CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Live from Davos, Bashes Trump for Potentially Unleashing ‘Forces of Nationalism’ That Would ‘Destroy the World That America Created’

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria cautioned Sunday from Davos he believed that President Donald Trump could disrupt the delicate foreign policy ecosystem the US created in the last century and that it could ultimately “destroy the world.”

The host, who was reporting live from the World Economic Forum, spoke to attendees about Trump’s America-first agenda. He concluded the world that America’s post-World War II policies helped build now risked being undone by the president’s shortsighted desire to impose his will.

Zakaria said that prior to 1941, Americans preferred isolationism to empire and that the country did something unthinkable after freeing Europe, Africa, and Asia from dictators. He noted instead of seeking repayment, it paid war-torn countries to rebuild.

The host said American foreign policy allowed it to act in its own best interests while building up others in the eight decades after the war ended. Due to innumerable policies of “goodwill” from Washington,  Zakaria said, America had been given the benefit of the doubt time and again when acting unilaterally on the global stage.

He cited one “foreign leader” who asked to remain anonymous who told him, “We all accommodate American requests and wishes far more than those from any other country.”

But Zakaria warned he believed Trump now risked burning decades of goodwill and room to operate down for a series of cheap and easy personal wins.

“He wants to squeeze every foreigner for more,” Zakaria said.

While discussing the Panama Canal, which Trump has threatened to retake while complaining of fees for the US military to use it, Zakaria said:

But Trump wanted to shake down a poorer Central American country and get a discount. It’s a way of being that is always about a transaction rather than a relationship. America is so powerful that it’s quite possible that Trump will succeed in getting these discounts as he threatens other countries, most of them friends, allies, and partners. But in doing so, he will lose the goodwill generated over decades of American foreign policy that made so many countries around the world want to ally with Washington against the Soviet Union, or Russia, or China.

And he might unleash forces of nationalism and protectionism that, over time, will damage, even destroy the world that America created, a world that has been more stable, peaceful, prosperous, and free than any we have known before.

Watch above via CNN.