Interview: Fareed Zakaria on India and Obama

OBAMA CAN HEAL: Zakaria feels that Obama will carry on the shift in Indo-US relations as well as Clinton, Bush did

        

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When 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.