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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Syrian Rebels Topple Assad Regime; Why President Yoon Declared Martial Law. Interview With Former Senior CIA And State Department Official Jung Pak; Interview With Johns Hopkins School Of Advanced International Studies Senior Fellow Anne Applebaum. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired December 08, 2024 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:24]

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 live from New York.

On today's program, it is game over for Bashar al-Assad. His family's 54 years of repressive rule in Syria is done taken down by rebels who captured the country in a matter of days. We'll dig deep into this extraordinary story that will roil the already war-torn Middle East.

Then to South Korea, where the president briefly declared martial law late Tuesday night, shocking South Koreans and observers around the globe. We'll explore what happened and what comes next.

Finally to Georgia, where protests have rocked the capital Tbilisi and other cities. It is all part of an ongoing tug of war in Eastern Europe between Russia and the West.

But first, here's my take. It's been quite a week across the world. South Korea's president placed the country under martial law but was rebuffed by parliament. In France, the prime minister and his government lost a vote of no confidence for the first time in more than 60 years.

These seemingly disparate events do have a common underlying theme. A crisis of democratic institutions. On the face of it, South Korea is an amazing success story. Its economy boomed by more than 5 percent for five consecutive decades, a record that was matched by only one other place on the planet -- Taiwan. And yet it has been roiled by deep polarization and vicious political battles.

The backdrop for President Yoon's martial law announcement was two and a half years of deadlock between the liberal opposition and the conservative president. The opposition accused him of using the government's powers to attack his opponents in the media. He accused the opposition of misusing its powers by trying to impeach members of his administration.

In France, the story is different but it rhymes. President Macron has been trying to push through reforms in that country for years, many of which have triggered intense opposition. His last major round, which raised the age at which state pensions kicked in, could only be enacted through a rarely used procedure that bypassed parliament. In the last elections his centrist political party was decimated and parliament is now dominated by the far-right and left. They conspired to bring down the current prime minister.

The common theme is that people increasingly do not trust traditional democratic institutions and the elites who run them. In a 2023 Pew survey, a stunning 85 percent of U.S. adults polled said that elected officials, quote, "don't care what people like me think," unquote. 80 percent said they feel anger or frustration towards the federal government.

This sense of rage about the governing elites is not limited to America. Mainstream political parties everywhere from Germany to Japan are being battered in the polls. We're living through a period of rapid change, what I've called an age of revolutions, economic, technological and cultural. Old patterns are being cast aside. South Korea, for example, now faces a new era of slower growth and demographic decline, all combined with greater social aspirations.

Europe faces a new era of threats from Russia, economic competition from China and an America less willing to be a generous leader. People have often noted the decline of trust in many societies, especially America, but as the writer Derek Thompson has noted, what is really happening is not just a decline, but also a shift in trust. People have lost trust in the medical establishment but are placing their trust increasingly in podcasters like Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia, and even politicians like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

They have lost trust in traditional media and are transferring that trust to individual journalists and commentators. Tens of millions of Republicans lost faith in their party and entrusted their hopes in a single individual Donald Trump.

That is a shift from institutions to individuals, and it's been enabled by new technologies that allow individuals to have the same kind of reach and influence that was once the preserve of large organizations. The problem is that liberal democracy has been sustained by institutions and procedures. Government by individual is in the end government by arbitrary whim.

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This year's Nobel Prize in Economics went to scholars who asked the simple questions. Why do most countries fail to become rich and successful? And what explains the few that succeed? Their answer? Strong institutions. The handful of countries that have broken out of poverty and bad government have established good, fair institutions and procedures that go beyond any one individual.

That explains why a landlocked resource poor Switzerland has become one of the richest countries in the world, whereas other landlocked resource poor countries are mired in dysfunction. It's why Singapore, a swampy sandbar in Southeast Asia, now has one of the world's highest incomes per person. Liberal democracy has been marked by its emphasis on procedures not

outcomes. We honor the process even when we dislike the outcome. The drive to quickly get what we want, even at the cost of bypassing procedures and undermining institutions is deeply dangerous. That is true when it is Donald Trump appointing slavishly loyal apparatchiks to head key departments of government. And it is true when Joe Biden pardons his son after promising the American people he would not interfere with the workings of the justice system.

If, out of frustration with our current transitory problems we give up on the enduring institutions that have built liberal democracy, we will be turning our backs on one of the most significant achievements of humankind in modern history.

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

For more than half a century, the Assad family has ruled Syria with an iron fist. But that is all over now after 13 years of a slow grinding civil war. Opposition forces launched a lightning offensive, storming through major cities in a matter of days and they were met with little resistance.

Today, crowds cheered and chanted in the center of Damascus as the insurgents swept the capital. Meanwhile, Russian officials, Assad's allies, say the now former president Bashar al-Assad has left the country.

I want to bring in two great experts. And Natasha Hall is a senior fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Karim Sadjadpour is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Karim, what do you think explains the sudden collapse? We understand that the core issue here was Assad was being propped up by Russia and Iran and Hezbollah and all three have been battered. The Russians, because of Ukraine, the Iranians and Hezbollah because of the Israelis. But does all that explain why this suddenly has happened in, you know. in five days, really?

KARIM SADJADPOUR, SENIOR FELLOW, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE: Fareed, it reminds me of that old adage that all dictators look good until the last 10 minutes. This was one of the most brutal police states in the world. And what we've witnessed the last few weeks is really historic and unprecedented. And I think Assad basically fell into this doom loop and that his chief patrons, as you mentioned Russia, Iran Hezbollah were either consumed with their own battles or in the case of Hezbollah and Iran has been decimated by the Israeli military.

So they lost their resolve. As a result, Assad in some ways his resolve diminished and when his military commanders saw that, you know, their commander in chief's resolve has been diminished, their resolve diminished as well. And you couple that with the emergence of this Syrian opposition leadership and the backing of Turkey, and you know, that's what we saw. It was quite remarkable. ZAKARIA: Natasha, it's still not over, though, right? Most people

don't realize Syria is a mess because you still have in Syria the government forces that are on the coast, that still have -- hold some strongholds. There's ISIS in parts of the country that hold small parts of the country. There are Kurdish forces that hold parts of -- 20 percent of the country I think at least.

What is likely to happen? Will the rebels, let's call them for now, be able to control the whole country? Or is this the beginning of a new civil war?

NATASHA HALL, SENIOR FELLOW, CSIS MIDDLE EAST PROGRAM: Well, I mean, I don't think I have to tell the man who wrote the book on revolutions how difficult this will be and what an uphill climb. But what I can say is that Syrians have forged unity out of a crucible of 14 years of brutal civil war, and no one, even in government held territory, was happy with Bashar al-Assad.

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We've seen statues actually come down in some of those regime strongholds in Latakia and in Tartus on the coast but we do continue to see clashes between the Kurdish dominated SDF and some of the Turkish backed rebel groups. And as you mentioned, there are other spoilers potentially here, including ISIS fighters that remain.

ZAKARIA: And Natasha, do you think that Jolani is going to try and militarily sweep through the area? Because what's interesting is he seems to have learned a lesson from the American occupation of Iraq. He's not getting rid of regime loyalists as long as they flip sides. There is no purge that seems to be taking place. It seems like maybe what he's trying to say is if you surrender that's fine. And you know, we're trying to keep peace here.

HALL: Yes, it seems like Jolani has actually learned quite a few lessons from the U.S. war in Iraq, including to prevent looting, protect institutions, including government employees. And so we've actually seen rebels enter places like Tartus and Latakia and essentially say that they will protect minorities regardless if they're Alawites or if they are Christians or anybody else. And so that's quite heartening.

I mean, it remains to be seen if there will be, again, spoilers within his group or within other groups that sort of change that. But we have seen the former prime minister even stay in Damascus and say that he will stay for a formal and peaceful transfer of power, which is really quite, quite astonishing. I don't think anyone could have told you that was going to happen from a group like HTS, but they've certainly learned a lot of lessons in the past few years.

ZAKARIA: Karim, I was struck by the fact that Donald Trump recently tweeted on this and, I mean, I thought he got the basic outlines of the situation exactly right, that this is fundamentally happening because of Israeli attacks on Iran and Hezbollah and the Russians being mired in Ukraine. And then he said the United States should stay the hell out of this, which has, you know, been his position in general.

There is one issue here, which is that the U.S. has been supporting the Kurdish forces because, you know, they sort of see themselves as being persecuted by all sides. The Turks have always not wanted that to happen. What is going to happen there? If the U.S. does not play a role will Turkey, you know, ethnically cleanse the Kurds in Syria?

SADJADPOUR: That's certainly a big concern, Fareed. And in some ways, the tweet we saw from President Trump is not that much different than some of the public remarks from Biden administration officials like Jake Sullivan. Steve Cook has put it in a new book, it's the end of ambition for the United States in the Middle East. There's no longer an American project to really transform the region into secular democracies, but the priorities are to prevent the resurgence of groups like ISIS, to secure stockpiles of potential chemical weapons, WMD, and to protect minorities like the Kurds and Syrian Christians.

ZAKARIA: All right. Stay with us. When we come back, we're going to broaden this out and ask, what does all this mean for the geopolitical sponsors, Iran and Russia, most particularly.

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[10:18:17]

ZAKARIA: And we are back talking about the fall of the Assad regime in Syria with Natasha Hall and Karim Sadjadpour.

Karim, what does this mean for Iran? Syria was in some ways the crown jewel. This was Iran's great entry into the Arab world. They had as a client one of the major Arab countries. And now they don't any longer.

SADJADPOUR: Fareed, I think there's three big questions for Iran. And number one is, is this the end of Iran's axis of resistance in the Middle East? As you mentioned, Syria has been Iran's only stable ally since the 1979 Revolution. And can Iran continue to finance and arm Lebanese Hezbollah without Syria because Syria has been the bridge to Hezbollah?

I think what the Iranian regime will try to do is forge a partnership with Syria's new leaders based on common enmity towards the United States and Israel. That's a big question whether they can do that. Second question is what the impact on Iran's other resistance partners, namely in Iraq and in Houthi, with the -- and in Yemen, with the Houthis. And finally, what impact does this have on Iran internally?

The Iranian regime is also deeply unpopular. Is the collapse of the Assad regime going to embolden anti-government protesters inside Iran?

ZAKARIA: Natash, let's take Karim's first point there. Should the United States reach out to Jolani, the new rebel leader, in the hope of preventing exactly that kind of alliance? I mean, at the end of the day, the Jolani forces have hated the Iranians because the Iranians supported the Assad regime, fought against these guys.

[10:20:03]

So there is a common cause there. But he's seen as an Islamic militant and all that kind of thing. What's your take?

HALL: Well, I think there's a number of things that the United States can do. First and foremost is that HTS is a designated terrorist organization, and that's going to make rebuilding and reconstruction and a new Syria very difficult. So I'm sure this administration and the next administration is going to have to deal with that first and foremost. If they are not, then they are likely to engage in sort of the same nefarious activities that we saw the Assad regime do and Iran, as they try to build a power base in spite of sanctions and these kinds of designations.

Whether or not there's going to be some kind of alliance between Jolani and Iran, I highly, highly doubt that. These are people that have been, you know, destroyed by Iran and its proxies so I don't see that likely happening. That said, Iranian proxies could come to spoil the future of Syria certainly. And so I think a lot of eyes are also on Iraq to see how Iranian influence is either strengthened or weakened there in the months ahead.

ZAKARIA: Karim, what does this mean for Israel? Because Israel has been -- one more piece of this collapse of Assad is that the Israelis have been bombing Syria almost every week now. And yet Israel has always wanted a stable Syria because they don't want chaos on their borders. And I noticed Jolani's family originally comes from the Golan Heights. So presumably he bears some grudges against Israel.

Is this good for Israel? Is this bad for Israel? How do you think they're thinking about this in that country?

SADJADPOUR: Well, Fareed, when the Syrian uprising first began in 2011, I think for years the first years of that uprising, the Israelis calculated that better the devil they know than the devil they didn't know meaning which was better to stick with Assad than a potential Sunni Islamist takeover in Syria.

I think over the last few years they took the opposite tack, which is that Assad really wasn't doing a good job of securing that border with Israel. And so you know, I think one of the questions journalists should ask Mr. Jolani is what country does he most seek to emulate? You know what is his vision for Syria? And if his vision for Syria is something along the lines of a Taliban government or something that has the foreign policy of the Iranian government, which is opposition to America and Israel?

Then Israel is going to continue to have to do what they've been doing, which is to carry out targeted strikes inside Syria.

ZAKARIA: Natasha, we just have 30 seconds left, but Russia, and a huge humiliation for Russia. This was their great warm water port, Syria. right. What does it mean for them?

HALL: I mean, this was the most stunning development, I think, of the past few days to just see Russia essentially abandon its ally. And as you said, this is, I mean, this is the crown jewel of Russia's reemergence into the world. You know, its first couple of ports outside of its near abroad and its air base and its seemingly just abandoned its ally.

ZAKARIA: We'll have to -- that is going to take a whole another conversation on another day.

Thank you, Natasha, Karim, really appreciate it.

Next on GPS, we will talk about another extraordinary international occurrence this week. South Korea was put under martial law. When we come back we will talk about what happened and why.

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ZAKARIA: That was South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in better times at a White House dinner last year. Today, his presidency is in grave risk. It all began late Tuesday night when he summarily declared martial law, stunning South Koreans and the world. But within hours lawmakers had forced their way into parliament and unanimously struck down the decree, forcing Yoon to reverse course.

Widespread calls for his removal from office immediately followed, though he narrowly survived an impeachment vote on Saturday.

Here to try to help us understand what happened is Jung Pak, a former CIA and State Department official with deep knowledge of Korea.

So help us explain, what the hell was he thinking? I mean, it seemed so out of the blue and it seemed so unlikely to succeed. What are we missing? Did he just, you know, have a kind of strange momentary spasm of thinking he could make this happen?

JUNG PAK, FORMER SENIOR CIA AND STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Thanks, Fareed. It was an extraordinary six hours and the drama continues to evolve over the weekend and probably into the next several days and weeks, if not months.

President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law late Tuesday night, which had sparked the National Assembly members to scale the walls to get into the National Assembly. He has narrowly survived the impeachment vote. His ruling party has rallied around him for now but the martial law really struck or fueled fears about what happened last time when a South Korean president under a military dictatorship had declared martial law that had sparked widespread student uprisings and protests. And South Korea has been a democracy since 1987. And this was really a shock to everyone, outsiders and insiders in South Korea.

ZAKARIA: So, why do you think he did it?

PAK: The way he explained it in his public apology in recent -- in the past day or so, is that he acted out of desperation. And I think that is a reflection and his actions were a reflection of his real discontent and dissatisfaction about the political deadlock. And political deadlock and extreme polarization is a hallmark of South Korean politics. It has been for the past several decades. But the fact that he took or declared martial law is really -- was really an extraordinary step.

ZAKARIA: He framed it very much in almost cold war terms that the -- you know, the opposition that dominates parliament is essentially pro- North Korean. And he was trying to play on these old cold war themes. Do you think that works in Korea, still in South Korea?

PAK: It works in some quarters. And I would zoom out a little bit to say that many conservative presidents in South Korea, if not all of them, have framed opposition -- or anybody that opposition -- that opposes the conservative government as communist or anti-state. I'll just note that there was no evidence that North Korea had infiltrated South Korea in the way that the president was framing the issue. But I think that that is a trope that has been used by past conservative governments and presidents to blame the other side for diminishing the power of the state.

ZAKARIA: You mentioned the polarization and deadlock, and it really feels there is some similarities with the U.S. In that there's a -- it's a lot of cultural polarization. It's almost like these are two different careers at war with each other.

I mean, for example, the -- President Yoon had promised to shut down the ministry of gender equality because he was being supported by a kind of male backlash against what was seen as the emancipation of Korean women. Is that situation still as divided and deadlocked culturally and politically?

PAK: I think there are some cultural components. For example, there -- the polarization is -- derives itself from the division of the Korean peninsula, that there are extreme -- there's extreme dissatisfaction in South Korean society.

I would say, however, that both sides of the aisle, both conservative and liberal presidents, have come into office saying that they're going to make lives better for the South Koreans. The South Korea ranks among the lowest in terms of OECD rankings of happiness. And I think that the depolarization and the sclerosis in the South Korean government, liberal or conservative, is the -- speaks to the inability of various governments to really ameliorate and mitigate some of that dissatisfaction and that inequality in South Korean government -- or south Korean society.

ZAKARIA: On the international front, there's just one issue, which is the U.S. has banked a lot on South Korea and Japan, allying closely, essentially against China. And President Yoon has made this part of his signature, a kind of rapprochement with Japan. Does any of that get threatened as President Yoon is weakened?

PAK: I think the repercussions of the martial law and the crisis in presidential authority in South Korea will reverberate for the next weeks, months potentially into 2027, when the next South Korean election is supposed to be taking place. The U.S. government has been very much focused on rapprochement and building ties between the -- among the trilateral partners, the U.S., South Korea, and Japan. And president Yoon was extremely courageous in making that decision to do that, to invest in that relationship.

South Korea has also been an anchor in so many of the U.S. and global national security priorities whether it's cyber climate nonproliferation. And, of course, we have an increasingly aggressive China that's not going to be -- going away. We have North Korea and Russia cooperating with each other in the war against Ukraine. This martial law declaration really is a stain on that excellent track. Track record that President Yoon had in terms of national security.

ZAKARIA: Jung Pak, a pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much. We will be back with Anne Applebaum on Georgia.

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[10:40:11]

ZAKARIA; Ukraine is not the only country in Eastern Europe where the struggle between Russia and West playing out. Protesters have clashed with riot police in Georgia following the government's decision to delay the country's bid to join the European Union.

Critics accused the ruling Georgian Dream party of taking the former soviet nation down an increasingly pro-Russian path. And on Friday Romania's top court annulled the country's recent presidential election amid allegations of Russian interference. To help us make sense of this all, I want to bring in Anne Applebaum. She is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and a staff writer at "The Atlantic." Anne, is it just a coincidence these two things are happening at the same time? It does feel as though Russia is trying to push back on pro-western efforts in eastern Europe.

ANNE APPLEBAUM, SENIOR FELLOW, JOHNS HOPKINS SCHOOL OF ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: Well, Russia is trying to push back everywhere in Europe. Russia wants to win the war in Ukraine, not militarily, which they're so far unable to do, but by convincing Ukraine's potential partners not to support Ukraine anymore. And so, you see -- you saw a stolen election in Georgia where people were pressured before the election, warned about voting, especially in small towns, told how to vote. During the vote, was not secret. There were all kinds of problems with ballot papers, ballot stuffing.

You then had an election in Romania where a dark horse candidate was running a campaign on TikTok that was funded and paid for by outsiders against Romanian electoral law and against TikTok's own rules. But it's part of a larger pattern. The Russians are seeking to install or influence pro-Russian or even just anti-European or anti-NATO governments and leaders wherever they can in Europe, not just in Eastern Europe but anywhere where it's possible.

ZAKARIA: In Georgia, the trigger was this decision to back down from the negotiations with the European Union. That was, of course, precisely or almost -- not precisely but very similar to the trigger that began the protests in Ukraine that led to the ouster of a pro- Russian president and, you know, eventually to this war.

Are we likely to see something like that in Georgia? Because Russia has much more influence in Georgia. It still occupies parts of Georgia, right? Could we see the restarting of some kind of a civil war there?

APPLEBAUM: I don't know about the restarting of a civil war but I don't think that this is going to be over quickly. Georgians are -- the majority of Georgians are angry about the Russian occupation of their country. Of course, many Georgians are also afraid of Russia. And what you're really seeing is a kind of clash between people who are too afraid and want to back down, and people who want to fight. It's hard for me to say now who will win. There was a similar kind of division inside Ukraine in 2014 and afterwards as well.

You know, the decision to break off negotiations with the E.U. that the government made seems to have been a kind of almost a deliberate provocation. Like they wanted to get over this hump, get over this decision in the winter while people are less likely to protest as a way of preparing maybe deeper changes in the in the new year.

They seem to have anticipated protests. They've used a lot of violence both on the streets but also targeted at people in their homes and outside of the demonstrations. And they seem to have been prepared and ready for this to happen.

It's hard for me to say from the current perspective what the final outcome will be. But the division is real and there is certainly a part of the Georgian population that will not give this up. They will not allow their country to be sacrificed or to become somehow part of a Russian bloc or an anti-Ukrainian bloc without further protest. So, the story is not over.

ZAKARIA: So, Anne, as all -- it seems like all of Europe is watching this Russian pressure influence in Romania and Georgia, as you say even parts of what we used to call Western Europe, and wondering whether the Russian effort will be successful. Meanwhile, you have the big new shift, which is Donald Trump becoming president of the United States. And in Paris, he seemed to embrace Zelenskyy, talk about how, you know, the war had to be ended.

[10:45:03]

Some of the things he said even with regard to Syria were about how the Russians need to come to their senses and realize they're losing the war. And yet he has also said recently that he would absolutely pull out of NATO if the United States was not treated fairly. How are Europeans thinking about Donald Trump in this context of the Russian efforts to weaken the European Union?

APPLEBAUM: So, Donald Trump's attitude both to Ukraine and to NATO is still very unclear. He has said he wants the war to end, but he hasn't presented a plan

for how to make the Russians stop fighting. I mean, of course he could put pressure on Ukraine. Europe could put pressure on Ukraine. But there hasn't been an explanation of why the Russians would stop now. You know, on the contrary, everything that they have said makes it sound like they want to continue fighting and their plan, which is to partition Ukraine or occupy Ukraine, doesn't appear to have ended. And so, I think Europeans are waiting to see if there's something more to what he's going to propose other than what we've heard so far. I don't think anybody's leaping to any great conclusions yet.

Clearly, there are some fears that -- not so much Trump himself but the MAGA movement, the online movement that helped him get elected. The pressure on Twitter and on other forms of social media that that kind of movement could join with Russian pressure, with existing Russian online social media operations and seek to swing elections in other European countries.

You know, there's still more elections coming up over the next few years. There are -- there's an election in Germany very soon. You know, there will be one in France in a couple of years. And people are anticipating that, as I said, a part of the American political spectrum and a part of the Russian political spectrum might wind up working together. People are aware of that and are anticipating and preparing for it.

I mean, that's almost a -- that's a kind of different issue now from the issue of how Ukraine is resolved. Because Ukraine we're still -- we're still waiting to hear some real details.

ZAKARIA: Anne Applebaum, always a pleasure. Thank you so much. And we will be back with gender politics worldwide.

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ZAKARIA: And now for the last look. One of the most striking aspects of Donald Trump's reelection was the gender gap specifically how young women overwhelmingly cast their ballots for Kamala Harris, while young men flocked to Trump.

Is this a sign of a Gen Z gender war? If so, America is not alone. All over the world, the gap in the politics of young women and young men is widening to a chasm. As "The Guardian" notes, recent surveys showed young German men were twice as likely as young women to vote for the hard right AfD party.

In the 2024 election in the U.K., twice the share of young men voted for Brexit engineer Nigel Farage's Reform U.K. party than young women. Nearly twice as many young women voted green.

These political trends coincide with changing attitudes about gender among young men. As "The Economist" notes in a study of 27 European countries researchers found that young men, 18 to 29, were more likely than men in any other age group to believe that advancing women's rights had gone too far.

In South Korea, a 2021 poll found that just 38 percent of men in their 20s think that discrimination against women is serious. More than half of men over 60 believe that. That's in a notoriously patriarchal country, with the largest gender pay gap in the OECD, a group of mostly rich countries.

We know education is a key predictor of political affiliation. Well, "the Economist" analyzed polling data of 18- to 29-year-olds from 20 rich countries they found that the gap in political affiliation across gender lines is about twice the size of the gap in affiliation between those with a college degree and those without one.

Why are we seeing this growing divide between men and women? Part of the issue is social media, which is rife with right wing voices targeting young men, describing a world stacked against them. But another big reason is education.

In 1998, 21 percent of men in OECD countries had an advanced education compared to 19 percent of women. Today, that advantage has reversed and 45 percent of women have advanced education compared to just 37 percent of men. And education, as I mentioned earlier drives political affiliation.

This underscores an uncomfortable reality behind the numbers. Women have made progress in recent years, and some men appear to resent it. South Korea provides an illuminating example. A deeply patriarchal society, it has seen recent progress on women's rights and a MeToo movement of its own.

[10:55:03]

But that expansion of rights has taken place alongside a growing sense of scarcity. As "The Economist" notes, the percentage of young men not engaged in employment, education, or training has soared, as have housing prices. And scholars have found that a rise in unemployment in one's geographic area correlates to anti-feminist views among men in Europe.

In South Korea these dynamics are coupled with a deeply misogynistic strain in its politics and culture. Underlying the political trends, at least in the U.S., is a deep crisis in the well-being of young men, according to the scholar Richard Reeves, the author of the book "Of Boys and Men."

Boys trailed behind their female peers in early education, and men without a college degree face stagnant wages, though their wages are still higher than women's. Reeves believes one solution is explicitly pro male policies and rhetoric, which could counter voices that seek to stoke male anger without offering any remedy for it. Perhaps that would put some men in a better place to see that women's advancement matters. Whatever the solution, what this dilemma reveals is that progress does not march on unrelentingly, that in a constantly changing world, we must constantly tweak the formula to improve it.

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

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