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 london today. on today's show, a secretary of state fired. a poisoned spy and the kremlin holds elections. first up, the american secretary of state gets fired via twitter. what does rex tillerson's departure mean for america and the world? then, a poisoning in britain sets on a major international incident with russia. >> the united kingdom will now

expel 23 russian diplomats. >> where does the former spy go from here? >> it's also election day in russia. but that really begs the question, will putin be president for life? i'll ask one of his opponents, but first, here's my take. if confirmed as secretary of state, mike pompeo will arrive at a department that has been battered by proposed budget cuts, hollowed out by resignations and vacancies and neutered by president trump's impulsive and personal decision-making style. but pompeo's most immediate challenge won't be rebuilding the department or restoring morale. it will be dealing with an acute foreign policy crisis of the president's own making, regarding the iran nuclear deal.

pompey know will have to tackle a genuine foreign policy challenge soon. president trump has agreed to meet with kim jong-un before the end of may, but before he even sits down with him to discuss a nuclear deal, they have to discuss how to handle the preexisting deal with iran. from the outset, mike pompeo has cheered trump in his hard-line posturing toward iran. trump announced that america will no longer abide by the nuclear pact unless the european leaders agree to fix the deal's disastrous deals. they seem sob worried about more than cosmetic changes and iran refuses to renegotiate. that means by may 12th, the united states is set to pull out of the iran accord, which could lead iran to do the same thing, and restart its nuclear program. this would happen at the same time as the summit in north korea where the united states will be trying to condition vince north korea to sign a

similar agreement. recall that iran did not have nuclear weapon, only a program that could have led to them. still, the deal required the iranians to scale back significant aspects of their program, dismantling 13,000 centrifuges, giving up enriched uranium and shutting down the plutonium reactor in iraq. the agency has cameras and inspectors in iran at every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle from mines to labs to enrichment facilities. the iaea attests that tehran has, in fact, abided by its end of the deal, even mike pompeo conceded as much. the iran deal is not perfect, but it has stabilized a dangerous and spiraling situation in the middle east. with a deal to unravel an already similar region would get much hotter. in an interview with "60 minutes" the crown prince of

saudi arabia recently confirmed his kingdom would go nuclear if iran did. the tragedy is this is an entirely self-inflicted skries sis. there was already enough instability in the world that the administration didn't need to create more. pompeo should recognize his job of secretary of state will be to solve problems, not produce them and he should preserve the iran agreement and spend his time on north korea. take a page from his boss' book. remember what president trump said about nato? >> i said it was obsolete. it's no longer obsolete. >> likewise, he promised to label china a currency manipulator and then decided against it. he insisted talking to north korea would be a waste of time, and then eagerly announced he would. whatever pompeo said months ago is now ancient history. he should declare right now under the circumstances the deal is worth preserving.

there are significant costs to the nation's credibility and reputation. if washington keeps reversing its positions on core foreign policy issues, yet there are greater costs to stubbornly persisting with the wrong policy. so mr. pompeo, repeat after me. the iran deal was bad, but now it's good. for more, go to cnn.com/fareed, and read my "washington post" column this week. and let's get started. it was a week filled with foreign policy intrigue in one fell swoop or one long tweet to be precise, the president fired his secretary of state and named a new one. he admitted to fibbing to the canadian prime minister, and of course, there is the big row between britain and russia over

a spy poisoned on english soil. joining me now, david miliband, the former foreign secretary of the united kingdom, now president and ceo of the rescue committee. richard haass, the former director of policy planning at the state department. here with me in london is the editor in chief of "the economist." david miliband, what do you make of the tillerson firing? have you ever seen anything like it in all your years in diploma diplomacy? >> no. rex tillerson was inexplicably abusive toward his own department. he tried to take on the state department rather than with the state department. but the manner of his dismissal and more important, what that portends for the future of american foreign policy, is a grave concern. i can't think of a more dangerous moment when you have crises around the world, not just north korea and iran, but

the tragedy in yemen, the man-made tragedy, and dysfunction in washington of the kind of the tillerson demotion and firing represents, and a new belligerence on the part of the president that portends some very, very major decisions coming up. i think that the rising fear is on the part of the administration because until now, the combination of tillerson and mattis has helped keep things in check. >> zani, when you look at it, what does the personnel change mean in policy terms? >> well, i think you have gone from a weak and ineffective secretary of state, but one that was broadly viewed as a grown-up who held the conventional view of alliances and the global order, to a man in mike pompeo who is someone clearly who the president gets on with, and who knows how to flatter the president.

who is somewhere between a hardcore realist and not america firster. you have trump there saying i'm going to do it my way, and you have had president trump in the campaign, he was all holds barred. he wanted to make america great by distancing the world as it was, and when you start it in. foreign policy, and we're seeing him get rid of the people that he doesn't like or don't look good on tv, and bring in people to his liking. >> richard haass, you long said tillerson should resign because he obviously didn't have the confidence of his boss. max booth, the historian says rex tillerson is the worst secretary of state since 1898, when the united states became a great power. do you think that's true and do you think as zanny does that the pompeo announcement is also a

policy shift towards a more hawk kish america-first direction? i'm sorry. we lost -- so let me ask you, zanny, do you feel like when you look at the new configuration, is it something that you're likely to see new policy on? because part of what -- for trump this is part of, more than just having somebody congenial around him, he simply didn't enjoy the company of rex tillerson. >> i think that's right. he doesn't like people who may or may not have called him a moron, but we definitely -- i think we now have people who have a different view on certain important things. as you said earlier in the show, on the iran deal, mike pompeo shares the president's view, and rex tillerson didn't. before that, you have that rex tillerson was, you know, in favor of the climate change deal.

he was much cleaner on alliances. on north korea, he didn't know anything about what was going to happen in terms of direct talks and partially the fact he was a weak secretary of state, but it was also partly that the president didn't respect him. is it better to have someone as america's chief diplomat who speaks for the president, which i think mike pompeo will do much more, but also you have someone who is much less likely, perhaps to restrain the america first agenda? >> all right. we are going to come back with this panel, including richard haas, and we will talk about trade and russia when we get back. i'm just worried about the house and taking care of the boys. zach! talk to me. it's for the house. i got a job. it's okay. dad took care of us.

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and hopefully richard haass if we can get him back. david miliband, big foreign policy challenge in your country. what to do about russia? we all know the circumstances, but i want to get your take has theresa may been tough enough in their response to what they believe was vladimir putin personally ordering a murder on british soil? >> i think she has made the right start, but it can only be the start because this is an attack not just on the uk, but it's the first use of chemical nerve agent since the second world war on european soil, and therefore, is an attack on the whole of the western alliance. i think the absolutely key going forward is going to be two sets of allies she needs to bring into play. the first are the obvious allies in the u.s. and around europe where they're going to need to work together for some targeted financial sanctions that really address some of the people around putin as well as putin

himself. the second thing is that we have to understand how russia has been building alliances elsewhere in the world. it has been reaching out to saudi arabia, and israel. those countries too who like to see themselves as close allies of the u.s. or the uk, they need to be part of a very clear demonstration to president putin's regime. the attempts to sew discord around the world, and undermine fundamental aspects of global stability, are not acceptable. frankly russia is now a member of the u.n. security council that behaves like a rogue state. unless that is met with a very clear and very united response, it's going to get worse. >> let me ask you, david, briefly. the leader of your labor party in britain has been much less tough on putin and russia than you just were. does that worry you? >> what's extraordinary to many of us, and i live in new york now, running a humanitarian agency, but watching the uk

debate, what one see social security a symmetry between what jeremy corbin says and what donald trump says. both of them seek to evade pointing responsibility to russia. both of them have a deep skepticism about the west that they end up excusing or at least finding ways to avoid, pointing the finger at russia undermining the system, and while skepticism about intelligence is important to policy making, when skepticism means there's more of russia than the west, it's worrying indeed. >> richard haass, i think we have you back. let me ask you, where does the administration go from here? are we likely to see a more america first policy, a neocon policy? give us the picture. >> the administration now has also sorts of challenges in its inbox. some it inherited like north

korea, and several, as you suggested, are of its own making, the iran and the trade thing. we have already got a new secretary of state, but the rumors are true, and it's a question of when and not if we have a new national security adviser and the constant is the president. the challenge is dealing with the real world as it is, and my crystal ball is no better than yours. i would simply say that this administration is on the edge of the most difficult two or three months of foreign policy in my memory and it simply can't -- the rule of thumb, maybe only one nuclear crisis at a time. i would argue on shelving the iran one, focusing on a more reasonable approach to north korea and basically walking back the issue of tariffs. it's very hard to confront your adversaries at the same time you're in a trade war with your friends. >> zanny, he really believes in the tariff issue. this seems to me to be the biggest danger out there.

>> i think he absolutely believes it, and i think the one thing that donald trump has been very clear about in the last 30 years is he doesn't believe in multilateral trade and he thinks america has had a rough deal, and he plans to trade that. one person who we haven't talked about yet is larry kudlow, the new white house chief economic advisor. he is someone who was brought in as part as a tv pundit, because he looks good on tv, he flat terse the president on tv, but he is a free trader. it will be interesting whether this man can convince the president not to be as extreme on trade as he would like to be, and the one area that i think you really need to look out for is what he does with china because china is the place where he has the biggest grievance on trade. the steel and aluminum stuff didn't hit china hard. there's a big question, is he going to slap tariffs on china for their supposed theft of international property? we can see things get nasty very quickly.

>> richard haass, president trump did say he hired larry kudlow -- i think he said i like what you said on tv and you're very handsome. i do recall during the campaign president trump said he liked what he heard you say on tv which leads me wonder, if you went to larry kudlow's tailor, would you be secretary of state right now? seriously, tell me what you think of the personnel. you have got 60 seconds, but have you ever seen more chaos in the administration, you know, in just the kind of staffing of an administration? >> no, and the president's making a dangerous mistake. he's trading people for whom he's comfortable. that's not what you want as president. you want people who will speak truth to power, experienced and confident. he may end up in the cabinet and staff he wants, but it's far from the staff and cabinet that he needs, and the contrast potentially between this most daunting of worlds and inboxes,

a russia that has become a real outlier, a difficult china and venezuela that's unraveling, the middle east that's unraveled. the pressure on this set of people and the chaotic process at the risk op being self-whatever. i wrote a book about a world in disarray, and the combination of a world in disarray and an administration in disarray, that ought to keep people up at night. >> as you say in a tweet of yours, richard, peter navarro, one of the president's chief economic advisers said he thought his job was to find analysis to justify the president's views, which is a rather bizarre way to look at it. you'd think you'd first do the analysis and not just try to justify whatever the president's views were. do you worry now it's going to be yes men all the way?

>> well, again, the secretary of defense is not a yes man. the question is whether he will be marginalized. we'll see who will come in as national securitied a vieszer ultimately. mierk pompeo, there's an old saying, where you stand depends on where you sit. my question for mike pompeo, is he in favor of tearing up the iran agreement when he was on the hill, or does he now take responsibility for the full dimension of american foreign policy? have a serious, practical approach, maybe entertaining an interim agreement with the north koreans, because we're not going to get full denuclearization. does he decide not to tear up an iran agreement when we have nothing to replace it with? will he moderate the tariffs? he has to decide i think whether he will be secretary of state or whether he's going to be a confidant of the president. there's tension there and i think how that plays out could be critical. >> all right. we've got to go. fascinating conversation.

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that's more speed than at&t's comparable bundle, for less. call today. our quarrel is with putin's kremlin and his decision, and we think it overwhelmingly likely that it was his decision to direct the use of a nerve agent on the streets of the uk, on the streets of europe for the first time since the second world war. >> that was the british foreign secretary boris johnson on friday pointing the finger for the poisoning of an ex-double agent and his daughter on british soil. earlier in the week, the british prime minister may told parliament she was ordering the expulsion of 23 russian diplomats and russia retall rated. joining me now, luke harding who wrote a terrific book on the

last known poisoning, the book is called "a very expensive poison." ann ap el obama writes a foreign affairs column for "the washington post." she joins me in london, as does businessman bill browder, once the largest foreign investor in russia, he's since become one of the fiercest critics of the putin regime. >> ann, what's the significance of what happened? >> the significance is that the russian government used chemical agent, a military grade chemical agent which it would have known, would have been traced back to moscow, and that's because they invented it. and in the city, they carried out the brazen murderer of somebody who had been a british spy and had been traded.

in doing so, russia broke all kinds of unstated rules. you don't attack spies that have been traded, traded and pardoned. the use of a military grade chemical weapon in a small city, all assumptions we make of how civilized countries behave inside one another's borders had been broken. it was destain for london, we don't think you're going to do anything to us, we just don't care anymore. >> luke, why would putin do something like this? it seems provocative, somewhat reckless. is it, you know, is it a new kind of aggression? what is going on? putin is supposed to be a smart guy. what is the strategy here? >> well, i think there's an interesting question about timing. this attack happened two calendar weeks before today's russian presidential election.

it plays well with conservative nationalist voters inside russia who maybe otherwise who wouldn't have gone to the polls. that's one dimension, but i think ultimately the target of this attack is the russian elite. i think skripal was merely the instrument. it's to anybody inside the russian elite whether they are an oligarch or a spy who is thinking about cooperating with the west in general, but i think i would say with west intelligence in particular, that we can strike you at any moment. we will damage you, your family as well, and i also think it's partly to do with robert miller and his investigation. bear in mind that the espionage operation to influence the 2016 isolation involved a lot of people. a lot of people know about this in russia and they will be thinking very hard and very carefully before telling anything of what they know. >> bill browder, what to do about this because, you know, i was struck by alexei navalny,

probably russia's leading opposition politician has a long interview in "the times of london" this morning and said, look, the weapon's response so far has the kremlin laughing because this is precisely what they wanted. they wanted what he calls another installment in the tv show that they are running called, "look, look, the west hates us," and that that, you know, feeds putin's nationalism and his base. so where do you go from there? is this crisis provoked for that reason? and if that's the case, the more you oppose him, the more it plays into this game. >> first of all, kicking out 23 diplomats is not going to have any impact on putin. it's not going to prevent this from happening again. this is the second time that something like this has happened in the uk. litvinenko was killed with nuclear poison in 2006. what putin will react to and the way to deal with this situation

is to go after him with targeted financial sanctions, to go out hf and the people around him, the cronies and the oligarchs who look after his money by seizing assets in the uk. everybody in the uk says we don't have any -- our cupboards are bare, and that's not true. what we have elsewhere, they commit their crimes in russia and keep their property in the west. >> you wrote a "washington post" column saying the reason london is not responding more strongly is because essentially it's been in collusion with russian oligarchs, laundering their money. and he says go after oligarchs and their money in london. >> that's true, and it's although not just london, although that's the primary place. numerous accounts of how he came to power, how he made his money,

show how he took money out of the russian state, he and people around him. they took it abroad, lawn laundered it abroad and brought it back. western banks, tax havens, accountants, western lawyers, western shell companies, all kinds of people, particularly in london, but not also in new york, miami, paris, helped them all along the way. this is why they have so much destain for the west. they think of us as -- it's corrupt, we can buy them. we can buy their lawyers, their political parties. i think the reason why they were so sure of themselves intervening in the u.s. election is partly that. we can use money to get anything. we got ourselves to power using western money, sort of leveraging our money in and out of russia using western institutions. why not keep going? >> stay with us. when we come back, we'll talk about just that. russia and trump. new reporting reveals that contacts between russians and

cambridge analytical, the firm that helped the trump campaign target voters. what to make of that.

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and we are back with luke harding, anne applebaum and bill browder talking about russia. luke, you studied russian intelligence carefully and its methods. i want to ask you, what do you make of this report that cambridge analytical, the firm that did extensive work for the trump campaign, really helped the trump campaign figure out where to try to bring out voters and where to suppress voters, and the russians had some contacts which had been previously denied by both sides. the contacts were through a rig russian oil company. is that a direct tie to the kremlin? is it possible this is something unrelated. when you read that story, what did you make of it? >> i was deeply disturbed. it was an astonishing investigation by "the observer"

newspaper. it's not like a regular oil company. it's an appendage of the kremlin. i think the big point here is the way in which unscrupulous powers like russia can take advantage of the porousness of the western system, the fact that we're open. for decades the kgb was trying to reshape american politics. now these methods have been updated for the age of facebook and twitter and social media. what we're seeing is an astonishing ability to microtarget people and push people to the ex-streams, to try to polarize the conversation. what putin has been doing is try to instrumentalize social divisions in america, europe and elsewhere for its own advantage. i think it's very scary and i think our democracy is in a more precarious and i would say

perilous state than any other time in the 21st century. >> bill browder, the reason this is potentially important is we know the russian intelligence services know how to do cyberattacks, know how to hack, use facebook, et cetera, but they don't have a reputation for having a deep and detailed understanding of which demographics in rural ohio and michigan to suppress and bring out, and that seems to have been provided by cambridge analytical. so if there is a link, if that's how they got the know-how of where to do this, that does suggest that there is -- i don't know what one would call it. but it suggests someone was helping them in the united states. >> if this leak turns out to be true -- there are people, as ann was talking about before, these western enable hers in all different fields. there's lawyers, investigators, now apparently there are

election -- analyzer manipulators involved in this kind of thing and they're doing it for money. they don't see it as treason or being unpatriotic and they're doing it for money. to the extent that that link is proven, it's highly disturbing that you have a major russian company that's effectively under the thumb of vladimir putin somehow involved in a situation where somebody knows how to micro target 50 million voters. >> do you think the trump administration's response to the poisoning in general, is it getting tougher, does it feel to you like that period, well, trump seemed strangely unwilling to criticize russia is over, or are we still in that kind of sfwhorld. >> i think his response to the poisoning was peculiar. he made an initial comments saying, it sounds like it's russia, maybe it's russia. he hasn't tweeted about it when this is his performed form of

communicati communication. he doesn't say it's a break of the rules, with we're standing by our allies. i was struck that john mccain had a much more forthright statement about who was responsible. it's very pro for ma and it doesn't come from him. and there remains something peculiar about his attitude to russia, as if he's afraid to attack them. he doesn't want to attack them. he doesn't want to be seen to be criticizing them. and apart from -- whether it was cambridge analytical working with luke oil, whatever his exact role in that was, we don't know. but there's something in his mind, something that's keeping him from acknowledging what russia is and acknowledging the kind of threats that russia

posetion to the united states. >> ann applebaum, bill browder, pleasure having you on. next we'll take you to russia for the latest news. [burke] vengeful vermin.

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russians have been voting for their next president this weekend, but i can say with almost certainty they will simply reelect their current president, vladimir putin. let's go to moscow where cnn's senior international correspondent matthew chance is standing by. matthew, what i want to do -- it's a strange sort of election, so i want to throw at you three pieces of polling that i've seen recently. "the washington post" put together a very interesting package, and the first one is simply vladimir putin's approval rating, which is still at around 82%.

i'm wondering when you look at poll numbers -- you see this, and it's done by reputable, independent often western polling agencies. what do you sense on the ground? are those numbers real? are people scared to say something or is putin genuinely popular? >> i think this, fareed, is a really underappreciated fact about russia and about vladimir putin. yes, i think he is genuinely popular. i know a lot of russians personally and professionally. a lot of them, despite their liberal sentiments, despite their pro western leanings in many ways do genuinely believe that vladimir putin is the right kind of leader, the strong kind of leader, as they would characterize him, needed to manage a country as diverse and as vast as this. putin plays to that, of course. he also plays this kind of hypernags nallistic card which is that russia is a strong

country and will stand up to interference and intimidation from the west. we we saw that recently the day before election when putin's foreign ministry announced its retribution and response to the expulsion of russian diplomats from britain, doing the same and upping the anteclosing down the british council and consulate in st. petersburg and he thriving on this idea that he is seen as somebody who is a strong leader who will stand up to the west. yes, i do believe although there are a lot of people in russia that despise him, there are far more who think he's the right guy for the job. >> let me ask you, matthew, again, looking at these polls, there are two more i want to show you and get your response. the number of people who regret the collapse of the soviet union. putin famously once said this is the greatest disaster of the 20th century. the number of russians who

agree, 58% of russians still believe that the collapse of the soviet union was a mistake or they regret its decline and the final one which strikes me as interesting. do you believe russians have an enemy? the ones who thought russia had an enemy, 22% believed it was the united states in 1999, and now it's 68% think it's the united states. so my question to you, matthew, is, is russia now of a mood that they wish they were the kind of great power they were in the days of the cold war, and do they really want to stand up to the united states very specifically? >> reporter: well, i mean, look, i think that one of the things that putin has done is give russians back a sense of their national pride, which they lost so dramatically and suddenly really, when you think about how suddenly the soviet union collapsed, back when that

massive geopolitical event took place. russians were, you know, on an equal footing in their minds at least with the united states, and they were suddenly reduced to an impoverished nation that had to go cap in hand looking for food even from other countries. it was a deeply humiliating experience for many russians, that fell off that perch, and you know, they clung on, they have clung on to vladimir putin as their leader who can give them their pride back, and that's perhaps been one of the main reasons for his enduring popularity today he's given russians back their sense of pride. it's incredibly important factor in this election and putin's popularity in general. in terms of russia's response, russia's attitude toward the united states, i mean, look, there was a moment when donald

trump was the candidate, when he was elected president of the u.s., when russians really believed, after years of being, you know, kind of jostled around and being disrespected by the obama administration and those earlier that they thought the situation was going to turn around. they had really high hopes that donald trump was the president who was going to see the world from their point of view, and so they have immensely disappointed in the past year and a half or so, since the trump presidency began that that did not happen, and i think that when your hopes are high and they're unfulfilled your disappointment is greater and i think that's why you see the heightened figures the united states is the enemy. >> fascinating reporting. that suggests putin will be reelected, reaffirmed and there will be tough relations between him and the united states and the entire western world. we will be following it and we will be back.

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if you'd have told me three years ago

that we'd be downloading in seconds what used to take minutes. that guests would compliment our wifi. that we could video conference and do it like that (snaps). if you'd have told me that i could afford a gig-speed. a gig-speed network. it's like 20 times faster than what most people have. i'd of said... i'd of said you're dreaming. dreaming! definitely dreaming. then again, dreaming is how i got this far. now more businesses in more places can afford to dream gig. comcast, building america's largest gig-speed network. the debate on allowing circumcision of boys is being reignited and brings me to my question, which country recently introduced a bill that would ban the circumcision of male children? iceland? france? sweden? or belgium?

stay tuned and i'll tell you the correct answer. i want to make sure you're aware of many ways to stay connected with "gps" outside of the weekly show. first if you miss a show download our podcast and subscribe to it, go to itunes or wherever you get your podcasts. also we have a weekly online quiz that allows you to test how well you know your world. go to cnn.com/fareedquiz, and you can also see how good you are at predicting world events. we've teamed up with good judgment open to allow our viewers to el us things like whether there will be war with iran or the china seas in 2018. you tell us what you think, go to gjopen.com/fareed. the answer to this week's challenge is, a. after passing a law in 2005 that makes female genital mutilation a crime, iceland lawmakers want to change the wording of the law from girls to children, according to the "new york times." the paper says that would make it the first european country to

prohibit male circumcision. although many icelandic doctors and nurses support the bill, it has come under fire from jewish and muslim organizations, who say it would restrict freedom of religion. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. happening now in the newsroom. >> do you think that the president is laying the groundwork to fire mueller? >> i just hope it doesn't go there, because it can't. we can't in congress accept that. >> i don't think the president will fire robert mueller. i don't think it would be appropriate for him to do so and i don't think he'll do it, and if he did do it, it would be inappropriate. >> if he tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency because we're a rule of law of nation. >> this would undoubtedly result in a constitutional crisis and i think democrats and republicans need to speak about this right