; Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic; Bob Hormats, currently Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and formerly of Goldman Sachs; Rob Shapiro of Sonacon, LLC. Anne-Marie Slaughter, formerly of the State Department and now back at Princeton; Debora Spar of Barnard College; and Allison Stanger of Middlebury College. I should also note that my friend Philippe Bourguignon offered not only great contributions but for a crucial period his wonderful home at the Miraval Resort in Arizona to enable me to finish a key draft of the book.

During the course of preparing for and later writing this book, I interviewed and spoke with scores of people from business, government, and academia. Some of those interviews were off the record or on background, so I can’t cite the individuals who shared their time with me, but I do want to express my thanks to them. I also want to be sure to note that the views expressed in this book do not necessarily represent those of the people I can acknowledge. That said, the book would not have been possible without the generous access and thoughts provided by Lewis Alexander, Neil Allen, Celso Amorim, Charlene Barshefsky, Don Baer, Sandy Berger, Lael Brainard, L. Paul Bremer, Ian Bremmer, Richard Burns, Kurt Campbell, Steve Case, Ambassador Heng Chee Chan, Nelson Cunningham, Dan DiMicco, Niall Ferguson, Carol Graham, Ambassador Hussain Haqqani, Fred Hochberg, Walter Isaacson, John Judis, Susan Levine, David Lipton, Mack McLarty, Luis Alberto Moreno, Michael Oren, Antonio Patriota, Karen Poniachik, Clyde Prestowitz, Dylan Ratigan, Jim Rogers, Francisco Sanchez, David Sandalow, Roger Sant, Klaus Schwab, Meera Shankar, Thomas Shannon, Tharman Shanmugarantnam, Joseph Stiglitz, Lawrence Summers, Julia Sweig, Arturo Valenzuela, Mauro Vieira, Timothy Wirth, and Daniel Yergin. I would also like to offer special thanks to two men who helped shaped my thinking for much of my adult life and who died during the preparation of this book. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and the former U.S. representative Stephen Solarz were among the best international thinkers and leaders of their generation, and I remember both with admiration, appreciation, and fondness.

Naturally, the greatest thanks of all must go to my family. My parents regularly encouraged, coaxed, goaded, and inspired me along the way to getting this book done, and I must say my dad’s particular enthusiasm for the idea was one of the leading reasons I did this book when I did. My mom proved once again to be a fantastic editor, both in her review of the manuscript and in terms of the little editor’s voice that she embedded in my head when I was in a preconscious state (which could have been at almost any time in the past half century).

My daughters, Joanna and Laura, are not only the inspiration for everything I do, they are the reason I have the courage to undertake any creative venture, because I know that no matter how that particular venture may turn out, I have already been associated with the creation of two masterpieces. I know everyone else thinks their children are special and best. But mine actually are, and the rest of the world is just going to have to learn to deal with it.

Finally, I want to offer special thanks to the person who deserves the most gratitude of all, my wife, Adrean. As it happens, she lives her professional life at the intersection of government and business. This book is therefore largely written for her, not only in the hope that it might offer a glimpse into an aspect or two of what she does for a living, but as certain proof that her profession is in fact, contrary to popular belief, the world’s second oldest. She has been unwaveringly supportive throughout this project, as she has been in all things throughout our time together. She is a wonder and a joy. And after all she has done for me, perhaps this book will allow me to return the favor and help her with one of the great challenges she faces in life. You see, she has trouble sleeping some nights …