This is GPS, the Global Public Square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world.

I'm Fareed Zakaria.

Today on the program, an exclusive interview with the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Schoen.

This Bundeswehr on Putin's one-up plane.

On whether Ukraine and Russia should start talking about a peace deal and about the future of Europe itself.

And Chevron CEO Mike Worth on the present and future of oil, which still powers our world.

Also, just where did Covid come from?

The so-called Lab leak theory just got new life this week.

We'll follow the facts with Dr. Lena Wen.

But first, here's my take.

We're often told that America is deeply divided.

That polarization makes it impossible for us to make any progress in policy.

That our country is so internally conflicted it cannot project unity and strength to the world.

But on the most important foreign policy issue confronting policy makers, the problem is closer to the opposite.

Washington has embraced a wide-ranging consensus on China that has turned into a classic example of groupthink.

To watch Tuesday's hearing held by the new House Select Committee on China was to be transported back to the 1950s.

Members of both parties tried to outdo each other in their denunciations of China.

Describing as Committee Chair Mike Gallagher did, the Communist Party has an existential threat to the United States.

And blaming it directly for every problem in America, from drug use to Covid to unemployment.

An odd charge since unemployment is currently at a more than 50-year low.

One could dismiss some of this more extreme rhetoric as the usual congressional grandstanding.

But it creates a dynamic that makes rational policy difficult.

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