Fareed Zakaria

It's a weird thing.

There was this caricature, which is that everybody in America thought that if China kept doing what we were saying, China was going to become like America.

But what's really happening is America is becoming more like China.

We are becoming admiring of China's methods of running the economy.

Right, state-run capitalism.

Right, controlling the population, of buying mineral rights around the world.

It's like we are becoming them.

You know, it's something that's true in personal life as well, right?

Like real deep abiding trust takes decades to build.

It's a lot of hard work.

Rupturing trust is very easy because exactly as you say, because after this,

You know, every European country, every Canadian, the Australians, they always know, you know, the Americans could do this again.

So I kind of have to hedge.

I kind of have to have an insurance policy.

I kind of have to have, you know, a way out, some kind of diversification.

And that's the tragedy.

We had been so reliable, but the world never thought, that our allies never thought they needed an insurance policy.

They needed to hedge against our becoming crazy rogue imperialists.

And now they do.

We are leaving them leaderless.