Fareed Zakaria

Almost every Latin American country in the early 80s was a military junta.

They all became democracies by the 90s, with the exception of Cuba.

That whole process of partnering, integration, cooperation, law enforcement cooperation, drug cooperation ended up making the United States much more influential in Latin America.

And it produced, Mexico now is half a middle-class society.

There's no migration from Mexico into the US anymore because there are jobs there.

All these good things happened, but it points to the dilemma you're describing.

This is complicated.

It's messy.

You have to treat countries that are really not your equal like your equal.

You have to give them respect and defer to them sometimes.

Yet, it has worked miraculously well.

We're throwing that all away for this much older version of power and coercion, which doesn't work.

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?