The Chris Cuomo Project - Ian Bremmer

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

In this week’s episode of The Chris Cuomo Project, political scientist Ian Bremmer (founder and president, Eurasia Group and GZERO Media) joins Chris to explore the current state of the Russia-Ukraine war, best and worst case outcomes for Ukraine, how China and Iran fit into the broader geopolitical picture, whether the United States could overcome political dysfunction in the face of another 9/11-style attack, and much more. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Visit Indeed.com/CCP to start hiring now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's so much going on in the world, and it's such a precious commodity to be able to knit it all together, especially for why you should care. That's exactly what our guest today can do. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to another episode of The Chris Cuomo Project. Thank you for subscribing, following, for deciding to wear your independence and get your free agent gear. Remember, I'm just putting the money together so we can give it away.

It's not like, you know, you're paying for my kids to go to college. Now, Ian Bremmer, okay? Eurasia Group, okay? GZERO Media. GZERO Media is a great resource. Bremmer doesn't talk about this enough. You know him as the kind of masterful columnist

and international geopolitical whiz that he is in the American media and political culture. GZERO Media is his newsletter and a really interesting think site, as is the Eurasia Group, where he really put together a firm that looks at the implications of politics and all kinds of geopolitical decision-making. Now, we are lucky enough to have him today to talk about the kind of interconnectedness and interdependence of what's happening in Ukraine with here, Russia with here, Russia with China, and Iran and here, Mexico and here. You see what I'm doing? It's all synergistic. And Ian Bremmer makes it so understandable. Nuclear power. Should it be in the conversation? He makes it understandable with a genius IQ that he focuses through the lens of exactly how you and I think.

So without further ado, Ian Bremmer for you. We don't fake the funk here. And here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo, it's embarrassing, but it shouldn't be. Thankfully, we now have HIMS, and it's changing the vibe by providing affordable access to ED treatment, and it's all online. HIMS is changing men's health care. Why?

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It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. We don't fake the funk here, and here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo, it's embarrassing, but it shouldn't be. I know it's taboo, it's embarrassing, but it shouldn't be. Thankfully, we now have HIMS, and it's changing the vibe by providing affordable access to ED treatment, and it's all online. HIMS is changing men's health care.

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You'll get details and important safety information. You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. and subscription plan. Ian Bremmer, as I live and breathe, what a great, great opportunity to have some time with you to speak, especially with what's going on in the world.

Thank you for taking the opportunity. Thanks, Chris. I'm happy to be with you. So, in your super genius mind, what is keeping you up at night right now? Oh, man. Look, the fact that the Russians have become a rogue state, the most powerful rogue state in history. I mean, we've cut them off, right? I mean, we've frozen their assets, half of their entire sovereign wealth assets,

over $300 billion frozen by the Americans, the Europeans, the Japanese. They were not buying their gas anymore. That's cut off. The oligarchs can't travel. Putin's been declared a war criminal. I mean, by the International Criminal Court just in the past few days. He can't come back from that. It doesn't mean that he's going anywhere, of course, because the rest of the world is still doing business with him.

But the fact that he is for the US and Europe, the equivalent of what Iran is for Israel, and he's got all sorts of capabilities to make life deeply uncomfortable from much more than just Ukraine, that's a very dangerous place to be in. It's much worse than the Cold War because we're in kind of a hot war with Putin right now.

And if you go back to 1962 and the Cuban Missile Crisis, like both sides decided to take a step back from the abyss, we could actually go back to the status quo ante. I mean, you could have normal relations again. There's no way back to normal relations with Putin going forward. So I think that's the thing that worries me the most, the fact that this guy has become a determined and implacable enemy of the entire West. And I'm not sure what that means for the next 10, 20 years. What's best and worst case scenario three years from now? Well, best case scenario is that the Ukrainians have a successful counteroffensive in the next month or two, are able to get the ammunition they need from the U.S. and allies.

They can take much of their territory back that has been occupied since February 24th. And then the conflict winds down. It's a stalemate. The Ukrainians don't accept that the Russians still have some of their land, but you can imagine that some form of negotiations process can begin. The Chinese will favor that. The French will probably favor that. And it's even possible that the Americans will favor that and try to get the Ukrainians to engage. That's that's the best case scenario. And in that context, you kind of hope that Putin doesn't cause too much more trouble outside of Ukraine. In other words, not much. There'll be some limited cyber attacks, some information, misinformation attacks,

but Russia doesn't meaningfully escalate the war beyond Ukraine. That is the absolute best case scenario. And they're still a rogue state. There's still no business with them. The sanctions are still on there. The worst case scenario. Well, Chris, I mean, there are two different flavors of worst case scenarios. So one worst case scenario is the

Ukrainians are actually much more successful than I just suggested. They are able to take back almost all the territory, including they break the land bridge between Russia and Crimea. The Russian troops fall apart in disarray, start firing on each other. Wagner group is gone. The prognosis is dead. And and suddenly Putin can no longer defend Crimea, which feels like a red line for him. He he looks like a failure, even for many of his own people, starts hearing rumblings of maybe internal moves against him and decides to launch a nuclear tactical nuclear weapon against the Ukrainians. And and then we are at war with Russia. Then the Americans directly intervene with a no fly zone, start blowing up Russian military, and this is much

worse than 1962. So that's one worst-case scenario. There's another worst-case scenario, which is that the Russians are actually much more successful, that the Ukrainian counteroffensive fails. They aren't able to take much, if any, land. They don't have enough ammunition. The Russians get more troops on the ground and the front lines. They're dug in. It's easier to defend than to attack. The Americans start becoming much more divided. You've got not only Trump, but other Republicans running for office that see that the Ukrainians aren't winning. They see that there's more support in the GOP and among independents for no longer providing them the money. The debt

limit crisis in the United States this summer becomes a big deal. Americans are saying, you're not spending on things that are critical for me, but you want to do $100 billion for who, where in Ukraine? Why would we do that? The Americans start falling apart on this issue. The Europeans get wobbly. The Poles are all in with Ukraine, but governments like France and Germany, seeing that the Americans aren't there, start saying we need to sue for peace, put pressure on the Ukrainian government.

The Chinese come in and say, let's have a deal. Russians are all in favor of a deal. Zelensky now looks like an outlier. People aren't supporting him. They're not trusting him. And the Ukrainian economy and military is collapsing. And then Russia and China together start looking like they have an upper hand here. Biden looks like Ukraine is as much of a disaster for him as Afghanistan was,

but with a lot greater impact. That would be the worst case scenario in terms of Russia doing well. Is China the biggest X factor? No, Putin is still the biggest X factor. We kind of know what the Chinese are doing here. We know that the Chinese have put out this 12-point so-called peace plan. It basically promotes an end of sanctions, an end of NATO expansion, an end of war crimes,

in principle recognizes Ukrainian sovereignty, which is aligned with their Taiwan position, of course, but also is calling for a ceasefire. And I think that Xi Jinping sees Putin and says, yeah, let's call this war. Like right now. We need to stop the escalation of the war. And, you know, that means that Russia de facto is occupying a lot of territory illegally and getting them out of that territory is incredibly difficult to do. And I think that Xi Jinping today thinks that time is increasingly on his side, on Russia's side, not with the Ukrainians, for some of the reasons I just mentioned. That's why he's so willing to travel to Moscow now when he wouldn't

have been three or six months ago. It's why he was very comfortable throwing his peace plan out there, something he also would never have done before. What do you make of the idea that China is happy to watch this because it sets a precedent for what they may want to do with certain territories that they believe they should have? Well, I think that the lessons that China has learned on Taiwan are not necessarily so great for China in the near term. They've learned that Russia thought they had a battle-ready military that has been fighting on the ground in Ukraine for 10 years and really were not ready at all. They learned that Western capabilities, including cyber defenses, were much more robust than people

would have expected. That's definitely a shocker for the Chinese, that the Russians weren't able to have hugely successful cyber attacks against Ukraine because Western tech firms were defending them. And also, they learned that the West was willing to hang together on Ukraine, which frankly is much less strategically important for most large advanced industrial nations than Taiwan is, given the position of the most strategically important corporation in the world, TSMC, the semiconductor producer in Taiwan. So I think that China, looking at all of that, would have to be much more cautious about what a military scenario in Taiwan would actually look like in the medium term? The Russians don't really have to do as much in terms of their ambitions with mis, dis, and even

to the extent they want to use it, mal information, because we're doing it to ourselves. One of the ways that we're doing it vis-a-vis this current situation is this discussion about how we're in bad shape with Ukraine and Russia because we're so dependent on their fuel. America is really not dependent on Russian oil, refined oil, or natural gas, but we keep hearing that that's true in America. What do you make of that? Look, I mean, the Americans have talked a pretty good game on energy independence for a while now. Now, of course, there are big differences between Biden's slant on that and Trump's. But nonetheless, the Americans are producing an enormous amount

of fossil fuels. And they're also helping out the Germans and other Europeans, for example, with LNG that they really needed because they cut their gas off from Russia. So, I mean, there was a vulnerability. The Germans and others decided that they were going to get cheaper energy for Russia from 20 years now. Their energy, of course, is much more expensive than that of the United States. And now they're paying for it. But it's been cut off. I mean, the gas, they are no longer getting from Russia. And now they're paying for it. But it's been cut off. I mean, the gas, they are no longer getting from Russia.

And not only do they not need it anymore, but in two to three years, they will have so much gas that they probably will be able to sell off these floating LNG terminals that the Germans have built in record time because they're very expensive. And so they're paying a price for decoupling from Russia, but they've done it. And they've done it through coal. They've done it through LNG, from Qatar, from the United States,

from Azerbaijan. They've done it with efficiency, with increasing efficiency. And they've also done it with pushing post-fossil fuels transition energy faster. So it's a little bit of everything, but it is completely a canard that the United States and Europe still needs big energy from Russia. Now, the different point is that Russia is the biggest geographically. It's the largest country in the world. They have massive amounts of natural resources. Those natural resources are important for the global market, and they will continue to be produced for the global market. That's why my good friend, the UN Secretary General, has been spending so much time working

on this food and fertilizer deal, the Black Sea Initiative, that just recently got extended for another couple of months because the world needs abundant, inexpensive food and fertilizer. Millions of people will die if we don't get that from Russia and Ukraine. So the Russians have leverage there, and people want Russian oil. And oil, unlike gas, gas is not a global market. Gas gets piped from one place to another. If you don't have that gas getting piped to Europe, it will be stranded. It won't get consumed and prices go up. That's what's going to happen. Oil, if the Europeans don't buy oil directly from the Russians, everyone else buys oil and then you buy oil from those other people

and you just pay more money for it. So mean that's a global market unless the americans are prepared to literally put sanctions on every other country in the world including countries we really need right like india like china which we're not going to do no one is suggesting that no democrat no republican then the fact is that russian oil is still going to be on the market. That's true. What is the win for the United States? Well, there are a lot of wins for the United States. I mean, first of all, the fact that you are talking so much about companies like Volkswagen that are going to be producing more in the United States because their input costs are so much higher in Europe. Big multinational corporations that were benefiting from cheap energy in Russia and no longer can and also have to worry about now spending a lot more in defense

and being frontline against Russia as a aggressor. All of those companies feel much more comfortable putting some of their production in Asia, putting a lot more of their production in the Western Hemisphere. And that means Canada, Mexico, and first and foremost, Chris, the United States. So of course, that's a benefit. The United States has been the world's largest military defense exporter weapons. Russia has been number two. Russia, of course, now can't produce a lot of what they used to produce and what they do produce they need for themselves. So if you're another country around the world that used to get weapons from russia like the indians for example you're going to buy a lot more oil from russia they're still producing you're not going to buy spare parts for helicopters or migs they're going to fall out of the sky so

you're going to be much more interested in working with the americans so the military industrial complex i wouldn't say they're cheering on the war. That's not true. That's a conspiracy theory. And certainly, you know, Biden does not want this war. The war is bad for the United States overall, but there are limited sectors of the U.S. economy that are absolutely profiting from the level of instability that's happening over there. I mean, let's keep in mind that America's borders are Mexico, Canada, and two big bodies of water, right? So we don't have Ukrainian refugees. Europe has 8 million, right? And we don't worry about being a frontline state with thousands of troops defending against the Russians. The Finns have to worry about that. Poland has to worry about that. So there are obvious benefits to the United States. But when you asked me to start this podcast off, what keeps me up at night, and I started with Russia, that's as an American, not just as a global citizen. This war is dangerous, ultimately, for all 8 billion of us on this planet. And the United States is, you know, we're stuck on this big ball just like everybody else.

And the United States is, you know, we're stuck on this big ball just like everybody else. What do you say in response to the idea of, yes, yes, yes, but we've done enough. And this is really Europe, like you just said, it's really Europe's concern. And they really should pick up the ball now. And they should be backfilling all the stuff that we are giving Ukraine to do it themselves. First of all, they are doing that. If you look at the economic costs that are being borne on the shoulders of the Europeans because they have to cut off their significant trade with Russia, that is a much bigger hit to their GDP, much bigger hit to their economy, to their citizens' well-being than the Americans are actually spending.

So that, first of all, the Europeans are doing more. And we, Obama and then Trump and then Biden, we're all telling the Europeans, we want you to spend more on your own defense. The Americans shouldn't have to do all of the lifting for you. And the Europeans were basically saying, talk to the hand until the Russians invade it.

The Europeans are doing much more. The Germans refer to this as the Zeitendwende, the turning point. That's what the German chancellor said a couple of weeks after the invasion. And the Germans are now moving towards spending 2% of their GDP on defense, which is, you know, what we had been demanding, what Trump was demanding. They weren't doing it. Now they're doing it. So I think that that is a big deal. But that's very different from saying that Americans should fundamentally care about things that happen outside the United States. And you and I, Chris, both know, and you've been talking to people about this for years now, there are an awful lot of Americans that look at things like the war in Afghanistan, the war in

Iraq, fought on the backs of, you know, not well-to-do, not well-educated men and women in the United States. And for what? What did we get out of that aside from trillions of dollars of spend and hundreds of thousands of Americans dead or injured and emotionally traumatized? Like that is not acceptable. And we look at even free trade, which has benefited the world economically and has benefited the U.S. economically, but the spoils of those benefits have not gone to so much of the U.S. middle and working classes,

and particularly in rural areas that feel hollowed out. So I do think that it is a difficult argument to make to the average American that feels like they've been lied to by their leaders, by their corporate leaders, their banking leaders, their media leaders, and of course, their elected officials. They feel like for decades they were told, we're taking care of you. No, you're not really, not so much. And now you want me to support 100 billion to Ukraine? Like, why would I do that?

So I think that, you know, Trump understands very well that that is his audience. When he gets, I think he gets like 76% of Republicans voters that have a high school degree or less. And you remember when he says, I love the undereducated, right? I mean, because those are the people that fundamentally feel this grievance. And for him to say, why would you spend money on Ukraine? It's not just because they don't know anything about Ukraine. It's because they intuit something fundamentally about how their own leaders have lied to them.

Because they have. Because they have. Because they have. Another thing that plays into it is, oh, look, Russia doesn't have it. And we've been looking at them as a boogeyman for a generation and a half, and their military stinks. They can't even take on Ukraine in a World War I-style trench warfare contest with drones from Radio Shack. And it fuels people's suspicion. What else have they not been telling us? You told us, like, Russia could go stride to stride with American military.

They clearly can't. How did we get it so wrong? Yeah, and, I mean, look, the fact is that, of course, Putin also got it wrong. So let's be clear i mean putin thought he was going to be able to take kiev in very short order and the american officials the nato officials i mean they all thought in those those first days of war that zelensky was going to have to flee or was going to get killed. And you'll remember when the Americans, the French, others offered him to evacuate, said, you know, you're not going to make it. And he said, no, no, no. He's like, I need ammunition. I don't need a ride. Right. I

mean, that was like the that was the big statement that he made. And let's face it, the Ukrainians wouldn't be fighting there today if it wasn't for that level of incredible personal courage. there today if it wasn't for that level of incredible personal courage um but but putin thought that his military would be able to fight and he was lied to by his own very corrupt military hierarchy who were taking a lot of money for themselves didn't think they were ever going to have to you know sort of show that the military couldn't really work suddenly he actually orders them to go to fight and they're like oh my oh, my God, we're going to get caught out here. You know who knew? Dick Luger and Sam Nunn.

And I'll tell you how I know that they knew. So 100 years ago, I actually should figure out exactly how long ago it was. But it was like 15 years ago or more. Sam Nunn says, why don't you go over to Russia and shine a light on this nuclear disposal program that we're doing? Because Russia has a lot of, I guess what we would call today like suitcase style, size, biological, and maybe even nuclear potential weapons we got to get rid of them and so we started this international consortium and we're getting rid of why don't you go i said all right and i i said and they're good with this yeah we're paying them for it basically

there's this big international fund yeah so i go over and they send me, I thought I was going to Moscow. I get to Moscow. I'm not going to Moscow. I'm going to outer Siberia, this place called Shuchia. And they send me out there. And I noticed. Could be Chukotka. Maybe Chukotka?

It was called Shuchia. I could, I'll show it to you. You probably know everything about it. But I show up there. It's like nowhere, okay? And it's the wintertime. And this is where I learned why Siberia is so terrible. It's not just because of the taiga, T-A-I-G-A, in the wintertime. It's about how swampy and mosquito-y it is in the summertime.

So I get out there and I notice that all of the Russian soldiers that I'm coming across out here have no weapons. And we then go to the facility where they're keeping these weapons that they're getting rid of. And it's like a barn. And the guy opens it up for me by walking up to the doors that are sealed with a string and wax. And I say, what is that? He says, well, if the string is broken, I know somebody has been in here. Absolutely.

And there was no security and they're just wine racks, racks and racks of whatever degree of weaponry they had. So I speak to, I think it was Luger at that time. And I was like, wow. He's like, this is all they have. He's like, they're selling their weapons. They're selling their equipment because they're not paying their military. They have nothing going. All their special operators or the equivalents there are leaving to go to other countries

to work as independent contractors or mercs. And it's down to these biological and nuclear warheads that we got to get rid of them. And then Russia really has nothing to fear. And we have nothing to fear from them. And this was a long time ago. So some people knew. We just kept talking the talk about how formidable they were because I think maybe it works politically. Well, look, first of all, I'm very sympathetic to

that story. And I think one of the best things that the Americans did in the aftermath of Soviet collapse was the Nunn-Lugar Act because it was allowing us to spend money to make the former Soviet republics less dangerous. That just see that that's a really good investment. And you could make the argument that American support of Ukraine is doing the same thing with the unfortunate addition of the fact that it's on the backs of Ukrainians. Right. But I mean, you're making Russiaussia less dangerous because i mean they're fighting this war in a sense so that we don't have to um and and you hear that a lot among some of the republicans that are still pushing very hard for the americans to provide that support but let's also remember chris that this wagner group i mean when when the regular forces are doing so poorly

and aren't getting paid and don't have the morale, suddenly you have tens of thousands of troops that are being raised that do have capabilities and are being paid and are becoming the world's largest paramilitary army. And they're used on the ground in Libya and in Mali and in other countries. And they're causing a lot of trouble. And they're valuable. Mali and in other countries. And they're causing a lot of trouble and they're valuable. And they're the ones that have been having some of the limited successes that the Russians have had on the ground. So that's one point. The second point that I would raise is Russia has some friends and China

is a real friend of Russia right now. And one of the reasons why the Americans have read the riot act to the Chinese now about potentially providing significant military support to Russia is because China does not want Russia to lose, will not stand idly by and watch their friend not just become a rogue state, but become a failed power in Eurasia. And so the Chinese, I mean, they were prepared until the Americans publicly called them out to provide significant state military support for Russia's efforts. And the Chinese absolutely have the economic capacity to do that. So this is, we're not, we're not anywhere close to end game on this. That, that, That should be clear. How about Iran?

So the Russians are, you know, the Iranians, I'll put it this way. Iran is a rogue state in the Middle East. And I think the fact that the Iranians, they don't have nuclear weapons and they're not yet at full nuclear capability, though they're closed. The Iranians, if you look at what they have done to Israel, to the UAE, to the Saudis over the past years, what are you talking about? Cyber attacks, drone attacks, proxy warfare, supportive terrorist organizations, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, organizations like that. Iran has been a serious challenge for American allies in the region. And now the Russians are getting

significant military capabilities, drones, ammunition, and others directly from Iran. Iran is even setting up and building manufacturing capabilities in Russia. And if you're Iran, you've already been cut off economically to the same degree that the U.S. and Europe is cutting off Russia. What do you have to lose? I mean, it's not like there are any further, short of going to war against Iran, there are no further acts that we are capable of taking against them that will deter them. You'll remember, you know, when Trump was president, the Iranians attempted to assassinate the sitting national security advisor, John Bolton. I don't know if Trump would have thought

that was good or bad, given his relationship with Bolton at the time. But the point is, that's a legitimately insane thing to do, right? And I'm suggesting, Chris, that increasingly, that's who Putin is. And that's why Putin has become such fast friends with the Iranian president and supreme leader. Should we be more involved, aware, attentive, concerned about what's happening in Iran because of the potential of people there to change their own reality?

Or do you think it it can't happen there's no arab spring type effect there i would argue there was no arab spring type effect period but i was just about to say that i mean even tunisia which was the big win more recently it's kind of slipped back into autocracy egypt never really had a democratic moment even though the people tried their damnedest on interior square. So I look, I never say never. And, and, and, you know, the Iranians are a deeply educated, diverse, young, engaged population, and they hate their theocracy. But, you know, when I saw the Iranians just about a week ago, givenesty to 22,000, I think it was, people that had been arrested, detained for demonstrating, that to me was not a sign of weakness. That was a sign of, okay, we've cleared them all out.

Let's let these guys go. We don't have anything we have to worry about in the near term. So I think the Iranians are now feeling much more comfortable about their domestic situation. I don't think they would have accepted. What about the gassing of the women in the school? Oh, I know. I know. And the Supreme Leader came out against that and said, oh, they're going to find the people that did that. And we're going to we're not that's not acceptable. And I mean, obviously, it's almost impossible to imagine they wouldn't have known about it to begin with, if not directly ordered it. But I mean, I, Chris, I don't think that the Iranians show up in Beijing and sign a deal

with their enemies, the Saudis, unless they feel very comfortable that they've got the situation at home locked up. Right. Because that's a that that's one they could take a lot of criticism for. And they're like, no, no, that's all fine. Now we can play internationally. So I think that even though these young women are going to continue to be very angry, have a voice, and will be a thorn in the side of the regime, I think near term, it doesn't look very unstable domestically. Look, no shame in my game. I've been using AG1 for over five years. Why?

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and you enter the code, enter the code Chris, and you can get up to 35% off your first order. CozyEarth.com and the code is Chris. So how surprised are you that our biggest enemy in terms of disrupting us at home is us? Look, I think that as the world's only superpower, we're the largest economy in the world. We're the biggest integrated energy producer. We've got the global reserve currency. We're in a fantastic geostrategic position geographically. You put all of that together,

it shouldn't surprise anyone that the country that can do the most damage to it is us. It's unfortunate that we are as politically dysfunctional as we presently are. bank thing, you know, it got politicized for a few days, but mostly people stayed away from interfering with the business of the government trying to make sure the economy still worked. And that was also true with the pandemic. I mean, I thought Mnuchin and Pelosi very quickly put together a very big, very important economic deal that, frankly, was much more effective than any other major economy was able to do at that point. other major economy was able to do at

that point. And then Biden was able to do the same with a majority, though a very thin majority, when he became president. So, I mean, political dysfunction in the U.S. is deeply sad and depressing, and there are lots of things we can discuss about it. But part of the reason it persists is because it hasn't posed an existential threat to America's fundamental economic strengths, its projection of power and the rest. What do you think would happen, Ian Bremmer, if there were a 9-11 scale attack of the United States today by the same players as the last time? Do you think the reaction would be the same domestically as it was then? Oh, I hate that question, Chris.

I hate that question. It's a really hard one. I mean, if I think about like January 6th, right? I mean, like we saw that that felt to many people like a 9-11 style crisis, though it came from inside and it was being, you know, sort of pushed by Trump. And of course, even that night, the response was really dysfunctional from the Republicans in the House, who the majority of whom voted not to certify a free and fair election. Insane, except that they all felt like it wasn't that big of a crisis, right? So, I mean, like, maybe if Mike Pence had actually been killed

they would have responded very differently and god forbid right god forbid but it wasn't a big crisis and so they all felt well politics as usual my concern chris the reason i have a hard time answering your 9-11 question is i feel like we as a nation have normalized what daily crazy feels like. And so I'm not sure that even a 9-11 style attack would have the same resonance as existential threat as it did for you and me in New York City watching Ground Zero when it occurred a couple decades ago. I think you're right because of the context specifically that we've been through it once already. But I will tell you, I remember acutely as do you, the politics of the moment. Giuliani was dead man walking in New York City. Then President George W. Bush was a dope who was seen as going out as soon as possible. Yeah.

And the Democrats and the Republicans knitted together into whole cloth immediately when that happened. We came together hard and fast there. When George Bush came to New York City, a place where he would never have been welcome otherwise, and what happened with Rudy Giulianiiani my suspicion is it doesn't happen today my suspicion is they immediately desantis cruz rubio i don't know about mcconnell he seems to go would immediately say this is biden's fault biden did this you may be right i will say i've heartened somewhat uh when my namesake hurricane hit florida i thought that de santis and biden together act like adults

uh to try to ensure that american citizens were who were in very deep and immediate distress were taken care of yeah um no advantage to de santantis in that situation, though, to attack Biden, though. I don't think it would be Biden who would be doing the blame game of the right. I think that the right sees its strategy as existential threats coming from the left worse than anything else. There's only one breakthrough, I think, which is why I'm pushing it so hard. One, because legitimately I can, but two, I also think there's an efficacy. The Mexican drug cartels, I think, could be the one thing that could knit us together in the short term because everyone I know who's in the kid game or even in the young adult party game is afraid of fentanyl being in things. And everybody knows it's coming from the cartels.

Not really from China anymore. You can get precursor chemicals a lot of different places. They're making it themselves. They're making it increasingly in the United States. I think that's the one thing. When I saw Dan Crenshaw, he's like one of the bellwether guys for me. When I saw him get out in front of going after the cartels militarily i

don't know how that would work i think you have to do it cooperatively with mexico but when he was going to democrats and saying sign on to this with me that was very that that was a really good sign to me except for one thing the democrats are so afraid of the border issue that they're afraid to attack the cartels because they're afraid to expose themselves to the border issue and that's the only thing that i can they don't have they don't have good answers for it right i'm right as part of the problem they can't get anything done and it's like a bleeding wound uh every time we see people come across the border even though that's not the fulcrum of the fentanyl problem. First of all, I agree with you completely that there is an ability to get people together on that. But I would also say that on critical national security

threats, China, the Democrats and Republicans have been enormously strongly aligned on China over the last two administrations, whether you're talking about, you know, semiconductors or Taiwan or the Quad or AUKUS or all of these things. These are fairly major moves. I personally think it's gotten too politicized and it's made it harder for the Americans and Chinese to meet and try to bring the temperature down in areas that you can see cooperation. But the national security threat is taken very seriously. And until very recently, Democrats and Republicans have all been together on Russia, Ukraine as well. That still kind of holds true. But you and I both sense that that ground may be starting to shift and it's right to raise the alarm now before it's too late.

So, look, I guess what I'm saying is I think the jury is out. I think we both know that the bar has gotten higher for how big a crisis you need in order to consolidate across the partisan divide in the United States. But clearly, you and I are both identifying the fact that this is within the realm of the plausible. Oh, absolutely. I actually think that you're more optimistic than I would assume. I don't push back on you because you're too damn smart. But when I look at the landscape, Congress, you know, I think this is typical brinksmanship with the debt ceiling and they'll do what they have to do and probably before June if they're smart at all. They don't do anything in terms of any degree of ambition. You know, the Infrastructure Act allowed Biden to do the semiconductor stuff in the Southwest, which is a really big deal, the Republicans immediately dismissed it, although it does create this strategic advantage from a national security perspective vis-a-vis China

and blamed him for not going to the border when he was there opening the factory and the development plant. And they could absolutely do things on a number of things that they refuse to because of their insistence on the zero-sum nature of the two-party system right now. They just want the other side to lose, Ian.

There's no need for a win. Well, again, this is why I point to during the pandemic, you had this incredible, unprecedented amount of cash that was spent. And it wasn't just the bailout for the rich after 2008. This was working mothers. This was small businesses. This was every man and woman in the United States. And that was Trump and his secretary of treasury. And it was the speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi. Now I also think, I mean, this is just Democrats, but still you got Manchin on board for the inflation reduction act. That was a big deal. That is the Americans telling the world that we

cannot abdicate industrial policy to the authoritarians of China. No, we are going to invest in strategic sectors. And by the way, even a West Virginian representing coal will promote subsidies into transition energy that will be more aggressive than what the Europeans are presently doing. And then Biden will invite Ursula von der Leyen, who runs the European Union, to come and visit in Washington, and they'll have a breakthrough deal. And they'll work with each other on that as allies. I think that's a positive thing.

So look, again, I see all sorts of areas that we can talk about incredible dysfunctionality. Like, I don't want to talk about, you know, gun violence and, and thoughts and prayers on that stuff. There are plenty of places that are just like that, but I'm an international affairs guy. I look at, you know, the global environment and they are, when I see allies of the United States looking at Washington right now, they, they see a lot of movement from the U S they see the U S leading the world in response to Russian invasion. If it wasn't for the U.S., no one else would be doing that.

They see the U.S. driving industrial policy on semiconductors as well as IRA and transition energy. They see the Americans driving new architecture like AUKUS, like the Quad. Not so much the Indo-pacific economic framework nobody knows what that is but nonetheless you see i mean all sorts of countries around the world saying we need more u.s now mostly that's a national security argument it's not an economics argument but there are economics pieces too so we can't it's good for us not just to look at washington dysfunction i have one more thing for you. Yeah.

So I teamed up. I have a pet issue that is just born of my own ignorance. I grew up in the generation where you fear anything with the word nuclear attached to it. Obviously nuclear weapons, but nuclear power too. nuclear weapons, but nuclear power too. And my father and my brother, both as governors of New York State, worked hard to close nuclear facilities, okay? And then I started reading about this about six, seven years ago and trying to figure out more. My wife runs a wellness business and she's very into green, everything. And I'm reading about it, and I start to become increasingly confounded as to what happened to nuclear power in this transition equation for us as it starts to

ramp up everywhere else in the world. I mean, very notably France, but even in India, other places. Why isn't nuclear power in our discussions? About 17% of our energy here. We just saw Newsom out in California was playing the politics of closing it down as a Democrat. Didn't, didn't, probably won't. Are we missing a tremendous opportunity for transition in this country by sleeping on nuclear, which we helped to create? Well, look, I think that the answer to fossil fuel dependence is everything that isn't fossil fuel dependence. So nuclear is absolutely a part of that answer. And the fact that the Americans aren't embracing that, and by the way, it's not just the Americans. The Japanese are not embracing that post Fukushima, of course.

The Germans are not embracing that with the Green Party as part of the coalition, of course. So there are others that are big economies that are problems here. But the Chinese are embracing it big time. They're producing an immense amount of nuclear. And also because they don't have the regulatory issues and their labor is comparatively inexpensive and it's all being developed where they have a lot of relevant infrastructure, they're able to develop it for much cheaper than the Americans or other advanced industrial economies would. So I'd like to see a lot more done on nuclear. I think we have a huge NIMBY problem and we also have a lot of vested interests in alternative energies that are driving

most of the relevant subsidies. But, you know, when when you look at China and you see that they are becoming world leaders in advanced nuclear, in solar and in wind, and also in the critical mineral supply chains that feed into that production, if you're the United States, you do not want to abdicate leadership of post-carbon energy and transition energy to China. Like that's a mistake. And that's why we're taking it seriously. And I would argue we should take nuclear

more seriously as a consequence. Well, by the way, you may note that the Europeans, the EU now has agreed, it was very contentious, has agreed that in a lot of their regulatory environment, they will consider nuclear to be green, to be part of the transition. And the Germans didn't want it. But of course, the French who get most of their electricity from nuclear absolutely did. And they won that argument. And thankfully so so because the eu is the largest common market in the world so i think you'll see more as a consequence it's just it's an interesting issue to me because it's an issue where the optics are completely at odds with the data um and even when i started slamming people eventually i wound up doing a

little bit of a partnership uh with the nuclear energy, which is obviously the advocacy and trade group for nuclear. And I was chasing after like Schellenberger and their different, you know, astro, you know, their different physicist types who are dealing with nuclear. And I was like, yeah, but every time there's an accident, everybody does. And they were like, actually, no. And here's the data. Yeah. But everybody glows when something goes wrong or out there. They're like, no, and here's what we know. And it was really interesting to report on something and learn about it coming from a place of complete bias. You know, that's rare for me, Ian.

I'm usually pretty open on things. for me i'm usually pretty open on circle you know because when i was talking to the head of the iaea who's the guy that is very deeply concerned about the largest nuclear plant in europe in zaparizhia ukraine in the middle of a war zone where the russian soldiers are there and the ukrainians are shelling it right and and and that sounds horrible but i, I said, I had him on my show. I said, okay, so talk me through this. Are we talking Chernobyl? No. The worst plausible case scenarios were bad, but they weren't Chernobyl.

They weren't Fukushima. And it was very important to hear that because you wouldn't have gotten that from listening to like the mainstream news. Yeah, it was really interesting. I'll tell you what's interesting. You are. You're like a human vitamin

for the brain and for the psyche of understanding the interconnectedness and interdependence of things happening around this world. I have relied on you for a long time and I appreciate you and I thank you, Ian Bremmer. I'm very happy to be back with you, Chris.

This was great. I'm sure we'll do it again. All right, we will. And thank you and thank you, Ian Bremmer. I'm very happy to be back with you, Chris. This was great. I'm sure we'll do it again. All right, we will. And thank you. And thank you for my audience. I told you that Ian Bremmer is no joke. He takes things that are so complicated, but makes them common to our interests here. So thank you very much.

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