Fareed Zakaria

Infobox journalist
name =Fareed Zakaria


caption =Fareed Zakaria in 2007
birthname =
birth_date =birth date and age|1964|01|20
birth_place =Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
age =
death_date =
death_place =
education =B.A., Yale University
Ph.D., Harvard University
occupation =Journalist, commentator, author, statesman
alias =
status =
title =
family =
spouse = Paula Throckmorton Zakaria
children = Omar, Lila, Sofia
relatives =
ethnic =
religion =
salary =
networth =
credits = "Newsweek International", editor (2000–present)
"Fareed Zakaria GPS", host (2008–present)
"Foreign Exchange", host (2005–07)
"Foreign Affairs", managing editor
agent =
URL =http://fareedzakaria.com

Fareed Zakaria (pron-en|fəˈriːd zəˈkɑriə, born January 20, 1964) is an India-born American journalist, author, and television host specializing in international relations.

Early life

Zakaria was born in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. His father, Rafiq Zakaria, was a politician associated with the Indian National Congress and an Islamic scholar. His mother, Fatima Zakaria, was for a time the editor of the Sunday "Times of India".

Zakaria attended Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai, Yale University and subsequently received a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, where he studied under Samuel P. Huntington and Stanley Hoffmann.

Career

After directing a research project on American foreign policy at Harvard, Zakaria became editor of the magazine "Foreign Affairs", and, in 2000, an editor of "Newsweek International". He writes a weekly foreign affairs column that appears in both the domestic and international editions of "Newsweek". His book "" (Norton) was published in 2003.

He is the author of "From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role" (1998) (Princeton University Press), "The Future of Freedom" (2003), "The Post-American World" (2008) and co-editor of "The American Encounter: The United States and the Making of the Modern World" (Basic Books).

Zakaria hosted the weekly TV news show, "Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria", for PBS, and, from 2002 to 2007 a news analyst with ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos". His new weekly show, "Fareed Zakaria GPS" premiered on CNN in June 2008.

In 1999, he was named "one of the 21 most important people of the 21st Century" by "Esquire" and in 2005, he won the World Affairs Councils of America's International Journalist Award. He serves on the boards of Yale University, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, New America Foundation and Columbia University's International House.

Zakaria has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart a record eleven times.

Views

Zakaria is generally regarded as a political moderate or centrist. [cite web|url=http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-08-09/news/the-interpreter/2|title=The Interpreter|work=The Village Voice|date=2005-08-09|author=Press, Joy] In foreign policy terms, he is a "realist" (i.e., someone who believes that American foreign policy should be guided by a conception of its national interest). His first book, "From Wealth to Power", argues that countries that grow rich and powerful inevitably expand their sphere of interests abroad. He sees America as a reluctant great power in the late 19th century because it was a strange creature — a strong nation with a very weak central state.

Zakaria is an advocate of free markets, both at home and abroad. He believes that America should embrace globalization and free trade. He is an internationalist, writing consistently in favor of American engagement with the world, multilateralism, and efforts to help alleviate global poverty and disease. He has often argued that helping countries to modernize their economies and societies is a more secure path to development and liberty than pushing for elections and democracy.

His second book, "The Future of Freedom", develops this latter theme more fully. Zakaria argues that democracy works best in societies when it is preceded by "constitutional liberalism," which he defines as the rule of law, rights of property, contract, and individual freedoms. He has written that historically liberty has preceded democracy, not the other way around. He has argued that countries that simply hold elections without broad-based modernization—including economic liberalization and the rule of law—end up becoming "illiberal democracies". For this reason, he has been critical of the manner in which the Bush administration has pushed its democracy agenda forward, relying on elections in Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, and Lebanon as the solution to those countries' problems and minimizing the building of the institutions of law, governance, and liberty.

After the 9/11 attacks, Zakaria wrote a seminal cover-story essay for "Newsweek" entitled "The Politics of Rage: Why Do They Hate Us?". In it, he argued that Islamic terrorism has its roots in the stagnation and dysfunctions of the Arab world. Decades of failure under tyrannical regimes, all claiming to be Western-style secular modernizers, has produced an opposition that is religious, violent, and increasingly globalized. Because the Mosque is the one place where people can gather in an Arab country, that is where the opposition to these regimes grew. Because Islam was the one language that could not be censored, it became the language of opposition. He argued for a generational effort to create more open and dynamic societies in the Arab world, thereby helping "Islam enter the modern world".

In a June 11, 2007 cover essay, Zakaria criticizes "fear-based" policies on terrorism, immigration, and trade, and argues that beyond George W. Bush the world needs an open and confident United States. [cite web|last=Zakaria|first=Fareed|title="Beyond Bush"|work=Newsweek|date=2007-06-03|url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19001200/site/newsweek/from/RSS/|accessdate=2007-06-03]

Iraq War views

While Zakaria initially supported using military force against Iraq, he argued for a United Nations-sanctioned operation and occupation with a much larger force (approximately 400,000 troops, similar to what General Eric Shinseki had argued for). He also called for a Bosnia- or Kosovo-style occupation that was international, rather than American, in nature. He wrote a "Newsweek" cover essay the week the Iraq war began entitled "The Arrogant Empire," which detailed the failures of the Bush foreign policy in the run-up to the war.

He was an early and aggressive critic of the occupation, arguing against the disbanding of the Iraqi army and bureaucracy, which the administration accomplished under the guise of "de-Baathification." He predicted that accelerating the build-up of the Iraqi military would create a Shia and Kurdish army that would exacerbate the sectarian tensions in the country. Four months into the occupation, his columns bore such titles as "Iraq Policy Is Broken," and in September 2003 he wrote a cover story for "Newsweek" entitled "So What's Plan B?" In a February 2005 issue, the week before Iraq's elections, he wrote, "no matter how the voting turns out, the prospects for genuine democracy in Iraq are increasingly grim." In his March 5, 2007 "Newsweek" cover essay, Zakaria called for a reduction in American troops in Iraq to 60,000 by the end of 2007.

Participation in Wolfowitz meeting

In his 2006 book "State of Denial", "Washington Post" journalist Bob Woodward wrote that, on November 29, 2001, a meeting of Middle East experts and analysts was convened at the request of then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. The outcome of the meeting was a report for President George W. Bush concerning American policy toward Afghanistan and the Middle East in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, a report that supported the subsequent invasion of Iraq. Zakaria told "The New York Times" that he attended the meeting for a few hours but that he "thought it was a brainstorming session" and did not recall being told that a report for the President would be produced. [cite news|last=Bosman|first=Julie|title=Secret Iraq Meeting Included Journalists|work=The New York Times|date=2006-10-09|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/business/media/09zakaria.html?ex=1318046400&en=ab43603ab31201e7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss|accessdate=2007-01-16]

On October 21, 2006, after verification, the "Times" published a correction that stated:

An article in Business Day on Oct. 9 about journalists who attended a secret meeting in November 2001 called by Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense, referred incorrectly to the participation of Fareed Zakaria, the editor of "Newsweek International" and a "Newsweek" columnist. Mr. Zakaria was not told that the meeting would produce a report for the Bush administration, nor did his name appear on the report.

Criticism

Wisconsin Citizen Action member Roger Bybee, in a piece entitled "Fareed Zakaria, Spokesperson for the Global Elite" for the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting organization, writes that Zakaria's "fervent embrace of the perspectives of the powerful keeps him in a state of denial regarding fundamental realities of the global economy." [http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3593]

Personal

Zakaria is a naturalized citizen of the United States. [citation | last = Zakaria | first = Fareed | title = America Doesn't Need Crusades.(United States citizenship narrative by Fareed Zakaria) | newspaper = Newsweek International | year = 2001 | date = July | url = http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3335/is_200107/ai_n8056458] He currently resides in New York City with his wife, Paula Throckmorton Zakaria, son Omar, and daughters Lila and Sofia. Zakaria has weighed in on his Muslim background on only one occasion, telling the "Village Voice", "I occasionally find myself reluctant to be pulled into a world that's not mine, in the sense that I'm not a religious guy." [cite web|accessdate=2008-05-20|url=http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0533,fpress,66881,6.html|title=The Interpreter|work=The Village Voice|date=2005-08-09|author=Press, Joy]

Bibliography

*"The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria, (W.W. Norton & Company; 2008) ISBN 0-393-06235-X
*"The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad", Fareed Zakaria, (W.W. Norton & Company; 2003) ISBN 0-393-04764-4
*"From Wealth to Power", Fareed Zakaria, (Princeton University Press; 1998) ISBN 0-691-04496-1
*"The American Encounter: The United States and the Making of the Modern World Essays from 75 Years of Foreign Affairs", edited by James F. Hoge and Fareed Zakaria, (Basic Books; 1997) ISBN 0-465-00170-X

References

External links

* [http://www.fareedzakaria.com/ FareedZakaria.com] official site with most of his essays, links to books, etc.
* [http://www.foreignexchange.tv/ Foreign Exchange (no longer hosts)] weekly television news show/Daljit Dhaliwal now host
* [http://www.zakaria.newsweek.msnbc.com/ Fareed Zakaria Newsweek Articles]
* [http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0533,fpress,66881,6.html "The Interpreter"] —profile in the "Village Voice"
* [http://www.fareedzakaria.com/interviews/latimes.html/ Los Angeles Times Profile]
*Mangino, Andrew. " [http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=31829 Trustee Zakaria '86 found his niche at Yale] ", Yale Daily News.
*imdb name|id=1821472|name=Fareed Zakaria
* [http://www.sajaforum.org/2006/09/911_saja_qa_wit.html SAJAforum.org Q&A with Fareed Zakaria with Sree Sreenivasan on five-year anniversary of 9/11 attacks]
* [http://blog.washingtonpost.com/postglobal Washington Post, PostGlobal Moderator]
* [http://www.slate.com/id/3519/ Sweet Justice] —Fareed Zakaria says that German wines get a bad rap
* [http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/politics/national/features/n_8621/ Man of the World] "New York" magazine profile by Marion Maneker.
* [http://www.sajaforum.org/2008/01/tv-fareed-zakar.html Coverage of his many appearances on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"]
* [http://www.sajaforum.org/2008/05/books-fareed-za.html Review roundup of "The Post-American World"] at SAJAforum.org
* [http://www.omnivoracious.com/2008/09/thomas-friedman.html One-on-One] with Thomas L. Friedman, Sept. 7, 2008

Persondata
NAME = Zakaria, Fareed
ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
SHORT DESCRIPTION = Indian-born American journalist, commentator and author
DATE OF BIRTH = January 20, 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH = Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
DATE OF DEATH =
PLACE OF DEATH =