So my sense of reading you overall, particularly reading your new book Age of

revolutions is a sense of sadness and surprise that the world finds itself today in a state of

peril that the powers of populism and darkness and closed thinking are battling hard and maybe winning against what seemed

to be the liberal trend or a trend toward openness and relative peacefulness.

Is that too dark a read of your views?

No, I think you put it exactly right.

It's a sadness.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall,

it seemed as though many of the great Enlightenment,

liberal, progressive projects in the world were moving forward

and being embraced by people from Eastern Europe to Latin America to Africa opening up holding

elections, many of them free and fair, markets that were often closed

opening up so that people had many more opportunities to move up, trade between countries growing, tourism between countries growing,

and then the information revolution, which was bringing us all together, binding us together.

All these forces seemed to be moving forward. They were each reinforcing the

other in a kind of virtuous cycle. And then what we've seen over the last 10 years

is every one of the trends I just mentioned has reversed.

We are in a democratic recession,

we are in an age of rising trade and tariff barriers and protectionism.

We are in an age where information systems that were once open are increasingly being cordoned off, monitored, regulated.

And all of it is fueled by a certain degree of popular sentiment which says stop this train. We're moving too fast and I need to protect myself.

That is Far Reed Zakaria.

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