Fareed Zakaria on America’s Retreat from the World

24:14Do you think there's an opportunity where we could potentially develop a more lethal fighting force, learn from the Ukrainians, go to drones, go to an asymmetric fighting force, and maybe take our military budget from one and a half trillion to half a trillion and potentially have a more lethal fighting force? Is there a silver lining? Do you think we'll learn the lessons of warfare from these wars?

24:38Fareed Zakaria:There's definitely a scenario where we can do that. I think getting down to half a trillion would be tough. A lot of the military budget is personnel costs. But your general point in the direction is exactly right. Look, we are going through a massive revolution in military affairs, and we saw it with Ukraine on the battlefield. We gave the Ukrainians 40, I think, M1 Abrams tanks. These are the best tanks in the world by far. Russian drones shot every one of them down. I mean, attacked them and made them inoperable. I don't think they ever even got to the battlefield. I mean, I don't think they were ever actually used in any significant way.

25:18Fareed Zakaria:A tank has now become essentially a sitting target, a trap for the soldiers who are in there. Because think about it. I think the M1 Abram is$35 million, $40 million, a drone is$5 ,000,$10 ,000. You can launch 100 drones at one tank, and you still have huge benefits of asymmetry. That's what's happening with these drones. That's why the Ukrainians are making$10 million. By the way, the Russians are making$10 million too. So the whole nature of warfare is going to be different. And the point you were making is very important. The Pentagon now basically buys its equipment from a handful of vetted defense manufacturers that are, in my opinion, very bloated, very inefficient, engage in what's called cost plus manufacturing, which is there's no market for the product.

26:08Fareed Zakaria:It's just whatever it costs plus the profit that the Pentagon decides it's willing to give. That is not how we traditionally bought stuff. That's not how we did it in World War II. That's not how we did it in the Cold War for, you know, really until the 70s. What we did was we went to civilian manufacturers and we asked them on the side, can you do this stuff? And there was, as a result, a lot of competition. You know, now if the only person making something is Raytheon, what's the price discovery? How do you figure out what it should really cost? And the drone revolution is moving us back into that world where you are leveraging private capital, private innovation, private expertise.

26:48Fareed Zakaria:Most drones are made by private companies. Most drones initially were just bought by, it was all Chinese drones, and then they were modified to make them military drones. And in a sense, that is a much more healthy environment because you can scale massively when you're tied into the civilian economy. How do you get to 10 million drones? There aren't defense manufacturers who can scale up like that, but there are 30 or 40 civilian manufacturers of drones who can do that and then you can modify their drones. That's the way we should be thinking because this is going to turn into a game of smarts and scale.

27:26Fareed Zakaria:The weapons are getting very precise and you need lots of cheap weapons rather than a few exquisitely engineered weapons. Think about the planes that we buy. An F-35 is$250 million. Would you rather have that or would you rather have 25 ,000 drones, which is still a drop in the bucket in cost? And it's manned, right? And there's a handsome man or woman in a uniform that might, yeah. Why put human beings, you know, what's happening is the human being is basically being removed from the battlefield. And if we are not part of that revolution, we will lose because they can put a thousand, 10 ,000 robots against our one human because we'll be worried and cautious about risking the human being's life.

28:12My mom, who was not an optimistic person, used to always remind me that things can always get worse. And it appears that things have gotten worse in the Gulf. And that is an emergence of a second choke point, the names of which I was not familiar with. Can you tell us what is going on with the Houthis? And the Red Sea ports there and the kind of the second choke point to the Red Sea of the Gulf of Aden and what you think is going on there and what happens.

28:40Fareed Zakaria:The great 19th century humorist Ambrose Bierce once wrote a book called The Devil's Dictionary. And indeed, he says war is God's way to make Americans learn geography. So we now learn. It's working. Now we know where the Strait of Hormuz is. We know where the Bab el-Mandab is, which is the other strait you're referring to. So basically, there are two ways to get oil out of the Persian Gulf. One is through the Strait of Hormuz. The other is through what is called the Bab el-Mandab. It's another strait at the Red Sea. It's controlled or it has to potentially be controlled by Yemen. Yemen has gone through a civil war for like most of its modern existence, 40, 50 years.

29:22Fareed Zakaria:there's always been kind of two factions fighting. The Saudis got involved and tried to support the government and essentially fought for almost a decade. It went nowhere. They managed to get a truce. They managed. The Saudis are always, the mechanism is often patronage. You know, they bribed the Houthis. So they got it under control. So even though the Houthis are allies of the Iranians, the Houthis were not doing much. But I think what happened is the Houthis realized that as the Strait of Hormuz has been blockaded and all this oil is now going through the Red Sea, they have leverage. They could really squeeze the Saudis and ask for some of the things that they've been wanting to ask for demand for a long time, which is greater control over Yemen.

30:12Fareed Zakaria:So they saw this opportunity, obviously encouraged by the Iranians, and they moved forward. And they've actually made remarkable progress. They've managed to take the port city of Mocha. For all those who are wondering why you have a port city in Yemen that's named after coffee, coffee is named after Mocha. The original coffee comes from Mocha. So they have that place. They can control if they want. They can, again, remember the whole game is you're not trying to control these places. You're just trying to spook insurance companies. That's what the Iranians were able to do in the straight and foremost.

30:54Fareed Zakaria:That's what the Yemenis are trying to do. If you throw enough drones at ships, basically you can't get insurance and the number of ships willing to go through goes down a lot. There will still be some. The Saudis will be able to escort some. The U.S. will escort some. But it becomes, it goes down to 20 % of the traffic. So now the Saudis face this very tough dilemma. Do you try to get back into a war with the Houthis in Yemen? You've tried for 10 years and it didn't work. They are the insurgents. They've managed to survive. Or do you give in to their demands and sign another agreement, which means you're basically selling out your allies in Yemen who were the formal government of Yemen.

31:38Fareed Zakaria:And the Saudis are enraged because this problem has only been created because of the vulnerability, because the Strait of Hormuz is closed. and the Saudis are enraged because they signed an agreement with Trump that Trump would defend them. This was, you know, the Saudi, as you know, the Saudi government and the crown prince have been incredibly nice to the Trump administration, both as a country, they've been nice to the United States as an administration and to the Trump family. And yet, when he asked Donald Trump to come to his aid, Trump basically said, well, they're not attacking us. I don't see why we should do it.

32:17Fareed Zakaria:I mean, and he said this publicly. So I think American credibility on that front is, I mean, I think that's a big, big deal because the Saudis have based their entire foreign policy for the last 75 years on the idea that the United States in extremists will come to their aid. And it is extremists for them. And the United States is not coming to their aid. Well, it feels as if overnight our military bases has gone from being a protective shield to a bullseye. Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to think of, again, going to the, I'll put forward another thesis around a possible silver lining here, that potentially in 10 years, oil's at 20 bucks a barrel because fossil fuels have now become not only expensive, but incredibly insecure and a defense threat.

33:02And I got to think that every nation in the world is thinking, you know, is there a way we can have fewer gas stations and more windmills? And the big winner is China, who produces 70 % of the batteries, the panels, the EVs. But is there a scenario here where the whole world, not for political or woke reasons, but turns away and starts furiously trying to diversify away from fossil fuels, which, distinct of the climate change, are dependent upon the throughways of a bunch of insecure places that have a tendency to end up causing wars? Is there a silver lining where a great renewable future is going to reemerge?

33:41Fareed Zakaria:Yeah, I mean, it's a very interesting point because I've been traveling. I was in Ukraine before that. I was in Asia. And that's the interesting thing I've been hearing is people saying they want to find a way to have greater energy resilience. And that means they want to be able to produce more of the energy locally. Now, in some cases, that means that what I'm struck by is they're kind of climate indifferent. I wish I would say that they were green, But if they have coal, they're willing to burn coal. If they have natural gas, they're willing to burn natural gas. If they have oil, they're willing to burn, but they don't have a lot.

34:18Fareed Zakaria:So what you're seeing is some efforts to create just greater resilience. I want to build a refinery here so that, you know, it's easier to import the crude product and I can refine it at home. If I have the ability to get natural gas, I want to have conversion terminals so that they can convert from liquid. If I have coal, I'm going to burn it. But I'm also trying to get more into solar, more into wind, more into things like that. The problem is, as you know, the ramp up rate is not going to be that fast because you still have this problem of baseload capacity. You know, you still, in order to make these really work, you need to have a backup that's green.

35:02Fareed Zakaria:because otherwise, you know, the sun doesn't shine all the time and the wind doesn't blow all the time, which is fine. There's a way to make it work, but you do need that backup. And that backup tends to be natural gas. So you don't completely get away from fossil fuels. But if you're talking directionally, Scott, that's very much the way people are looking at it. And as you say, it's interesting. It's not for green reasons. It's for national security reasons. We just don't, we find it, We're too reliant on a fuel that is coming out of these dangerous parts of the world that can get blocked at will.

35:38Fareed Zakaria:And it's a huge cost for, you know, like the Indians are, I don't know what the numbers are, but I would guess it's taken half a percent off India's GDP growth. Same for Indonesia, for all these countries. I mean, this is a big deal because we don't realize it as much because we produce, you know, we export hydrocarbons. Most of the world imports hydrocarbons, and it's a huge added cost to their economic growth. Let's return closer to home. You recently joined the Can't Be Censored podcast to discuss how Trump might be driving Canada into China's arms. Canadian exports to China are up 30 % for the first half of this year, with overall trade between the two countries up 3.6 % year on year.

36:21This comes as Mark Carney shows an increased focus on striking new trade deals. with other countries to replace the U.S. What do you think of, so it appears the EU is adopting Canada or bear-hugging them. And at the same time, Canada appears to be experiencing or purposely holding up an air fryer to thaw the relationship with China. Talk about what it means, the distancing or the fissure in U.S.-Canadian relationship.

36:51Fareed Zakaria:I think in many ways, it may be the single stupidest thing we are doing economically. There are many things we're doing, at least on trade policy. Because, you know, what we have managed to do with Canada and Mexico was create a kind of North American economy that was working, you know, in incredibly complementary ways. So China, particularly in those days, had energy that we needed. When we started it out, the Mexicans had cheaper labor. So you could spread manufacturing across the three places in ways that optimized, you know, made the product most efficient, most low cost, most powerful. The place industry did this the most was the car industry.

37:39Fareed Zakaria:So products would move five, six, ten times across these borders because that was the most efficient way to create a North American car. And this really revived the industry in many ways. What we've now done is put these tariffs in. So the car parts that move back and forth, every time they move, they face a tariff. So the tariffs are actually much higher than they sound because every time you cross a border, you have to pay these tariffs. And it's crippling the car industry. The largest producer of cars in Canada is Ford, which is our largest producer of cars. So we're crippling our national champions.

38:19Fareed Zakaria:And so Canada has to find ways around this problem. And what Mark Carney has been really brilliant about is saying, I don't have that much power. I'm a much smaller country, but I do have flexibility and I'm going to take what power I have and create a better situation for me where I'm not as dependent on this hostile and unpredictable superpower. So he's made a trade deal with India, made a trade deal with Europe. And as you say, even with China, the result is the Chinese are essentially entering the Canadian car market in a way that they would never. So if the American car industry gets expelled or becomes unaffordable in Canada, it is going to be replaced by the Chinese car industry.

39:06Fareed Zakaria:And the Chinese are showing other countries, in a sense, the way to get around this, which is treat America as the problem and increase free trade with everybody else. so you get more growth. So it's, and it's terrible for us both economically, but it's also terrible for us geopolitically because the single biggest beneficiary of all this is going to be China. I mean, China's car industry is going to take over the world now. Yeah, again, going to predictions, I think in 10 years, the US auto industry is going to be a niche industry and a shadow of itself because we're giving nations permission to import and take lower barriers on Chinese cars.

39:48And the reality is, pound for pound, the Chinese are making a better car than Detroit right now. I don't know, have you spent any time at a BYD or one of these new Chinese models?

39:58Fareed Zakaria:I did. I was in China in February or early March, and I drove. They let me drive what is the fastest car in the world. It goes 475 kilometers an hour. It's an amazing car. I mean, what's extraordinary is they've also understood, Scott, that the car is going to be not a vehicle that human beings drive in, but a vehicle in which human beings are driven in by autonomous driving, AI, etc. So they're trying to maximize the human experience. So do you want to work in the car? Do you want to watch movies in the car? Do you want to listen to music in the car? I drove an SUV. Yeah, it was a BYD SUV where you can launch drones off the roof of the car.

40:49Fareed Zakaria:And I was telling them, well, why do you need that? Because they were like, well, for traffic. And I said, well, but you have the GPS anyway. And they said, all right, maybe it's just for fun. It's like recreation. People enjoy this kind of thing because you're not actually good to be driving in a few years. And so they're sort of two steps ahead in some ways of realizing where it's going. And by the way, the BYD cars are amazingly good. And I think they're roughly$12 ,000,$15 ,000. So even if you put a 100 % tariff on the car, it's like$30 ,000. It's still incredibly affordable. I was in Brazil and I got in, I used a ride-hailing app, got in the car and I thought, oh, it's a Model Y.

41:32These are pretty nice. He's like, no, it's a BYD. and he told me when I did the calculation that it cost him$16 ,000.

41:42I still think Tesla makes a nicer car, but at 40 % of the price, a car that's 80 % is good. I got out of this car and I thought, Detroit is screwed. This industry is just not gonna, I mean, they'll probably make some SUVs, but it just felt to me, and I keep seeing all these videos, YouTubes of all these cars that are essentially a Range Rover for$40 ,000. And I thought, wow, Detroit is going to be a very, very difficult place. I doubt, I would project that home values continue their slide.

42:17Fareed Zakaria:And just to make a point, I think this will be, the shape of trade here will be massively managed trade. Because frankly, the Europeans can't allow the Chinese to simply come in. It would destroy, you know, what is Europe's great value add if it has one? It is advanced manufacturing. You know, the Porsches, the BMWs, the Mercedes. Prestigious manufacturing. Right. And they will get wiped out. So there will be some kind of quota system. And we're going to, in the whole world of automobiles, in my opinion, between the U.S., Europe, and China, it's going to be highly managed political trade. It's not going to be free markets, free trade, because China would win.

42:57We'll be right back.

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45:49We're back with more from Fareed Zakaria. Yeah. Under the auspices of a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. And again, going to what could go right. Is there an opportunity for whoever takes the White House in 28 to, and there's motivation now, and I think the opportunity here for cooperation has ever been greater. Is there an opportunity to basically take NAFTA and incorporate the EU and give the UK cloud cover to go back, rejoin the European Union and not only take these ridiculous tariffs or get rid of them, but create a broader free trading agreement and say, look, we have existential threats from autocracies.

46:31We have an economic threat from China. We need to bulk up and we need to get along. And cooperation is responsible for the majority of the prosperity post-World War II order. Let's take that same idea and turbocharge it. And it's there now. I'm just trying to figure out a way we turn chicken shit into chicken salad here. Is there real potentially motivation to create the mother of all trading zones and potentially reinforce our cooperative mechanisms and constructs? Or am I being naive?

47:03Fareed Zakaria:No, look, I think we've got to find something to disagree on. I think that's the real opportunity. And here's the really interesting thing that I would not have predicted. The tariffs are incredibly unpopular. I wasn't sure this would happen because there's a kind of nationalist, you know, machismo about tariffs, you know, and Trump said it all the time. somewhere between 65 and 70 % of Americans oppose the tariffs and think they're a mistake. That is extraordinary because it's actually, you know, the trade is only 15 % of our economy. So it's basically a consumption tax on not even 15 because it doesn't cover all of it, maybe 10 % of the economy.

47:42Fareed Zakaria:But people see how it just raises prices without doing anything in particular. So there is going to be, the problem is it raises revenue and we desperately need revenue. We've given our debt and deficits. But I think it's exactly what you said, presented as a big new advance. And I do think there was a mistake that we made with China. It's not necessarily letting them into the WTO because the whole world was embracing China. We couldn't have been an outlier. But we didn't condition further relaxation of tariffs in the United States or in Europe on China actually becoming more and more of a market economy and not playing games because they're actually not a market economy.

48:27Fareed Zakaria:It's a very complicated, quasi-market, quasi-fixed economy with massive industrial policy. And I think we should be saying, we want to create an ecosystem in the West. In the West, I mean, broadly, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Persian Gulf states, maybe India if they want to join it. And we will trade with a certain set of rules amongst ourselves because we are genuinely open societies. But we're not going to trade like that with the Chinas and Russias and North Koreas and Irans of the world. And if you want to join that, you have to be an open society and with an open economy. Of course, the problem is that right now we are the most protectionist advanced economy in the world.

49:16Fareed Zakaria:We are now at Smoot-Hawley level tariffs. And so very hard for us to do that, but it does provide an opportunity. I mean, there are a lot of Trump policies that I think it provides a real opportunity if the Democrats have the courage and imagination to say, let's be bold. Let's not be scared of this populism. Let's reverse some of this, but exactly as you say, reverse it in a creative way, which doesn't sound like you're just trying a restoration. What you're trying to do is new better. You know, that should be what they look at. Look at this as an opportunity to say, yeah, we needed to rethink trade.

49:54Fareed Zakaria:And the way we're rethinking it is free societies should create an ecosystem. And that ecosystem is large enough that if you shut down the rare earth, we'll find somewhere else to do it. We're not going to process rare earths in the United States, but we could do it in India. We could do it in Kenya. We could do it in places where they have in Brazil where they have, you know, just for developmental reasons, lower environmental concerns. Let's come back to the U.S. in the midterms. Diesel just hit$6.51 a gallon. That's a record. Inflation seems to be kind of stubbornly stuck at 3.4 percent. Trump's own Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, just voted for the first rate hike since 2023.

50:40three. Give us your sense. And as a Democrat, I'm just so nervous because I would just never underestimate our ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I wish the election were happening tomorrow. I'm wondering how we're going to screw this up in the next few weeks. What is your take on the midterms? Are you willing to speculate on what might happen and what dynamics do you see playing out in the election?

51:05Fareed Zakaria:Look, the polls all look great for the Democrats, but I feel like I still tend to believe that there are shy Trump voters, but there are no shy Democrats. In other words, that polling tends to - The silent majority. Yeah, underrepresented. Think about almost every poll that, now Trump is not on the ballot, and so that does make a difference. But I, you know, who knows? Look, the one thing I will say is clearly the House is going to go Democratic, but it's not by as much as people think because there's so much redistricting. There are really only 50 seats in play. The Senate seems like it's on a knife's edge.

51:43Fareed Zakaria:And it's to me bizarre that, you know, given this much bad policy from the Trump administration, but that is, you know, where we are. If the economy really turns south, that I think could be the decisive blow. And could it turn south? Well, look, I'm reading this book, 1873 by Li Akadema, a wonderful book about, you know, it's about a lot of things, but really the heart of it was the great global railroad boom, which is the closest thing we have to the, in terms of percentage GDP, to the AI boom. And what caused it to, what caused the bubble to burst? What has almost always caused the bubbles to burst, which is the cost of money went up, Interest rates went up.

52:29Fareed Zakaria:Basically, a very complicated story, but Bismarck decides he wants to screw the French. And so the French used gold and silver and the Germans only used gold. So he sold all his silver, which meant there was a run on gold, which effectively tightened the money supply, raised interest rates. And that is what burst the railroad bubble, which then produced a recession that lasted almost, I mean, it was probably worse than the Great Depression. And I wonder whether this uptick that you're seeing, whether the 10-year bond is getting up over 5%, if something unwinds there or if the thing we were talking about at the start, this moment of truth where AI companies simply cannot spend what they have committed to and they start scaling back, if you see an unwind, would something happen?

53:18Fareed Zakaria:The problem with this stuff is you never know the timing, right? This could happen a year from now. It could happen a year and a half from now. So Trump may get lucky. But I think you need to be sure of a kind of democratic wave. You need tougher economic times. And the truth is, because of the AI boom, the American economy is actually in reasonably good shape. I apologize for jumping around here, but I realized we skipped Ukraine, Russia. I woke up the other morning and I immediately opened my computer. on one of those mentally unwell people that sleeps with screens around them. And I immediately flipped open my computer and went to CNN and I saw fires.

54:01And you immediately go, oh no, it's another fire in an area that's, you know, had drought and hasn't done a good job of clearing its brush. And then I thought, oh, these are good fires. And that's a terrible thing to feel. And it was the Ukrainian launch of a thousand drones on Moscow. Give me a sense for the state of play there. And I mean, isn't it an extraordinary for me to think just even 24 months ago, we'd see Moscow on fire? The Ukrainians have done an extraordinary job.

54:29Fareed Zakaria:I was in Kiev 10 days ago. And I think that people just don't understand how much these guys are innovating. You know, they have one-fourth the population of Russia. Their economy is 10 % the size of Russia's. And they have been able to hold ground for four years. They have been able to regain ground that the Russians took. It's really an extraordinary achievement. And it's all because they have been super determined, super dedicated, and super innovative. These drones they have now can go 3 ,000 kilometers into Russia. Moscow is only at 1 ,500 kilometers. They can go way past Moscow if they need to.

55:11Fareed Zakaria:And they have ways to do it in a coordinated way. They seem to have very good intelligence. And remember, they have to do this without Starlink because once you enter Russian territory, they're not allowed to use Starlink. The Starlink is not turned on for them. So they face a lot of these challenges. Why are they able to do it? Because they're fighting for their country. They're fighting for, and that's why I think when people say, oh, the Russians will win, it's not going to look like what you think it might look like. Even if the Ukrainians face setbacks, it will morph into a guerrilla war.

55:48Fareed Zakaria:The Russians will be fighting Ukrainian guerrillas for another 20 years. So they're not going to give up. The biggest challenge they face and the biggest thing they told me privately, of course, was the collapse of American support. This is a matter of such shame for us. This is a brave liberal democracy fighting against an authoritarian aggressor that is trying to resurrect the Soviet Union or the Tsarist empire. Take your pick. and they're bravely struggling for it. And the one thing that has changed in the last year has been the total collapse of American support. American military aid is essentially down to zero.

56:30Fareed Zakaria:America won't sell them the patriots they need to, for example, defend Kyiv. First time I was there, there was almost continuous air raid sirens, almost continuous fear of being bombed. The train convoy that I was in when I came back, was the Russians bombed. We were 10 minutes from the Polish border and the Russians bombed right next to the train behind mine, which had David Petraeus and Boris Johnson in it because the Russians wanted to send a signal. We can get to you anywhere. And it's not just that we've stopped supporting the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians believe that the United States has essentially become pro-Russian and might collude with Russia to force Ukraine to accept a dishonorable peace.

57:17Fareed Zakaria:This is what they're worried about. So whenever you go through these times of change, there's a bit of a reshuffling of the deck. Certain powers diminish, certain powers emerge. And it strikes me that we love predictions of the pit. I believe, hands down, Times Person of the Year has already been decided and it's going to be Mark Carney and that he's the leader that Europe's been looking for for the last 20 years. So I think not Canada as much as Carney, unbelievable ascent of status and power. The nation, and I want to get your reaction to that, but then the second part is the nation that is sort of, not the sleeping giant, but a stirring giant that people don't, I don't think gets nearly enough recognition is Poland.

58:02And the economy there is strong. They've been building up their defense. My sense is they are not ready for a war with Russia, but don't seem to be scared of it, and that Poland is becoming a middle power, elevating potentially to real strategic power in the region. So thoughts on Carney and a potential sleeping giant, Poland.

58:31Fareed Zakaria:So I think you're right that Carney has sort of given other leaders and other countries a way out of this. You know, they've been looking for this, how do we, what do we do when the guarantor, the creator, the protector of the international system turns into the dismantler, the destroyer of the international system that it created? And Carney has given them a kind of language and a path, you know, so you don't have to just surrender. You don't just go in and weep. There's a, you have options. You can make new alliances. you can try to find a way to stabilize yourself. You know, it's obviously a suboptimal outcome, but it is something.

59:11Fareed Zakaria:And I think you're right that he is, I think he's getting more appreciation and applauded around the world than Americans realize. As for Time's Man of the Year, I hadn't thought of it that way, smart idea. I would guess it would be between that and AI. You remember Time once very famously made the computer the man of the year. And Steve Jobs got really pissed off because he thought he should be man of the year. But you could imagine them doing something like that. But onto Poland, 100 % right. Poland is a remarkable country. It has grown close to 5 % a year for 25 years or so. I mean, Poland is like an emerging market.

59:54Fareed Zakaria:It has grown in the way that, you know, the South Koreas and Taiwans of the world grew when they were really in their growth phase. It is fiercely pro-Western, pro-democratic. They do have a populist swing, which has been a bit of a problem. But the current Polish government is extremely savvy and extremely smart. The foreign minister of Poland, Radek Sikorsky, was in Kiev with me. But here's the thing they're grappling with. They understand that what Putin is doing is not just attacking Ukraine. He's also testing NATO. That's why you're seeing these Russian drones and these attacks in Moldova.

1:00:36Fareed Zakaria:A drone somehow reaches Poland. A drone even reaches Germany. And what the Eastern Europeans and the Poles in particular are worried about is, what if a Russian missile were to enter Polish airspace and kill, say, 200 Poles? that should trigger Article 5, collective self-defense for NATO. But would the United States honor that commitment? This is something they, you know, the entire process of NATO's response to these kinds of violations has always rested critically on the United States. And that's why the United States has always been absolutely clear. You know, any attack on a NATO country will mean it's an attack on the United States.

1:01:23Fareed Zakaria:That is what has kept the peace, that sense of American deterrence. And the polls, quite understandably, I think, are thinking to themselves, well, is Donald Trump really going to go to war with Vladimir Putin over 200 polls? And so, you know, they're trying to figure out, OK, where does that lead us? Last question, and you're the fastest hour in podcasting. My question is, are you worried? You're constantly have your hand in the pool. You know the temperature. And this just feels like one existential crisis after. I long for the days of Y2K when the elevators were going to stop or Greek sovereign debt was the thing we were worried about.

1:02:15It just feels as if so many matches are being lit in a room where we're knee deep in gasoline right now. So my question is, one, are you worried? And two, what does Freed Zakaria do to relieve that, if you feel that anxiety and worry? What do you do to manage it?

1:02:35Fareed Zakaria:Look, I'm sort of by temperament an optimist. And I'm an immigrant, which means you kind of have to be optimistic. I made my bet on the United States. I moved countries, cultures, left behind, you know, family. I have three kids here. So I've like staked my, you know, my future here. And so I'm just generally optimistic about this country and about the fact that, you know, I think things will work out. It's a tough period to have that kind of temperament because, you know, for most of the time I've been in the United States, at a broad kind of macro level, things were getting better, you know.

1:03:17Fareed Zakaria:And economically and the standard of living and all that, I still think, you know, an AI will be this amazing thing. But if you look at core political indicators, the quality of our democracy, the quality of rule of law, the quality of our civic life and the way we talk to each other and treat each other, some of these things, both in the United States and around the world, have actually been moving in the wrong direction for several years. And so, you know, I view it as part of my job to try to reverse that trend. You know, one of the things I'm grateful for is that I don't just look at that world.

1:03:58Fareed Zakaria:I feel like I have something I can do about it. I don't wring my hands. I say, you know what, let's point out, let's contribute to changing that dynamic. I'm not arrogant enough to think that I, you know, I'm one person, you know. But the way trends work is if a whole bunch of people start doing things like that and each reinforces the other, maybe, you know, maybe you steer things a little bit in a positive direction. At least that's what I say to myself. Steer things in a positive direction. Fareed Zakaria is a journalist, author, and political commentator. He hosts Fareed Zakaria of GPS on CNN and is a columnist for The Washington Post.

1:04:40Fareed, like I said, you're the fastest hour in podcasting. Thanks very much for your time today.

1:04:45Fareed Zakaria:Always a pleasure, Scott. Thank you.

1:04:50This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez, Laura Jannir, and Asher Schwartz. Our video editor is Bianca Rosario Ramirez. Cami Reek is our social producer. Drew Burrows is our technical director. And Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thanks for listening to the ProfG Pod from ProfG Media.

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