Zakaria discusses conflicts in the Middle East

Despite the tensions, wars and frustrations that dominate the global stage, Fareed Zakaria expressed Monday in a lecture titled “Global Trends and Hotspots: The Next Security Crisis" that he remains optimistic in his view of how conflicts, mainly those in the Middle East, should be addressed.

Zakaria, a journalist and author who hosts CNN’s flagship international affairs program, “Fareed Zakaria GPS," explained that, while growing up in India, he was exposed to an energetic and enthusiastic portrait of the United States. He noted that times have indeed changed in terms of his own as well as general international and world views.

“At the heart of it, I think there’s a sense that the world has become a much scarier place… and that comes out of the Middle East,” he said, referring to the political turmoil and violence that has occurred in the region for decades.

Zakaria noted the cycle of violence that started with the fall of oppressive regimes in the Middle East and North Africa that has in turn revealed the fragility of many Middle Eastern states. A state, as defined by Zakaria, is an administrative and authoritative institution that can maintain political order. He added that the fall of any state thus brings the collapse of civic organizations and the nation itself, sending a region spiraling into chaos as vulnerable communities search for an ideology to latch on to. Zakaria noted that this effect has taken place in the Middle East.

“There is very little sense of a country, and in that situation, when you have the reality of political chaos, social chaos… what tends to happen is people gravitate toward the thing that maybe will give them security and identity. And that tends to be the place where you feel you have your deepest connection, and that is not the nation,” he said, adding that Middle Eastern historic institutions are being taken over by the Islamic State's successful appeal to citizens.

“You have two things going on in the Middle East — one is this cataclysmic state-collapse and state-system collapse, but at the same time you have had the radicalization and globalization of political Islam that is now infecting much of the world,” he said.

“The reality, of course, is that this is not all around us,” Zakaria noted, adding that the number of post-9/11 deaths in America from Islamic terrorism is up to 45, while the number of people in America who died from gun violence during the same period is around 150,000.

He also noted that the dynamic economy of the United States is growing at an unprecedented rate compared to other countries and that the US dominates sectors of the economy that will ultimately define the future, especially technology.

“The United States takes more illegal immigrants in than the rest of the world put together…and that means that there is a chain of economic vitality that is impossible to replicate,” he said. “If someone is going to cross the border… so that they can come clean your dishes and build your house and pick your food and look after your kids so that you can go work — that person has drive,” he said.

“If I were 18 years old and I was looking out into the world, and I said to myself, ‘What country I could go to where I could make a home for myself?’… I’m pretty sure I would still say it’s the United States,” he added.

A Q&A followed the lecture, with topics ranging from the Syrian refugee crisis and the recruitment of Western youth into Islamic radicalism to what cooperation between the US and Iran against the Islamic State would look like.

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Zakaria is a New York Times bestselling author, a contributing editor to The Atlantic and a columnist for The Washington Post. In 2010,Foreign Policynamed him as one of the top 100 global thinkers.

The lecture took place in McCosh 50 on Monday at 6 p.m. The lecture was part of the University Public Lectures series and was sponsored by the Edge Lecture Series.