The economic order was transformed not by any altruistic movement or political awakening, but by globalised capitalism

Earlier this year, passing through Dubai Airport on my way from China to Africa, I contemplated the giant terminal's restless, shifting population.

Asian businessmen peered at BlackBerries, Bangladeshi migrant workers tried to sleep under the seats that line the concourses, Chinese tour groups milled around the shops, Somali mothers chided recalcitrant children. I thought back to the 1960s and 1970s, when socialist third world leaders such as Julius Nyerere, the late president of Tanzania, used to advocate south-south co-operation. The New World Economic Order was an idealistic project in which US capitalist leadership would be fatally undermined by the solidarity of the oppressed.

But in the end, it is the universal energy of self-interest and the urge to make money that has weakened US power. The economic order was transformed not by any altruistic movement or political awakening, but by globalised capitalism. Those who care about developing countries campaigned against globalisation, but it is time to rethink. We can no longer blame western governments, the vestiges of colonialism and the multinationals for the ills of the world. There are growing inequalities within countries, and valid arguments about the distribution of wealth and power. History has swept away the old notions of north v south and east v west.

We are not talking of a simple challenge to western power from the rapidly developing economies of China and India. In his new book The Post-American World (Allen Lane), Fareed Zaka ria refers to "the rise of the rest", pointing to a more profound change which is already altering not just the world economy, but diplomacy and culture. "The world has shifted from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism," he writes, describing this as the third great power shift in modern history, after the rise of the west in the 15th century and the rise of US power at the end of the 19th.

Everyone passing through Dubai Airport, from the Filipina maid going home on holiday to the oil executive heading from the Gulf to Shanghai, is living this new reality, but I suspect that many Americans and Europeans have no idea of the changed world they now inhabit. Zakaria points out that 124 countries, including 30 in Africa, have experienced economic growth of more than 4 per cent for the past two years. Companies from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, India, Mal ay sia, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea and Taiwan may soon be in the top 25 multinationals.

Meanwhile, the British still struggle to accept the idea of shared sovereignty within the European Union, let alone a world in which our government's decisions can only be reactive to greater forces. On the right, parochialism mixes with "Rule, Britannia!" nostalgia to rail against asylum-seekers, Muslims and foreigners in general. The left is confused. Chinese sovereign wealth funds are buying shares in British companies: is that good because it signals a diminution of western exclusivity, or bad because it means China is now resolutely capitalist? The world's largest oil refinery is being built in India. Is that good because millions of Indians now have access to energy, or bad because the environmental consequences are potentially disastrous?

In the US, the anti-foreigner right has made common cause with labour unions to deny reality. The champion of this view is the CNN commentator Lou Dobbs, who sees American culture being swept away by a tide of immigration from the south while American jobs go to "communist China", as he always call it. Economic studies show that service-sector jobs in Europe and the US have increased as manufacturing jobs have been lost, and that western companies and economies have benefited from outsourcing and globalisation. Europe and the US need immigrants to replace their ageing populations. That the US is no longer economically dominant does not mean it's about to collapse - but fear rather than logic dominates the debate.

Zakaria compares the relative weakening of US power to the decline of the British empire. He quotes Arnold Toynbee, who described British triumphalism on Queen Victoria's 60th jubilee in 1897: "There is, of course, a thing called history, but history is something unpleasant that happens to other people." Just as history happened to Britain, a new chapter of history is happening to the US now. Zakaria believes that Britain survived as a significant power by shedding expensive colonies and cannily hitching its wagon to the rising power of the time: America. The lesson would be for the US to accommodate, rather than fight, the global economic shift east.

The challenge to the left remains. Development does not necessarily lead to democracy: witness China and Russia. Democratic India has huge wealth disparities even as the middle class grows. There are multiple injustices to confront. Maybe the first thing to learn is the lesson of Dubai Airport: stop obsessing about America.

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