The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Fareed Zakaria: What Revolutions Teach Us About Politics Today

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

How have the Glorious, French and Industrial revolutions shaped modern politics? How did the Left versus Right divide come about? Might a potential U.S.-Iran nuclear deal be a gamechanger for peace in the Middle East? And how seriously should Canada take Trump's relentless 51st state threat? CNN's Fareed Zakaria joins host Steve Paikin for a wide-ranging discussion on the tumultuous state of play in the world today. He is the author of "Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present," and a columnist for The Washington Post. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Could the early 21st century be the most revolutionary period in modern history? In his book, Age of Revolutions, Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, Fareed Zakaria looks at how the revolutions of the past might help us understand our current moment. You know him, of course, as the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS and the columnist for the Washington Post as well, and he joins us on the line from New York City and Farid. It's always great to have you on our program. How are you doing tonight? Very well, and it's a pleasure to be back with you.

Excellent. When we think about the origins of liberty, I'm going to go on a hunch here and think most people don't think of the Netherlands as sort of ground zero for this, but you tell us that you believe that was where the first liberal revolution in world history started, late 16th, early 17th century. Why did you come to that conclusion? Well, if you look at the point at which human society breaks with the past, you know, if you look at the economic, the average income of human beings, it's basically the same, flat lines for most of history. And then it starts to go up in the Western world around the 16th

century. And the place it first starts to go up is the Netherlands. And so I asked myself, well, why was that happening? Well, it turns out the Netherlands begins the great break with, you know, millennia of poverty and oppression. The Netherlands is the first place where they try to devise an economy that is more based on knowledge and innovation rather than just extraction. But it also turns out to be the place that they first try to create a modern republic, rather than courts and kings and court politics. And it all happens for a peculiar set of reasons, as I point out in the book.

The geography of the Netherlands means you kind of have to work together in a very egalitarian fashion to rescue the land from the sea. There's this wonderful line that the Dutch have. They say, God may have created the earth, but the Dutch created Netherlands. So there's this sense in which they did it themselves. So it's the origins of economic growth,

but also the origins of self-government. And of course, that's what produces ordered liberty. It then spreads to England and then through England to its empire, which is why Canada and the United States are among the oldest constitutional democracies in the world. Well, tell me this then. If it started in the Netherlands and so many of the other countries that experienced that became big and rich and powerful, how come the Netherlands never became a superpower?

Well, it was. Most people don't realize, but in the 16th and 17th century, the Netherlands never became a superpower? Well, it was. Most people don't realize, but in the 16th and 17th century, the Netherlands had a fearsome navy, was able to invent a globalization in many senses. If you go to Indonesia, think about how far Indonesia is from the Netherlands. The idea that the entire area, by the way, Indonesia is larger than Europe, if you put across a map properly, was conquered by the Dutch. But what ends up happening is eventually, you're right, just the size of the country

was not large enough to produce the kind of army that you need, the kind of navy that you need, and the Brits kind of do better than them and out-innovate them eventually. But almost every great British innovation, like for example, stock markets, was actually invented by the Dutch. But by the end of a few hundred years, they go down. And one last piece of this, and again, it has modern relevance. People don't like pesky, innovative, entrepreneurial societies, particularly the big, bad, brutal dictatorships.

You know, we think today of, of course, a country like Russia, but in those days, it was absolutely just France. And the French go into the Netherlands and essentially try to destroy it. And to a certain extent, they succeed. You know, Louis XV basically destroys the fledgling Dutch Republic. It survives in a form in that the Dutch king, William of Orange, goes to England and foments what becomes the glorious revolution in Britain. You would expect that an American writer would choose an opportunity like this to engorge

himself on retelling the events of the American Revolution, but you don't. Why does the American Revolution make such a relatively minor appearance in your book? Because in terms that we would understand a real revolution, by which I mean a real social economic transformation of society, the American Revolution is actually not that revolutionary. It is a change of political form of government for sure, and that is a very big deal, and politically it has that big effect. But you know, socially and economically, America leaves in place the old order remarkably intact. I mean, most obviously and famously, it leaves in place slavery and the entire feudal structure of the South.

But it even leaves in place the feudal structure of the North. There's a very good book called Gentleman Revolutionaries, which talks about this tension where the Northern aristocrats are essentially worried that their land and their privilege is going to be taken away, and there was one effort in the Whiskey Rebellion. But basically it doesn't happen. What really changes America socially and economically is the Industrial Revolution after the Civil War. And if you looked at America in 1850, it would have been a very recognizable country to the founding fathers. But if you'd looked at it by 1875, after railroads, the breakup of slavery, the transformation of the entire economy into an industrial economy that would soon surpass Britain.

That was the change. That was the absolute breakdown of the old order. So if you're keeping score at home, we've got the Netherlands, we've got the glorious revolution in Britain, we've got the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, which you just mentioned. What about the globalization revolution. So if you look at how much the world economy has expanded in the last 30 or 40 years, since the fall of communism, which was the great engine of today's revolutions in many ways.

Well, if you looked at the 1950s and 60s, what countries entered the revolution? a kind of engine of today's revolutions in many ways. Well, if you looked at the 1950s and 60s, what countries entered the free market system? You probably say Japan, what is 70 million people at the time, Korea, 40 million people at the time, Malaysia, Singapore, places like that, Taiwan.

You put it all together, it's probably 200 million people. between 1985 and 1995, China, India, Indonesia, all of Latin America, all of Eastern Europe, go from essentially controlled, statist economies, socialist economies, to free market, free trade economies of some sort. That's roughly three and a half billion people entering the globalized world. Then take the information revolution. We invent a whole new economy that is digital and virtual rather than physical, you know, one based on bits and bytes rather than atoms.

Take the cultural revolution. Take just women's rights as one example. one based on bits and bytes rather than atoms. Take the cultural revolution. Take just women's rights as one example. For most of human history, women were subordinate. And no matter what place you went in the world, what tribe was up, what tribe was down, women were always second-class citizens, mostly the property of men until the 16th or 17th century.

And I'd say it's fair to say that in the last 30 or 40 years, women have finally been genuinely emancipated, work as equals, you know, are able to carve out independent lives and roles for themselves. That's a big deal, right? The rise of minorities, of course, is another very big thing. So you put it all together, and I feel like we are living in the most revolutionary times we've ever lived in. And the central thesis of the book is that whenever you have this level of change and revolution, you're going to get

a backlash. Well, and we're seeing it right now. And I wonder whether the free trade revolution is over with the election of Donald Trump. What do you think? I think you ask a very good question. And I've been thinking about it a great deal, because in some ways, the book, I don't want to say,

predicts the reelection of Trump. But it reminds us, and I was written before the reelection of Trump, that these are very deep. This is a very deep backlash. Trump's 2016 election was not a fluke. There's this kind of populism around the world. But what's interesting is there are also these forces of progress and modernization and liberalization also have a very large constituency. So what I noticed going around the world is that the United States has turned

away from free trade in a kind of a real backlash against free trade and globalization. But in large parts of the world, they have not because they realize the only path to prosperity, the only way to raise standards of living is to in some way embrace trade. So while there's been a little bit of modest shift

and people don't wanna be too dependent on China and maybe the pandemic Taught them you don't want to put your eggs too many eggs in one basket most economies realize They need trade look at Canada. Look at what Mark Carney says very intelligently, which is we made a mistake That we we we tried to integrate too much with the United States. So you might think what he's saying is, you know, it's too much trade and too much globalization. No, what he's saying is, we're going to have to diversify our economy and not be so dependent on the US, which means trading with Europe more, trading with Britain, trading with China, trading with perhaps India.

So it's actually more trade, not less trade. The US is unusual in this regard. We are a big continental economy. 80% of the US economy is domestic, actually even more than that. But that's not true for most countries. So here you have a situation where the US has abdicated its agenda setting kind of role. But the rest of the world is not following

America's new role. They're sort of trying to do their own thing, they're freelancing, but it's a very important moment because for the first time in eight decades, the US is not setting the agenda, but it's not like China is, it's not like Russia is and Europe is too divided. So in a weird way, the world is kind of agenda-less and everyone is trying to figure out their own particular path that is much more specific, not part of a global narrative.

That may account for why there seems to be so much anxiety in the world today. I was talking to somebody else about that on this program last week. And I said, you know, which was a more anxiety inducing time? What we're experiencing now or during the Cold War when we had 30,000 nuclear missiles, maybe more, pointed at each other. And the commentator said, definitely now.

There was a predictability and there were checks and balances back then. None of that seems to exist today. Would you agree? I think that people sometimes forget how unnerving those days were and people worried about nuclear war and nuclear holocaust. But I think he's onto something very important, which is there was a master narrative, and you knew where you fit into that master narrative, which was this was a battle of ideologies. This was a battle of geopolitics between East and West. You were either on the East or the West, or you had even taken a principled neutralist position, like the

country I grew up in, India. So there was a much more, there was a sense of a set framework. What we are in now is living in a time of deep uncertainty. And you know, one of the hardest things for human beings to deal with is uncertainty, because it leaves you unsure, it leaves you wondering, you know, where you're going. And I think one of the challenges of life, the next few decades, is going to be living with that uncertainty and trying to plan forward with some level of uncertainty, not knowing what direction the world is going in. Let's talk about political polarization. It has clearly, I was going to say infected.

Okay, maybe that's the right word, infected your country. It's a 50-50 country. Our last national election, which just took place, was separated by a point and a half in the total vote. Again, a very, very close election. Here's what you say in your book about that. Sheldon, bring this graphic up and people can read along at home.

In recent centuries, politics has taken on a particular ideological shape that would have been alien to those living in the ancient or medieval world. Modern politics around the world has been characterized as a contest between the left and the right. The simple demarcation of left and right has traditionally said a lot about where someone stands, whether in Brazil, the United States, Germany or India. On the left, a stronger state with more economic regulation and redistribution. On the right, a freer market with less governmental intervention.

This left-right divide has long dominated the political landscape of the world, defining elections, public debates and policies, even provoking violence and revolution. But these days, this fundamental ideological division has broken down. Okay, what do you mean it's broken down? We no longer do the left right thing? Well, think about what Donald Trump stands for. And he really is, in some ways, the kind of pioneer of this. Trump stands for, more than anything else,

a hostility to free trade, which has let us remember, free trade is free markets. I mean, when Adam Smith and David Ricardo were inventing, if you will, or ideologizing capitalism, free trade was absolutely central to that idea because it is basically through protectionism that governments used to intervene the most in trade in the 17th, 18th centuries. So he's anti-free trade in that sense, anti-free markets. He has completely given up the whole conservative concern about deficits and about balancing the budget and all that kind of thing. He's a big spender. He also believes in the fairly arbitrary

use of government power to achieve whatever objectives he wants. So you'd say, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security. I'm going to favor steel. I'm going to favor certain states that he wants to favor. So it's a very arbitrary use of government authority to intervene in the market. So it's very, very hard to put Donald Trump on the right in any, in any traditional left, right spectrum. What is he on the right on, on culture, on class, on all the issues that I, I argue the new defining issues which revolve around culture, class identity. He's against immigration. He's, you know, he's in favor of traditional families.

He's against woke ideology. He's against gender fluidity. You know, it's, it's, and if you look at the European conservatives now, particularly the new ones, if we look at Marine Le Pen, look at the AFD in Germany, look at the Swedish Democrats with the right-wing party in Sweden, look at the Dutch. You know, what you see is anti-immigration, anti-Islam, anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism, anti with the right-wing party in Sweden. Look at the Dutch. What you see is anti-immigration, anti-Islam,

anti-gender fluidity, woke ideology. Call it what you will. So it is really, I think, Viktor Orban, when he was elected, said the first task of this government is to restore Christian culture in Hungary, or something like that. I'm paraphrasing. And that gives you the weight of these new movements.

Look at Georgia Maloney, whose battle cry was, I'm an Italian, I'm a Christian, I'm a mother, as opposed to, in a sense, being a European, being, you know, secular and being, you know, not regarding her gender is important, and not regarding the mother, maternal role is important. So that's the new divide. It's between a kind of traditionalist cultural conservatism and what people would describe as a, you know, secular cosmopolitanism. And that is the biggest

divide in America today. So if you ask yourself what is the strongest predictor of your voting patterns in America today, it is do you have a college degree? The second strongest is do you live in a rural or an urban area? And the third strongest is do you believe in God? Do you believe in organized religion? So in other words, you've stacked America. On the one side, you have secular, liberal, educated urban types. And you have on the other side, rural, less educated, often more white, less multicultural types. So it's almost a class culture division, as much as it is a division about political ideology.

I never understood, and maybe you could help me figure this out, I never understood why this cleavage is so severe, because clearly people who live in cities like to get out to the country, for example, to go, if they have a cottage, or go visit friends at cottages or whatever. And people who live in rural parts of Canada or America, of course, come to the big city all the time to see sporting events, theater, whatever. So why does this cleavage seem to be so impenetrable?

Because I think it reflects, to a certain extent, kind of modern class lines. We don't like to talk about class in North America, but there are class markers. Somebody once did some polling company, an analysis of whether you could predict voting patterns based on how close you lived to either a Starbucks on one side or an Arby's on the other. And it turned out there was a very strong correlation. So you know, in a sense, what you're seeing is these class markers with, you know, how people live, how they think of the world. And I think to your point, maybe culture is harder to compromise on.

When you think about the old divides of economics, the left wanted to spend a lot of money, the right didn't want to spend a lot of money. There's a way to compromise. The left wants to spend $100 billion. The right wants to spend zero. Well, there's a number between the two. What is the number, the compromise number, for somebody who believes passionately in gay rights and gay marriage and somebody else who

thinks it's immoral and against the word of God? What is the compromise on abortion? What is the compromise on national identity? These are the problems, I think, that are less amenable to a kind of split the difference attitude that characterized so much of our economic political ideology. Let's remind everybody your book is called

Age of Revolutions, Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, and we are delighted that it has brought Fareed Zakaria to our program one more time. All good wishes Fareed and thanks again for your time. Thank you. And just let me say this is a terrific program and you've done such an amazing job.

More power to you and I wish you all the best in your next adventures. Very kind of you to say. Thank you so much.