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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Interview With Former Secretary Of State Henry Kissinger; Interview With The Chief Of Space Force Operations General John Raymond; Former Prime Minister of Japan Assassinated; Boris Johnsons Resigns as British Prime Minister. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired July 10, 2022 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:36]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: 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 from New York City.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA (voice-over): Today on the program, the assassination of Japan's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Shot in broad daylight in a country with almost no gun homicide. We'll explore the murder and his legacy.

Then after a stunning series of resignations from his Cabinet, Boris Johnson finally admits it's time to go.

BORIS JOHNSON, BRITISH CARETAKER PRIME MINISTER: Now I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But them's the breaks.

ZAKARIA: What happens now? I will ask former top Conservative Party official, Camilla Cavendish.

Also, Henry Kissinger on Vladimir Putin. The 99- year-old former secretary of state has met with the Russian leader perhaps more than any other American. As the war in Ukraine continues to rage, what the West and the world needs to know about that man's intentions.

And space, the final frontier. For international conflict and perhaps even war. I will talk to General John Raymond, chief of the United States Space Force.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's my take. It's a famous saying that no military plan survives its first contact with the enemy. The greatest fear is on war, the Prussian general Carl on Clausewitz often explained that strategy must be dynamic, constantly changing, and rejuvenating itself.

In his famous treatise on war, he wrote that some generals consider only unilateral action whereas war consists of a continuous interaction of opposites. The West needs to take these lessons to heart in its struggle with

Russia and adjust its strategy, which is currently in danger of failing.

The core of the West strategy has been two pronged, to pride Ukraine with arms, training, and money, and to impose massive sanctions on Russian. That basic idea still makes sense, but the balance needs to change.

It is now clear that the economic war against Russia is not working nearly as well as people thought it would. Vladimir Putin cares less about what these sanctions do to the Russian people than he does about what they do to the Russian state.

And thanks to rising energy prices, Bloomberg projects that the Russian government will make considerably more revenue from oil and gas than it did before but the war, around $285 billion in 2022 compared to $236 billion in 2021. Meanwhile Europe is facing its worst energy crisis in 50 years.

The basic problem with the economic war against Russia, as I have argued before, is that it is toothless because it cannot sanction all Russian energy. The Russian economy is fundamentally an energy economy, revenues from oil and gas alone, make up almost half the government's budget.

And unfortunately, the solution would not be for the West to stop buying Russian energy altogether because with less supply on the world's market, it would only drive prices even higher.

Having developed a dangerous dependence on Russian energy over the last two decades, Europe cannot quickly change that without plunging into a deep and protracted recession.

Look at what is already happening on the continent where natural gas prices are now 700 percent higher than they were at the beginning of last year.

On July 11th, Nord Stream 1, the pipeline through which Germany gets most of its Russian gas, is scheduled to close for maintenance. It is possible that Putin will decide to punish the West and Germany by not letting it reopen. If so, Germany, Europe's largest economy, will almost certainly go into a recession.

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Putin's strategy appears to be imposed costs on the West and then play for time assuming that cracks in the coalition against him will grow as economic pain in these countries grows.

Western countries are still not treating this challenge as a paramount priority. The Netherlands has a huge gas field, but it is actually slowing down production.

Germany still will not reverse its self-defeating phaseout of nuclear energy. The Biden administration is still making it harder to finance long-term investments in natural gas and oil.

It also can't seem to find a way to restore the Iran nuclear deal, a move that would bring an enormous influx of new oil supplies onto the war market, and almost certainly stabilize the price.

I understand, there are valid objections and concerns with all these policies. But the priority has to be to defeat Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile, Putin's real vulnerabilities on the military front, the Russian army has expanded its control in the Donbas region of Ukraine but at great cost.

Thousands of Russia's soldiers have died, its supplies are dwindling, and most importantly (INAUDIBLE) very tough to get new recruits. "The Economist" reports that the Russian government is having a hard time filling the ranks and is offering new recruits nearly triple the median wage.

Russia is suffering heavy losses of military equipment that would be difficult to replace especially when they require sophisticated technology, almost all of which it used to import from the West and its allies.

Recently, Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, revealed that captured Russian equipment is being found to contain computer chips that were taken out of refrigerators and dishwashers.

Western leaders should recognize that economic sanctions simply will not work in a timeframe that makes any sense. They should try to increase as much of the supply of energy worldwide as they can, but also dial back those sanctions that are clearly causing more pain to the West than to Russia.

Meanwhile, they should amp up military support to Ukraine erring on the side of taking more risks. Freeing up the blockade around Odessa, for example, would be a huge economic win for Ukraine and a shattering symbolic defeat for Russia.

Winter is coming. Homes in Europe might not have enough heat. Troops in Ukraine will find it much harder to dislodge Russians once the snow blankets the land. Time is not on our side.

Go to CNN.com/fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week, and let's get started.

It was stunning to hear that Japan's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had been assassinated. Stunning that this important leader of Japan and key friend of America was dead, stunning, too, that he was killed by a gun in a country with absolutely stringent gun control and very low gun homicide rates.

Abe has been the country's longest tenured PM serving nine years total in two separate terms. When I interviewed him in 2014, I found him to be direct and frank.

Now I want to bring in Ian Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, who knew Abe for more than a decade pretty well.

Ian, welcome. And first, tell us just what are your thoughts about him as a human being, as a man, what kind of a person was he? What struck you most?

IAN BREMMER, PRESIDENT, EURASIA GROUP: Charismatic, direct, he was someone that when you met with him, he was quite warm.

I mean, and in conversation, he would occasionally touch you, on the arm or the shoulder or the back, depending on where you were situated as you're making a point, which is almost unheard of in Japanese society. I mean, especially when you talk about official meetings.

I remember the first time he did it, I was a little bit stunned. I mean, I don't know if you would call it Clintonian back in the day, right, or Ronald Reagan-esque, but that's kind of who he was, and this is also a man that, you know, had a second chance in politics after his first term ended sort of ignominiously with these health challenges and that almost never happens in Japan as well.

He cut a unique figure politically in the country, as well as having so much more of a platform and a profile for Japan internationally and almost anyone that knew him well experience that directly.

ZAKARIA: So he was very well-known internationally as you say, and also within Japan, came from a very distinguished political family. But he was also kind of controversial, right. He was more of a nationalist. His opponents would say he was even a militarist because he wanted to amend Japan's constitution and allow it to have a proper military.

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Were those really controversial positions in Japan?

BREMMER: They were somewhat controversial, especially, keep in mind, so Abe had his.

They were somewhat controversial, especially, keep in mind, so Abe had his best relationship in the world, was probably with Narendra Modi which started back when Modi was running Gujarat, they liked each other.

Abe thought it was very important to have a stronger union of democracies in the region because personally he was very, very concerned about the rise of China, more so than any Japanese high- level leader I had ever met.

When you'd mentioned China to him, I mean, he would literally he'd get more stiff. You could see sort of like the vein in his neck bulging a bit.

I mean, he was worried that China was, as it was getting larger, as it was militarizing, it was a direct threat not just to a country like Taiwan, but also to Japan directly, and that became the beginning of what's today, the Quad, which Abe really got started. He's the one that made the Transpacific Partnership really happen, the

CP-TPP when Obama couldn't get it done for the United States. And he's the one that wanted to change the country's constitution to help Japan re-militarize and not just focus on national self-defense.

I mean those were not unheard of positions in Japan, but he was certainly the most senior inarticulate and strongest proponent of those positions and it made a real difference for Japan on the global stage.

ZAKARIA: What do you think, you know, this is a gun violence, which is unheard of in Japan. I mean, they have -- you know, we have, whatever, 40,000, 50,000 gun deaths a year, they have -- you know, there are years when they have two or three. What do you think this does to the Japanese psyche?

BREMMER: I think it's a shock. I think it's a JFK moment for Japan. It's literally that cataclysmic. The entire 2021 Japan had one violent gun death, non-suicide, in the country.

In the United States we had 220 last weekend. It's unheard of. And you have to keep in mind that Japan is the most politically stable and the most consolidated of the G-7 democracies. It's very homogeneous. It's almost the single party democracy.

The Liberal Democratic Party which Prime Minister Abe was in charge of back in the day, they win almost every election and they are about to again today because Kishida will benefit, the sitting prime minister, from the country coming together.

This will not be a moment that disunites or fragments Japanese society. It will be a moment that brings the country closer together. They'll be shocked but they will also feel as one. I mean frankly the last moment we've had like that in the United States, I hate to say it, was probably 9/11.

ZAKARIA: You know, your point about America, you know, I have been thinking. Imagine something like this happen in America, I feel like it would not bring this country together. It would further the divisions.

BREMMER: No. And we've seen that frankly with the pandemic. You know, so much red versus blue, masking versus non-masking, vaxxed versus anti-vaxxed.

In Japan last week even outside 80 percent of the population was wearing a mask in 100-degree weather in Tokyo, record-setting. Inside it was literally everyone, and that's because they are focused as a community. There is a civic culture.

And even if you don't really like the rules yourself, you care about your neighbor, you care about your countrymen, and so you just kind of go along to get along, and you're right.

I mean, if this were to happen in the United States right now, God forbid, you have to imagine that the political outrage would be as deeply divided as the country today feels.

ZAKARIA: Ian Bremmer, always a pleasure, thank you.

BREMMER: Thank you, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: From the death of a former prime minister to the downfall of a sitting one. Next on GPS, Boris Johnson bows out as Britain's leader. What is next for the United Kingdom?

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ZAKARIA: At prime minister's questions in parliament on Wednesday, Boris Johnson was steadfast. He would not resign despite a swiftly growing list of resignations by his top officials.

A day later, Johnson stepped out of 10 Downing Street and offered his resignation. Bringing to a close, his three-year tenure at the top, one filled with scandals and some successes.

I want to bring in Baroness Camilla Cavendish, who ran Prime Minister David Cameron's policy unit and is now a columnist for "The Financial Times."

Camilla, welcome. I want to ask you first whether at some level this is the theme of Boris Johnson's career seems to have been enormous political skill and virtuosity, but marked by what I supposed one politely would call dissembling.

He got fired from his first job at the "Daily Telegraph" for dissembling about a quotation he made up. He dissembled about Brexit, lots of the anecdotes and facts he presented were simply not true.

He dissembled about party-gate. And now, it seems like he dissembled even to his own Cabinet about what he knew about this latest controversy.

Was it that people just finally lost the trust in him that you need?

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CAMILLA CAVENDISH, FORMER POLICY DIRECTOR FOR DAVID CAMERON: Well, he was revolutionary and in government he's never been able to switch from essentially campaigning to governing.

And this is really the tragedy of Boris Johnson actually, is he continue to be interested in headlines, and as you say to dissemble mainly sometimes on quite trivial issues and sometimes just to pursue an agenda, but ultimately I'm afraid, it's all been about him.

And that's what happened this week. The penny finally dropped and it was funny enough, you know, the issue that was the last straw was the dissembling over a man who appeared to be a sexual predator who had been employed by Johnson, who Johnson knew about. But, as you say, this was only one of a very, very long series of

things, which ministers attached to him. So many of the people who finally snapped on Monday and Tuesday and went to him and said you've got to go were people who have been out on the airwaves for a year defending all sorts of things that then turned out not to be true. And they have had enough.

ZAKARIA: So looking forward, the Conservative still have a huge majority from 2019. You know, many people point out it would be hard to lose that majority in one election. In other words, Conservative Party could be looking to another six, seven years of a ruling.

Is there some figure who can bring the various factions together, particularly, you know, the other ones that had been so at odds over Brexit?

CAVENDISH: The coalition that Boris Johnson built, you are right, the big question for the Conservative Party is can anyone keep that together?

I think really the bigger question is, can the next leader sort of smooth over Britain's relationships with its allies, begin to rebuild trust in politics, because trust in politics has been so damaged by all of these episodes, and also trust in some of these institutions.

So there are a huge number of candidates who are going to run. There are several big figures, Rishi Sunak who was the chancellor has declared that he will stand.

Jeremy Hunt, who was has health secretary and foreign secretary, ran against Johnson for leadership and got to the second place last time and has been outside of Cabinet. He will also run. And he's interesting because he is not tarnished in any way by the Johnson news.

ZAKARIA: Would it be fair to say that economically the verdict is in, Brexit has been bad for Britain economically. Right?

I mean, you have terrible inflation, which tends to happen when you have, you know, you have higher cost of goods, higher tariffs because you left the European Union, slowing growth. Britain looks like not quite the sick man of Europe but certainly the weakest of the major economies.

CAVENDISH: Yes. I mean, for a while, it was hard to disaggregate the effects of the COVID pandemic from the effects of Brexit. I think we can now see exactly as you say that we are way behind in terms of growth, a lot of small businesses are really struggling to export.

And we've got to remember that there were various possible versions of Brexit. Boris Johnson chose a very hard Brexit. He chose to leave the single market of European Union and indeed the customs unions.

And I think the polls in England are showing that the voters are also realizing that this has not been a very good deal for the country.

ZAKARIA: What do you think at the end of the day his legacy is?

CAVENDISH: Look, I think he is a superb politician. He was a household name. People called him Boris. He was a great mayor of London. He has a way with words that he connects with people.

His downfall really was that he appears to be a narcissist who even now actually can't accept why people want him to go. And that will really tarnish his legacy.

Whatever you think about him, he did take Britain out of the E.U., and he did create a very, very significant Conservative majority, and you know, those things will get down in history.

He also led the country through the pandemic. You know, for (INAUDIBLE), every government has struggled with that but that was a, you know, that was proper public service.

ZAKARIA: Is there any larger lesson in Johnson's fall about populism and what happens to, you know, because he was a kind of populist, you know, when you have to actually govern?

CAVENDISH: Well, I mean, there are a lot of analogies drawn between Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. I don't like to overdo that. I think, you know, he has played some of the same tunes and he has been too obsessed with focus groups and he's sadly been very divisive.

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In the pandemic, Britain really came together. People looked out for each other. We felt I think more connected than we've been ever since the Brexit referendum.

He could've capitalized on that, instead of which he started fighting cultural wars, you know, trying to build division against the opposition and as I said that's because he was still campaigning.

He was spinning parliament election mode. And I think the next leader has to be somebody who is much more serious about simply delivering good government for the country.

ZAKARIA: Camilla Cavendish, pleasure to have you on.

CAVENDISH: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, Kissinger on Putin. The 99-year-old former secretary of state has met with the Russian leader around 15 times. What the West needs to understand about Putin's mindset. Back in a moment.

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ZAKARIA: My next guest, Henry Kissinger, has been a controversial figure since his days as national security advisor, then secretary of state under Richard Nixon. At 99, he is still stirring up controversy with his recent comments about how to end the war in Ukraine. He is the author of the new book, "Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy." It's a terrific book, well worth reading. Henry Kissinger, pleasure to have you on.

HENRY KISSINGER, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Glad to be here.

ZAKARIA: So the book is terrific. I have read it and really, really enjoyed it. And I couldn't recommend it more to people. But I'm going to start by talking about a leader who is not profiled in this book. How many times have you met Vladimir Putin?

KISSINGER: Maybe 15.

ZAKARIA: And these are long almost always one-on-one meetings?

KISSINGER: Yes, always one-on-one. And I met Putin for the first time when he was deputy mayor of Saint Petersburg and I had no idea who he was. And he was talking about the then occurring collapse of the Russian empire, of the Soviet empire, and he said this is one of the great tragedies of history because it will create endless trouble and new definitions of borders and of influence. But, it was just at that time an interesting conversation.

ZAKARIA: So when you think about Putin as a leader, if you were to analyze him in the way that you have analyzed the leaders in this book, what is the thing that strikes you most strongly about Putin?

KISSINGER: His passionate, almost mystical view of the nature of Russia. He is very intelligent, very analytical, quite aloof. But on one occasion, he said to me, some days, I think I know everything. And other days, I think I know nothing.

It is not something leaders would usually say in conversations. But it indicates the inner struggle he was going through, and dealing with both the domestic evolution, and his perception of the foreign challenges to Russia.

ZAKARIA: When you say you know, he is very analytic, that has also been my experience in the few times I have met him, so what explains what seems -- he also seems careful. What explains this very bold, almost reckless move in Ukraine?

KISSINGER: I wouldn't have expected it. I thought when he concentrated the troops around Ukraine it was for bargaining. And I wouldn't have been surprised if he had taken slides but to attack the whole country and try to reincorporate it, you can interpret it in one of two ways.

The way it is generally interpreted, I know him with no exception, it's that he wanted to reconstruct the empire. But, you could also interpret it as a recognition, of growing a Russian relative weakness that the domestic situation is not evolving very rapidly. And here, the West is approaching via Ukraine, and I think that I interpreted it to myself, as much as a last act to show that there were limits to what Russia could tolerate.

ZAKARIA: So you proposed at Davos that Ukraine may clear that it does not intend to go further than the February 24th lines.

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In other words that it wanted to reverse Russia's aggression this year but not go further. And that became somewhat controversial.

KISSINGER: I didn't even address it to Ukraine. I said, "A dividing line for ending the war should be the status quo ante."

ZAKARIA: Right, of a return to --

KISSINGER: A return to --

ZAKARIA: -- the February 24th situation.

KISSINGER: Yes, but that is still very substantial retreat --

ZAKARIA: For the Russians.

KISSINGER: -- for the Russians.

ZAKARIA: But you are saying -- I want to be clear, you are saying you do not believe that it will be easy to get the Russians back to those lines, in other words, reversing the aggression of this year?

KISSINGER: It would be very difficult. But I think it has to be our objective, because if we settled for whatever the situation is when the Russians offer a negotiation, and if it acquires hereby all of the Donbas and the straight along the Black Sea that will be interpreted that in the end NATO could not protect a friendly country.

ZAKARIA: The problem of Ukraine fundamentally, is it seems to me, that the Ukrainians sort of reject entirely this, what you call, the mystical Russian narrative, right? They see themselves as formerly part of the West. They want to be a liberal democracy. They want to be, you know, a capitalist society. They want to be allied with the West. Can Putin live with that?

KISSINGER: Well, before the war, I would've said no. And I warned against incorporating Ukraine into NATO 10 years ago and predicted it would lead to some sort of conflict. But, the solution that I had then was to make Ukraine a bridge between Europe and Russia. It is not possible now, after the destruction of this war and the way it's being conducted, and the suddenness of the attack. So now Ukraine, whether formally or not, is part of Europe, and that will be a very hard decision for Putin to make. And it may not be Putin who makes a decision. It may not be Putin who survives that decision.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, I will ask Henry Kissinger whether January 6 was a bigger deal than Watergate.

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ZAKARIA: And we are back here on GPS with more of my interview with Henry Kissinger, the author of the new book, "Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy."

Let me ask you finally about one leader you write about, Richard Nixon. So, when I talked to David Gergen recently, we were talking about leadership, and I asked him about Nixon, and he said, the lesson I draw from Richard Nixon's experience was he is one of the smartest people ever to have occupied the White House, but he had internal demons. And unless you have dealt with your internal demons, you know, they will -- they will in some way, come up. Do you agree with that?

KISSINGER: The Nixon I encountered had a capacity for making extremely courageous decisions and was a great patriot about the purposes of America. But he also was driven by a sense of insecurity, in which, he found it very difficult to give orders to somebody he knew disagreed with him.

So, he did have these demons, where they came from, I don't know. But, what I do know and experienced, is that in the big decisions on which in my opinion the security of America depended, he made the right decision. But from what I saw and what he honored me by letting me participate in and help and guide some of it, he was a strong president with a big flaw which destroyed him.

ZAKARIA: When you look at what happened on January 6, it seems bigger than Watergate, or no?

KISSINGER: Watergate was primarily -- I mean, the legal aspect of Watergate was the obstruction of justice and the cover up. The other things were -- they were -- since it could have been accommodated. January 6, the attempt to undo a recognized electoral result by a president that was unprecedented and hopefully will never be repeated.

ZAKARIA: When you look forward, and you think, let's say you are 105, six years from now, do you think that -- you know, is this something like the populism, the attacks on democracy, is this a phase where we have gotten through it, or are we spiraling downward?

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KISSINGER: Well, what bothers me is even say in the Vietnam period when I was in Washington and I thought life was tough, and it was, but the critics and the majority were believers in the system. They disagreed about the policy and were very passionate about it, and it was not easy. But, now, the domestic dispute seems to be more about diverseness of the country itself, and that is a debate that makes it very hard to move from it to a compatible vision of the future.

ZAKARIA: Henry Kissinger, always a pleasure. Next, on GPS, I'll interview the man who runs America's newest military branch, the Space Force. General John Raymond will tell us why in space, just as on Earth, the U.S. faces many threats.

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ZAKARIA: On December 20th, 2019, then-President Donald Trump signed a defense spending act that included within it, a provision to create the country's sixth military branch, the U.S. Space Force. Despite some late-night ribbing about the name of the force, its logo and its uniforms, the force's mission is actually very simple and deadly serious, to protect the United States and allied interests in space. That becomes increasingly important as major tensions dominate U.S. relations with both Russia and China, nations with ever more powerful space programs.

I want to welcome the head of the Space Force, General John Raymond, to GPS, for an exclusive interview. General, thanks for coming on.

GEN. JOHN RAYMOND, CHIEF OF SPACE OPERATIONS, U.S. SPACE FORCE: Fareed, sir, thank you very much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

ZAKARIA: So we know about the tensions on Earth. We know about the tensions between you know, with Russia, with China. If we were to look up in space, what would we see? Would we see some kind of a mirror image of those tensions that we have on Earth?

RAYMOND: Let me just start by saying that, you know, the U.S. has been a spacefaring nation since the 1950s, and that status of being a spacefaring nation gives us great advantage. Space underpins all of our instruments to national power whether it is diplomatic information, military, or economic. And it is a domain of competition, just like all other domains, air, land, and sea.

And so as you were to look up in space, you would see a domain that has changed pretty significantly over the last couple decades. A domain that has become much more congested with -- and the numbers of objects that we are tracking, close to 50,000 was just a few years ago I would've told you it was only about 22,000. The numbers of satellites that are up in space have gone from about 1,500 a couple years ago, to almost 5,000 today.

We see increased competition. We see an increase contested nature of the domain.

ZAKARIA: So every now and then you hear about the Russians or the Chinese blowing up a satellite, which I have always assumed was a kind of, I don't know, warning or -- you know, showing off the capacity to take down satellites, the U.S. obviously has the most in the world and the most critical ones, how do you read those explosions?

RAYMOND: First of all I read them as being very reckless and irresponsible behavior. The space domain is a domain for global use and it provides great opportunity for the nations of the world, and what we have seen is a spectrum of threats that have materialized over the last decade or so, everything from reversible jamming of communication satellites and GPS satellites, to directed energy threats, think lasers that can blind or dazzle satellites, to missiles that can launch from the ground and destroy satellites which is what you're -- you just mentioned.

Russia did that back in this past November where they launched a missile and blew up a satellite in lower orbit into -- a little over 1,500 pieces of debris. We are still tracking that debris. We are still warning folks across the globe to react as a space traffic control for the world if you want to make sure that people don't hit that pieces of debris. We protect the International Space Station along with our partners at NASA and we found that behavior very reckless and very irresponsible.

ZAKARIA: The big new entrant here if of course China, which is completing a big space station, Tiangong. Tell us about that, and how would you rate China's space capabilities?

RAYMOND: They have come a long way in a very short period of time. I would say China is going, you know, zero to 60 very, very fast. It wasn't too long ago, that they didn't have significant space capabilities and today they do. And so, God forbid if deterrence were to fail and we were to get into a conflict -- and, again, our desire is not to. Our desire is to deter that conflict from happening. But if we did we will be up against an adversary that has the same space capabilities and the same advantages that we currently enjoy.

[10:55:05]

They use those capabilities to track our ground forces, our maritime forces, our air forces, and it is a threat to those forces.

ZAKARIA: General, let me ask you finally what people, you know, I'm sure must ask you all the time so when -- you're tracking all of this stuff out there, are you also tracking for whether or not there is any kind of life out there, aliens, weird objects?

RAYMOND: We do not track that specifically. We're much -- much closer -- focus much closer to home. That is not part of our mission set. We are really focused on making sure that every American and our allies and partners in our joint and coalition forces have the space capabilities they need to both fuel our American way of life and to fuel our American way of war.

ZAKARIA: Good enough. Thank you, sir. Real pleasure to have you on.

RAYMOND: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you and I really appreciate the opportunity.

ZAKARIA: A note before we go, two weeks ago in the course of the discussion, I said that Israel had not really condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I misspoke. Israel has voted to condemn it at the United Nations.

Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.

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