The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Fareed Zakaria: Why Liberal Democracy is Worth Fighting For

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Why is a nuclear peace deal between the U.S. and Iran key to stability in the Middle East? What would the global consequences of a full-scale trade war between China and America be? Is the world headed towards another arms race? How should Canada respond to Trump's repeated threats of annexation? And why is liberal democracy worth defending? This is Part 2 of Steve Paikin's wide-ranging conversation with CNN's Fareed Zakaria. Fareed is also the author of "Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present," and a columnist for The Washington Post. Watch Part 1 of their conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QXwNq0d26USee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Let's continue with part two of our conversation with Fareed Zakaria. Let's talk about America's current relations with two powerful players on the world stage who, apropos of the title of your book, are no stranger to revolutions. We're going to start with Iran. I know you did a Washington Post column on this a few weeks ago. As things stand today, Iran is set to reject a United States proposal to end a decades-old nuclear dispute. And what I found interesting about your column in the Post is that you seem to believe that peace and stability in the Middle East hinges on a deal between Iran and the United States

on this nuclear issue. Lay that out for us. How come? So let's begin by noticing, you know, we tend to not in the press focus on good news. How come? or the American created security order have failed. What the Iranians realized was that they were weak. And so they couldn't really fight directly against the American led order, which would have meant fighting against Israel,

against Saudi Arabia, against the UAE. These are the pillars of the American led order. But instead what they did is they put together an array of proxies, the Houthis, the Hezbollah, Hamas, the Syrian regime, and those the militias in Iraq. And those kind of kept everybody at edge, uneasy, diverted shipping. It meant that, you know, Israelis couldn't live in the north. Well, Israel's attacks on Hezbollah, on Iran have been very powerful

and effective. The fact that Russia is occupied with Ukraine means that the Syrian regime turned out to be much weaker than we expected. And between the withdrawal of Iranian support and Russian support, the Syrian regime has collapsed. So what you're looking at is a world in which Iran is weak. Its proxies have been devastated. And so it needs peace. It needs to make a deal. And that's why I think there is a chance here

to permanently codify and reset the Middle Eastern order so that it's, you know, I think it's basically better for everyone, which is it's more about peace and stability and freedom of navigation and allowing countries to develop and grow and trade. And even the Saudis have come to realize they were the biggest opponents of an Iran deal. They are now the biggest proponents

because they realize in order to modernize at home They need peace and stability abroad the the two big problems I would argue are on the one hand we need to give Iran Some some way out, you know, you know, it can't it can't just be pressure pressure and pressure there has to be some reward for For agreeing to these terms and the second is Bibi Netanyahu in Israel, who is unalterably opposed to any deal. I think he is basically unalterably opposed to anything that relaxes tensions in the region,

because right now his survival as Prime Minister of Israel depends on the idea that there is a wartime emergency, which is why he has to stay vigilant, he has to be and he has to be prime minister. If that wartime emergency goes away, his government is likely to collapse and he faces possibly criminal prosecution. So as Ehud Omed, the former prime minister of Israel says, Israel is now engaged in essentially a personal private war that

benefits one man more than it does the country. And let me ask you about the other revolutionary power admittedly seven and a half decades in the rearview mirror, but China. Tell us what you believe the global consequences of a full-blown trade war of the world's two largest economies, China and the United States. What could that mean for everybody else? It would mean probably it's the single event that could reverse much of the progress that has taken place in the last 30 or 40 years, because it would mean a decoupling of the

global economy almost entirely a deglow a genuine De-globalization right now. We really haven't had any De-globalization people talk about it, but it's frankly nonsense We when if you say you're not gonna buy stuff from China and you start buying it from Vietnam or India. That's not De-globalization that's a re globalization. Here's buying it from another foreign country, but an actual globalization, here's buying it from another foreign country. But an actual complete wrenching decoupling, well, then you're talking about these supply chains completely unwinding.

People are going to have to find a whole new way of doing things. You'll divide the world into two camps. The camps will become increasingly geo-economic as well as geopolitical. So I think it's very important actually for the progress of the world that we don't end up in a second Cold War, except this time with the second largest economy

in the world and the only other truly technologically cutting edge country in the world other than the United States. The Soviet Union never had that kind of imprimatur on the world, that kind of weight in the world. So this would be much, much more damaging. I think China is an adversary. China is a geopolitical adversary, and China is a pretty tough Leninist dictatorship. And therefore, we are going to have an adversarial stance with it. But I think the challenge is, can we

do that without turning this into a joke? And I think that's a very important point. And I think the challenge is can we do that without turning this into a genuine replay of the Cold War, except this time with the second largest economy in the world, technologically sophisticated and involving the combination of artificial intelligence, robotics, and nuclear weapons. To me, that is a frightening thought of a spiraling arms race that involves nuclear weapons, AI, and robotics. You can easily see something going very badly awry in that picture.

Yeah. Okay. A few minutes to go, Fried. Let me see if I can sneak in two more questions. We had your friend Tom Friedman from the New York Times up here last week and excuse me we did a program in front of a live audience at University of Toronto and I asked him about this 51st state business that of course the president has been trolling us on for the last many months. Tom Friedman's view was we shouldn't take

any of this stuff seriously. What do you think? I think it we should it seriously, but not literally in the famous phrasing about Donald Trump in general, because I think it does reflect something about Trump. It reflects a kind of petty narcissism. It reflects a kind of bully. a kind of bully, you know, the core nature of a bully. Always try to put people on edge. Always try to demean them. Always try to make them feel bad. Always try to lord over the fact that you are maybe, you know, bigger and richer than they are.

These are all very real aspects of Trump's personality. And right now, Trump's personality is the single most powerful determinant of American policy, just because he has turned the presidency into a truly imperial presidency, where he pays almost no attention to Congress, even pays very little attention to the courts right now. So, I don't think you can just, you know, say it means nothing. Now, will it get, will it translate into some kind

of annexation of Canada? No, of course not. That, you know, that is, that would be, that's absolutely implausible. It's not going to happen. But the fact that you have a country, that you have a president treating one of America's oldest, most reliable, most responsible allies, a liberal democracy of the highest order that has espoused the

same values the United States has at times lived up to those values even better than the United States has. The fact that you have the president of the United States trying to demean and humiliate that country is a matter of profound shame for me as an American, but also a sad sign of where we are in the world, where we really do need the democracies of the world, the countries that believe in human rights, that believe in good governance and the rule of law, to be banding together because there is a challenge from the Russians and Chinas of the world. And instead, we have this, you know, this kind of mean-spirited, narrow-minded nationalism and protectionism that Trump is trying

to turn into the new narrative. As I say, the one saving grace here is that not a lot of people are buying it. Some people in Europe are, but for the most part, I was in Europe and I was in the United States, and I was in the United States and I was in the United States, and I was, the one saving grace here is that not a lot of people are buying it. Some people in Europe are, but for the most part, I was in Europe last week. What I'm struck by is how to a large extent people are not always rejecting, but some

of what Trump is saying is really falling on deaf ears. Thank God. Well, this acronym that's going around these days, Trump as a taco, taco, Trump always chickens out. We certainly hope that's the case as it relates to his interest in our becoming the 51st state. Let's You know what you should tell them, by the way? Go ahead.

You're too big to be one state. So what you really have to do is take the 10 provinces, probably make it into five states, which would mean the Republicans would probably get one, one of them, right, Alberta. But there would be four democratic states, there would be eight new democratic senators. That would be a permanent democratic majority. That might make Trump realize this is not such a good idea. You would have thought he thought that through already, but I guess not.

Anyway, global liberalism certainly seems to be in considerable difficulty these days, particularly Western democracies. This may seem obvious on the face of it, but you and I have both seen polls which show that younger people aren't necessarily as sold on Western democracies as perhaps people of our generation are. So how about reminding them why this is a form of living, a form of governing ourselves, that we really shouldn't

take for granted and should do whatever we can to try to maintain? You know, I think part of it is that young people don't have any memory or knowledge of the alternative. You know, there is a sense in which it's all so far back. The Cold War, you know, if you think about it, most young people were born after the end of the Cold War. They have no living memory of communism, of the dissidents, of the gulags, of any of that.

They've seen a world in which democracy is the only thing around. So you take for granted what you have. The truth of the matter is democracy has provided human beings with more freedom, more liberty, more wealth, more prosperity, and more equality than any other system we know.

Even now, even the last 30 years, one of the things I've been trying to remind people is that in countries like the United States and Canada, people just don't realize how much progress we've made. If you look back 30 or 40 years ago and look at the average size of a Canadian house, average size of an American house, they're 50% larger today.

They have an extra bathroom. The people have extra more cars. Those houses 40 years ago were not routinely air conditioned. Now they are. If you look at life expectancy, you can look at the kind of diseases people used to die off. There are so many little things. I was just reading a report on how violence against people in Wales has declined by something like 75% in the last 30 years. And do you know why it is? Because people

used to say, I hate this. It sounds like a cliche. But they used to beat themselves up after they'd get completely shitfaced at bars. And it turns out that people, you know, there's a social stigma against drinking. People have realized that bottles will be used for that. So you can't turn bottles into weapons

anymore because the glass is made so that it doesn't turn into jagged edges. The policing has gotten better. You know, the truth is made so that it doesn't turn into jagged edges, the policing has gotten better. The truth is when people talk about how crime is up in New York, I've lived in New York for 30 years. Crime is down 90% since the 1970s and 80s. It's up about 10% post-COVID or something like that. We just don't recognize the degree to which life has gotten better, despite all the problems,

despite all the kind of foibles. The thing about liberalism and liberal governance, and I mean liberal very broadly, is it's focused on human betterment, on individual lives, on people having better lives, having better, more disease-free living, crime-free cities, all that kind of thing. What it isn't good at, and here's its flaw, it's not good at inspiring the heart. It's not good at filling you with some kind of atavistic pride, right?

It's not good at that sense of tribal belonging. It doesn't scratch that itch. And what the populists have realized is that's a very real human need. And that is liberalism's problem, is telling people your houses will be 25% bigger and there'll be more technology in them, and you'll be able to travel to more interesting places and you know your your daughters will be able to get you know get educated and face no discrimination

that doesn't fill the heart with the kind of you know irrational tribal pride that makes you want to you know do great projects build great buildings but you think of the great cathedrals of the world they're all built you want to, you know, do great projects, build great buildings. You think of the great cathedrals of the world, they're all built, you know, to a god nobody could see but fear. That sense of belonging and pride that liberalism doesn't know how to provide. And that is its Achilles heel that the populists are capitalizing on. Just before we say goodbye, I can't help but ask one last cheeky question, which is to say, Achilles heel that the populists are capitalizing on. Just before we say goodbye, I can't help but ask one last cheeky question,

which is to say you have a very interesting birthday. Your birthday is January 20th, which is Inauguration Day. And I wonder whether you celebrated your birthday this year with Donald Trump's return, or maybe was there a competing emotion at play? Oh, look, I'd make no bones of the fact that I regard Donald Trump's election as a very sad moment for America because I think it is premised on the idea that America has done badly in the world and I think America has done very well in the world. It has done very well by the world. And I think America has done very well in the world. It has done very well by the world.

I think the eight decades of American leadership has been great for the world and great for America. It's the longest period of peace and prosperity in recorded history. And so, yeah, I mean, very mixed emotions. And let me reveal something that the populace will delight in. As it happened, I was at the time of January 20th, I was actually not in America,

I was in Davos covering the conference because we tried to do the show out of there. But a friend did have a little dinner for me with a few people. All I will say is we talked a lot about the state of the world. I wouldn't say the mood was celebratory though, luckily my friends did raise a glass to me at least. Amen for that.

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. Thank you so much. Take care.