Fareed Zakaria

only 20 or 30 years before it collapsed.

And the reason was that the British elites got very engaged and enamored with the idea of controlling Iraq and controlling Afghanistan and controlling, you know, they would find these, there was this wonderful book called Africa and the Victorians by Robinson and Gallagher, in which they talk about how, why the British annexed Fashoda in the south of Sudan.

Well, because they thought you needed to control the Suez Canal to control the route to India.

Well, if you needed to control the Suez Canal, you needed to control Egypt.

But if you needed to control Egypt, you needed to control Upper Sudan.

But to control Upper Sudan, you needed to control Lower Sudan.

So, boing, there you were, sending troops to Fashoda, which nobody anywhere in Britain would have any idea where it was and why were they doing that.

Meanwhile...

What they were neglecting was the reality that Germany was becoming much more productive.

America was becoming much more productive.

And I look at what we're doing today.

I mean, you think about it, right?

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.