Fareed Zakaria Has a Better Way to Handle Russia — and China

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“Russia’s utterly unprovoked, unjustifiable, immoral invasion of Ukraine would seem to mark the end of an era,” writes Fareed Zakaria, “one that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.” Many of us, myself included, grew up in that era. We came of age in a unipolar world, dominated by a single country whose military, economic, even cultural, hegemony remained largely uncontested. That world was by no means free of violence. But the great power conflict that had defined the lived experiences of previous generations seemed like an ancient relic. Recently, it’s the post-Cold War era of the last 30 years that has begun to feel outdated. China has become an economic and military powerhouse — its economy is now larger than the third, fourth, fifth and sixth biggest world economies combined. Russia has become geopolitically assertive, annexing Crimea in 2014, undermining U.S. elections , and now invading Ukraine. Over the past few weeks, questions that once came off as alarmist have become urgent: Are we witnessing the return of great power conflict? And if so, what does that mean for America — and the rest of the world? Fareed Zakaria is the host of CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” a columnist for The Washington Post and one of the most brilliant analysts of this emerging era. His 2003 book “The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad” and his 2008 book “The Post American World” were well ahead of their times. And his more recent work on Russia’s aggression, China’s rise and the crucial distinctions between those nations is crucial for understanding this moment. We discuss the decline of the so-called “Pax-Americana,” why Zakaria believes Russia poses a much more existential threat to the liberal world order than China, what the West would be doing if it wanted to seriously punish Russia for its actions, whether Putin’s attempt to break the liberal world order has actually reinvigorated it, why Zakaria thinks it’s a mistake to think of the world as divided into “democratic” and “neo-authoritarian” blocs, how America’s expansionism and hypocrisy undermines its reputation abroad, whether Donald Trump was ultimately right about the need for greater European defense spending, what a diplomatic solution to the current Russia-Ukraine war could look like, how America’s thinking about the world needs to radically change in a global great power competition and more. Disclaimer: this episode contains explicit language. Mentioned: “The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World” by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro Fareed Zakaria GPS episode, “Fareed’s take: Putin’s War on Liberal Democracy.” (CNN) “The Return to Great-Power Rivalry Was Inevitable” by Thomas Wright (The Atlantic) “Why Ukrainians Believe They Can Win” by Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. Book recommendations: “Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis” by Kenneth N. Waltz “A World Safe for Democracy” by G. John Ikenberry “Memoirs 1925-1950” by George F. Kennan Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

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Fareed Zakaria

Ezra Klein

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Ezra Klein

00:33

I'm

Ezra Klein

, and this is "The

Ezra

Klein Show."

00:51

It is eerie knowing that you have lived through the end of an era and that you're now witnessing the birth of another. For most of my life, foreign policy has not been dominated by great power conflict. And that is a defining characteristic of that period.

01:09

There have been crises. There have been wars. There have been horrors. But

America

was too strong and other countries too weak to really worry about world wars or even cold wars, to see the world as this great power chessboard.

01:24

That's changed. I don't know where you'd mark it exactly, but it's like the old line about how bankruptcy happens. First the era ended slowly, and then it ended all at once. It ended slowly as

China

rose in power, in wealth. And then it ended all at once with

Russia's

invasion of

Ukraine

and the sharp revitalization of the

NATO

alliance, to some degree of a

Western

identity in response.

01:52

So we are again in an era of great power something, great power competition, great power conflict. But what? What kind of conflict? What kind of competition? What are the lines? Should

Russia

and

China

be understood, as many in the

West

are arguing, as a neoauthoritarian bloc? Should we see the lines as these open democratic societies against the closed authoritarian regimes? Should

Russia

be understood as a great power at all?

02:19

Or is it something closer to a rogue State or even a

Vassal State

increasingly of

China

? I mean their

GDP

, it's roughly that of

Italy

. They're not an economic peer of the

U. S

., They're not an economic peer of

China

. What is the

European

become, now that

Russia

has roused its fury, its collective identity, and maybe most importantly, its defense spending?

02:44

And I think this is actually the most important question of all. What is

China

in all this? Is a

Cold War

, not just a hot war, between

China

and the

U. S

. Inevitable? Or is that a choice and one we can choose not to make? Can

Russia

and

China

be split from each other, if we make the right decisions?

03:03

The most dangerous moment in a foreign policy paradigm is its birth, is its beginning. Because in the beginning, the rules remain unknown. The alliances remain untested, and there is not predictability. That's where we are right now.

03:18

And so I wanted to have a conversation about not just what this era is shaping up to be, but the many things it still could be. I wanted to have a conversation where we tried to imagine it, but didn't impose a shape. It is not yet attained. If we are re-entering a period of great powers, and I think we are, how do we avoid letting old mindsets and metaphors drag us back into the disasters of the past? How do we not believe the future is more set than it actually is?

03:47

And so I invited

Fareed Zakaria

to join me on the show.

Zakaria

is, of course the host of

CNN's

Fareed

Zakaria GPS

." He's a columnist for

The

Washington

Post

. He's a best selling author many, many, many times over.

03:58

And he's been thinking, in his various books, about the problems of illiberal democracies and the rise of new powers for decades. And so I hoped he could offer some perspective on the moment, and he didn't disappoint at all. As always my email, ezrakleinshow@nytimes. com.

04:20

Fareed Zakaria

, welcome to the show.

Fareed Zakaria

04:21

Pleasure to be on,

Ezra

Ezra Klein

04:23

So on your show this past Sunday, you said, quote, "

Russia's

utterly unprovoked, unjustifiable, immoral invasion of

Ukraine

would seem to mark the end of an era, one that began with the

Fall of the Berlin Wall

in 1989." How would you describe the era that feels to so many like it's ending?

Fareed Zakaria

04:43

One simple way would be to describe it as a

Pax Americana

. Because in the most simple realpolitik sense, great power politics, you went from a world that was dominated by two great powers, two superpowers, to one in which there was just one.

05:00

The period after 1945,

Hans Morgenthau

, the great international relations theorist, said the reason he called it a bipolar era was that the two poles, the

United States

and the

Soviet Union

, just towered over everybody else. And that remained true until 1991 roughly, you know, when the

Soviet Union

essentially collapses.

05:22

And after that, we entered an age where there was no contest to the

United States'

supremacy, hegemony, politically militarily, economically, but even in terms of sort of the realm of ideas. I grew up in

India

. In

India

, there was an active contest between, what were the best ideas about which way to order your society, capitalist, democratic, socialist, communist? All that ended with the collapse of the

Soviet Union

05:51

So it's a unique moment in world history, where all these forces seem to favor the

American

model and

American

power. And I think that is the world we've lived in. You can say that it begins to atrophy with the global financial crisis. The

Iraq

War

going sour. But this certainly seems to mark the first frontal, great power challenge to

American

hegemony. That's why I say, in a sense, it's the end of an era.

Ezra Klein

06:19

I think that question of where you market is really interesting. I want to hold on the emotional, the felt experience of this world for a couple of minutes here. Because, look, I was born in 1984. So the

Soviet Union

really collapses, '91, let's call it. And the next 20 years or so, so most of my maturing and political life, they're really unusually free of great power conflict.

06:45

And I would mark it like 2010-ish,

China

is becoming strong enough. And as you note, the financial crisis and the

Iraq

War

are making

America

look weak enough, that people are beginning to expect a different world is coming.

Russia

really begins becoming more assertive. They meddle in our elections, obviously, in 2015 and 2016. Now they're invading

Ukraine

07:07

And so what do people who maybe have come of age in this aberrant period of

American

unipolarity not understand, not gutturally sense about what it means to not live in an age of

American

unipolarity?

Fareed Zakaria

07:25

More than anything else, a sense of constraints, a sense of the limitations on your power. Throughout human history, power has always been checked by power. I mean, there's a period of the

Roman Empire

. But for the most part, modern history has been marked by a world of many powers. And that meant there was severe limits on what you could do.

07:49

We now think of the

United States

nostalgically. We talk about the period after

World War 2

as being a period of extraordinary

American

dominance. That's what

Trump

wants to return

America

to. But in fact, while domestically, it was a period of, you know, it was a great period of economic boom times, in international terms, the

United States

was very constrained.

08:10

The

Soviet Union

was this very powerful rival. Approximately half the world, in some way or the other, either aligned itself with the

Soviet Union

or was non-aligned, which was a way of distancing itself largely from the

United States

. So when

America

wanted to get its way on international issues in any international fora like the

U. N

., it could not.

08:32

When it was trying to rally countries to its side for some international cause or the other, most of the time, it wasn't able to do that. That sense of real constraints on

American

power has not existed for the last 30 odd years.

08:49

You know, we've had trouble getting a complete coalition for one thing or the other, but never the sense that this was the defining characteristic of the world we lived in, that there was superpower competition, that it was a zero-sum game, that our loss was their gain. That world we haven't really experienced. And by the way, the global economy was built on that lack of great power competition. That's why the global economy was so broad, so wide, so ubiquitous, involving everybody,

Russia

and

China

included.

Ezra Klein

09:22

You just mentioned zero-sum competition. And I just noted the felt experience of, you know,

Millennials

, let's say, Zoomers, true, of being in this aberrant period without great power competition. But before that, people who are older, what they remember mostly is the

Cold War

competition, which did have this profound zero-sum dynamic to it.

09:47

And is that the only kind of great power competition that can exist? Because I worry that the mental model that is operating for a lot of analysts right now and a lot of politicians right now is that, if it's not the'90s, it's the'50s, '60s, '70s.

Fareed Zakaria

10:07

The best way to answer your question is kind of along two dimensions. First, in terms of power politics, in terms of realpolitik, no, you can have different ways of organizing power or disorganizing power that is not unipolar, that's not bipolar. Generally speaking, we refer to the third option is multipolar. And that's what most of modern history has been characterized by.

10:29

And multipolarity is actually even more unstable than bipolarity. Because a bipolar world, while very dangerous, because you have these two big powers glowering at each other, and every loss is the other's gaine, so that's why we cared during the

Cold War

. Which way is

Angola

going to go? Which way is

Nicaragua

going to go? Which way is

Cuba

going to go?

10:50

You think, at some level, these were kind of crazy, foolish, irrelevant questions. Who cares which way

Nicaragua

went? But you wouldn't remember this, because it happened around the time of your birth, but there was a huge, heated debate in the

United States

during the

Reagan

administration as to which side

Nicaragua

was going to be on. Because everything became about the great power competition. A multipolar world is different.

11:14

It is ceaseless competition among lots of countries, but they're constantly shifting power, weight, policy, which means there's lots of room for error, misperception, miscalculation. Multipolarity is what characterized 19th century

Europe

. And you will notice that there is a period of lots of little wars.

Germans

go to war with the

French

British

go to war with the

French

during the

Napoleonic Period

11:39

Napoleon

goes to war with the

Russians

. And there's just constant movement of trying to figure out who's on top, who's not and constant ceding of land. And, so that's the power politics. But then there's a second piece to this, that I think it's worth talking about, which is this is not just about a world of power politics.

11:60

There is also the question of, how much have the liberal ideas, practices and institutions that have been built up over the last century, how much have they changed the world so that it's not zero-sum? To what extent have we created a world of interdependence, commerce, capitalism, travel, contact, values, that mean that we shouldn't just be applying this power political set of ideas to the world?

Ezra Klein

12:30

I think that's very important, and we're going to come back to it. But I want to pick up on the idea of stability that you mentioned and a cousin of it, which is predictability.

12:41

There's an idea you'll hear from foreign policy scholars, which is that the most dangerous moment of a given foreign policy paradigm is it's beginning, the beginning before clear red lines are established, before the different parties really understand each other's motives and intentions and capabilities. Does it feel to you like that's where we are now?

Fareed Zakaria

13:02

I think so. Because it's an interesting, I hadn't thought about it quite in the way you describe it. But what you're describing is, in some ways, for example, the only

Cold War

, when the

United States

and the

Soviet Union

both had acquired this terrible new weaponry, nuclear technology, and weaponized it.

13:20

But they barely talked to one another. There was a great deal of ambiguity about what their posture was, just how many weapons they had. And there was very little contact. There was no constant arms control summits. The arms control itself didn't exist. And after the

Cuban Missile Crisis

, you start a process of regularized contact, communication, confidence, building measures, and things like that.

13:46

So in some ways, I wonder whether we are in a similar moment, where there is a waning of

American

unipolarity, hegemony. There is the rise of some kind of new structure. We're not completely sure what it is. I myself think, in the long run, it will tend towards bipolarity. But the truth is we don't know. And that period of uncertainty is very unstable. And it's the one we're living in now.

Ezra Klein

14:15

So how do you map out what you see emerging right now?

Robert Gates

, the former defense secretary, was on your show over the weekend. And he said that the

United States

and our allies face a situation we have not faced since

World War 2

. And that is we have two superpower adversaries, one in

Europe

, one in

Asia

. Our so-called holiday from history is over.

14:37

Do you see it like that, that we should understand it as there being two adversaries here,

Russia

and

China

. And if so, should we understand them as linked, as allied, as in a relationship of convenience? If you were to sketch out what looks like it is emerging, what is the structure?

Fareed Zakaria

14:56

To me, it seems much less clear than

Gates

was making it out to be, that you have 2 superpower adversaries. That to put

Russia

in the position of a superpower seems, to me, we're fundamentally missing something, particularly in the 21st century.

15:10

It is fundamentally a petro state. It has some natural resources beyond that, but not very much. It has all kinds of bad omens in terms of its power profiles. It has bad demographics. It has incredible overreliance on one or two dimensions of power. It has triggered a very powerful countervailing response in

Europe

, which is, you know, its principal line of contact with the outside world.

15:39

So it doesn't feel right to me to call

Russia

a superpower.

China

clearly is. The structure of the world that looks clearer to me is one that is emerging bipolarity. You have 2 powers that are head and shoulders above all the others.

15:54

So that was, again,

Morgenthau's

definition in the'40s. And I think it works here, which is that the number 1 and 2 are very far away from the others. So the

U. S

. is number 1, for sure, economically.

China

is number 2. But get this, the

Chinese

economy is larger than the 3rd, 4th, and 5th economy in the world put together.

16:16

Similarly the

U. S

. has the largest defense spending in the world.

China

is number 2. And again,

China's

defense spending is larger than the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th put together. So you see the

U. S

. and

China

are, kind of, in the league of their own.

16:31

What makes

Russia

complicated is it is a spoiler state. It's willing to use what power it has and really in a kind of very disruptive way. So for me, it complicates life. It's a kind of menace. It has to be dealt with, but it doesn't have the capacity to shape the international system in quite the way that

China

does. I think we should be trying to drive a wedge between

Russia

and

China

. I think we could do it.

16:58

The

Chinese

and the

Russians

have been suspicious and hostile of each other from

Nixon's

opening to

China

until yesterday. This is not a particularly comfortable alliance that

and

Putin

have. And if the

United States

were to work at it, I think it would be possible to exploit areas of difference, areas of disagreement, in a much more effective way than we have done so far.

Ezra Klein

17:23

So what working at it would look like, changes, depending on what you think the nature of the cleavages here and the alliances here are? And I want to lay my cards in this conversation on the table a bit, which is I am really allergic to the new cold war mentality that dominates in

Washington

around

China

17:43

I have a really just bad reaction to it. But I want to try to give that a hearing. It's part of why I wanted to have you on the show. Because I thought you could help me do it.

17:53

And so I've been thinking about an essay Thomas Wright, the director of the Center on the United States and Europe, at

Brookings

, wrote in 2018, about the inevitable return of great power conflict.

18:04

And I want to read a chunk of it, because I thought he laid out the logic of this case very clearly. So he writes, quote, "

Russian

and

Chinese

leaders concluded, that if the liberal order succeeded globally, it would pose an existential threat to the regimes.

Moscow

and

Beijing

saw the spread of color revolutions, helped along by the press and non-governmental organizations. They came to understand that

Western

governments will always face pressure to back democracy activists overseas at precisely the moment that authoritarians are most vulnerable, regardless of what assurances or cooperative relations existed beforehand.

18:38

They saw how media organizations published material that destabilize their regimes, such as the 2012

New York Times

investigation into corruption in

China

. They worried about

Google

and social media companies aiding dissenters in their own societies, "and so on here. And so there's a bunch there.

18:53

But the underlying idea that he's laying out is that our system, our values, are more expansionary and confrontational than we give them credit for. And the systems we then criticize, threaten, even seek to undermine, see us as a threat, and they try to weaken and undermine us, in turn.

19:13

And that, that's pretty fundamental to the differences between an open, small-d democratic world, and a more closed neoauthoritarian world. And there's not an obvious way around that. That's a pretty I think popular analysis right now. Do you think it's right?

Fareed Zakaria

19:30

Look, the world we are living in is a world of grays. And so when you present something like this, there are elements of it that are true. There's no doubt that there is a difference between dictatorship and democracy and that democracies, in some sense, pose a fundamental, ideological threat to dictatorships. But I think that what you read in that Thomas Wright essay, which I remember, is a fundamentally ideological conception of international relations.

19:59

Whereas, I have a fundamentally strategic conception of international relations. So when I look at that same reality, what I'm struck by is,

China

and

Russia

are very different in this way.

Russia

benefits from international instability. It's an oil State. Oil prices go up. It seeks to undermine international institutions and cooperation.

20:22

China

, as a general principle, does not do that. It benefits enormously from international stability from international order, even from international institutions. What it wants is to become powerful within them, so powerful, that you cannot violate its sovereignty.

20:39

China's

number one principle for the last 20 years, and what it criticizes the

U. S

. for, is state sovereignty, the inviolability of state sovereignty. Which is why this whole business with

Russia

invading

Ukraine

has been so awkward for

Beijing

. So what they want is to grow powerful within the world as it exists.

20:59

You can see this in the fact that they want to become powerful in the

U. N

. They want to become powerful in the

I. M. F

. They want to become powerful in the

World Bank

. They don't want to overturn these institutions.

21:09

A good example that gives color to this is during the

Obama

administration, they came to the

United States

and said, we want to set up an

Asian Infrastructure Bank

. Because we don't think the

World Bank

has enough capacity to fund all the needs that we have in

Asia

. The

Obama

administration said, no, you won't, and we will actively oppose this.

21:31

So the

Chinese

go out and set up their own, that's totally are not tied to the existing international system, but still fairly rule based and such. Everybody joins it. When

Britain

joined it, an

Obama

administration official said to me, I guess the game is over. So that's a good example of how we were, in my view, unnecessarily and overly suspicious of what the

Chinese

were going to do. And the

Russians

would never do something like that. So there's that reality.

21:58

And the second, of course, is

China

and

Russia

share a huge land border, have had decades of hostility.

China

is rising, avaricious power.

Russia

is a declining power. If you look at their border and the empty wastelands of

Siberia

are being increasingly brought up by

Chinese

businessmen and entrepreneurs, It is not a happy situation.

22:17

So why would you lump them together? Why would you do the opposite of what Strategy 101 tells you, which is divide your adversaries? Instead, by applying this kind of ideological frame, we are uniting our adversaries. And I think most importantly, we're fundamentally misreading these two very different countries.

Ezra Klein

22:36

One thing I thought was so interesting in that Wright essay, because Wright is very much part of the

American

foreign policy establishment, is somebody who believes, as I do, in

American

values and in democracy and in liberalism. But he really does present

America

as expansionary, liberal democracy as expansionary, in a way that I don't think we always admit it is.

22:60

And something you said there,

Fareed

, I think really gets at this, that if you look at

America

from the outside, how we look to

Russians

, how we look to the

Chinese

, and I sure as hell don't want to take the

Russian

side at the moment. But I just want to offer the narrative.

23:14

Russia

weakened, we expanded

NATO

to their doorstep. The

Bush

administration,

George W.

Bush's

administration, really pushed this. As

China

rose, our top foreign policy officials have talked openly, publicly, explicitly, about keeping them in, to quote former Secretary of State

Mike Pompeo

, "Their proper place," and we've organized a lot of foreign policy around that.

23:36

We've expanded military presence in

East Asia

, arms sales to

Taiwan

Bush

embraced the nuclear

India

. You know, you can keep going on down the list. Do we not have a clear sense of our role in particular driving them closer together? Do we not see clearly how our foreign policy looks to those whom it's often targeted at?

Fareed Zakaria

23:59

We do not at all. I mean, you raise a very important point. And it's an even larger point than you think. I don't think we understand how we appear to the rest of the world. So it's one of the things I often point out with regard to the so-called liberal international order or the rules based order.

24:14

We think we're the great upholders of it, without we don't seem to understand we have violated those rules probably more often than almost any other great power in the world. I mean, think about the

Iraq

War

. Think about the multiple efforts at regime change. Think about the times we violate international trade rules every time it suits our purposes. Think about the number of times we weaponize finance.

24:36

So this is all an undermining of the international rules based system, right? We always think we do it in a good cause, so it's different, right? Like trying to get rid of

Saddam Hussein

is different from

Russia

invading

Ukraine

. But both are violations of state sovereignty, you know, outside of the any kind of

U. N

. system.

24:54

Now, there is a broader issue which I think you're also raising, which is democracy is inherently expansionist in the sense that we want the world to become democratic. And that's been part of the

American

DNA forever.

25:09

We have a theology. We assume that this is going to be the way that the world ends up. And that's ideologically very expansionist. It's very threatening to dictatorships around the world. And again, I think it's different from, say, the

Chinese

conception of their national interests.

25:26

I've sometimes wondered whether this is rooted in the kind of high Protestant tradition that

Britain

and

America

came out of, two great superpowers that rule the world or dominated the world, that really had this conception of universalism, that what was good and true for

Britain

and for the

United States

was good and true for everybody.

25:46

Britain

goes into

India

and tries to make

India

, you know, in some sense, in its image.

America

goes into

Iraq

and says, we're going to make this a democracy. It's going to be just like

Kansas

or whatever. The

Chinese

have no such conception.

25:60

They have an ethno nationalist conception of their global role, which is to make

China

great. There's no way

Iraq

could become like

China,

because it's not full of

Chinese

people. You know what I mean? There's a

Han Chinese

conception of their national interest.

26:15

That is a real ideological clash that is hard to mitigate. But you could mitigate the great by, you know, this other piece of it, which is we could be more conscious of the way in which our actions are seen as not just expansionist, but also hypocritical in ways that we often don't realize.

26:34

You know, so there's that exchange in

Anchorage

, where the Secretary of State

Tony Blinken

tells the

Chinese

all the things they've done wrong. And for the first time the

Chinese

foreign minister stands up and says, what about

Iraq

? What about

Afghanistan

? What about those civilian casualties? What about the way you treat Blacks at home?

26:53

And that exchange, by the way, the

Chinese

side of it went viral in

China

. There are t-shirts in

China

with the things that he said. That's what we sometimes don't understand, how we come across to the rest of the world in our acts as a global superpower.

Ezra Klein

27:09

And so I want to draw out something that you're saying, but I want to make it very explicit here. Because I don't think there's any doubt that we're in another age where there's going to be a lot of great power competition, hopefully cooperation, and clearly now, conflict. But it does matter how we conceptualize what that is.

27:29

And I think, and I've got all these quotes here on my paper in front of me on it, that the dominant view is that people want to fit this back into the

West

versus the

Soviet Union

, that there's a, you know, liberal, democratic

West

, and then this neoauthoritarian bloc rising. And that might become true. And there's elements of truth to it, perhaps. But something you're saying is that another way of thinking about it is that there's a very, very powerful

United States

. There's a rising power in

China

27:58

And one thing we don't want to have happen is have a neoauthoritarian bloc cohere around

China

. And if you think about it that way, then instead of trying to hold down everybody in that area, you're really trying to drive wedges between, say,

China

and

Russia

. So what does it mean to drive that wedge? How do you begin to split them apart in their interests?

Fareed Zakaria

28:21

Probably the greatest 19th century statesman was

Bismarck

. And

Bismarck's

rule was, I want to have better relations with all of my potential rivals than they have with one another. And in a sense, it is that Bismarckian logic that drove

Nixon

and

Kissinger

China

in 1972.

28:39

Remember this was a

China

that was in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. So this was not a reforming

China

at the time. This was a deeply, deeply reactionary, rogue communist

China

, that was funding insurgencies all over the world, from

Angola

Latin America

. But the

Nixon

Kissinger

strategy was, we are going to drive a wedge between the two great communist countries, so that, you know, we've divided our adversaries.

29:05

I think we could have a much better working relationship with

China

. Look, the

Chinese

expected this when

Biden

came in. They thought there was going to be a reversal of the

Trump

policy, reversal of

Trump

tariffs, reversal of the, you know, the kind of badgering

China

about everything. Instead, we kept all of that. We even doubled down on it.

29:24

And I'll give you one example that would be politically controversial. But I think it's worth pointing out. We weaponized and politicized the idea of genocide and accused the

Chinese

of genocide. In the case of

Xinjiang

, and I can say this as a Muslim, what they're doing to the Muslims there is horrible. It's probably crimes against humanity.

29:46

But it is a forcible process of re-education, indoctrination, to some degree incarceration. It is not mass slaughter. And to use the word genocide to describe that, not frankly what is going on in some other places in the world, does feel like it's a very selective and politicized use of the word to attack

China.

And that is certainly how it is perceived in

China

30:13

I mean, I had the Prime Minister of

Pakistan

on the other day on my show, and he said, look, 100,000

Indian

Muslims have died in Kashmir in largely extrajudicial killings, vigilante killings, over the last several decades. Is that worse than what's going on in

Xinjiang

? I mean, his view is that there is no question. It's not worse. Of course, he's got a politicized view there.

30:35

But my point is, we could have a working relationship with

China.

Because the fundamental threat that

China

poses to us is an economic one. And it is one of competitiveness. And what we need to do fundamentally, to deal with it, 90% of it is invest at home, invest in education, invest in technology, maybe have the government do more to encourage some of the technologies that we think we may be falling behind in. I'm in favor of all that. But very little of it requires that we enter into a

Cold War

with

China

Break

Ezra Klein

33:05

There's a very, very central question in how you understand

Russia's

invasion of

Ukraine

, that is somewhat unanswered in a lot of the media analysis, which is, do you understand

Putin

as being driven by a coherent view of

Russia's

interests or being driven by quirks or pathologies of his own psychology?

Fareed Zakaria

33:28

I think it's probably a combination of them.

Putin

began his tenure in office. And remember, he has been in power now since the end of 1999. He began, I don't want to say pro-Western, but recognizing the power of the

West

. Look,

Russia

was deeply indebted. 1998 was when the

Russian

default happened.

33:47

Oil prices were low.

Russia

was the 2nd tier, or even a 3rd tier power at that point. That's the point at which by the way,

Bush

looks in his eyes and sees his soul. It might have been more that he was seeing low oil prices than

Putin's

soul. But

Putin

was amenable.

34:04

Russian

power has grown,

Putin

has revived a sense of

Russian

nationalism, a sense of

Russian

imperialism. And

Ukraine,

in particular, I think, is he's neuralgic about. So where he's calculating and cautious about the others, notice when he goes into

Georgia

, it's a limited military intervention. He takes the two pockets of

Georgia

that are

Russian

speaking, declares them independent Republics.

34:30

Ukraine

feels emotional, romantic, nationalist neuralgia call it what you will. But the key here is, all that nationalism and romanticism and imperialism feeds into a worldview that says, I don't care if this breaks the international system.

34:48

I don't care if this imposes great costs on me. That, to my mind, is the part that is deeply troubling and why I'm in favor of the most robust response to counter this invasion. Because

Putin

is trying to break the international system. And if he succeeds, there's a good chance you will have broken it.

35:09

I don't want to say irreparably. And then, you know, things can be fixed. But that's why this is such a big deal. Because

Putin

may have his own romantic notions of unifying the

Russian

speaking people. But in doing so, the roadkill along the way is the rules based international order. And that we cannot allow to happen. We cannot let him win at that.

Ezra Klein

35:35

What does succeeds or success here even mean? I guess, for

Putin

, maybe for the international order, I found this a little bit more opaque a question than I think people realize. Because there's also a way of looking at this where

Putin

ends up engaging in what's going to become a much more, is becoming, as we speak, a much more brutal invasion.

35:59

And then he's trying to continuously pacify a huge country that doesn't want him in there. That looks like a graveyard for imperial ambitions to me. So what is success here for him, such that it would break the international order?

Fareed Zakaria

36:16

Success is very simple. He turns

Ukraine

into

Belarus

. He turns

Ukraine

into a subordinate satellite state. He forces it to be demilitarized, to be neutral, to renounce any aspiration for

NATO

membership. He decapitates the regime and puts in place a pliant pro

Russian

government.

36:36

As you say, it's going to be very hard. There's gonna be a lot of pushback. You're talking about a country of 44 million people who do not want. I think we have seen vividly and powerfully and in a deeply moving way how nationalistic the

Ukrainians

are, and how proud they are of their country.

36:54

But It's a 10 to1 mismatch in defense spending. It's a

David

and

Goliath

story.

Russia

has the capacity and is willing to be brutal to at least, formally gain control of the place. And if they do that, they will have violated the sovereignty of

Ukraine,

engaged in a completely unprovoked war, forced a surrender in terms upon, that are really, again, reminiscent of the 19th century.

37:22

And all of this breaks the international system because, and, you know, this is where the liberal international order is worth talking about. The liberal international order has had a surprisingly powerful effect on international behavior.

37:37

So there's this wonderful book by 2 Yale scholars,

Oona Hathaway

and

Scott Shapiro

, which points out that the forcible alteration of borders and the annexation of territory, which was a routine feature of international life from, say, 1845 to 1945, became virtually non-existent after 1945.

37:57

There are very few cases where countries have actually just marched in and grabbed territory. The

Russian

example with

Ukraine

is a rare exception. And it's very important that it not succeed, that there be very, very high costs for

Russia

in doing this.

Ezra Klein

38:15

What does it mean for that order to be upheld? Because the

West's

current stance is that they'll fight

Russia

economically, but they/we will not directly intervene militarily to save

Ukraine

. I mean, there are arms shipments going forward, but we're not bombing the

Russian

convoys or anything like that.

38:32

I think what everybody fears right now, what's arguably happening as we speak is, that

Russia

is retooling for a much more brutal invasion, where they simply flatten cities and shell civilians. So on some level, is

Putin

right to say that the commitment to that international order is weak, that he has already shown, on some level, its limitations?

Fareed Zakaria

38:53

I think it's fair to say that the

West

had, in this case, greater aspirations and ambitions than the means it was willing to deploy.

Ukraine

is a hard case, is another way to put it. It's not in

NATO.

It neighbors

Russia

39:10

Many

Russians

think of

Ukraine

as inextricably linked with it. I've been struck by that. When you go to

Russia

, whether it's an

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

, a kind of right wing cultural critic of the

Russian

regime, whether it's

Mikhail Gorbachev

, the kind of left wing critic of the regime, they all believe

Ukraine

is kind of inextricably tied up with

Russia

39:32

So it's a hard case. What do you do to a country that you don't have a formal security guarantee and that has the second largest, or the largest, nuclear arsenal in the world, depending on how you count it? I do think we should be careful not to go down a path that could lead to an escalation that even gets close to a nuclear conflict.

39:52

But I believe we could be much tougher. I think we could arm the

Ukrainians

far more effectively, far more extensively, than we're arming them. I think we could provide much more aid in various forms. And I think the central issue that we have to deal with is, are we really willing to impose costs on

Russia

? Is this as significant as I think it is?

40:15

And if it is, you can't fight every war at the same time. The only way you can make this work is you squeeze

Russia

on energy. And in order to squeeze

Russia

on energy, you have to be willing to give up some of your other goals for energy.

40:30

For example, if we were to relax sanctions on

Venezuela

, if we were to get into the

Iran

deal and relax sanctions on

Iran

, if we were to use

American

Liquefied Natural Gas

and send it over to

Europe

, all those things would have a very, very significant effect. There are a couple of very good papers out there that show

Russia

is not providing so much in the way of energy to

Europe

, that it could not be replaced.

40:56

But you can't do everything. You know, you have to make priorities. And my priority is

Russia

must feel that it is facing unacceptable costs. And if you drive that home, and if you're willing to make no exceptions, you know, tell the

Italians

, I'm sorry, for two years, you can't sell

Prada

handbags in

Russia

, whatever it takes, you will be able to drive up the costs.

41:20

Russia

is not such a big economy, and it is totally connected to the world in the sense that the

Russian

elite, in particular, as well, being has been their ability to buy large amounts of consumer goods from the

West,

using their petro dollars. And if you can break that nexus, I think you can make them face real pain. But it will cost us as well. I mean, that's the thing. It isn't cost free.

Ezra Klein

41:43

You see in that an asymmetry here, in the structure of the liberal democracies and the structure of, at the very least,

Russia

, where certainly, going into this, the fear of a

Germany

, of an

Italy

, to some degree of the

United States