China’s Growing Power, US Diplomacy, and Ukraine’s Counteroffensive — with Ian Bremmer

27:52But you're absolutely right, Scott, that on the global stage, the economy is no longer driven by the U.S. The economy is not driven by anyone. It is multipolar. And some of that is because China's bigger than it used to be. Some of it is because they're consolidated state capitalists under one leader. Some of it's because the Americans are so divided and no longer have a trade policy and can't provide market access. There are lots of reasons for it, but it's a frustration. It's a frustration for Americans in part because the reason why China was brought into and welcomed into American institutions for the last 40 years, part of it was because the U.S.

28:37knew it would make Americans wealthier, American corporations wealthier. but part of it was a mistaken assumption that as the chinese became wealthier and more powerful that they'd become americans and they're not they're still authoritarian they're still state capitals they're just wealthier and more powerful and and you know americans are not prepared to accept that um whether or not americans should and to what degree is another question but they're not democrats and republicans are not prepared to accept an authoritarian state capitalist china at the table with the same level of influence and respect that an American ally would have.

29:14That bet for the Americans did not work out. And that means that we now have this relationship, the two most powerful countries in the world really have zero trust. And it's certainly the worst relationship we've had with them since Tiananmen. And that's a problem. And it's Particularly a problem because you've seen Scott Jamie Dimon just got back from China, had great things to say about the Chinese. Elon Musk just got back from China, had great things to say about the Chinese. I'm sure if we sent LeBron to China, he'd have great things to say about the Chinese. Most American corporations are more aligned with Canada, Japan, South Korea, the UK, Germany, France than they are with Washington when it comes to China.

30:06And that is a challenge for the Democrats and Republicans in formulating China policy. Yeah, it's really, I mean, a couple of things that struck me as really insightful. The Americans, one of our superpowers is our optimism. And sometimes that bleeds into narcissism. And I think the general assumption was that if a nation became capitalist, they'd immediately be an ally and sign up to Baywatch and Apple Pie. And there's definitely just because they go capitalist, I would argue Saudi Arabia is going embracing capitalism. China, I would argue on many levels, is more capitalist than we are. But that doesn't necessarily mean we're going to be great, great friends.

30:43And the other thing that strikes me, what you just said, I see, I work with a lot of big American companies and their attitude is as it relates to our supply chain and manufacturing our shoes and our components in China, it's business as usual. And we have a great relationship with them on the ground that you see this level of rhetoric and heat around policy. But when it comes to actual business relationships, they continue to have a very productive ecosystem. system? Yeah, I mean, you know, we talk about de-risking. That is the term of art presently between the United States and China. But of course, the fact is that the United States is doing an extraordinary amount of business with China.

31:33And most of these corporations, not all, but certainly a large majority want to continue to have global supply chain, access to global markets, access to a large and fast-growing consumer base. You know, you've got 800, 900 million people online in China. They're still growing faster than the United States from an overall economic perspective. Any luxury goods producer, any major hotel chain, you know the sports industry uh you know not a little hollywood a little bit less because the chinese are developing a lot more of their own content but most of them see china as not only a core market but the principal growth market that they have globally now the counter indicators there scott one is that chinese labor today is more expensive than mexican labor um it has gone up a lot as China's gotten wealthier.

32:33So the idea that you would use China as your factory for global production is less attractive just on a pure economic dollar for dollar basis than it used to be. And of course, the Chinese don't have rule of law. They don't have an independent judiciary, and they support a lot of their own national champions and people that are connected to their government. So it is getting harder for companies to feel like they have a level of clarity and visibility into how they're going to engage in their business practices over the next five, 10 years. So I do see a lot of baseline Chinese American companies in China that are now saying we may not want to expand our investments the way we have.

33:17I see a lot of movement tech companies now opening a lot more in India than they used to, especially as India develops a much more improved regulatory environment in technology and invests in their own tech infrastructure, digital infrastructure. I see that with Apple. I see with Cisco. I see it with Google, a bunch of other companies like that. Those are big moves that five years ago, they never would have made. And then I see just the general populism in the United States saying, hey, we went too far with globalization. We hollowed out our own middle and working classes. we want to now get a lot more investment back in the U.S.

33:52So, of course, no more chip production in Taiwan. That should all be in the U.S. Want to promote a lot more local investment, even if it's more expensive. And, you know, some of that is national security. Some of that is, you know, a deep seated concern about about undervalued American workers. And some of that is the failure of the U.S. social safety net over the past decades that should have been working for Americans, but wasn't. We'll be right back.

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36:09let's shift to ukraine and we haven't we since we last spoke to you a couple months ago there's been a lot of attention on the counter-offensive uh spring counter-offensive and then a discussion around what is the staying power of russia here uh anyways state of play what do you think has changed in the last two months and if and how has it changed your view of the situation there and any predictions or thoughts around the next six months? Well, we're very close to the counteroffensive beginning in earnest. It has started in the sense that the Ukrainians have already ordered a number of probing attacks across the front lines to see where the Russians are defended well in depth, where they're not.

36:50And that should be a precursor to a Zelensky order for about 50 ,000 Ukrainian troops on the field to try to break the land bridge that the Russians have between Russia and Crimea. And, you know, they will probably take some territory. This area is well defended by the Russians, but they probably won't break the bridge. And that's one thing that's happened is we'll watch and see that counteroffensive and the Ukrainians will probably be in a better position after the counteroffensive than before. We also see a lot of movement on the part of NATO to put Ukraine in a much better position after the counteroffensive so that negotiations might start, so that a pause in the fighting, a ceasefire might occur.

37:38I'll tell you a few of those things. First of all, the Americans are working with allies to create military guarantees for Ukraine that would fall short of full NATO membership, but would treat Ukraine like Japan or like Israel to provide a level of certainty to the Ukrainian people that the Russians aren't going to get a second bite at this apple, that they will continue to have that level of defense on an ongoing slash permanent basis. Secondly, you see the Americans, the Brits and others ramping up their willingness to provide more advanced weapon systems to Ukraine. The F-16s, for example, the long range missiles from the UK, soon from the US, for example.

38:23These are weapons that are not going to be deployed in the counteroffensive, but they're weapons that will show Ukraine that you're going to have a very capable military to defend your territory after this offensive is over. This is longer term planning. You also see the Americans, the Europeans ramping up support for the hundreds of billions of dollars that will be required for rebuilding, for reconstructing Ukraine after the counteroffensive. And that includes seizing some of the Russian frozen assets, sovereign and oligarch, to use those to rebuild Ukraine, which has some precedent in international law, given that the invasion was illegal as declared twice in a strong majority vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations.

39:15So the idea here is, I mean, there are some people that support Ukraine that say Ukraine has to win. The only way they can win is if they get all their territory back, including Crimea. And I'm telling you, Scott, that is not going to happen militarily. We know that the Ukrainians know that. They certainly know that when it comes to Crimea. Zelensky's admitted that privately to NATO leaders repeatedly. So what does that mean? Well, what that means is if you can have a successful counteroffensive and they get some more of their land back so that Ukraine hasn't lost 20 percent of the land, it's more like 10 percent or eight percent and they have security guarantees and they've got massive military support and training and intelligence and they have money for reconstruction and they're joining the eu that that to me looks like a win for ukraine i mean nothing will bring back the 40 000 civilians that are dead nothing will bring back the people that have suffered from tens of thousands of war crimes, nothing will obviate the suffering of 8.5 million Ukrainians who have been forced into refugee status, have had their homes blown up, all the rest.

40:21I mean, you know, these things, this feels like a genocide for the Ukrainians and will for generations. But in terms of what will happen going forward, if you're China looking at Taiwan, if you're any country looking at NATO or the G7, you would say that the West stood up for the independent sovereignty and territorial integrity of a democratic country that was illegally invaded and did their damnedest to make it right. And, you know, as you mentioned, given the spotty history of the United States and its allies on this stuff, you know, getting it right in a big case here is important. So it sounds you sound hopeful to me.

41:01It sounds to me like you're sort of fashioning or envisioning a counteroffensive that is modestly to significantly successful, which puts Ukraine and the West in a position of negotiating a decent deal that all parties could sort of claim some sort of victory. And then we move on with a Ukraine that's more tightly integrated into the West diplomatically, economically, militarily, and that you see that might happen, say, call it fall. Yeah, I think that there's a reasonable possibility that by the end of the year, Ukraine will be in a markedly better position than they are right now. And we will have some level of a freeze in the fighting.

41:43I think that's wholly plausible. That's the good news. And by the way, the markets will like that. The global economy will like that. But there is bad news here, Scott. And I focus on two pieces of really bad news. You said that, well, I could see a deal that everybody can get behind. Well, the Russians are not winners in that deal. Russians are big time losers. Their economy still cut off from the G7. Their assets still frozen. Some of them seized for reconstruction. Putin is still considered a war criminal. So it's very interesting. Wouldn't that be up for negotiation, though, Ian? Wouldn't that be up for negotiation?

42:20Part of the settlement would involve all of those things, most likely? You know, I think it's going to be hard. I am optimistic that we might be able to get to a frozen conflict. I am pessimistic that we can get to successful negotiations. By the way, I do think that China will be a part of any negotiation. And the Americans at the highest level accept that. They recognize that you're not going to get Russia to the table unless Russia has someone they can talk to and they can't talk to the Americans. They can't talk to the Europeans. So having Xi Jinping a part of this is something that probably will eventually happen.

42:53But I still think that this relationship is fundamentally broken and that Putin has lost too much and can't get back from that. So he will still be a rogue state. He will still see himself at war with NATO. And I think that's a very dangerous place for the Europeans to be. That's a very dangerous place for the world to be. I mean, just a few months ago, we saw this UK reconnaissance airplane that was over the Black Sea, international waters operating perfectly legally, just collecting information on the Russian forces for NATO for Ukraine. a Russian fighter jet locked its weapons on. The fighter pilot misunderstood the order from his superior officer, fired his missiles, and they misfired, thankfully, or 38 British airmen would have been dead.

43:47We were really close to a Cuban missile crisis right there. And we all need to recognize that this level of ongoing war footing with the Russians against the Russians is a very dangerous place to be. And we just saw all these massive Russian criminal cyber attacks against a whole bunch of UK companies. There's going to be more attacks on critical infrastructure. There's going to be all sorts of espionage. And they've got nuclear weapons. You know, when Trump was on CNN, he didn't make much news. I mean, you know, he beat up on Caitlin Collins and had his laugh track audience there. But the one place he did make news was on Ukraine, because Trump hasn't really said very much on Ukraine since the war started.

44:30And Caitlyn was pushing him on whether or not he was willing to call Putin a war criminal. And his response was very interesting. He said, now is not the time for that. And Caitlyn pushed him again. What do you mean? He's done all these horrible things. He said, hey, right now we're trying to end this war. We call him a war criminal. We're putting him in a corner. it's much harder for him to actually be willing to come to the table. I happen to agree with that. I think that Putin is a war criminal, but I also know that war criminals, you know, the only ones I can think of are people like Milosevic, Gaddafi, Bashir.

45:10I mean, these people end up in jail or dead. We don't have a way to take out Putin. The guy's got 5 ,000 nuclear warheads. It's not helpful for us to be engaging in that way with him at this point. And, by the way, I will tell you that a lot of Biden's advisers privately feel the same way. So and they can't say that. You can't say that publicly because, you know, we're all us versus them in this country right now. And if Trump says something on Russia, Ukraine, he's only carrying water for Putin. But but the reality, I think, is more nuanced here. And it's it's going to be really tough to get this genie back in the bottle.

45:48So bringing Ukraine into domestic politics, it struck me, I watched the town hall with Ambassador Governor Haley, and she is trying to differentiate herself from the other Republican candidates by saying, you know, she's quite hawkish on Ukraine, you know, saying this is important. This is more than about Ukraine. This is about the West. What role do you think Ukraine will play in the election, the 2024 election? And who do you think it favors or what? How does the chessboard play out here? So DeSantis was taken out of context and had an unartful response to that Tucker Carlson request on Ukraine.

46:31And he then really sort of backtracked and said, absolutely not. I need to support. We need to support Ukraine. This is really significant. We're, you know, we have to defend the Russian invasion was illegal. So in other words, I see most of the Republican candidates actually pretty aligned with Haley on this and aligned with McCarthy on this and aligned with McConnell on this. I think that that is a very strong Republican policy that is aligned with Biden on continuing to provide strong support for the Ukrainians militarily and continuing to maintain very tough sanctions against Putin and Russia.

47:11uh trump is obviously uh on the other side of that uh vivek ramaswani uh is definitely taking on uh the trump line uh on on ukraine and it is end the war delinsky's not to be trusted ukraine is corrupt and you can find you know some of that with jd vance some of that with marjorie taylor Green. In other words, I'm really cherry picking to find the Republicans that have that perspective, except it's Trump. And of course, for any of you that had the misfortune of watching the 10-minute rant by Tucker Carlson in his first Twitter show the other day, which included really a direct dog whistle anti-semitic screed against zelensky um it was deeply disturbing it was pretty much blood libel you know he knows what he's doing um he's definitely promoting that too i do think that there is you know a a potential for a growing knee-jerk mega populist um the ukrainians are evil.

48:28They are corrupt. They're run by a dirty Jew and Soros is backing them. And we need to do something about that. I mean, I hate to say it, but there is that, that, that is definitely coming. And, you know, our friend Elon has done a lot to help those dog whistles get more broadly distributed. I worry about that, but it's still early days and it's very far. It's a fringe Republican perspective at this point, thankfully. And then just to wrap up here, we had Jeffrey Sachs, the economist from Columbia on, and I know you're friends with Jeffrey. I think a lot of Jeffrey because he's fearless. Some of the themes, though, went from sort of a balanced viewpoint where, you know, a sober view of America's role in the world to it felt a little bit, I don't know, self-loathing around America.

49:18And one thing that caught our attention, I wish now looking back when we talked about this off Mike, I push back harder, is that he believes, and I don't want to put too many words on his mouth, but reductively that we kind of provoked Putin and put Putin in a corner before the invasion. He wanted America to take some responsibility for Russia's incursion into the Ukraine. What are your thoughts? I do like Jeff. I've known him for easily 20 years. I think he's a really smart guy. And he's, you know, kind of a strongly knee-jerk anti-imperialist. And there are lots of reasons to feel that way when you look at U.S.

49:55history. Ukraine is not one of them. And the Ukrainian people are an independent people. Putin has, on a number of occasions, said that he doesn't accept that. He's called the Ukrainians Nazis. He doesn't respect their sovereignty. He believes that the country should be a part of Russia. And I think that what the Americans did was less provoke the Russians than make Putin believe that the West wasn't going to do anything. After 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea and had their little green men an operation that they denied in Southeast Ukraine. They said, oh, they're just soldiers on vacation, on leave, which is ludicrous on its face.

50:47The Americans didn't respond and the Europeans did virtually nothing. In fact, when the Russians then hosted a World Cup, a lot of European leaders, including Macron, others traveled to Russia. This was while the Russians were illegally occupying Ukraine. No consequences. And I think that when you add that to the failure of the U.S. and Afghanistan, the unilateral withdrawal of the United States, so embarrassing, so painful to watch after 20 years of war, to have lost that war in such an ignominious way. when he saw that Merkel, who was such a strong supporter of the Ukrainians and a strong opponent of the Russians, left for Schultz and the Social Democrat that was more, they were the ones that were really responsible for engaging more with the Russians.

51:40I think he saw opportunities. I think he saw, I can go in and take Ukraine and they're not going to do anything. It's going to be like 2014 all over again. So no, I mean, in fact, quite to the contrary, I don't think the Russians were provoked. I think the Russian Putin felt like he had impunity, felt like there wouldn't be consequences, felt like he could, he already saw that he bullied and got away with it. 2008 in Georgia, 2014 in Ukraine, and then 2023. And, you know, finally, this guy's sitting around continuing to bluff on a short stack, throwing all in. And he finally got called by a bigger staff.

52:24That's what happened. But he thought he could get away with it. And the idea that the Ukrainian nation doesn't have the unilateral right to join a defensive alliance, I mean, NATO doesn't have to let them in. But, you know, it wasn't like the West was saying, we're going to take over Ukraine. The Ukrainian people wanted to join NATO just like they wanted to join the EU. You know, the Soviet Union was incredibly repressive from Moscow. These independent countries, the former Soviet republics that became independent after decades of brutal Soviet rule, they wanted out. And thank God there were places for them to go.

53:11and you know i i feel for for them and and i was i was a little sad i heard some of jeff's comments on your pod and i i think it's i was a little sad that that he puts it in that way um that the united states is responsible by provoking russia somehow somehow justifying putin's behavior because of what the u.s did to him i i don't think that's I don't think that's reasonable at all. Ian Bremmer is the president and founder of Eurasia Group, the world's leading political risk research and consulting firm, and GZERO Media, a company dedicated to providing intelligent and engaging coverage of international affairs.

53:51He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, The Power of Crisis, How Three Threats and Our Responses Will Change the World. He joins us from, did you say Chicago, Ian? I said Chicago, yeah. And also, let's talk about our Twitter spaces. Yeah, that's right. What are we talking about? What are we doing? I think we're announcing our run. Yeah, you're running for president. I'm going to announce that. And the technology will break down. It's going to be fantastic. We're going to break Twitter.

54:28Algebra of happiness. What and who made you? No one is self-made. That's a myth we tell ourselves to take credit for things. and feel good about ourselves and kind of fall into this narcissism that's fomented by an American culture on individuality. But I think it makes sense, and it's a healthy practice, to, on a regular basis, sit down and say, Am I American-made? Is it a function of this incredible culture I was born into, where I could take advantage of entrepreneurship, or great universities, or the ability to move, or an environment that let me practice free speech, or valued the arts? What is it about the country you live in that has made you who you are?

55:09What is it about the people who made you who you are? Do you have a certain sense of humor that was genetically passed on? You know, is it experiences you've had that have kind of shaped you? I think it's important to just sort of say, if you were to disarticulate who you are, where do the pieces come from? What were the factories that made them? Such that you can appreciate them, you can be grateful for them, and you can think about being a better shepherd and investing in the future for other people. what made you? What external forces made you? Are you a function of tragedy? If you think about comic books or you think about Marvel movies, the hero and the villain are both shaped by tragedy.

55:50The hero is usually the orphan and the villain is usually someone who has a big scar. And the difference is how they each responded to tragedy. The hero decides that he or she wants to protect people based on their suffering. And the villain has decided that they're angry and they want to punish other people based on some traumatic event that's happened in their life. Are you shaped by trauma? But what is it that's made you? What are the factories you were made in? And what does that say about the rest of your life where you want to invest your resources, who you want to love, what you want to foster, what values you want to promote in terms of your own relationships?

56:25Are you American made? Who made you? What factories are you from. This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin, Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer, and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly market show.

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