this is "gps", the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you live from new york. we'll start today's show with america this week enraging both beijing and moscow. russia recalls its ambassador after president biden says vladimir putin is a killer.

>> you think he's a killer? >> mm-hmm, i do. >> and the u.s. and china begin high-level talks. >> i'm hearing deep concern about some of the actions your government is taking. >> with an exchange of insults. >> the united states does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to china from a position of strength. >> two of america's toughest relationships just got tougher. i'll talk to richard haass, zanny minton-beddoes and admiral james stavridis. also, at the start of the pandemic, everyone predicted the greatest strategy would occur in the developing world. but, in fact, the poorest countries have suffered relatively few covid deaths compared to the rich ones. what explains this mystery?

""th ""the new yorker's" sid muk gee will tell us what in the world is going on. but first, here is my take. during his visit to asia this week, secretary of defense lloyd austin outlined his key concern. >> and while we were focused on issues in the middle east, china has modernized its military, and so our goal is to make sure that we maintain a competitive edge over china or anyone else. >> welcome to the new age of bloated pentagon budgets, all to be justified by the great chinese threat. what austin calls america's edge over china is more like a chasm. the united states has nearly 20 times the number of nuclear warheads as china. it has twice the tonnage of warships at sea, including 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, compared with china's two carriers which are much less advanced. washington has over 2,000 modern fighter jets compared to

beijing's roughly 600 according to national security analyst, sebastian roblan. and the u.s. deployed this power using a vast network of some 800 overseas bases. china has three. china spends about $250 billion on this military which is a third as much as the united states. michael o'hanlon of the brookings institution notes that, if china were in nato, we with berate it for inadequate burden sharing since its military outlays fall below the nato 2% minimum. at the height of its imperial might in the late 19th century, great britain adopted a two-power standard. its navy had to be larger than the next two put together. u.s. military spending remains larger than the next ten countries put together, six of which are washington's close allies.

america's intelligence budget alone, around $85 billion, is much larger than russia's total defense spending. and yet the u.s. never imagines that this kind of spending could ever be seen by other countries as worrying or threatening. in requesting even more money for his region, the head of the indo-pacific demand admiral davidson remarks on china's defense spending. >> i cannot for the life of me understand some of the capabilities that they're putting in the field unless it is an aggressive posture. >> but the fact that washington is spending more on the military than it did at the height of the vietnam war, even accounting for inflation, should threaten no one? in any case, the size of military spending is a misleading indicator of strength, far more important than the objective sort and the political military strategy used to achieve those objectives. the u.s. is probably out-spent the taliban by about 10,000 to

one in afghanistan, and yet washington has ensured that they rule the country uncontested. if the united states defined his goals carefully and has a consistent political and military strategy to achieve them, it can succeed. without that, millions of troops and trillion dollars will not guarantee victory. bigness is not a substitute for brains. consider two contrasting exercises of power. america's f-35 fighter jet program, bedeviled by cost overruns and technical problems will ultimately cost taxpayers $1.7 trillion according to a document obtained by bloomberg. china will likely spend a comparable amount of money on the belt and road initiative, an ambitious set of loan and aid for infrastructure projects across the world aimed at

creating greater interdependence that are important to beijing. which do you think is money better spent? the pentagon operates in a realm apart from any other government agency. it spends money on a scale and wastes money on a scale that is almost unmanageable. every government agency is required to audit its accounts, but for decades the pentagon simply flouted this law. in 2018 it finally obeyed paying $400 million for 1,200 auditors to examine its books yet it still could not get a clean bill of health. after pentagon accounting, the auditors were unable to pass the pentagon or flunk it. they could only offer no opinion explaining the military's empire of hundreds of acronymic accounting silos was too illogical to penetrate. the defense department has

failed to pass two more orders. having spend nearly two decades fighting wars in the middle east without much success, the pentagon will now revert to the favorite kind of conflict, a cold war with a nuclear power. it can raise endless amounts of money to outpace china even if nuclear deterrence makes it unlikely there will be an actual fighting war in asia. of course, there might be budget wars in washington, but those are the battles the pentagon knows how to win. go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my washington post column this week. and let's get started. ♪ ♪ it was a remarkable week for washington's relations both with moscow and beijing. we'll get to russia in a motion. but first, on thursday, secretary of state tony blinken and national security adviser jake sullivan hosted their

chinese counterparts in alaska. blinken in his welcoming remarks to the foreign delegation made clear he would press china on the uyghurs and honk kong and taiwan and then they leveled criticisms about america's internal affairs. each person was supposed to make a two-minute statement. his lasted 16. tony blinken then jumped back in with a rebuttal. all in all, not what was planned. joining me is james stavridis the former supreme allied commander of nato. zani michb ton bed does, and richard haass is now the president of the council on foreign relations. welcome all. richard, let me start by asking you, you staffed many summits and meetings like these, participated in many and have watched many. what did you make of the one in anchorage?

>> look, fareed, this is the most, as you know, important relationship of this era of history. there are profound disagreements between the united states and china economically, strategically, on matters of human rights and the rule of law. this relationship is going to take the most deft handling if these two countries are not going to end up in some sort of confrontation or relationship or where cooperation is precluded and i would say anchorage is not a good start. i and that is diplomatic. that is a terrible start and mishandled. way too much public strategic dialogues. we know we have real disagreements but we know talking about them in public forces people to take out postures that are for more absolute because they have to play to the home crowd, to the gallery. it makes exploring the possibility of compromise that much more difficult. we've really got to dial it down in public.

this applies to both sides. make it private. make it regular, make it sustained and see if we can't lower the temperature and just maybe, not just rule out confrontation over an issue like taiwan, but find some areas where we could make progress such as north korea, afghanistan or climate where they've agreed to set up a follow-up working group. >> jim stavridis, how do you see the summit, and do you think -- that it does feel as though we've been moving toward an ever-more confrontational posture on both sides. >> i'm with henry kissinger on this one, fareed. he said over a year ago, we're in the foothills of a cold war. we're continuing to ascend that mountain. we're perhaps note in a full-blown cold war. we're old enough to remember what the cold war was like. it was millions of troops facing

each other, two vast battle fleets playing hunt for red october around the world, but we're edging in a bad direction. i agree with richard on the tactics, it doesn't feel good right now. here is the bottom line, what we need and has been lacking is a plan, a strategic plan for facing china. and that means, kind of taking a page from richard's comment a moment ago, it means confronting where we must. we're not going to seed the south china sea to china. it means confronting on human rights. look at the cover of the economist this week, but it also means cooperating wherever we can. i think climate is a terrific place to think about it. bottom line, we need a plan, we need to get our allies in the game. and we need to get final -- we need to get the u.s. inner agency kind of pulling together, not in different directions.

>> richard, let me come back to you for a second before i get to zanny. i'm looking at the gamut of issues, and you raise some of them but it does seem to me, if you want to actually get something done in myanmar and maybe restore the previous government, if you want to get something done on iran, you know, not just climate change but even the pressing problems of today, china does seem pretty crucial. do you think there is any discussion on those issues or is the public confrontation we're seeing matched with the private freezing of the relationship? >> well, the discussion of these things privately even in anchorage, what there hasn't been in progress. and, look, even if the public side of this has been handled better, fareed, i think progress would have been difficult. but you're exactly right, north korea, 90% of the trade goes in and out through china. china is now bailing out the iranian economy with oil purchases. again, they are critical.

myanmar, they could subsidize this military government. so we could just go around the world and we could basically say we need china involved at times constructively. it is not going to be easy. xi jinping's china is more repressive at home and it is wealthier and stronger and more assertive. so this is going to be difficult under the best of conditions and my point is two, one is diplomatically we have to get this under control and second of all, we have to put our own house in order. in some ways the most effective tool vis-a-vis china might not be how many warships we have in the south china sea, it is whether the united states is politically and economically competitive. >> zanny, you have a cover story on china, and you're pretty tough on china but you come out eventually for engagement with china because you point out just how dominant it is in the world

economy right now. >> yeah, absolutely. and i am slightly less tough on last week's meeting, the anchorage meeting than james and richard. i think that this is a deliberate recalibration of u.s. policy to be more open in confronting china on his authoritarian and aggressive nature on human rights, on cyber attacks, on taiwan, but at the same time there is a desire to work in areas of mutual interest. and i think that in some ways both sides got what they wanted from that meeting which was to play to their domestic audiences, the question is whether you could then pull off a more strategic cooperative report and sounding tough on the other stuff. it is going to be a balance, but

i think it is too early to write this strategy off and i think there is a thinking in the administration, whether they could pull it off and to get the allies on board because we made it clear you do need to engage in china. this is an epoc defining challenge between the west and a rising china. it is going to define the next few decades and we have to get this right but i think it does mean standing up for human rights and calling out for things that offend western values but this is a country that is the world's second biggest economy with which we have engage so i'm not sure so that the biden administration has gotten it as wrong as richard seems to think. >> we'll have to leave it there and just to close at the height of the cold war the united states and the soviet union traded $5 billion worth of goods and services every year. the united states and china trade $5 billion worth of goods and services every day.

next on "gps", we'll talk about russia and another wild week of words. president biden said that putin is a killer. putin then challenged biden to a debate. what in the world is going on? ♪ (singing in korean) ♪ ♪ like an arrow in the blue sky ♪ ♪ (singing in korean) ♪ ♪ on my pillow, on my table ♪ ♪ yeah life goes on ♪ ♪ like this again ♪ ♪ you come and go ♪ ♪ oh oh oh oh ♪ ♪ karma-karma-karma- karma-karma chameleon ♪ ♪ like this again ♪ ♪ you come and go ♪ ♪ you come and go-o-o ♪ ♪ loving would be easy if your colors were like my dreams ♪

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russia reacted angrily, recalling its ambassador to washington and suggested an irreversible deterioration of relations might be at hand. joining me, james staph rid difficult, zanny minton-beddoes and richard haass. biden seemed to respond in a spontaneous way. was that okay or should he have been more disciplined and it feels like into -- if you're going to call the president of russia a killer, it should be a thought through plan rather than an off-the-cuff response to a reporter. >> as we said a moment ago, there is a reset and a recalibration going on and i think putin is a special case in this regard because strangely and mysteriously, he was treated with kid gloves, him personally, by president trump. so i think this administration wanted to put a shot across the

bow, as we would say in navy terms, right away. now, whether calling him a killer is exactly the right thing to do, i'm kind of reminded of that great book of leadership, "the godfather" by mario puza when don said don't make the mistake of your enemies. it clouds your judgment. this seemed calibrated to me, signaled a toughness on russia, particularly on vladimir putin. and i think he is a special case because he has killed. he's killed at the micro level, former kgb agent in the united kingdom, as zanny knows very well, and on british soil he tried to poison navalny and killed at the macro scale in syria and ukraine. so to me i found it honest and refreshing when he was called the killer. >> zanny, how do you think europeans reacted to that? >> well, i think that is going to be -- there was very little

publicly as you know. and i agree, i think it is accurate and in some sense refreshing to hear president biden actually say that. the problem in europe is, as you know, the europeans are somewhat split and some are much closer to russia and are very concerned about extreme hostility toward russia from the united states. so i think this feeds into a broader european, slight skepticism about the whole recalibration by the biden administration. it is very, very obvious that the europeans are not leaping up to be sort of -- put themselves behind the biden administration with regard to china or russia. so it is going to cause him quite some challenges to get the europeans on board. >> can you say a little bit more on china? the europeans are hesitant to come on board on china, why? >> because the europeans -- remember, just before the biden

administration took office, they signed a trade and investment deal with china against the express, private wishes of the incoming biden administration. and although the europeans are talking about, yes, yes, it is appropriate toward china they have been noticeably reluctant, i think, in recent weeks to embrace the biden administration's approach to china and make clear there is a joint western approach. as richard has said on your program before, the western approach to china is never going to work unless the west works together. the u.s. can't do it alone. china is the biggest trading partner of far more countries than the united states is. the reality is the only way to influence china is if the western democracies work together and in tandem and it is not clear that the europeans are willing to kind of sign up. >> richard haass, what about the business with russia? is this a refreshing degree of

candor from biden, or does it complicate negotiations with russia? >> so let me did me the skunk at the garden party. the issue is not whether putin is a killer. of course he is. the question is whether saying that publicly advances things. i think it makes it more difficult for president biden to sit down with him. how do you sit down with a killer? and also the united states doesn't have that much influence, whether it is with russia or china on the human rights issues. we can broad cavity our inhappiness, but mr. navalny is probably going to rot in jail for quite a while. mr. putin will continue doing what he's doing in ukraine and in syria, that shows the gap between our rhetoric and our ability to deliver. so to me the purpose of foreign policy is not simply to signal. the question is does this help us to get russia to do what we want in a ukraine or in georgia or the middle east. does it get mr. navalny out of prison sooner?

does it get us in yet another nuclear arms agreement that would perhaps capture a greater set of weapons? i'm not so sure. again, it is a question of tactics. and i'm simply raising the question that i'm unpersuaded this is the way to go. it reminds me of woodrow wilsons about covenants at the time of world war i and afterwards. it didn't work so well. the diplomacy is done in a smoke-filled room and then when you have the compromise and the agreements, then you bring it into the public view. stay with us. while the white house is celebrating america's vaccine rollout, europ's has been rather poorly executed. it is also created an opportunity for the far right and for populism there. we'll dig into exactly what is going on. this is 5g built right. only from verizon.

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and we are back with james stavridis, zanny minton-beddoes and richard haas. zanny, you explained to us very nicely the series of screw-ups that led to the problems with europe's vaccine rollout as if to prove there are crazy people on both sides of the continent. they've gone ahead and put up suspended astrazeneca because of what appears to be a confusion between correlation and causation. it is true that some people who have taken astrazeneca has had problems and it is not clear they were caused by astrazeneca. but in any event, further comments on this but also is this undermining the kind of centrist leadership in europe that had seems a bulwark against populism.

merkel is looking back. macron is looking bad. the far right has made gains in germany and in the netherlands in the election last week. what is going on? >> well, the main thing is that it is a real mess. and are very, very worrying. cases in europe are rising. there was a note from german officials saying they're rising exponentially. 20 million people in france have gone into lockdown. the variants are rapidly spreading across europe and less than 10% of germans have been vaccinated compared to 50% of adult britons. the european commission haggle the over price and liability with the drug companies. but then more recently, the sort of mess-up about astrazeneca has been extraordinary. first of all, european

politicians, particularly macron, poured cold water with no basis on efficacy of the astrazeneca vaccine. he said it was quasi-ineffectively over people over 65 which was no evidence and more than 16 european countries temporarily suspended the vaccine as there was an increase in cases of blood clotting when there is no evidence that it had anything to do with the vaccine at all. the amount of blood clots that happened were no different than what you would expect and the u.k. more than 10 million people, me included, have had this vaccine and they're fine. so it was a frankly a crazy thing to do because the europeans said it was the precautionary principle, but in fact by suspending the vaccines even for a few days, more people will have died because more people will have gotten covid than otherwise would have, and perhaps more important they have fostered this sense of suspicion

within europe about this vaccine. i looked at a poll in france where 60% of french don't trust the astrazeneca vaccines, and since that's one that they'll be relying on, they're in a pickle. they're threatening to ban the export of vaccines to anybody who isn't exporting to them. it's a real mess. is it going to help the far right? i think that is not clear yet. but what is certainly clear is that governments in europe are furious with the european commission and people in europe are furious with their governments, and if they don't get this under control, there is a lot of lives lost and it effects the rest of us. none of us are safe until this is under control across the border and across the globe and to have the richest parts of the world failing so miserably is a real, real problem. >> jim stavridis, i must ask you

to be brief on a divided disunited angry europe is no good for united states or the world anyway. it makes cooperation more difficult. >> i spent four years as supreme allied commander of nato. you have 28 nato nations at the time, different languages, different culture, different history. look, the vaccine has been a tale of three cities, if you will. china has handled it perfectly, if you will. because they have all of the authoritarian tools. europe probably the worst because of the 28 different speeds of the bicycle, u.s. probably somewhere in the middle. but to your point, if we want our allies, partners, friends, the greatest pool of democracies in the world exist in europe, if we want them with us, in front of china, if we want them with us in front of russia, if we want them with us on climate, we have to pull for them to pull together.

>> jim stavridis, richard haas, zanny minton-beddoes. always such a pleasure. thank you. next on "gps", a true global mystery, and a doctor "new yorker" writer who plays detective and sets out to solve it when we come back. she'll enjoy her dream right now. that's the planning effect, from fidelity. try our new scented oils for freshness that lasts. crafted to give you amazingly natural smelling now. fragrances, day after day... ...for up to 60 days. give us one plug for freshness that lasts.

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indeed, the third world as a whole has suffered much less than the first. the question equiping epidemiologists is why. dr. mukherjee has been investigating the mystery. he's the author of "the emperor of maladies," the biography of cancer" which won the pulitzer prize. sid, welcome. describe for us the magnitude of the misprediction. we were all expecting this virus to rage through the developing world in and country after country, it is india and nigeria and africa, there just aren't those many covid deaths, right? >> absolutely. that's absolutely true. so the magnitude is quite impressive. again, we have to make a distinction between the fact that virus is actually present. as far as we can tell, the virus is moving through the third world. it is moving through low income

countries. nigeria, india, pakistan, bangladesh, most places are reporting that there is virus moving through those countries. what is different is that the number of deaths is surprisingly low, and there have been several models that were created early in the course of the pandemic, models that try to predict how many deaths would occur in india or pakistan, and most of those models, the predicted models, are ten-fold off to 100-fold off in deaths and that is really surprising. >> and what do you think is the leading cause? what is the leading explanation for this mystery? >> so, it still remains i would say a mystery. but there are possibly many causes. and one of the things that i try to do is to dissect the causes one by one by one examining them and then either putting a yes or

a no as it were to those causes. the most obvious cause is that most of the low income countries have younger populations. so just to give you one example, the median age in india is 28. the median age in the united states, italy, spain is in the 40s. so clearly that is one factor. but it cannot be the only factor, just to give you one example the median age in mexico for instance and the median age in some other countries badly effected is similar to the median age in countries like india, pakistan, et cetera. so one explanation is that most of these countries, these low income countries have younger population and they do get infected but they don't usually die from covid. so that is one explanation. >> what about heat? you sometimes hear people say well there must be something about the hot weather that in

africa is somehow sort of burning away the virus. i sort of look at texas which can get very hot and is it doesn't seem to be -- doesn't apply here. >> heat doesn't seem to be a reason of explanation. what might be a reason of explanation is that what heat allows you to do or forces you to do is ventilate. and when you ventilate, people are generally outside and they have crowded spaces and windows and doors are open, there is a lot of natural ventilation and maybe that is contributing, but we really don't -- we don't know whether that is a factor or not. heat by itself doesn't seem to be a factor. >> that would make sense because in a place like texas, everyone is indoors because the air conditioning is ubiquitous. >> exactly. and they're indoors, in malls and in places like environments where they are being constantly exposed to recirculating air. now, one thing that is very

important and i should remind you it is an interesting factor, in high-income countries, there is a phenomenon in which the air particularly are housed together so in nursing home, long-term nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, et cetera, and a full one-third of the deaths can be attributed to deaths in nursing homes and assisted living facilities in other countries there is a much lesser of the so-called warehousing of the elderly. they live in multi-generational families, but they don't live in large nursing homes typically. i give the analogy, there is a famous agatha christy novel called "the murder on orient express." and the trick is the famous detective finds out in the end there is not one culprit but many culprits. you think about murder mysteries

as having a single culprit. i think that the discrepancies in the covid deaths across the low income versus high income countries is like the murder on the orient express. there is not one culprit but a multitude of culprits. >> siddhartha mukherjee, pleasure to have you on. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. big and. yes, you are. i'm gonna get this place all clean. i'll give you a hand. and i'm gonna put lisa on crutches! wait, what? said she's gonna need crutches. she fell pretty hard. you might want to clean that up, girl. excuse us. when owning a small business gets real, progressive helps protect what you built with customizable coverage. -and i'm gonna -- -eh, eh, eh. -donny, no. -oh. -and i'm gonna -- -eh, eh, eh. my hygienist cleans with a round head, so does my oral-b. my hygienist personalizes my cleaning, so does my oral-b.

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. and now for the last look. the biden administration managed to pass the massive $1.9 trillion covid relief bill, but as experts have pointed out it was able to do this only because the democrats used an obscure legislative tool called reconciliation. if that hadn't happened the bill would have failed, even though the final vote was 50 yeas to 49 nays, a majority in favor.

why? because almost all legislation normally needs 60 votes in the 100 seat senate. you see, in america in 2021 the senate doesn't observe the founding tenet of a democracy, majority rule. instead it abides by supermajority rules. as the economist notes some countries, including germany and india require supermajorities. in that case two-thirds of the parliament, but only to amend the constitution. in denmark you need a supermajority to transfer oversight of some parts of government to an international body like the european union. the united states is the rare country that requires a supermajority for nearly all legislation. it's all because of a feature of the senate that has faced sharp criticism this week, the filibuster. the principle that allows legislators to hold up bills indefinitely, originally by debating them on the senate floor. it comes from the dutch word, by the way, for free booter, or

pirate, the idea that a person is obstructing the legislative process for his or her own personal gain. to overcome the filibuster you need those 60 votes. the requirement for a supermajority is, in effect, the form of minority rule. how did we get here? the answer can be found in a new book by adam endleson, once an aide to harry reed. it's called "kill switch," he notes that the filibuster was nowhere in the government, the first use in 1841 when south carolina senator john c. calhoun and his cronies talked on the senate floor for 14 days to kill a piece of legislation. the bill in question was about banking but what calhoun and his

cronies were really up to was protecting the slave holding south against the power of the north. almost 80 years later in 1917 the filibuster was expanded when a new rule was introduced. if you wanted to step a senator from performing a tuck talking trick you had to produce a two-thirds majority vote. from the 1920s on segregationist senators killed this rule. anything that might dismantle the race-based south was fill busted. from 1877 until 1964 only civil rights bills, which were sadly few and far between, were killed by filibusters. as you can see the tactic was invented and invoked not to protect our democracy but to -- often against the wishes of the larger public. but it took several decades to turn the filibuster from an occasional tool of obstruction

to a persistent feature of the senate. in fact, it took one man. mitch mcconnell. in senator mcconnell's first six years as minority leader recorded use of the filibuster averaged out to 92 times per session. that was double the average rate of the previous 25 years. today gentleson writes the filibuster doesn't even have to happen through debate. all one has to do is send an email to the majority leader announcing the intent to filibuster, and the business is done. the filibuster just adds to the senate's problems. fewer than 1 million people in wyoming have the same representation in the u.s. senate that 40 million californians do. there is no other upper chamber in the world that is so unrepresentative except the appointed house of lords in britain which is next to powerless. as paul waltman wrote this week in the "washington post," abolishing or reforming the

filibuster could actually incentivize republicans to work with democrats and foster true bipartisanship. if a bill is going to pass, whether you stand in its way or not, why not influence its features and take some credit for its passage? ending the filibuster is about more than any individual piece of legislation by abolishing this crazy destructive rule america could begin the process of healing its polarized politics. thanks to all of you were being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. ♪ ♪

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hello, everyone, thank you so much for joining me, i'm fred fredricka whitfield. stunning pictures out of florida for spring break, declaring a state of emergency. [ sirens ] >> spring break and the use of pepper balls being fired into the crowd. the mayor calling the situation overnight overwhelming for local police and the neighboring police departments brought in to help. at least a dozen people were arrested last night after multiple attempt