Global perspective

courtesy of journalist Fareed Zakaria

The following is an excerpt from Barry Friedman’s interview with upcoming Tulsa Town Hall speaker Fareed Zakaria for Intermission magazine. A writer, editor and CNN host, Zakaria is widely known for his foreign policy expertise.

The title of your book — The Post-American World — is it pejorative? The first line of the book says, “This is not about the decline of America, but rather the rise of everyone else.” It has gotten a great deal of attention, but I wonder if they’ve all read that line. The world has changed by the fact that countries that were for a long time so poor as to be dysfunctional or inactive on the world stage have now become politically stable, economically vibrant, culturally proud and, as a result, have become much larger actors. … So now these new powers are not going to passively attend to American foreign policy or even agree with it, and those disagreements will be felt. And that’s the new world we’re living in.

Was it inevitable or did we blow it? That’s a great question. A large piece was inevitable because it was structural change that, by the way, we had put in place. We wanted the rest of the world to grow. … After World War II, we got Europe back on its feet, we got Japan back on its feet. There was a piece, however, where we did blow it. I think the manner in which we exercised that hegemony clearly produced a certain amount of pushback. We could have handled our great and enormous power with greater wisdom and greater sophistication.

See the rest of Barry’s interview with Zakaria in Intermission magazine, available free at all Tulsa Performing Arts Center shows.

Tulsa Town Hall Speaker Series with Fareed Zakaria, 10:30 a.m. Jan. 16 at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center; $75 season subscription