Who is thomas friedman

It involved much more politics. But doing it for a year was quite enough for me. I was not cut out to be a White House correspondent, which is a strange cross between babysitting and reporting.

Click here for his first column. It carried Peter Lisagor. He was a favorite columnist of mine. I used to grab the paper from the front step and read it on the living room floor. First was to broaden the definition of foreign affairs and explore the impacts on international relations of finance, globalization, environmentalism, biodiversity, and technology, as well as covering conventional issues like conflict, traditional diplomacy, and arms control. Second, I tried to write in a way that would be accessible to the general reader and bring a broader audience into the foreign policy conversation—beyond the usual State Department policy wonks.

It was somewhat controversial at the time. So, I eventually decided to write a book that would explain the framework through which I was looking at the world. It was a framework that basically said if you want to understand the world today, you have to see it as a constant tension between what was very old in shaping international relations the passions of nationalism, ethnicity, religion, geography, and culture and what was very new technology, the Internet, and the globalization of markets and finance.

It is all about the intersection of the two. It has been published in twenty-seven languages. Its central argument was that the globalization system — the ever tightening links of trade, finance and connectivity between countries — replaced the Cold War system — the bipolar world.

And that international relations could best be understood as the interaction between, as noted above, all that was old — the forces of nationalism, regionalism, tribalism, ethnicity and sect — and all that was new: this globalization system. Sometimes that globalization system would restrain those urges and sometimes those urges would burst right through the system, but the price countries and leaders would pay who did burst through this system would, he argued, always be higher than they anticipate.

Yes, sometimes those olive tree urges will drive leaders to strike out—Vladimir Putin will seize Crimea—but, up to now, he has decided not to take Kiev because of the stress that global sanctions have imposed on his country and his fear of an additional loss of investments.

That is the Lexus vs the olive tree in a nutshell. Before going to Saudi Arabia in February , I wrote a column in the voice of President Bush calling on the Arab League to offer Israel full peace, diplomatic relations and normalization of trade in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from all lands occupied in the war and East Jerusalem.

There was only himself and his foreign policy aide Adel al-Jubair now the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Adel served as the translator. He said he had the same idea as I wrote in my column. At the end of a three-hour conversation I asked Abdullah if he would put his proposal, which was the same as my proposal, on the record in my column. He said he wanted to sleep on it. The next day Adel called me and told me it was OK to write it up as an on the record interview. Yet, it remains out there today as the only truly pan-Arab peace initiative.

It was the liberal case for the war. Only the combination of the Iraqi tribal awakening and the U. If Iraqis can produce a self-sustaining democracy in the heart of the Arab world—one based on an unprecedented social contract between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds—it could over time have a very positive impact on a region barren of democratic government.

If that happens, the Iraqis, Americans, Brits, and other allies, who have paid a huge price for this endeavor, will at least be able to say it produced something decent and better in Iraq. I continue to root for Iraqis to succeed, in the hope that real liberty, rule of law, and consensual government will take root in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world but up to now nothing that has happened in Iraq as a result of our intervention could be said to justify the huge human and financial costs that Iraqis, Americans and others have paid — and for that I have nothing but regrets for supporting this huge intervention.

I hitch hiked on George W. It had to come from within Iraq and from within Iraqis. And while many Iraqis shared that aspiration — and many Arabs as we would see with the Arab spring — the forces for democracy and pluralism up to now have proven to be just too weak compared to those for sectarianism, revenge — or just stability at any price.

You should never be in hurry on behalf of another people — one of the many lessons I took away from Iraq. Since that victory in , there has emerged in Iraq and Lebanon a mass movement, from the bottom up, for more secular, non-sectarian, uncorrupted government.

But Iran through its proxies has been doing everything it can — as it did from the beginning of the Iraq war — to prevent a true pluralistic, secular democracy from taking root in Iraq for fear that it would spread to Iran. On Oct. I see it as a region, because of oil, that is falling behind every global trend. I think the Arab Middle East is heading for some very significant social and political explosions. That the last 50 years are not going to look like the previous 50 years, as this Facebook generation of Arabs grows up, looks for jobs and seeks political expression.

In this kind of Middle East I would love to see Israel behind a wall—as all these things go on—but a wall mutually recognized by Israelis and Palestinians. A revised and expanded edition was published in hardcover in and a Release 3.

The World Is Flat has sold more than 4 million copies in thirty-seven languages. The Cast Thomas L. Friedman Correspondent. Why I'm Involved We're going in the wrong direction and I think the only way to counter that is to bring the story home in really concrete ways to people - in ways that kids can understand and non-scientists can understand.

About Thomas L. Friedman Thomas L. Share This. Behind the Scenes Climate Change and the Migrant Crisis Thomas Friedman travels from France to Niger, following the trail of migrants and unraveling how climate change is driving people to leave their homes. Climate Change and the Migrant Crisis Thomas Friedman travels from France to Niger, following the trail of migrants and unraveling how climate change is driving people to leave their homes.

Friedman behind the scenes for Climate Wars. Friedman standing on a street in Taiz, Yemen. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website.

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It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website. Thomas Friedman. Ranked Thinker 32 Ideas Work Membership.