if the US stopped monitoring near earth asteroids, nobody would miss it. The risk from such a threat is so small that no nation takes that as an imminent threat to spend money on defeating. Asteroids would be considered a natural disaster like earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. and therefore would not be considered a military matter or one requiring constant attention by political leaders.
The fact is that the US simply has both the financial capacity and the wherewithal to undertake such activities. The US is quite literally the only country with enough military largess to devote millions to combating rocks from space as well as satisfactory arguments to justify this expenditure.
The author is apparently complaining that in a world where the US is constantly mocked for its impotence, some of its activities should be carried on by others. Luckily for taxpayers everywhere, most nations are not inclined to fund the kinds of thing the US funds. Of course, having some sort of internationally funded organization to protect humanity from the apocalypse is an excellent idea, the fact is that nation-states are still the dominant organization at this stage of human civilization.
Also, I'm pretty sure that many countries have the ability to launch missiles into space with decent aim.

How many nations around the world have pet protection services ? too much money and not enough brains.

Who gives a ***insert forbidden word*** about asteroids?
I'd say that humanity is on the path to extinction on a much shorter time frame than that.

Because the whole world knows that whenever America elects a black president, we become responsible for asteroid containment. It's known as The Freeman Effect.

it isn't a post-American world. The book was lousy and filled with holes.

Fareed Zakaria can huff and puff his wares all he likes. His central thesis has been all over the board the last few years, from "decoupling" (remember that?) to "decline" to "the rise of everyone else".

Ho hum. The United States is still protecting the world from Asteroids, driving rovers around Mars, sending Probes to Saturn, Jupiter and Pluto and launching more rockets (of all types) into space every year than Brazil, India and China have in their entire history.

Yeah... post-American world my left foot.

It's not America's "job" to defend the world against asteroids. And no one is making the argument that it is. In fact, it's not anybody's "job" to protect the world against asteroids, so the entire question posed by this article is irrelevant.

The real question for NASA, for Congress, and for Americans, boils down to a simple cost-to-benefit calculation. Is detecting near-Earth objects (NEOs) worth the relatively modest (indeed, in terms of the U.S. budget, tiny) outlay, given the widespread destruction that even a relatively small asteroid (or comet) would cause - should one strike the Earth?

It is also foolish to assume that an bollide impact would likely cause damage wholly outside of the United States (as if lives outside the U.S are somehow worth less than lives within the U.S). Two-thirds of our planet is covered by water; an asteroid hitting one of the Earth's oceans could well send an enormous tsunami toward one of America's densely-populated coasts.

Because no state would be willing to share the technology involved for a successful asteroid deflection with other states.

if we leave it up to Burkina Faso, it is unlikely to get done.