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.

we'll begin today's show with a stunning announcement out of israel. is the bibi netanyahu era of israeli politics over? i'll talk to tom freidman of the "new york times." then, the strong man leader of a former soviet republic scrambled a fighter jet. the foe was not a hostile neighboring nation, but rather a 26-year-old opposition journalist. will state-sponsored hijacking as some have called it become a new tactic for despots around the world? i'll talk to the belarusian journalist and hanna liubakova. and then how did america, the world's wealthiest country, so badly bungle its initial covid response. >> china virus.

>> was it donald trump? >> people think that goes away in april with the heat. >> or was it something much bigger? michael lewis is here to tell us what he found. >> we didn't have a really respected and brave entity at the federal level to lead the response. >> but first, here is "my take." in a country divided on almost everything, one area of bipartisanship in the united states is alive and growing. fear of china. president biden says -- >> the chinese are eating our lunch. >> republican senator josh haully says they're well on their way to achieving the goal of world domination. they warn that the belt and road initiative and vaccine diplomacy are bolstering the soft power. let's look at what is actually happening on the ground. china's secrecy and deception of the origins of covid-19 have spurred increasing calls for

thorough investigations worldwide, including now from president biden. instead of being transparent and welcoming international efforts to figure out what went wrong, beijing's attitude has been defensive and obstructionist, fueling suspicions and conspiracy theories. this is part of a pattern. last week china's ambitious trade and investment treaty with the european union ran aground largely because of chinese overreaction. in march, the eu choose not to endorse the american characterization of china's act in shin jhung chin against four local officials an the regional public security bureau. as stewart land notes in politico, the beijing counter attack came as a shock to everyone. it places broad sanctions on the entire eu political and security committee as well as the parliamentary subcommittee on human rights, five leading european parliamentarians and

even academic experts who study china. as a result, europe has all but pulled out of the deal. or take china's relations with australia, one of the main trading partners. australia has been assertive on trade and human rights but always worked to maintain constructive lags. 4 last year they called for an independent inquiry into the origins of covid-19. in response, china had what could only be called a freak-out. beijing hit australia with all kinds of trade restrictions and the chinese embassy in australia issued an extraordinary charge sheet of 14 grievances accusing australia of poisoning bilateral relations and demanding that the country's media and think tanks stop writing negative things about china. in april, the australian government canceled belt and road agreements made with china. all considered china's handling of relations with india.

last year chinese troops clashed with indian forces in skirmishes that netted china 100 square miles of land along the frozen tundra along the himalayan border. the result is that india which has long been weary, is now much more willing. it is been a slew of chinese apps, excluding chinese companies from building 5g and joined u.s. and japan in the largest naval exercises in over a decade. meanwhile, taiwan and japan and those in the south china sea have plenty of stories about china using aggressive military patrols and intimidation to assert its interest. china's current foreign policy is from the country during the ping era and after. back then the central objective was to ensure that the country's meteoric economic rise did not trigger resentment and counterbalancing from other

countries. president tao spoke often of the peaceful rise to describe china's aspirations and strategy. now chinese diplomats embrace conflict and hurl insists known as wolf warrior diplomacy. what is striking about china's strategy is it's produced a series of own goals, leading countries to adopt the very policies beijing has long tried to stop. there have also been serious consequences for its global image, greatly diminishing soft power. negative views toward china soared from 47% in 2017 to a staggering 73% in 2020. and if you think that is a u.s. phenomenon, here are the numbers from some other countries. 73% in canada, 37% to 74% in britain. 32% to 81% in australia. 61% to 75% in south korea.

and 49% to 85% in sweden. if there is a single theme in international life these days, it is rising public hostility toward china worldwide. president xi transformed china's approach domestically and abroad. he has consolidated power for the party and himself. he has reasserted party control over economic putting curbs on the most innovative parts of the chinese economy and the technology sector and lavishing benefits on the most unproductive the state owned enterprises. he's pursued an emotional foreign policy. in doing all of this, he's dismantling the hard earned reputation as a smart and productive player on the world stage, bringing to mind another period of centralized politics and aggressive foreign policy. the mao era, and that did not

end so well for china. to go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my washington post column this week. and let's get started. benjamin netanyahu has been a most dominant force in israeli politics for decades, prime minister of industrial for the last 12 years and served a three-year stint in the late '90s, but the netanyahu era may be coming to a close as a coalition is being formed to oust him. joining me now is tom freedman who was one once the jerusalem bureau chief for "the new york times" and now the foreign affairs columnist and the author of "from beirut to jerusalem." a classic. who knows where this goes because there need to be seven coalition agreements, lawyers will look at this, it might even

go to court because it is not clear that you could have bennett as prime minister if the president had asked lapide. what does it mean if the bibi netanyahu era is over? >> if it is over, if it comes together with a national unite government in israel, let me put it in terms that americans could understand. this is bidenism coming to israel. it is a backlash against a leader who developed a personality cult, who basically lived by dividing people, who is extremely allegedly corrupt. he's now on trial for three corruption cases. it is the triumph of people who believe in institutions, the rule of law and decency. it is the beginning potentially of a biden backlash in israel. >> but let me ask you, tom, when

you look at some of the key figures here, naftali bennett is somebody who on the issue of israel-plastin is more hawkish than netanyahu. never giving up the west bank and he's talked about how you saw nothing wrong with killing arabs and you could see that lieberman advocated moving palestinians who are israeli citizens in some cases off the land. what does that tell us? should we really welcome this? >> if you think this is a prelude to peace, that is not the case. but what bennett has been a strong advocate of, fareed, is a very strong autonomy for palestinians in the west bank. and i think you could see a consensus forming in this new

coalition, this potential national unity coalition around more separation and more autonomy for palestinians in the west bank as a potential stepping stone for something else. right now, fareed, the most important thing for american diplomacy and american politics is to keep one thing alive, and it is the two-state solution and i see this coalition potentially doing that because i think there is a common denominator for separation and real palestinian ouautonomy unless daily delegitimization is a staple of netanyahu's force. >> tom, you've covered the middle east for 30 years. when you wrote "from beirut to jerusalem," you were very hopeful about the two-state solution and you advocated it

even then. at this point when you look at the encroachment of settlements and the israeli politics, when you look at the degree to which palestinian's defunction remains, gaza being ruled by hamas, do you underand do you think that there will be traction for this idea that you are seeing going on the palestinian side and with some liberal zionists like peter beinart, maybe the only solution is one binational state in which you give the palestinians political rights within israel? >> i don't really see that happening, fareed. i think the best you could hope for -- i do think we're in the one-state reality more than in the two-state reality, but i don't see it as a one-state reality in which the jewish majority basically gives full equality to the palestinian minority if you brought in the 2.5 million palestinians from

the west bank. but i do think we're in a phase where the dangers to israel of becoming apartheid state, are becoming so clear, it became clear in the last two weeks here. fareed, we may be seeing in joe biden the last pro-israel democratic president of the united states if you look where the rising left in that party is today. and, therefore, i think you will see a stronger move toward building more separation and creating a much stronger autonomy and preserving the possibility for a two-state solution. that is the most we could hope for right now, but that is a possibility with this new coalition. >> tom freedman, you're always so insightful on this. thank you. >> thanks, fareed. next on "gps," we'll dig into the bizarre story of belarus forcing a passenger plane down and then arresting a passenger who was a thorn in the side of the country's strong man leader. go ♪ ♪ where everybody knows your name ♪

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last sunday's ryan air flight 4978 started out as just another trip from athens, greece to lithuania but it was a pawn in an international incident after a security alert caused it to land in belarus. once on the ground it was boarded by those who arrested roman protosevich a thorn in the side of belarus president lukashenko. ryan air called the incident a state-sponsored hijacking. it was widely condemned by western nations.

let me bring in hanna liubakova, a journalist from belarus and fellow at the lilgt anian council. anne applebaum published a piece on the incident titled "other regimes will hijack planes, too." it is a must-read. and explain this to us in historical consequence, the last time we heard that lucashenko, and theres with massive protests in belarus. many governments supported those protests. he seemed flailing, and now this. explain. >> so, yes, you're absolutely right. lukashenko last summer seemed to be close to resignation, leaving this job. the entire country had turned against him and remember, this is a country that was created out of what used to be the soviet union, although it has a

long history, it had never been a state before and there was a feeling that we as a nation for the first time are united in saying what we want and what we want is to be a democracy and to elect our own president. lukashenko managed to stay in power. he lived through the crisis. partly because he escalated the level of violence that he had been using and partly because he got support from russia. and so he was offered this hand of friendship from putin, and that was clearly what prevented him from leaving the country and what made him decide to stay in power. i don't think the fact that he is still there means that people are any less determined that he should leave or that they don't want him to leave. but the level of violence there is now at an extraordinary high. i'm not sure that people outside of the country will believe it or really understand what has happened. people are being arrested off the street, people are tortured in prison and raped in prison. there have been several deaths in prison recently.

a few days ago, a very young boy of 17 committed suicide in prison. this is a very, very brutal regime now. and the fact that they were willing to hijack this plane shows that the degree to which they are willing to defy the rule of law in the country but also around the world. >> and hanna, explain this 26-year-old journalist. who is he and why is lukashenko so afraid or enraged by him? tell us about him. >> so roman protasevich has become a journalist in a very young age. he basically got involved in all of these political activities. he's full of energy, an extrovert, very brave, very loud. since 2019 he has been living in

poland, and he joined the team of this most influential telegram channel, it is a social media network that protested belarus in the very popular in the country and in november of last year he was added to the kgb terrorist list by the kgb which is the security service agency in belarus which only shows that he is kind of -- lukashenko considers him a personal enemy because he's a blogger who spreads information and informed citis inside and out of the country about what is happening in the country. he was a blogger. but because lukashenko is so scared of information, that is why he basically forced down a plane to detain roman. >> anne, it feels like this is a somewhat cruder version of a

russian strategy which is to say that vladimir putin has made it a point to attack opposition leaders, opposition movements when they're abroad. lukashenko said this in recent days, we have eyes everywhere. you can't escape even if you leave the country. >> yes, absolutely. it is not just russia, actually. the whole phenomenon of what summer are called transnational repression is something that is growing rapidly. we have examples of russians trying to assassinate in some cases successfully their russian citizens in england, in germany. we have examples of the chinese kidnapping their citizens abroad. we have iranians that have been murdered dissidents outside of the country for a long time. but you're right this has now accelerated.

>> anne, you raise in your "atlantic" piece. i want you to spell out a little bit, the real dangers here because i think as the way 9/11 exposed us to the reality that people could turn planes into bombs. this reveals a reality that if an authoritarian regime wants to send a jet up to into space, it could force any civilian airline anywhere in the world down. >> this is exactly why it is so important that the e.u. and the u.s. and other democracies react really strongly to this new level of provocation. because ultimately this is about breaking rules that are set up to help all of us. whether the laws of the sea, the laws of air traffic control, the point of those laws is to keep airplanes and ships safe. once those are broken, once autocracies are able to freely break those rules, we're all going to suffer.

i can't tell you exactly how it will happen or when the next crash will be or when the next catastrophe, but the use of air traffic control or the politicization of air traffic control is something that could have grave consequences for us all. >> hanna,and anne, this is a very important issue and you're very kind to have explained it to us. thank you. >> thanks, fareed. >> thank you. next on gps, the great writer and reporter michael lewis set out to understand how america could have bungled its covid response so badly in the first few months. what he found out will surprise you. he'll tell you all about it when we come back. >> if you miss a show go to cnn/fareed for a link to my itunes podcast. ck to that same old place♪ ♪that you laughed about♪ ♪well, the names have all changed♪

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book, like all his books, is fantastic. it's called "the premonition: a pandemic story." the central kind of insight i think in your book is that this goes beyond donald trump. this is a much deeper issue. how did you come to that? >> you know, i didn't -- it wasn't my own views that led me there. in fact, kind of surprised me that i ended up there. but i went looking for kind of the best characters to see this thing through, and when you spend time with people who have been in disease control or even before donald trump, they would have pointed out a couple of huge problems that would have made it difficult for us to respond no matter who was in the white house. and maybe the first is just basically an absence of a public health system. you've got these disconnected 3,000 people around the country local health officers with some guidance from the cdc, but also a lot of reasons not to completely trust the cdc. and that was sort of the other

thing that came up again and again, was just how the cdc itself had ceased to be a center for disease control. charity dean, a local health officer wants to rename it for the centers for disease and observation -- for the observation of disease. whenever she was in a conflict, whenever she was on the ground trying to control some outbreak of some other virus, she found that the cdc was more of an obstruction than an aid. and she actually banned them from her investigations. so she told you that that enterprise is not set up to do what people think it is set up to do. >> explain this more. because it is at the heart of the screwup. the cdc gets the first -- is late and then it has a bad test. why do you think this is happening? why was she -- was was somebody like charity dean so frustrated

with the cdc? >> well, what she saw again and again -- and the information and the stories before covid are so revealing. what she saw again and again is that, when you're trying to control an outbreak, it is inevitably controversial. you're walking into a clinic of a doctor spreading hep c with dirty needles, and you're shutting down part of a college campus because of a meningitis outbreak and people don't like is t so you're doing it over the objections of some fractions of the society. and when things got at all hot, the cdc would retreat. they didn't want to be there or want controversy. so that was part one. and part two is what they did want, they wanted academic papers and they wanted was to figure out the science of whatever happened, write a paper about it, and that is what the status was.

and the problem with that as an incentive, is that if you're waiting for perfect data before you take any kind of action, and the action is you write a paper, that the disease outbreak is over. that you -- the nature of disease control is sort of taking action with imperfect information in conditions of real ambiguity. it really is like battlefield command. and she just sensed that the institution had lost its nerve. >> you had this amazing moment where you describe how george w. bush reads john berry's book about the spanish influenza, and he decides that, in fact, the u.s. has a bad national health administration and he tries to reorganize it. does it work?

>> it does work. i mean, it is an amazing story, that bush, you have a traumatized president with 9/11 in the rearview mirror and katrina just happened and someone thinks it is good idea to hand him a book about the 1918 pandemic and he comes back to the white house and says, what's our plan, and comes the answer, we don't have a plan. two doctors, carter mitscher and richard hatchet try to figure out the answer to a very particular question and it is what do you do to slow disease before you have vaccine? how do you minimize illness and death? and the conventional wisdom at time which is hard to believe and it was entrenched in the public health community was you couldn't do much. social distancing, school closing and all of this stuff didn't work. and they thought that because in 1918 it seemed not to have worked. and so inside the bush white

house, these two guys and they're real doctors, like an oncologists and an icu doctor reexamine what happened in 1918 and write persuasive papers about how the reason that st. louis had a fraction of the death rate of philadelphia was that they introduced these interventions earlier in relation to the arrival of the disease. and this wisdom ends up being buried in a plan about how you intervene when you have a pandemic. that becomes the official plan of the government and it is in the cdc. now the irony here is the cdc was regarded as the world's great health organization, spread this idea to other countries. australia has contained the virus using the playbook the cdc handed them. so other countries executed our plan much better than we did. of course it is too simplistic to say it is just that plan. it was a plan, but the plan is -- was easily adopted to

covid, and we did not for a bunch of reasons, did not completely internalize the plan. >> next on "gps," michael lewis will tell us more about the woman who predicted the severity of the covid-19 pandemic. that story and more when we come back. saturdays happen. pain happens. aleve it. aleve is proven stronger and longer on pain than tylenol. when pain happens, aleve it. all day strong. ♪ na na na na ♪ na na na na... ♪ hey hey hey. ♪ goodbye. ♪ na na na na... ♪ hey hey hey. ♪ goodbye. ♪ na na na na ♪ na na na na...

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when covid-19 swept the world, it caught many by surprise. but some people sounded alarm bells early on. dr. charity dean, a former california state health official, was one of those people. she spent her career fighting outbreaks of fatal diseases lightning meningitis and tuberculosis. she knew what these plagues could do and how to stop them. her bosses ignored her calls for urgent action against this novel coronavirus until it was too late. she's one of the stars of

michael lewis's new book. you have many fascinating characters in the new book, but charity dean is probably the principal one. talk a little bit about what is the most distinctive thing about this woman. >> it is the combination of having so much fear inside of her with the ability to act so bravely. she -- her personal story is a lot like the tara westover story that grew up in an evangelical community, didn't want girls to be educated. they were just supposed to have children. had been obsessed with viruses as a small child. she leaves -- in many ways, lots of bad things happen to her. she has many reasons to be fearful. she is fearful, but adopts as a narrative, i need to be brave in order to do the things i want to do, and constantly sort of reminds herself that that's who

she is. she's churchill, not chamberlin in her parlance. and you need to be to do the job she's destined to do, which is to stop people from giving fatal diseases to each other. and the side of the story that was bring taking, you have walked into a public local health office and i have not but when you walk in there you are walking into a netflix drama. what is going on pre-covid is to unbelievable, that it is life and death kind of every day. and it is outbreaks once a week. and it is -- you don't know what saved you, this woman stood between you and a tuberculosis outbreak and you never knew it happened, that is what interested me about her. it was the quality of the person in the situation. >> she said men underestimate me, they think that my spirit animal is a bunny and instead it is a f'ing dragon.

i want to ask you about something about her that reminded me of your last book, "fifth risk." all these people, incredibly impressive, talented, devoted, who are not motivated by money. who are not doing this for the money. you spent a lot of your time writing about wall street and people like that. but does it surprise you when you see these people with this level of dedication and hard work and they're just doing it because they think this is an important -- this is important work? >> i have come to the conclusion that there is a separate gene, it's the money gene. and some people have it and some people don't. and the people who are really effective in public service simply don't have it. if they have it, they're frustrated because they're not getting paid. this woman, charity dean, walks away from they times the sum she could have made in private

practice to take this job as a public health officer. and doesn't even think about it. doesn't like gnaw at her that i should be making more, i'm worth more than this. none of that crossed her mind. so instead she's animated and i think these other characters in "the fifth risk" are the same way. what gets them out of bed every morning is not their bank accounts, it is a mission that they've identified, some almost -- you don't want to overstate this, but it is a calling. she has a calling. and it overwhelms all other motivations. she doesn't need any other motivation. and to me the tragedy of all of this is that we currently live in a society that does not honor these people appropriately. because i think that -- i think what teased more out of the population if we created a culture of recognition around it and people understood kind of sacrifices that some of the people made to do things for all of us.

>> and you have a calling michael lewis, which is to tell us all about this stuff in these just amazing, amazing books. thank you. >> thank you, fareed. >> i'm sorry to have to add a very, very sad coda to this segment. michael lewis's 19-year-old daughter dixie and her boyfriend ross schultz were killed in a car accident earlier this week after we had taped the interview with michael. it is just a terrible tragedy. we send our condolences to the families and to all those who loved dixie and ross. may they rest in peace.

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. and now, for the last look. the last year and a half has taken a toll on every aspect of society, from our mental health to our financial well-being, and now new data reveals just how much populations are shrinking. it's not just the excess debts from the pandemic, it's the other side of the life cycle too, all across the globe birthrates are falling. the first babies conceived after the pandemic was declared were born in december 2020 but that month in south korea and italy, both rates fell 10%. in spain births fell by 20%. and by january in poland birthrates were down by almost a quarter. in fact, aggregating 21

different countries, the economist found births fell 11% in january 2021 over the prior year. the magazine also noted that countries with a higher covid infection rate saw greater declines in their birthrates. when u.s. census data from 2020 was published much was made of the 4% decrease in births that year compared to 2019. but the sharpest dropoff in births came in december, an 8% from the previous year and that trend looks to continue based on the few states that have released data for 2021. in fact, a survey last june found that a third of all american women were postponing their plans to have children or aiming for smaller families due to the pandemic. demographers point out that a declining birthrate is a norm during such massive crises. but this is actually part of a larger trend that's been happening for decades in developed countries around the world. as gdp rises with higher

education and more women in the workplace, instead of at home, couples marry later in life and have fewer children overall. some of this is obviously a good sign, gender equality and educational attainment are certainly worthy goals. a decline in teen pregnancies accounts for one of the biggest parts of the u.s.'s declining birthrate. most would agree that's a cause for celebration and a in a world of limited resources there is a virtue to having fewer people on the planet. but the base of this decline matters a lot. because when people stop having babies, the labor force shrinks. and with it the tax base, pension funds, and all the resources needed to deal with issues like climate change and inequality. one need only look at the oldest country in the world, japan, where once american officials warned of japanese economic dominance, the island nation now faces a labor shortage.

there's one elderly person for every two working adults, and that ratio is getting worse. already medical coverage for some elderly people will be cut with some care giving outsourced to robots or other elderly citizens. but it's not just japan. in italy 23% of the population is over 65 years old. in greece and germany, it's 22%. for a long time the united states seemed to be avoiding these kinds of crises. part is due to the melting pot, immigrants add to population, and immigrants also have more children. but in the last decade or so it has joined the pack as overall population began to level off. you see, since 2007 the american fertility rate has been lower than the 2.1 births per woman that's needed to sustain the population. last year it fell to 1.6. on top of that, legal immigration has also slowed.

america's chief economic competitor china is facing an even steeper demographic decline. its own census released earlier this month showed a massive decline in births, and 18% decrease in 2020, from the number of babies born in 2019. the fertility rate is low as well, an average of 1.3 children per woman. already, the state has made plans to increase the retirement age, and readjust pension pools. this will have a significant impact on beijing's path to becoming an economic superpower. even the government-owned people's bank of china warned that china could be at risk of falling far behind the united states and india. the report pointed to the one real benefit that the u.s. has above all other countries in demographic terms. immigration. but that is, of course, as long as we continue to view it as a strength and not a weakness. thanks to all of you for being

part of my program this week. i will see you next week. let's get uncomfortable. that's when we find empathy. once we get past our differences, that's when we find empathy because real empathy knows no age no color no gender. real empathy says, hey, i see you. i feel you. i hear you. i understand you. i may not be you, but i love you. that's what truly matters. ♪ ♪ sometimes you wanna go ♪ ♪ where everybody knows your name ♪ ♪ ♪ and they're always glad you came ♪ welcome back, america. it sure is good to see you. my name is monique, i'm 41, and i'm a federal contract investigator. as a single parent, i would run from football games to work and trying to balance it all. so, what do you see when you look at yourself? i see a person that's caring.

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right now a mass shooting outside a concert in florida, a group of gunmen now wanted for killing two people, and wounding at least 20 others. >> this is a despicable act of gun violence, a cowardly act. >> breaking news israel on the verge of a possible power shift when an opposition leader announced moments ago that could end benjamin netanyahu's time in power. and president biden calls it an assault on de