•Hello and welcome to Walk the Talk. And my guest today is Fareed Zakaria. Welcome to Walk the Talk. I don’t want to waste time in introducing you but just to acknowledge the fact that you are by far the most prominent public intellectual of Indian origin, if I may put it like that, in the US, but very American.

There’s a saying “from your lips to God’s ears”, if you say so, Shekhar.

•But times have changed a great deal since we talked last, January 2004 is when we talked last.

I remember that very well — at Haji Ali.

•Yes, Haji Ali at Bombay.

Yes, times have changed. I think that was probably the pinnacle of the US power. If you think about the unipolar world from 1989, the fall of the Soviet Union, to about 2006-2007, the period from 2003-2004 was the high point of American power. This one country could almost unilaterally depose two regimes 6,000 miles away from it, expand its military budget by $60 billion, which is more than the combined military budgets of Britain and Germany. But that world is passing now.

•Are we now talking about what could be the lowest point of American power in many decades?

I would have agreed with you maybe six months ago. But, in a sense, we have passed the phase of critiquing the Bush administration. Now, I think what we are really into, if you pardon the expression, is understanding the post-American world. I think everybody understands that level of American or German unilateralism has passed. Now, we try to understand this far more complex world with America still at the centre but in a room of equals, and you saw that vividly with this G20 summit. The actual existence of the summit was in itself an event to be marvelled at. Every previous financial crisis has been discussed by the G7 or G8 or the IMF, in other words, western clubs. For the first time, they did it with 12 emerging market countries, and the dominant theme by everyone’s account was that these countries — India, China, Brazil — will have to be given more power, more representation.

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