By Fareed Zakaria
Perhaps the most original contribution of Fareed Zakaria’s new book “Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World” is his “general theory” of COVID-19. Zakaria looks back 20 years to the political consequences of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as well as those flowing from the 2008 global financial crisis, as dress rehearsals for the pandemic. Each share an asymmetrical element, as world-changing events propelled by something very small.
In the 2001 terrorist attacks, Zakaria points to the box cutters carried by 19 hijackers aboard four planes and the thousands subsequently killed – which then led to the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the “global war on terror”, the upheaval of security systems worldwide, and consumed the life of the Bush administration and its dealings with Middle East regimes.
