Click to play videoWhen Barack Obama was elected the President of the United States, hope was born that America would reclaim its moral leadership of the world. Will that hope become a reality? And what does it mean for India? Editor, Newsweek International, Fareed Zakaria says India too can get an Obama if it encourages political angels. Zakaria is an authority on America's role on the international stage.
Sagarika Ghose: What was your first reaction when Barack Obama was elected?
Fareed Zakaria: I was absolutely delighted. People like you and me analyse things and look at them in an objective manner, but then there are these moments which are purely symbolic and you just realise that the very fact that a black man could be elected in America is very symbolic. He belongs to a people who were slaves 150 years and till 40 years ago did not have the right to vote. And then to realise that seven years after 9/11, a man was voted into power whose name was Barack Hussein Obama - his father was a Kenyan Muslim who lived in Indonesia and went to a madrassa there for a brief period - is just extraordinary. And it's these extraordinary affirmations of hopeful elements that are important. We see that such hopes can fade out the darker, more pessimistic views of the world.
Sagarika Ghose: I read the article that you wrote on Obama, when you said that "here was a man with brown skin and a funny name" and you also wrote about your son Omar, and said that you were happy he would be growing up in a world where there was a man called Barack Obama who had been elected president. Did you have a sense of personal identification?
Fareed Zakaria: Oh absolutely, because more than being an African-American, Barack Obama is the child of a Kenyan immigrant, who came to the United States for education, just as I did. That article you are talking about in which I endorse Obama, I showed it to my son and he couldn't understand it. He didn't understand how he was any different from the Asians, Hispanics and the Blacks in his class.
Sagarika Ghose: In an article on Obama, you said that he can actually create a new governing ideology for the whole of the west. What is this new governing ideology that you are talking about and will Obama be able to create it?
Fareed Zakaria: For 200 years ever since the French Revolution, Western and therefore the whole world's governments have tended to organise around two basic ideas - small government and big government - and they are generally speaking the Right Wing and the Left Wing. I think that debate is over because I think we have arrived at a place where people now understand that one cannot achieve growth and raise standards of living without using markets, trade, private sector. But you cannot achieve social equity, justice and stability in the context of the financial market without a government. So we need both. So the question is not about a small government or a big government - you need a big government but I think that key issue is a smart government.
Sagarika Ghose: At some point in your writing, you were actually considered a cautious supporter of George Bush. How do you think history will judge Bush?
Fareed Zakaria: I supported Bush on one central issue and I still support him on that, which is that I think Bush understood that the nature of extremism and Islamic radicalism coming out of the Arab world was centrally related to the political dysfunctions in that part of the world. The fact is that you have on the one hand, these extreme dictatorships and the other hand a highly radicalised opposition and the two feed on each other. Bush really did understand that. There ended the wisdom though. I think what he missed was a slow and organic process of bringing reform and democracy into a place. It doesn't work very well if you use cruise missiles and B52s.But I think that Bush is onto something very important and I think that in the long run, if Iraq can evolve in that direction, the idea is to have at the heart of the Arab world, a society which is more open and more democratic where the Sheas and Sunnis and Kurds have to negotiate their differences rather than slaughtering each other. It will make a difference.
But as you know i criticised him for a lot of other things like for most things I regard him as a failed President. But I do think that people who dislike George Bush should keep in mind that just because he believes in something, doesn't mean it's wrong. But he is much loved in India. On India he has been very intelligent. His relationship with China has been set. He has managed Asia very well. He has strengthened ties with India, China and Japan simultaneously without annoying any of them. I think it has been pretty deftly handled.
Sagarika Ghose: Do you think that the quality of the transformative power of America, bringing democracy to different parts of the world, should continue to be an objective of the American foreign policy? Do you think that democracy is still the great hope for the Arab Muslim world?
Fareed Zakaria: I think that the political, economic and social development is the absolute answer to the kind of extremism, radicalism and depravity that you see in parts of the world, particularly - let's be honest - in parts of the Muslim world. I wouldn't just say democracy. We have held five elections in Iraq. There have been elections in the Palestinian territory and in Hamas. You really need a broad modernisation of society. You need a development of the rules of law, of the Constitution, the courts, and of civil society. And in that context of course, elections are very important. I think that's where Bush goes wrong. He doesn't recognise that this is an organic process of a modernisation of a society and you can't just say that it's going to happen tomorrow.
Sagarika Ghose: It's a difficult line of argument sometime isn't it because where do you actually interfere in traditional structures? Example in parts of Afghanistan, people are saying that the Americans are actually intervening in traditional tribal functioning. And where do you actually reform?
Fareed Zakaria: American strategy in Afghanistan now pivots around this precise issue. Does the US persue a strategy of modernisation, building up the central government which is a legitimate, democratic, internationally recognised government? Or does it make deals with tribal elders wherever it can find them? Now an anti-al-Qaeda strategy would tell you forget about Karzai and go with the tribal elder, but a democratic strategy would tell you go with Karzai, modernise Afghanistan. Which is the tougher, slower way, but perhaps the more fruitful way.
Sagarika Ghose: But let's talk about Obama's foreign policy. How different can it realistically be?
Fareed Zakaria: I think there will be a radical shift in Iraq. I think the Iraqis want it and the Iraqi parliament has just handed him a gift by agreeing to it. But what Obama wants to do is reduce America's exposure in Iraq. He will bring down forces substantially in two year - they won't go down to zero. In Afghanistan it will be trickier because 20,000 troops more or less does not change this dilemma we were just talking about - do you engage with the tribal leaders or not and there are just costs and benefits to it. But I think more braodly, he has already done something. He has changed the image of America. America is once again the place which invents the future, that people look at with hope-filled eyes. And I think that there are two ways in which he can do it. The first is he will shut down Guantanamo Bay. He will end the official use of torture and the second is creating an America that listens more and engages more and doesn't seem to be dragged to those tables, kicking and screaming.
Sagarika Ghose: A number of Indians are very apprehensive about Obama. They fear that Obama will stop outsourcing, he will put pressure on nuclear proliferation, he will put pressure on Jammu and Kashmir. What do you think about those fears that Indians have about a Barack Obama presidency?
Fareed Zakaria: I think they are unwarranted. Look, the US has made a broad strategic shift toward India over the last 10 years. It began under Clinton. Certainly accelerated dramatically under Bush. But it is a deep strategic shift. It is also a cultural shift where the US has found a partner in India that is very much like it - an open, messy, chaotic, democratic society - that it understands very well. The fundamental driver of the new relationship with India is the rise of China. That isn't going to end anytime soon and so the relationship is going to stay strong. Every Democrat has to talk a little about outsourcing. They usually do nothing about it. He has supported the Indo-US Nuclear Deal. And Kashmir is really a non-issue because it's not going to be solved anytime soon and frankly the thing that he said about Kashmir, which was most important was, 'we need to stop the Pakistani army in viewing this as fighting a land war against India on Kashmir and move to a counter-insurgency strategy in the hills of FATA, which is where the real threat to Pakistan is from'.
Sagarika Ghose: Pakistan-Afghanistan border now seems to the zone of real threat. What do you think Obama should do on Pakistan?
Fareed Zakaria: I think that he should have a political strategy and it is about engaging the tribes in Pashtun areas of both Pakistan and Afghanistan. I think we should make a deal with the tribals. This is a complicated process and the support of Karzai and the Pakistani government is important. But which tribal leaders matter? The old tribal structures have been destroyed. Afghanistan has gone through 25 years of civil war. So figuring that out is more important than 20,000 troops more or less. And I think the whole effort should be a political surge to making deals and trying to create a situation where you have local stability. If you have the kind of rampant instability that you have there, people are going to gravitate towards the strongmen in the region and the strongman in the region is the Taliban.
Sagarika Ghose: The economic crisis that is engulfing America and the whole world is in some senses evocative of your book, The Post-American World, where you spoke about America being a reduced power in the future. Do you see that happening because of this economic crisis, and other powers now rising in geo-politics?
Fareed Zakaria: Oh absolutely. If you look at this financial crisis, for the last 50 years, every time there was a financial crisis, who handled it? It was the G7, G8, the IMF and the World Bank. This time around, for the first time ever, G20 is handling it. For the first time ever, the western club realised that it had to expand its ranks substantially. There are eight western industrialised power and 12 emerging market countries. And why? Because it realised that if it needed legitimacy, it needed to include Brazil, China and India. If it needed growth, it needed to include China and India which are likely to be the two most powerful growth engines going forward in the next few years and if it needed cash, it needed to include China and the Saudis. So all of a sudden, the terrain has shifted.
Sagarika Ghose: The other fear that the rest of the world has is America turning protectionist under the onslaught of the economic crisis - America putting up walls between free trade, increasing subsidy to farmers, killing the Doha round of the WTO, stopping outsourcing and taking measures to stop India's software exports for example. So do you see Barack Obama presidency also becoming a time when America turns protectionist and turns inward?
Fareed Zakaria: This is an important question but it is beyond Barack Obama. There is a mood in the western and industrialised world that it is very anxious about the globalisation taking place and the outsourcing and the reality of 3 billion people entering the global labour force. This is where India can play a role. India must engage in these global negotiations. It must make clear that it wants to be a responsible stakeholder - it wants to try and be part of the system that keeps the global system open for growth and trade. If the US, or France or Britain feel like they don't have willing partners in the emerging markets, that there aren't ways where you can't make a deal and come up with a win-win scenario, then there is a danger that there will be a pullback. And it will be understandable because there are protectionist forces in every country.
Sagarika Ghose: This poses a challenge also for democratic functioning in the rest of the world. You write very interestingly in your book, Future of Freedom, that democracy is not enough, voting is not enough. You need the quality of Constitutional liberty. Do you think that in India, with the rise of groups like say the BJP or groups that put pressure on democratic functions, India is in danger of becoming an illiberal democracy?
Fareed Zakaria: Let's think about this. What has been the core of this? Everyone says this is the end of capitalism and in Delhi there are so many Left wing intellectuals who have been waiting for this moment. I guarantee you that in five years' time, capitalism and globalisation will be fine because that is the only way to raise standards of living around the world. Because after crisis' like this, countries reform more because they need to attract capital. I think there will be a return to reulation, but regulation is not socialism. Regulation is part and parcel of capitalism, it always has been. I think this is less a crisis of capitalism than a crisis of democracy. This has happened because governments in the western world have not imposed discipline on their constituents for long term gain. People wanted everything so we said 'fine borrow'. Borrowing was the solution to everything because you don't have to raise taxes, cut subsidies. It's the magical solution a democratic government has found. If you look around the world, every democratic government is saddled with debt because they cannot bring themselves to tell their constituents that you can't have it all. It's a crisis of the ability of a democratic system to think about broad interests in the long term.
And then you raise the very troubling aspect for India, of another kind of democratic populism, which is the rise of highly illiberal forces within the political system. I say this as a very proud son of India, but it's a matter of shame to have Christians being killed, Buddhists being persecuted, Muslims being slaughtered, to have a situation like Gujarat in 2002 under Narendra Modi and then for him to win an election. I have heard all the analysis about how it is all about good governance, but you cannot get around the fact that what you are seeing is the highly illiberal streak in a democracy.
Sagarika Ghose: You have been very worried about the BJP in particular haven't you, about its potential to assume illiberal forms?
Fareed Zakaria: Yes absolutely because this kind of thing works. You can see it in the US. You can get White votes by implanting fears of Blacks and Hispanics. You can see it in France, where you make people scared of Muslims. There is a certain kind of identity politics which can turn very nasty and get very violent and ugly. And to say we are just doing a moderate version of it is not right. You are playing with fire and everybody in the BJP knows they are playing with fire. I think that there are many good things that they have done in various ways. What is the greatest thing about India? Its extraordinary diversity, its pluralism and its tolerance. We should be celerbrating this. This could be the world's first universal nation.
Sagarika Ghose: That is why you need political unifiers. Do you think India will ever get a unifier like Barack Obama?
Fareed Zakaria: Well, that's an interesting question but put it this way: Could India have a Dalit prime minister? Could India have a Scheduled Caste prime minister or a Muslim prime minister? I hope so, because I think that it would say something very powerful about India and it would be something which is genuinely true of the Indian political culture. But you have to encourage a political culture's better angels, not its fears and pessimism and that's where I worry about India. Right now people are trying to encourage the worst fears and suspicions about others. We should be encouraging the better angels of our culture.
Sagarika Ghose: That's a wonderful note to end on Fareed Zakaria. Let's encourage the better angels of our political culture, the better angels of our democracy, both in India and in the US. Pleasure to have you on the show Fareed Zakaria. Thanks very much indeed for joining us.
Fareed Zakaria: Thank you Sagarika. It was a pleasure.
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