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The Ezra Klein Show

Fareed Zakaria on Where Russia’s War in Ukraine Stands — and Much More

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.611K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2023

⏱️ 90 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A lot about the world has changed since February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. The war itself has brought a number of surprises, from the tenacity of Ukraine’s resistance to the limits of Western sanctions. Meanwhile, competition between the United States and China has escalated into something resembling a new Cold War, India just surpassed China as the most populous country in the world and countries representing about two-thirds of the world’s population have chosen not to align themselves with the U.S. position on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Those shifts raise a number of important questions: Where does the Russia-Ukraine war stand today? Are U.S.-China relations headed in the right direction? How will the rise of “nonaligned” countries like India alter the global balance of power? Is America’s longtime global dominance waning? Fareed Zakaria is host of the CNN show “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” a columnist for The Washington Post, and one of the sharpest foreign policy thinkers of our time. We discuss what possible outcomes of the Russia-Ukraine conflict seem likeliest at this moment, why the U.S.-led sanctions on Russia haven’t been nearly as effective as expected, how the Republican Party’s stance on Ukraine could influence the outcome of the war, why tensions between the United States and China have intensified over the last year, the dangerous implications of the Chinese spy balloon debacle, whether the United States should ban TikTok, how America’s hypocrisy about foreign invasions looks to the rest of the world, why so many Global South countries don’t support the West’s sanctions regime on Russia, what India’s rise means for the future global balance of power, what President Biden’s foreign policy should look like moving forward and more. Mentioned: Foreign Affairs’ May/June 2023 issue “The Upside of Rivalry” by Nirupama Rao The Internationalists by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro Book Recommendations: Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson Wealth and Power by Orville Schell and John Delury The Idea of India by Sunil Khilnani Listen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioapp Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. The show’s production team is Emefa Agawu, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Russia invaded Ukraine 15 months ago.

0:27.0

For a time following the invasion, it was all the world could talk about.

0:31.0

It was all the show could talk about.

0:33.0

And now, as happens with a lot of stories huge at their outset,

0:38.0

now the Russia-Kran war is treated as one new story, I mean a major one, but one new story among many.

0:45.0

But it's still more than that. It's a kind of hyper story.

0:48.0

There is the conflict itself, which matters enormously.

0:52.0

And then there's a way it's reshaping global geopolitics and the relationships and balancing of the great powers.

0:59.0

Early in the invasion, I'd foreed Zakaryan to talk about the way it felt at that moment,

1:03.0

like we were re-entering an age of great power conflict.

1:06.0

So I wanted to have him back on now to discuss where the war is now,

1:10.0

what the prospects and possibilities of its end might be,

1:13.0

and how it's changed the relationships and competition between America and Europe and China and India, among others.

1:20.0

Zakaryan, of course, is host of the CNN show, Fried Zakaryan GPS.

1:23.0

He's a columnist for the Washington Post and the author of many, many books,

1:27.0

including most recently, Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World.

1:30.0

As always, my email for guest suggestions, thoughts, etc.

1:34.0

As we're Client Show at nbytimes.com.

1:41.0

Fried Zakaryan, welcome back to the show.

1:44.0

Always a pleasure, Ezra.

1:46.0

We last talked on the show in March 2022.

1:49.0

This was right after Russian-Vedity Ukraine.

...

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