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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Ukraine's Daring Drone Attack; The Future of Warfare; Syria Six Months After Assad's Fall. Interview With The President And CEO Of The International Rescue Committee David Miliband; Interview With Carnegie Endowment For International Peace Fellow For Korean Studies Darcie Draudt-Vejares. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired June 08, 2025 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:42]

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.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Today on the program, Ukraine's audacious attacks on Russia. Kyiv says it hit 41 enemy aircraft, some of them almost 3,000 miles from the border, all thanks to drones.

I'll ask retired Admiral Stavridis if this changes the calculus of the war, and what does it tell us about the future of warfare. I will ask an expert.

Also, Syria is now ruled by a former al Qaeda terrorist. Donald Trump met him last month and described him as young, attractive and tough.

David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary, is just back from Syria. And he also met with the country's new leader. He will tell us his reaction.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's "My Take."

Once upon a time, America's CEOs felt free to criticize government policies, often with a familiar complaint. Former Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg explained that by reaching into virtually every sector of economic life, government is injecting uncertainty into the marketplace. Cisco Systems CEO John chambers agreed. Business doesn't like uncertainty, he said.

This was during the first Obama term when the administration was trying to steer the economy out of a once in a lifetime global financial crisis. Today, at a time of full employment and low inflation, the Trump administration has unleashed a tsunami of uncertainty. Tariffs are on then they're paused, then they're back on. Then they get doubled. And what do business leaders say? Nothing. There are a few honorable

exceptions, most prominently Ken Griffin, Jamie Dimon, Larry Fink and of course now Elon Musk.

In the past, business leaders have routinely railed against higher taxes on businesses. Yet today, encountering a raft of new taxes in the form of tariffs, they've mostly stayed quiet. Many CEOs will not even dare mention that their prices will have to rise because of the new taxes on their imported goods. The new 50 percent tax on steel tariffs, for example, will benefit the steel industry. But studies have shown that for every job saved in that industry, there are 75 jobs endangered in industries that use imported steel in their products, like cars and construction.

Have you heard those CEOs complain? I have not.

Consider the hypocrisy surrounding the budget bill. CEOs have long talked about the dangers of budget deficits. And yet faced with a bill that will almost certainly result in $5 trillion added to the national debt over 10 years, most have taken a pass on objecting. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it adds only 2.4 trillion to the debt because they have to work with the accounting gimmickry of the House Republicans, who deliberately end some tax cuts in year four so that they add less to the 10-year debt projections.

If you look at the numbers seriously, it is obvious that the only way to pare down the deficit is to make cuts in the largest programs like Medicare and Defense, and allow many of the Trump tax cuts of 2017 to expire. Instead this bill does basically nothing to rein in Medicare spending, increases spending on Defense, and expands tax cuts substantially.

What should enrage businesses even more is that the bill reaches into virtually every sector of economic life on a scale that is mind boggling. The best practices for taxes are to keep the rules simple and fair, apply them equally to all taxpayers, minimizing distortions, workarounds, and accounting maneuvers. This bill proclaims no taxes on tips or overtime pay and new deductions for seniors and on car loan interest.

[10:05:07]

So a waiter who makes $50,000 will get a break, but not a dishwasher. Workers in jobs that pay overtime get a tax break, but not those in jobs that may pay less. But just don't bill it as overtime. Expect lots of people to try to reclassify their income as tips and overtime.

As the nonpartisan Tax Foundation points out, these breaks come with various conditions and guardrails that, if enacted, will likely require hundreds of pages of IRS guidance to interpret. And the IRS will have to adjudicate all this complexity with up to 40 percent of its workforce eventually cut, which means there will be lots of tax cheats who get away with fraud.

The Tax Foundation concludes that the new rules and compliance costs, in many cases, probably outweigh any potential tax benefits. The American economy is now more politicized than it has ever been.

President Trump threatens tariffs on individual businesses like Apple and Mattel. On Thursday, he threatened to terminate government contracts with Elon Musk's companies. He tells businessmen who want favorable treatment to ask him personally. This week, his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, boasted that business leaders are begging to meet with this president and begging to come to the White House.

Trump has explained how he views the American economy not as a vast and gloriously complex free market system, with hundreds of millions of private transactions. No. To him, it is one big, beautiful store. I own the store, he explained, and I set prices. And I'll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay. Business leaders must deal with America the way they used to deal with third world dictatorships, appeased the supreme leader, and they are adjusting to this new model quietly without much dissent.

There's a new biography about William F. Buckley, Jr., the intellectual godfather of the American right. Buckley was a friend of mine, and I once remember him making an odd statement. He said to me that his favorite country in the world might be Switzerland. I asked why. He explained that it was a genuine free market democracy where the government truly left people alone. He explained that if you ask the average person in Switzerland who is the president of your country, most wouldn't know. Needless to say, Bill Buckley's dream would be Donald Trump's nightmare.

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

Operation Spiderweb that was the name of a daring drone offensive. Ukraine launched inside Russian territory this week, stunning Moscow and observers around the world. Kyiv says the assault hit more than 40 Russian aircraft, landing a major blow to Russia's long range strike capacity. Moscow has responded by launching some of its fiercest aerial attacks of the war so far.

Joining me now is the former NATO Supreme Commander, retired Admiral James Stavridis. He's currently a partner at the Carlyle Group, a global investment firm, and also advises or serves on the board of a handful of defense related companies. He has a new book out called "The Admiral's Bookshelf." And as you can see from the study behind him, he is an avid reader.

Jim, give us a sense first of just what was your first reaction when you heard about this? Is it as stunning as it sounds?

ADM. JAMES STAVRIDIS (RET), FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER: It is stunning, but not definitive. What I mean by that is some observers, Fareed, have kind of compared it to Pearl Harbor. This pivotal moment that changes global geopolitics. It's not a Pearl Harbor. It is a very clever operation. It did three big things. Number one, it's an example of how penetrated Russia is by Ukraine. The tradecraft here, you can only compare it to the Israeli beeper operation of some months ago. Number two, it takes away a fundamental Russian warfighting advantage.

Russia always feels our country is so big. The strategic distances cannot be overcome. Think Hitler trying to invade. Napoleon failing. In this case, these targets were struck 3,000 miles from Ukraine. Quite remarkable. And number three, it just continues to show Russia that determination of the Ukrainians alongside this creativity.

You know, I'm Greek American. It feels like Trojan horse kind of moment more than anything else.

[10:10:06]

ZAKARIA: Yes, that is true with those canisters popping open and the drones popping open, much like the soldiers jumping out of the Trojan horse. But give us a sense with all that, what is the battlefield look like today? It still seems like we're at a kind of deadlock. I don't know how to -- a very bloody deadlock, but a deadlock.

STAVRIDIS: I think we are. And to me, as a military officer, a former Supreme Allied commander, what's ironic is that on the one hand, you see the most advanced kind of military technologies deployed. Think "Starship Troopers," the novel by Robert Heinlein about the future of war. But at the same time, it's World War I. It's the battle of Verdun. It's artillery, trenches, tanks, bloody hand-to-hand combat. It's the whole spectrum of warfare. And it does feel stalemated to me.

ZAKARIA: And does that mean when you look forward that, you know, this is going to just grind along? Is there anything that could change it? I mean, there's been a lot of hope that Donald Trump is finally realizing that the problem is Vladimir Putin. If you were to advise him, what could you do to put pressure on the Russians at this point?

STAVRIDIS: I'd say to President Trump, number one, go to Putin and say, hey, you know, that $300 billion in Russian assets in Brussels? Let's get to a negotiating table or we're going to use that to reconstruct Ukraine. Number two, you could say to Vladimir Putin, hey, I really don't want to do this, but I will give even more advanced long range missiles, more intelligence. I'll load up the Ukrainians. Vladimir, we don't want to get in that position. Let's get to a negotiating table.

And number three, if I were president -- advising President Trump, I'd say, you know, Vladimir, there's a bill in the Senate right now. I think about 80 senators support it. It would put secondary sanctions on any nation that does business with you to include China and India. That would crack the Russian economy. I think if President Putin were to hear that from his, quote, "friend," unquote, Donald Trump, it might encourage him to get to the negotiating table. Let's hope so.

ZAKARIA: And you think when you look at Russia's position strategically, I mean, it is 10 times bigger economically than Ukraine. It's four times bigger in population. But it's under a lot of stress, right?

STAVRIDIS: Indeed it is. And let's put it this way. Putin's hand of cards is actually not that great. He's playing it fairly well at this point, but he's lost a million young Russian men killed or wounded, probably another 600,000 to 800,000 have left the country. Huge brain drain. They did it to avoid the draft. His economy is teetering. He's having to pump everything into this war. He's mortgaging the future of Russia for his ego driven project to try and recreate the Soviet Union.

I don't think it's going to work. And I would not want his hand to calves at this moment, particularly if the U.S. continues to stand behind Ukraine.

ZAKARIA: Admiral James Stavridis, always so enlightening to hear from you. Thank you, sir.

STAVRIDIS: Thanks my friend.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS as we see the future of warfare emerging in Russia and Ukraine, my next guest warns that the Pentagon is drastically stuck in the past. He'll explain.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:18:22]

ZAKARIA: Ukraine's stunning attacks on Russian bases proves that cheap drones can be game changers in war. My next guest warns that the U.S., though, is stuck in old modes of war.

Christopher Kirchhoff is a leading military strategist who has helped launch the Pentagon's Silicon Valley office, formed to connect California's tech innovation with America's defense machine. He writes about it in his new book, "Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Future of War."

Chris, huge pleasure to have you on. You predict exactly what happened in your book. You talk about how these airplanes are going to sit on -- you know, in bases, and you're going to have drones that can come in and destroy them. Give us a sense of the asymmetry of cost. Like, what do, you know, these planes cost? And what does the drone cost that destroys them?

CHRISTOPHER KIRCHHOFF, FOUNDER, PENTAGON'S SILICON VALLEY OFFICE: It's astonishing. I mean, the drones that come in, the FPV drones are literally a few hundred dollars apiece, and they are blowing up, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of aircraft airframes. So the cost calculus is unbelievable.

ZAKARIA: Is this the future of air war?

KIRCHHOFF: It's not the future. It's the present in the sense that we are now undeniably in an era of treatable precision mass. So if you think back to the first Gulf War, I mean, what an astonishing display of U.S. technology that was where we all watched on CNN as bombs were dropped down chimneys and buildings. But that precision strike complex, we're talking about, you know, bombs that cost millions of dollars apiece, dropped by fighter aircraft.

[10:20:04]

These drones changed everything.

ZAKARIA: And they are cheap. They use GPS. They're -- and it's not just drones. The tanks we gave the Ukrainians were all destroyed by cheap Russian drones, right?

KIRCHHOFF: You know, Ukraine is such a tragic war, but there is a silver lining. And that is, it has woken up everybody to the reality that war is now drone on drone. And just to drive this home, you know, the U.S. M1A1 Abrams tank is the most advanced battle tank in the world. About $10 million apiece. We provided early in the war the Ukrainians with 31 of them. Almost all of them have now been destroyed by Russian Kamikaze drones. And that tells me that the era of mechanized warfare, which -- manned mechanized warfare, which began in the First World War, is coming to an end.

ZAKARIA: And you can't really update these old legacy systems, right? Like, what is the technology in something like the F-35 fighter jet?

KIRCHHOFF: So it turns out in the United States of America, there are two completely different supply chains for technology. There's one for military hardware, and then there's one for everything else. And the military supply chain runs by a different set of rules on a much slower clock because it's dated from the Cold War. It's designed to build aircraft carriers that might be with us for 80 years. It's not designed to, say, build an iPhone and come out with a new version every year.

So these two systems are mismatched. I mean, the F-35, it took 16 years for that aircraft to be operational. So it flew in 2016 for the first time with a computer processor, essentially a Pentium 4 from 2000. That same year, the iPhone 7 came out with a processor 100 times faster.

ZAKARIA: Do you think the Chinese are ahead of us in this sense that they understand that they can't match America symmetrically? I noticed, you know, they're not trying to match us in aircraft carriers and things like that. Are they relying entirely on or largely on asymmetrical and high tech warfare?

KIRCHHOFF: So the Chinese have a number of very significant advantages. The first is that they are a country of electronics manufacturing. They produce more drones than the U.S. and Europe combined, probably by a factor of 100. So they are a massive factory. They are also a country that's developing evermore advanced A.I., as DeepSeek has shown. Their models are just almost as compelling as our latest models. So when you put that together, they are going to end up being a very formidable adversary on the battlefield.

ZAKARIA: So how do we get ahead? How do -- because the danger is -- we're spending now over $1 trillion on defense. But I look at it, it looks like all these old legacy systems that are going to be destroyed by cheap asymmetrical warfare weapons of the future. What do we do?

KIRCHHOFF: So we have to start buying -- stop buying the old and start buying the new. And we're beginning to do that slowly. So defense innovation unit led the highest profile initiative of the Pentagon the last few years called Replicator, which is a program to develop autonomous weapon platforms in all domains, on land, in the air, undersea, on the sea surface.

The problem is that it wasn't started for more than a year and a half after Ukraine kicked off, and though directionally correct, the Replicator program was only $1 billion. And if you think about $1 billion in the context of how much money the department spends buying new technology each year, its seven-tenths of 1 percent of that expenditure.

ZAKARIA: How do you stop buying the old stuff? You know, because it seems to me this is still all, you know, under 5 percent, 2 percent of the Pentagon's budget. If you add all this innovation up, the problem is it's still -- it's pocket change, right?

KIRCHHOFF: Well, the new team in the Pentagon that's come in with the Trump administration, many of whom hail from Silicon Valley, are very much signaling they are going to take a break glass approach and that they are looking to swing significant parts of the Pentagon's budget to this new defense sector.

ZAKARIA: Chris, always a pleasure to listen to you. The book is fantastic. I recommend that everyone buy it.

KIRCHHOFF: Thank you. Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, six months ago, Syria broke free from more than 53 years of repressive rule. But now the country is run by a former al Qaeda terrorist and faces a myriad of threats, both foreign and domestic. Britain's former foreign secretary, David Miliband, is just back from there, and he'll tell us what he saw.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:29:12]

ZAKARIA: It has been half a year since Syria's Assad regime fell, toppled by a rebel offensive led by a former al Qaeda member. The former terrorist Ahmed al-Sharaa is now running the country. He faces a difficult road ahead, rebuilding the war torn nation, combating threats both internal and external, and working to rehome the more than half of Syria's population that had been displaced or fled during the nearly 14-year long civil war.

Joining me now to discuss it all is David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary and current head of the International Rescue Committee. He is just back from a trip to Syria, where he met with al- Sharaa.

So, David, give me your first impressions. You drive from Beirut into Syria. What did you see?

DAVID MILIBAND, FORMER BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY: The first thing you see is destruction. Just massive destruction everywhere. Even the outskirts of Damascus. Whole, not just buildings, rocked to the ground, but whole streets, whole communities. Including when you drive out of Damascus, when you drive north up to Idlib, Aleppo, these historic cities, enormous destruction.

The second thing is, as soon as you get out of the car, as soon as you talk to anyone, you have this sense of possibility, because after this unspeakable civil war, 13 years of war, one of the most brutal civil wars, after 50 years of Assad rule, there's suddenly a sense that there's something to play for.

ZAKARIA: What was the sign at the Syrian border as you -- as you --

(CROSSTALK)

MILIBAND: Well, at the Syrian border, it says, welcome to Syria. Syrians returning home. You are returning to build your nation. And it says, visitors, welcome to the historic home of civilization.

And outside my hotel, outside the Sheraton Hotel in Damascus, there's a sign that says, thank you, President Trump. Together, we will make Syria great again. Which isn't just rhetoric, because they've just done this really very significant deal. And you have to offer credit to the Trump administration and probably to President Trump himself for this. They've got rid of all the sanctions regime. So, suddenly investment in Syria doesn't carry the kind of risk --

ZAKARIA: Right.

MILIBAND: -- that existed before.

ZAKARIA: And that's the good side of Trump. Like, you know, this would normally have taken months or years of reviews and committee meetings and --

MILIBAND: Yes, to be fair to the Biden administration, they did an interagency process. In the interim, they handed it over to the Trump administration just in December, January. But he then -- he just went and did it. Half an hour meeting. I looked at you, the new president. I think I can work with him. Sanctions off. We'll go for it.

ZAKARIA: So, he looked at him. He thought he was young, attractive, tough. What did you think when you met with him?

MILIBAND: He's in charge. He's strategic. He's not under any illusions about the scale of the challenge. I mean, the destruction of this country is enormous.

And he's got this passionate view, well-honed, that this was a revolution born inside Syria, not the product of foreign intervention. This is a homegrown revolution. And he's -- he's open to working with those who he learned to trust.

My own organization, we worked in the northwest of Syria as well as the northeast. Outside government held areas all the way through the civil war. So, he knew that we'd proven ourselves. Others, they have to go and prove themselves because he's -- he's wary as well. And what came through the politics of this are very, very tough because there's enormous expectation, enormous need, and the danger that it all takes too long. So, he wants month by month metrics and improvement that help him hold on to public support.

As we went up to Aleppo and Idlib, the government -- the services, the social services in the government held areas, they're in a worse situation than those in the rebel held areas. So, there's a massive job.

ZAKARIA: So, al-Qaeda terrorist turned moderate. There are two possibilities, it seems to me. One, that the al-Qaeda terrorist part was always just a garment he wore where he really was a politically savvy leader. And he thought that was a -- that was a clever way to position himself. And the other is that he has changed from advocating a kind of Islamic militancy, and he's now a moderate. What do you think it is?

MILIBAND: He has gone from being 20 to being 40, like we all -- we've all aged in the last 20 years. I think he would say he sincerely believes what he believes now. And I think it's right to give support for the right things to be done.

He says he wants a more inclusive Syria, in which all Syrian voices are there. That's important. He wants a stabilizing Syria that has no conflict with any of its neighbors, including Israel. And he referred to the bombing campaign that's still going on from Israel into Syria at the moment. But he also made clear he -- which he said publicly, since I saw him, there are enemies of Syria who are enemies of mine. He said that publicly.

So, I think there's an absolute imperative here to support the Syrian people, Syrian civil society, opposition groups, independent journalism is beginning there. They were supported throughout the civil war. They need support now.

And above all, the Syrian people who have suffered so much, 16 million people in humanitarian need today in Syria on the IRC emergency watch list for good reason. They need help now.

ZAKARIA: The IRC is one of the world leaders in humanitarian aid. What have the budget cuts, the essential dismantling of USAID that Elon Musk's DOGE did? What is the effect on the ground that you see?

MILIBAND: Well, it's deadly, Fareed. It's deadly. Two million IRC clients have already lost services, including in the world's worst humanitarian hotspots like Sudan and --

ZAKARIA: These are people who relied on you for food and medicine.

MILIBAND: Yes. And more than 2 million have already lost services. The Boston School of Public Health has concluded that by May the 30th, 100,000 adults and 200,000 children have already lost their lives as a result of the cuts.

[10:35:09] And the anchor of the global aid system, which was the U.S., has been pulled up and we don't know what kind of future funding there will be. We're sustaining services where the government have said to us continue, but I can't disguise from you the deadly effects of the cuts so far.

ZAKARIA: David Miliband, always a pleasure.

MILIBAND: Thank you very much.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, America is a divided nation for certain. But I'll tell you about a nation that is even more deeply divided, especially on gender lines. What did that mean for a recent crucial election? Stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:40:09]

ZAKARIA: Six months ago, South Korea's then president declared martial law in a power grab that plunged the nation into chaos. This week, South Koreans elected a new president, Lee Jae-myung. A key battle in the election was drawn along gender lines.

According to one exit poll, around 60 percent of women in their 20s and 30s voted for Lee, a liberal, while a majority of men in the same age bracket voted for the more conservative candidates. What makes South Korea so divided along gender lines?

Joining me now from Seoul is Darcie Draudt, a fellow for Korean Studies at the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Darcie, welcome. First, give us a sense of this new president. People call him the Bernie Sanders of Korea. What does that mean?

DARCIE DRAUDT-VEJARES, FELLOW FOR KOREAN STUDIES, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE: Yes, Lee Jae-myung has been a bit of a controversial figure of late. During the last presidential election in 2022, when he lost by less than one percentage point to Yoon Suk Yeol, the president who was impeached, he presented himself as the Bernie Sanders.

He rode to the national attention because of his promotion of a universal basic income. He paid a lot of attention to social issues, particularly women's issues, gender issues. It was remarkable, that since the martial law declaration and the political crisis of the past six months in South Korea Lee Jae-myung actually pivoted to present himself as more of a centrist, a pragmatist.

So, he's no longer calling himself a Bernie Sanders. In fact, a couple of times he has likened himself to Trump, more of a populist. So, there's a lot of things going on. There's a lot of questions that still remain of who he is going forward.

ZAKARIA: And tell us about the gender issue. I mean, the divide seems really about as stark as anywhere in the world. Why are South Korean men and women diverging so much in terms of their political affiliations?

DRAUDT-VEJARES: Yes. I mean, as you mentioned, across the world, we're seeing a gender divide. And particularly it's pronounced among younger Koreans, right? This is a story that we're seeing in Europe, we're certainly seeing in the United States, but it's so far apart in the South Korean case.

And we can see that in this election. We can see this in the previous election. In fact, the previous election is, I think, what fomented a lot of these to the national stage.

A few years earlier, Korea had a pretty strong MeToo movement. There were some pretty big national attention made to gender-based violence. The murder of a young woman at a train station in Seoul really catapulted the issue of gender inequality onto the national agenda, and that was stoked in the 2022 election.

ZAKARIA: So, explain the gender divide in Korea to me because you have -- I mean, the social conditions that lead to it. So, you have women in Korea who often when I've gone there and you read about who talk about a very conservative, patriarchal society, which is still very reluctant to, you know, empower or liberate women.

But now you have a male backlash to whatever efforts were made to empower women. So, you know, what are the two -- what are the drivers on each end?

DRAUDT-VEJARES: Yes, I think there's two levels to this. Like you mentioned, there is a social or cultural dimension. Family based laws are still really strong in South Korea, and strong gender lines are part of that, right?

The second factor that I think is really the strongest one that's causing this to be a tipping point is the economics of having a family and the difficulty of finding work. The workplace is really hard to have work life balance. And so, that's making women delay getting married, delay having childbirth.

And then that's not really fitting into the traditional timeline for having families. And that's bubbling over to how men feel. They're not able to keep up to the -- to the timeline that they want to have their families either.

So, I think that that's at the core of this, but it has become such a big political issue that it's kind of taken on a life of its own.

ZAKARIA: So let me ask you, finally, you know, we look from the outside at Korea and it's a huge success story. There are very few countries in the world that have gone from developing country status to developed, and Korea has made that. You know, if you think about it, it's basically like Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, that's, you know, a very small number. Everybody else gets stuck in the middle- income trap.

So, it looks like Korea is -- Korea -- South Korea is successful. What does all this tell you about that picture that we should understand? DRAUDT-VEJARES: So, I think about Korea in comparative perspective a lot. And I think social changes that happened on the ground in Europe, in North America, things that took three generations, happened in less than a generation in South Korea.

[10:45:04]

And so, that's putting a lot of pressure on society to come up with changes that it's just maybe not ready for. Cultural changes are slow, right? Even if economic changes can be fast. So, social changes are slow. Political changes are slow. Institutional changes are slow.

And so, it's really a lot of these things are what's happening everywhere. It just happens at a much faster pace in South Korea. So, I think that helps explain some of these things. And it also means that Korea can kind of be a bellwether for what's going on in other places.

So, we need to be watching what South Korea does to grapple with these sorts of things in order to adapt elsewhere around the world, as well.

ZAKARIA: That's fascinating. The downside of rapid success. Darcie, thank you so much. Pleasure to have you on.

Next on GPS, I'll tell you about the latest victory for the MAGA movement abroad, it's an important one, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:36]

ZAKARIA: And now for the last look. There's a battle underway in Eastern Europe over two competing visions of the West. The liberalism of Europe's oldest democracies, and the populism of Donald Trump's America. As the "Times" also notes this week, that battle played out in Poland with a victory for populism.

In the presidential election held last Sunday, Poles elected Karol Navrotsky, a Trump endorsed conservative who ran a Poland first campaign and told voters that Poland did not want to be a European Union province. He will now oppose Poland's center right prime minister, Donald Tusk, who has for the last two years attempted to strengthen Polish democracy by, for example, making the judiciary more independent.

Navrotsky as president will have limited powers, but he will be able to veto Tusk's legislation, and he has hinted that he is likely to do so. The election, writes the polish journalist Jaroslaw Kuisz in the "FT," signals the death knell for any chance of restoring the rule of law after the era of populist rule.

Navrotsky will join leaders like Viktor Orban of Hungary and Robert Fico of Slovakia as illiberal Euroskeptic voices in the region. But bear in mind he didn't win in a landslide. He won 50.89 percent of the vote to his opponent's 49.11 percent. Nor does this represent a decisive victory of populism in the region. The battles between two visions for the future rage everywhere. Look at Romania. In May, it elected as president Nicusor Dan, a pro-EU liberal, over pro-MAGA Euroskeptic George Simion.

Dan's election was a victory for liberalism, but it was by no means guaranteed. In the first round, Simion was actually ahead, and he lost only after a series of what the "Economist" calls gratuitous errors. Skipping debates were done and making ill-fated attempts to court ethnic Hungarian voters.

In December, Romania's constitutional court had called off the previous presidential election, in which Calin Georgescu, the far- right nationalist who praised Putin and the 1930's Romanian fascists, won the first round. The court claimed election interference from Russia and annulled the vote.

The dangers of illiberalism are perhaps the gravest in countries close to Russia, and susceptible to its political influence. Take Moldova. Maia Sandu, the country's incumbent pro-Europe president, was reelected in November. Brussels watched the election nervously because though Sandu came out ahead in the first round most of the other candidates were pro-Russian, but she prevailed against her opponent, who was backed by a pro-Russian party, 55 percent to his 45 percent.

But the victory masks a painful reality in Moldova. There is ambivalence about joining the E.U. In a referendum on whether to put the country's aspirations to join the E.U. into the constitution, 50.35 percent voted in favor to 49.65 percent voting opposed.

In both Romania and Moldova, liberal leaders often blame Russian interference for undesired results. Of course, there is interference, but that doesn't absolve proponents of liberalism of making a convincing case for it, or of seeing its failures clearly. This is the contention of the 2020 book "The Light That Failed: Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy" by the political scientist Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes.

When the iron curtain fell, dissidents in Eastern Europe showed remarkable enthusiasm for the liberal western world order. People didn't want some new utopian regime. They wanted individual liberty and prosperity, values on display in the West. The former communist countries took up a project of western imitation.

But as Holmes said in an interview to GPS, over time, the benefits of privatization of those formerly communist economies were felt by too few. Corruption became rampant. People's lives didn't change for the better. And many of those who wanted to live in open societies simply decamped to Western Europe. Back East, frustration grew with the style of governance imposed from the outside without alternative.

[10:55:01]

Krastev and Holmes write that populism arose in part because of the humiliations associated with the uphill struggle to become, at best, an inferior copy of a superior model. The transition away from communism in Europe's East was never going to be easy. Beyond the region's particular struggles, the path towards liberalism is necessarily incremental. There is no definitive victory, no final paradise, just gradual betterment. That's liberalism strength, not its weakness.

If anyone needs convincing, perhaps they should look to another country where the promise of liberal democracy is deeply understood, Ukraine. There, people know how precious liberalism is, how much preferable it is to the alternative. So much better, indeed, that Ukrainians are willing to fight and die for it. A lesson for us all.

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

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