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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Interview with Foreign Ministers of Sweden, Hungary; Interview with Sergey Guriev; Women Taking Over the World; New Way of Getting Renewable Energy

Aired March 30, 2014 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Victor Blackwell at CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta. We'll get to FAREED ZAKARIA in just a moment.

But first let's get you the latest on the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. An Australian plane returns to base with what officials say are the most promising leads so far. The team saw four large orange-colored objects, but they've not been identified.

Meanwhile, the time is quickly running out to find the plane's black boxes. You know that. An Australian ship is being fitted with the U.S. Navy's black box detector. That ship, which is the Ocean Shield, is expected to leave port in a few hours, and it may take maybe three days, depending upon the weather, to reach the search area. And that travel time is critical because the batteries on the black boxes are only expected to last one more week.

In Malaysia, dozens of angry relatives of Chinese passengers on board demanded answers from Malaysian officials. They carried banners. You see them here pleading with officials to give them "evidence and the truth." And they also want an apology for sending mixed messages of hope and despair.

FBI forensic experts have been taking a closer look at the computer hard drive that belonged to the captain of Flight 370. Well, data was deleted from that hard drive. No one knows why for sure. But now a law enforcement official tells CNN that investigators believe the deleted data was simply overwritten and was not deleted in an effort to hide anything.

I'm Victor Blackwell. Thanks for being with us this morning. FAREED ZAKARIA: GPS starts right now.

FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST: This is GPS, the global public square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria, coming to you live from New York.

We'll start today's show with the East-West crisis. Tens of thousands of Russian troops are massing on the Ukrainian border. But then President Putin reached out to President Obama on Friday. Is there a diplomatic solution here? Then, China's reaction to the missing Malaysian Airlines flight has been belligerent. Why? We'll take you inside what the Chinese are thinking with Evan Osnos, the former China correspondent for The New Yorker.

And Angela Merkel runs Germany. Janet Yellen runs the Fed. Hillary Clinton could run the United States after the 2016 elections. How would the world be different if women ran it? I have a great panel, including Tina Brown and Arianna Huffington.

But first, here's my take. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has brought to the fore an important debate about what kind of world we live in. Many critics charge that the Obama administration has been blind to the harsh realities of the world because it believes, as a Wall Street Journal editorial opined, "in a fantasy world of international rules."

John McCain declared this is the most naive president in history. The Washington Post editorial board worries that Obama misunderstands the nature of the century we're living in. Almost all of these critics ridicule John Kerry's assertion that changing borders by force, as Russia did, is 19th Century behavior in the 21st Century.

Well, here are the facts. The scholar Mark Zacher has tallied up changes of borders by force. Something that was once quite common. Since World War I, he notes, it has been on a sharp decline, and in recent decades that decline has accelerated.

Before 1950, wars between nations would result in border changes, that is, annexations, 81 percent of the time. After 1950 that number dropped to 27 percent. In fact, since 1946 there are only 12 examples of major changes in borders using force, and all of them begun before 1976. So Putin's behavior does in fact belong to the 19th Century.

The transformation of international relations goes well beyond border changes. Harvard's Steven Pinker, who will be on the show later, points out in a recent essay that after a 600-year stretch in which Western European countries started two new wars a year, they have not started one since 1945, nor have the 40 or so richest nations anywhere in the world engaged each other in armed conflict.

Colonial wars, a routine feature of international life for thousands of years, are extinct. Wars between countries, not just major powers, not just in Europe, have also dropped dramatically by more than 50 percent over the last three decades.

Scholars at the University of Maryland have been tabulating the number of new conflicts that have arisen across the world. They find that the past decade has seen the lowest number since World War II.

This is not an academic debate. The best way to deal with Russia's aggression in Crimea is not to present it as routine national interest-based foreign policy that would be countered by Washington in a contest between two great powers. It is to point out, as Obama did eloquently this week in Brussels, that Russia is grossly endangering a global order that has benefited the entire world. Compare what the Obama administration has managed to organize in the wake of this latest Russian aggression, to the Bush administration's response to Putin's actions in Georgia in 2008.

That was a blatant invasion. Moscow sent in tanks and heavy artillery. Hundreds were killed. Nearly 200,000 people were displaced. Yet the response from the West was essentially nothing.

This time the response has been much more serious. Some of this difference is the nature of the stakes. But it also might have to do with the fact that the Obama administration has taken pains to present Russia's actions in a broader context and get other countries to see them as such.

This is what leadership looks like in the 21st Century. There is in fact an evolving international order with new global norms making war and conquest increasingly rare. We should strengthen, not ridicule it.

Yes, there are some places that stand in opposition to this trend: North Korea, Syria, Russia. The people running these countries believe that they're charting a path to greatness and glory. But they are the ones living in a fantasy world.

For more on this go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my Washington Post column. And let's get started.

U.S. officials told CNN on Friday that Russia has around 40,000 troops along its border with Ukraine, plus another 25,000 further inland at the ready. And of course don't forget there are another 20,000 Russian troops in Crimea. But then another thing happened on Friday. President Putin called President Obama.

According to the White House, the call was to discuss a diplomatic resolution to the crisis. Is there one? Joining me now are two men who know diplomacy and know Russia. Carl Bildt is currently the foreign minister of Sweden. Before that he was the nation's prime minister. And before that, well, he has had many, many jobs representing Sweden and the world.

His Hungarian counterpart, Janos Martonyi, also joins us. This is Martonyi's second stint as foreign minister.

Welcome, gentlemen. Carl, if I could begin with you. What do you make of this phone call? Do you think that Putin is looking for a diplomatic resolution at this point?

CARL BILDT, SWEDISH FOREIGN MINISTER: I think he's looking for another way to achieve the political aims that he has had, which have had, ever since he started to create this crisis by really last summer. He wants to force Ukraine back into some sort of Kremlin- dominated fold.

And he has been trying the one trick after another to do that. The invasion of Crimea was the latest. I think he's now trying a somewhat more diplomatic approach. There is a solution, and that is for Russia of course to fully except the territorial integrity and the sovereignty of Ukraine. I don't think that's going to come easily, but it is possible.

ZAKARIA: But, Carl, do you think that there's any scenario in which Putin will accept something less than the full annexation of Crimea? And do you think there's any scenario in which the European Union could accept a solution which does not involve Crimea?

In other words, isn't that the stumbling block? He's going to say the Crimean annexation is now a de facto fait accompli, and the European Union is going to say the sanctions in place unless that annexation is reversed.

BILDT: I think that's absolutely true. I mean, the conflict over Crimea is going to be there for some time to come. We are never going to accept it. And that -- for the very reason that you indicated in the beginning is not only about Crimea, this is about the European order.

He violates every fundamental principle of peace and security and stability in Europe. We're not going to accept that. But the battle is really over -- Crimea is a small thing for him. It's Ukraine. It's power over Ukraine.

And what they are trying to achieve now during a period I think which starts now with an element of potency is some sort of pact with the West in order to impose some sort of restrictions or divisions or whatever on Ukraine that can then be imposed upon Ukrainians. I don't think that's going to work either.

Whether they will then move back to the more overt destabilization, they have economic destabilization going. They're doing political destabilization. And whether they will then move back to the military track, we don't know. I'm not quite certain the Kremlin knows either.

They are set on a course here. We should not be naive concerning what's at stake. It is the order of peace and stability in Europe, to a certain extent the world that is at stake.

ZAKARIA: Foreign Minister Martonyi, if the stakes are as high as Carl Bildt says, why is it that Hungary, you, your prime minister, have repeatedly voiced your concern or easing, even opposition to sanctions. I understand Hungary trades a lot with Russia, but so does Poland.

If the principle is so important, should your narrow self- interest override that principle?

JANOS MARTONYI, HUNGARIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: No, I will disagree with what you were just referring to because in fact the Hungarian prime minister, indeed the Hungarian government fully supported all the sanctions which have been decided until now by the European Union.

So there was a complete unity, also in the council of the foreign ministers as well as in the European Council of the heads of states and governments.

What you probably refer to is what -- not just the Hungarian prime minister, but many other people alluded to, and this is that possibly the third stage of the wider economic sanctions should be avoided, how it could be avoided.

First and foremost, I believe that we should finish with this uncertainty, this unpredictability, which would mean that Russia should give a firm guarantee that Russian troops will not cross the border of Ukraine. So they will not deteriorate further the conflict, which is already serious enough.

So of course the exposure to economic conflicts or economic war of various EU member states is different. Of course there are countries which would suffer more than others. And that's why what we underlined and we still underline is that in this case a burden sharing and the solidarity will have to apply among the member states, but otherwise I would not agree at all with the allegation that the Hungarian government conducts a different policy in this regard either from the other central European nations like for instance (inaudible) four countries or indeed from the united position of the European Union.

ZAKARIA: Thank you, foreign minister. Thank you, foreign minister Carl Bildt, pleasure to have both of you on.

So are sanctions against Russia having an effect? What would make President Putin sit up and take notice?

Next up, I'll ask someone who knows. One of Russia's top economists who recently fled that nation.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: If a military response is out of the question, sanctions are just about the only stick that the United States and west can use against Russia. But can they hurt? Can they make President Putin actually change his behavior?

My next guest is Sergei Guriev. He was one of Russia's top economists, running its leading school of economics, sitting on the boards of Russia's biggest banks, until last May. Guriev was under investigation because he had spoken out against a very important political prosecution, the one against Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Fearful for his freedom, even for his life, Guriev bought a one-way ticket to Paris and has never returned to Moscow.

He has fascinating insights into Russia's finances.

Sergei, thanks for joining us.

Let me ask you...

SERGEI GURIEV, RUSSIAN ECONOMIST: Thank you very much, Fareed.

ZAKARIA; What is your sense of what has happened so far to the Russian economy? Your old bank, Sberbank, says it will now possibly grow zero percent this year, that there is going to be $100 billion of capital outflow from Russia.

Paint the picture that you see.

GURIEV: I think that's exactly right. Investors are really scared of the things which are happening. They understand that they no longer can predict Russian government's activities. And they also see that Russian government has no priority in attracting investment. And that's why the acceleration of the capital outflow. And that's why, for example, the official forecast for this quarter, the first quarter of 2014, net capital outflow is at something like 70 billion dollars, which is the total 2013 annual outflow.

So Russian economy's already taken a hit. But much will depend on what rolls out after, what kind of sanctions will be imposed and what the sanctions that are already imposed, how they will play out.

ZAKARIA: What are -- tell us about the nature of these sanctions, because at the end of the day, correct me if I'm wrong, something like 70 percent, 75 percent of the Russian government's revenues come from oil, natural gas, things like that. Nobody's talking about imposing a ban on the buying and selling of that. So how effective can sanctions that do not target the energy sector, which no one is proposing, how effective can these financial sanctions be?

GURIEV: I think right now sanctions are not really crippling the economy. They are really targeting a very narrow group of officials or businessmen close to Mr. Putin. And again, even that is not clear to what extent the west is ready to go after these officials and actually investigate the assets that they parked in the west under different names, under the chain of offshore companies.

So far we don't really know to what extent sanctions will even hurt them.

But if sanctions hurt these corrupt officials, or corrupt businessmen close to Mr. Putin seriously, that will actually undermine Mr. Putin's support among the Moscow elite. And in that sense, financial sanctions against the top Russian decision makers will actually have an effect.

Although of course not as crippling as you mentioned as an Iran-style oil and gas embargo. If that happens, and if China joins, then indeed you're right, Russian budget will be in very poor shape.

But even without that I should say that if you go back one year the forecast, not only by Russian economists, but also by IMF, would be that Russian economy would grow at 3.5 or 4 percent a year. Now indeed the forecast is zero or negative rates.

ZAKARIA: And very briefly, do you believe that at the end of the day Putin would be moved by this kind of economic data, the general economic data? Or is his decision-making really power politics and economics doesn't come into it?

GURIEV: I think he kind of signaled that he doesn't care about the cost. And I think as you're guests earlier on the program said it is extremely unlikely that he moves back on Crimea. I think for him Crimea is a done deal, as you said, fait accompli. There is no way he withdraws from Crimea.

It is indeed, the question is to what extent he will or will not directly move into eastern Crimea or he will try to support the provocations going on in southern and eastern Crimea. I think this is where uncertainty is.

And this is where economic sanctions can actually provide support to those in the Kremlin or around the Kremlin who would see that the cost of further provocations and further invasions may be too high.

But generally, Mr. Putin kind of signaled that he doesn't really care about economics. At the end of the day, however, if the sanctions really work or if just investors get scared then we should expect that Russian economy will not do very well, which of course will have huge political implications for Mr. Putin.

Russian public expects that social compact which Mr. Putin offered before, which is Russian economic growth delivers tangible material benefits to everybody in Russia. This social compact is not going to work out anymore. And that will of course make Mr. Putin very unpopular with Russian public.

ZAKARIA: Sergei, thank you very much for your insights.

Up next, what does the Malaysian Airline mystery tell us about China? When we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Today marks 23 days since Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 went missing during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and an Australian search team today spotted four orange-colored objects approximately two meters in size each. The Australian air force calls them the most promising leads in the search for the new -- for the plane.

Now almost two-thirds of the people on board that flight were Chinese, of course. And to talk about China's connection to this tragedy I've asked Evan Osnos to join me.

Until recently, Evan was the China correspondent for The New Yorker. He's just back from a reporting trip to Beijing.

Evan, what strikes you as significant about the way in which the Chinese people and the government are reacting to this loss?

EVAN OSNOS, NEW YORKER: Well, what's particularly interesting is when you look at the people on that flight they come from the new Chinese middle class and they have a very different conception of the kind of information they deserve and the kind of recognition that their sacrifices deserve.

A generation ago people died in China in very large numbers, 171,000 people died, for instance, in a single cascade of dam collapses. Today you have...

ZAKARIA: This was in the '70s.

OSNOS: In 1975.

Today you have a group of people, 154 passengers and their families now, who are demanding information about what happened. They're asking their own government, they're asking the Chinese press, and of course they're asking the Malaysian government.

ZAKARIA: The youngest person on board that flight, describe that family.

OSNOS: His name is Wong Moa Hung (ph). He was just shy of his second birthday. His father worked for the Boston Consulting Group, his mother worked in the technology business before she decided to stay home and raise their children.

They come from a very specific part of the Chinese new middle class. And that is a generation that has been raised to believe you can go online, you can find out what's happening. And the Chinese press in this case was told don't go beyond the state media reports, don't analyze, don't provide commentary, and the Chinese middle class is not satisfied with that.

ZAKARIA: One thing that the state media did do was blame the Malaysians from the beginning. I was struck by the degree to which the China's official media, which is an organ of the government, really pushed the blame, responsibility on Malaysia quite belligerently.

OSNOS: Yeah, from the very beginning I think this was a decision that in this case Malaysia was designated as being the target of significant criticism from the government. And that in effect also created permission for the public to then attach a lot of their legitimate grief and anguish onto the Malaysian government, onto Malaysian airlines.

But as you saw, there were protests in Beijing. And protests don't happen in Beijing unless someone is willing to give them permission to happen.

So it was a way to also in effect deflect blame from the Chinese government, from the Chinese media, and drive it over to Malaysia.

ZAKARIA: But this comes at a time when the Chinese government and the Malaysians and the Philippine and Vietnamese governments are having all these border clashes would be too strong a word, but serious arguments over borders.

OSNOS: Yeah, this is -- the backdrop for this event, was that China and its neighbors in Southeast Asia have been involved in an intense conflict over territory. So in fact, on the very morning before the plane disappeared the Chinese foreign minister had said that it was not going to heed what it called the unreasonable demands of smaller neighbors and it meant Malaysia, Philippines, and Vietnam.

So it was really already a very tense political atmosphere, and this just triggered an outburst.

ZAKARIA: They also went after the United States initially and then they dropped it. But they made a couple of statements about U.S. intelligence capabilities and how the United States was not sharing enough. Presumably the argument they were making is the U.S. was not sharing its intelligence data because the United States did not want to reveal sources and methods and they were putting that ahead of lives.

OSNOS: Right.

I mean, you have to remember of course, this was an odd situation that drew on the spycraft technology of 26 countries. And so this was an occasion where they could say to the United States why aren't you sharing information?

I would point out that there are American military analysts who say well, when the Chinese released some of their own satellite images, those images had been fuzzed up, they said, in order to make it unclear in fact good the technology is the Chinese were using.

So you had this overlay of this very urgent, very emotional moment, but in fact the tools that they were talking about, the apparatus they were talking about, was very sensitive, it's after all related to espionage.

ZAKARIA: We have about a minute left. And since I have you, I have to ask you, what do you make of Xi Jinping, the nationalism, people worry about the belligerence. Is this -- do you think this is part of a kind of a new China, or should we look at the Malaysian Airlines as a, you know, one-off, a very unusual situation?

OSNOS: I think what we see here is an evolving toolbox that the Chinese government is using. Xi Jinping, the new president has used it very effectively. When he feels trouble and tension at home, it is convenient for him to push it onto some of the political issues that they've identified overseas. And Southeast Asia, these territorial conflicts with the Philippines, with Vietnam, and, of course, with Japan in the East China Sea are hugely sensitive, and they can rally the public easily around those issues. It's worrisome because the truth is this is a dangerous game. When you get the public mobilized around these issues, it can move in all kinds of different directions. So it may be targeted at Japan one day, but it can easily come around and start to focus on the Chinese the next day.

ZAKARIA: Evan Osnos, fascinating. And of course, you have a piece in "The New Yorker" this week. It's on something completely different. Coal. We will read anything you write. Up next, are women going to rule the world? Think about it. Some of the most powerful jobs in the world. The Fed chair, the head of the IMF, the chancellor of Germany are all occupied by women. Some argue that slowly but surely this will change the world. To understand why you're going to have to stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Throughout most of human history the positions of power have gone mainly to men. Think of the kings of Yore, the presidents and prime ministers in more recent decades, central bankers, chief justices, military chieftains. But given today's reality, where Angela Merkel heads Germany, Europe's biggest economy, where Janet Yellen now has the most important job in the U.S. economy, where Hillary Clinton is the most serious, albeit unannounced contender for the presidency in 2016, where at a recent count there were 21 female heads of state or government, where the defense ministers of Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, and Germany are all women, we wanted to consider how a world with women in charge will be different. I've gathered a panel who has given these issues great thought. Tina brown is the founder of the Women in the World summit and was the editor-in-chief of "Vanity Fair," "The New Yorker," and "The Daily Beast" and "Newsweek" as well. Arianna Huffington is the editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post media group. Joseph Nye has worked at the top levels of academia and government, and he is a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, where he was also dean. Steven Pinker also at Harvard is a psychology professor and the author of "The Better Angels of Our Nature," absolutely terrific book.

In that book, Steven, you lay out an argument that others have made. But basically, the argument goes that if there were more women in more positions of power the world would be a more peaceful place.

STEVEN PINKER, AUTHOR, "THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE: Well, in general, societies that empower women are less obsessed with violence than those in which men make all the decisions. This is true of tribal societies. It seems to be true of modern societies. It doesn't mean that every woman leader will be a pacifist. But it probably means that on average if women have more of a say you'll have less stupid wars, you'll have less bellicose rhetoric, you'll have fewer contests of sheer dominance for its own sake.

ZAKARIA: Tina, how does this strike you? I mean, you have had to climb your way up in an incredibly male-dominated world.

TINA BROWN, FOUNDER, WOMEN IN THE WORLD SUMMIT: Well, I do think that women are particularly suited to the era that we're in because in this global network world, the skills that women have, the more -- the emotional content that they bring to decision-making very often, their sense of how to work somewhat more collaboratively, is particularly attuned to this particular world that we're in right now. So that's in a way, I think, also why women are rising to the top. But it's so interesting how even in this very grassroots level women are stepping forward as peacemakers in a much more interesting way. For instance, in Bangladesh now there's a whole -- there are U.N. peacekeepers now who are all women, who are going to places like Congo and Haiti. That in the -- in Pakistan recently there's now an all-woman Jirga, which is the council of 18 members, who are actually taking decisions about women in their own hands and settling disputes. Issues like, you know, forced marriage and rape and asset violence are now being settled by the women. And even the men are beginning to acknowledge this actually works, that in fact this peacemaking that the women are doing is very, very positive thing in their societies.

ZAKARIA: Joe, you do believe that there's something about the feminization of international relations that would have beneficial or peaceful effects.

JOE NYE, PROFESSOR, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: I think that's right. I agree with Steven. I think that if you look at when women are able to have a majority or a significant group within the government, it's different. People often say, well, look at Golda Meir, look at Indira Gandhi, look at Margaret Thatcher, it shows that women are just as bellicose. These are women who had to fight their way up as minorities in a male-dominated world. But I think when you have governments, in which you have women as -- it doesn't have to be a majority, but a significant group so they can come up through their own cultural biases, then I think gender does matter and I think women are more tuned to the use of soft power as well as hard power, which is what a smart power strategy is, using both.

ZAKARIA: Do you think, Arianna, that there are these traits that are different and that they manifest themselves - you know, because part of what you've now had to do in your incredibly long and brilliant career is you're dealing with a lot of technology people at AOL, and that's a very male dominated world.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, HUFFINGTON POST MEDIA GROUP: It is. But that's changing. I think the reason why Steven is right is because we're living in the middle of a perfect storm, where we can see that the old way of doing things, the way that men have (INAUDIBLE) workplaces, fueled by stress, live deprivation, exhaustion, is not working. It's not working for women, and it's not working for men. And so, women are taking the lead in a way in what I consider in my new book, "The Third Women's Revolution." If you think of the first women's revolution being getting the vote. The second being giving us access to all the corridors of power and the top of every field, the third one is changing the workplace. Changing the world, in which women are competing, which I believe is going to be the fastest way to get more women at the top, because right now women are paying a heavier price in stressful jobs. The data that is out, came out last year is unequivocal, that women in stressful jobs have a 40 percent greater threat of heart disease and a 60 percent greater risk of diabetes. So one of the reasons they're not competing as much at the top is because they know that we internalize stress differently and it's not working for us. And because of the way it's not working for anybody, there is more of a demand now to change the way we work and the way we live our lives.

ZAKARIA: We are going to come back, and we're going to talk about two things. One, there are a lot of people who argue that this is kind of evolutionary biology, humbug. But I also want to talk about the fact that there is a war on women in places around the world and some people would even argue in the United States.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) ZAKARIA: And we are back with Tina Brown, Steven Pinker, Arianna Huffington, and Joseph Nye. Talking about what if women ruled the world. And you know, I remember when I was editing "Foreign Affairs," I ran a piece by Frank Fukuyama arguing this point. And we got some very spirited responses from Barbara Ann Wright, (INAUDIBLE) women, who said this is -- you're kind of creating this idea that there are these gender -- innate gender differences between men and women and that men are adventurous and aggressive and women are peaceful. And, you know, she -- one of them (INAUDIBLE) says "Did Viking women stand on Scandinavian beaches begging their husbands not to pillage France? Did pre-modern European women shun public executions and witch burnings?" In other words, there was - that things that women seem to participate in. And he argues there are a lot of things that men do which are peace loving.

PINKER: Yeah. Well, it's true that across societies in war-like societies the women are more war-like than they are in the more peaceable societies. In general, there is a gender gap whether most of the people support war or most of the people support peace. A few more men than women will support war. In countries where the war -- war-like policies are part of just the existential identity of a country. In Israel where it's a matter of absolute survival, there's very little of a gender gap. In the United States where the wars are a little more optional you have a much bigger one. But it is quite consistent. It is, though, statistical. It is not the case that every woman is a pacifist or every man is a hawk. We're always talking about differences in the mean of two overlapping distributions. It also means that there's a limit as to how much gender can matter because especially in positions of leadership you have to play by the rules of the game that you have been plunked into and even if a woman is a pacifist or wants a family-friendly workplace she is in competition with other countries, she's in competition with other companies, and it's also true that you will have for any human trait you want to mention more women who have a male-typical trait. Some men will have a female-typical trait. We're really talking about averages here, not every last individual.

ZAKARIA: The one crucial distinguishing feature it seems to me that is at the heart of this is motherhood. And you were talking about that. To what extent do you think that shapes a woman's perspective as being different from a man? And, you know, from the perspective and then the reality that women are the primary caretakers.

BROWN: I think the tremendous amount because I think that women have that extra nurturing gene, where they're trying to create a world, in which their children can flourish. And therefore, they have in a sense more invested in creating a peaceful atmosphere. It's very interesting at the moment, actually, how there are many women in Pakistan and in the Middle East now who are coming together against the whole question of Islamic terrorism. And there are Sisters against Extremism is one organization, which is having quite an impact in the Middle East. (INAUDIBLE) which is about -- women who are getting together and really trying to talk to children about not becoming radicalized, and that bonding together as women, as sisters, as mothers. And there's that impetus. Also on the south side of Chicago you're now seeing mothers bonding together and trying to come together to create programs and create initiatives that actually create more peaceful atmospheres amongst this gang warfare, et cetera, that's going on. So I do think that women are more invested in that. And you saw it in Liberia also when the women came together and wanted to end that civil war. So I think these are the things that you're seeing, and I think you're going to see more and more of it as women rise and really are in charge.

ZAKARIA: Is this wise, though? I mean as, you know, you could imagine somebody listening to this and saying yeah, but if so -- if women were ruling the world in the 1930s would that mean that Chamberlain and his views would have been adopted? That OK, sometimes you have to fight and that you need the kind of male aggressive gene to ...

NYE: Oh, and absolutely. And I think the one danger we have is putting too much on gender and not enough on structure or situation. But if you look at a smart strategy for a leader is to combine hard power of coercion, and payment with the soft power of retraction, and you have to adjust the mix depending on the situation. What we do know is that women from various scientific studies, women have a better sense of soft power than men. In my book "The Power's Lead," I talk about two images of leadership. One is the king of the mountain. You give orders down a chain. The other is the center of the circle, in which you're -- and women are much better at that center of the circle, and men are much better at the king of the mountain. But a successful leader in today's world has got to do both.

BROWN: You need both.

NYE: You need both.

ZAKARIA: Arianna, we're talking about empowering women and women running the world, but there is a reality that Tina has talked about and you know well, which is that in many parts of the world women are still treated like slaves, sex slaves. The violence against women. The picture is not that pretty.

HUFFINGTON: No. That is really like a split screen. I mean, there are all these legal, institutional biases against women all around the world. And at the same time there is the recognition, including in a lot of modern leadership theories that modern leadership is about being in the center of the circle, to quote Joe. And that means that a lot of the female qualities, which men have as well, are much more valued right now. And you have leaders, you have CEOs in America right now who are talking, like Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn, about compassionate leadership. You have the CEO of Aetna, Mark Bertolini, who is introducing, yoga, meditation, and acupuncture to his 49,000 employees. And a lot of the soft power elements that create a more compassionate and caring workplace are now being instituted by women and by men. And women have to do it because otherwise we're going to be paying an even heavier price than women -- than men have been paying in terms of how we've been running our workplaces so far. ZAKARIA: Hillary Clinton didn't seem a particularly different secretary of state for the fact that she was a woman. Do you believe that if she were president it would be different from the man being in that job?

BROWN: I think Hillary Clinton can do all of it, actually. I think she's very good at being in the center of the circle, but I think she knows how to be tough when she has to be. So I think she would be excellent because I think she combines a little bit of what Joe here was saying about the need to be a bit more like a man and men to be a bit more like women. She's good at that. So I think she would be excellent in that role.

HUFFINGTON: But I think Hillary Clinton paid a price. When, remember in '08 she felt she had to be hawkish on the war in Iraq even though now we hear from her inner circle that's not what she really believed, but she felt as potentially the first woman commander-in- chief she could not afford to come out against the war and appear to be a pacifist. So that is a price, which in the end may have cost her the primary.

ZAKARIA: Fascinating. I wish we could keep going, but we have to stop. Thank you very much.

Up next, how to tame a hurricane. One study says we have the technology to lessen a superstorm's destruction and make some money in the process.

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ZAKARIA: Women may be gaining political power, but how are they doing in business? A new report was released earlier this month measuring the percentage of women in senior management positions in 45 economies around the world. It brings me to my question. Which economy has the highest proportion of women in senior management? A, the Netherlands. B, the United States. C, Thailand. D, Russia. Stay tuned. We'll tell you the correct answer.

This week I want to recommend instead of a book a documentary. It's called "Particle Fever." it's about the search for the Higgs Boson particle, also known as the God particle. It makes what might seem like a very obscure scientific investigation into a fascinating mystery story.

And now for the "Last Look." Hurricane season won't begin in the Atlantic basin until June 1st. But the South Pacific storm season is in full swing. At any point in time, in fact, it is the season for hurricanes, typhoons, or cyclones somewhere in the world. With winds up to an astounding 190 miles per hour, fierce storms can dump more than 2.4 trillion gallons of rain in a day. At this point the world really has nothing to defend against nature's fury. But a Stanford study says there may be something that could stand in a hurricane's way. Quite literally. It's not some brand new technology or hypothetical machine I'm talking about. It's wind turbines. According to the study, large numbers of wind turbines could slow down the outer winds of the hurricane, decrease wave heights, and cause it to dissipate faster. The authors say 78,000 300-foot turbines off the coast of New Orleans could have reduced Hurricane Katrina's wind speeds by as much as 98 miles per hour by the time they reached land and decreased storm surge by an incredible 79 percent. Considering the billions of dollars of destruction a single storm can cause, a solution that provides renewable energy, pays for itself, and saves lives. Where can one sign up?

The correct answer to our GPS challenge question was D, Russian companies have the highest percentage of women in senior roles, at 43 percent. The report attributes the high levels of women in management in countries like Russia, Lithuania, and Armenia to their historic communist ideals of equality. China, you'll notice, is high on that list as well. Of the 45 economies the company measured, the United States doesn't even crack the top ten. In fact, it's in the bottom ten along with a few other surprises. Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.