Fareed Zakaria

This is the third Middle Eastern war we have fought in 25 years.

I do worry that this imperial temptation

to have so much of the focus and the resources of the country placed in these faraway parts of the world, where it's not clear we're actually gaining much, we're expending enormous energy, and we're expending a lot of our moral capital, our political capital, our actual financial capital, that part is very similar to what happened to Britain.

And I don't know whether it's exhaustion or whether it's a kind of imperial arrogance or maybe a combination of the two,

But that feels hauntingly reminiscent.

And it's actually mostly a vote against us because nobody actually wants Chinese leadership.

I think they don't know what it would mean.

The Chinese, for the most part, don't seem to want to offer it.

Look at what has happened with this recent crisis.

They got involved a little bit.

Mostly what they're involved in is trying to see that the currency settlements are made in Chinese currency.

The Chinese are a free rider.

They want a free ride on the benefits of American hegemony while criticizing it.

They don't have an alternate conception.

So what people are going to find is, unfortunately, a world without American power is going to be a less open, a less liberal, a less rule-based world.

But it's not going to magically reconstitute itself around a Chinese hegemon, because that is not China's conception of its world role.

It's not going to be able to do it.

It does not have the trust

We still, for good reasons, have an enormous amount of trust because we built it over 80 years.

You know, look, we have, I don't know, 55 treaty allies in the world.