Brooks and Capehart on the global impact of war in Ukraine, historic inflation

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• Judy Woodruff:

  This week, Russia's war on Ukraine continued to dominate the headlines and the attention of Ukraine's Western allies. Meanwhile, rising prices here in the U.S. raised questions about how much the Biden administration can ease the pain many Americans are feeling.

  We turn now to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart. That is New York Times columnist David Brooks, and Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post.

  So, very good to see both of you. Thank you for being here.

  And we are back to talking about Ukraine.

  I want to start with you, David. The misery continues. We heard it from David Beasley of the U.N. World Food Program just a few minutes ago. The people of Ukraine are suffering. And yet the Ukrainian resistance has forced the Russians to regroup. They have taken down a huge ship, part of the Russian navy.

  What does this war look like to you right now?

• David Brooks:

  Well, the U.S. and the West are hanging in quite well, I think.

  We continue to increase the amount of arms we're giving to Ukraine. Europe, in a move that is really stunning to me, is trying to wean itself off Russian oil and natural gas. And so the alliance has held. And, if anything, it's getting firmer.

  But — and a lot of people — I think Fareed Zakaria made this point this week. There are — some say there are two wars. There's a northern war around Kyiv, where the Ukrainians are doing very well. There's a southern war on the border, mostly over the port of Odessa. And the Russians are doing much better in that southern war.

  And so, if they can capture Odessa, which is the main port, then they really will have strangled the Ukrainian economy. And if they can keep that territory, that amounts to some sort of victory. So, it's become very important that the Ukrainians defend Odessa and defend — do better in the war in the south, and that the U.S. becomes a lot more active in helping the Ukrainians with the anti-ship missiles they need to sort of do the best they can to fend off the Russian Navy.

  And so, while the Ukrainians are just being absolutely amazing, this situation in the south, I think, strikes a lot of people with some alarm.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And President Biden did announce, Jonathan, that package of another $800 million in additional weaponry this week.

  What does it look like to you?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  It looks like — and I agree with David that the alliance has held strong, and I think primarily because of what the United States has been doing and President Biden has been doing, walking this very fine line between supporting President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people's effort to push back the Russians, while at the same time not having American troops, having American boots or planes come into any direct contact with the Russians.

  I think we have seen, on a near daily basis, President Zelenskyy speaking to foreign parliaments and legislatures with the same plea: Help us. Give us weapons. Give us anything and everything we need to defend our country and to push the Russians out.

  And I think that — excuse me — the United States, while not wanting to have American boots on the ground is doing everything else possible to make sure that the Ukrainians get the materiel and the weapons systems they need over the border. And if that means nations like Slovakia and others are sending over their weapons, the United States will backfill them.

  And anyone who is afraid that Putin is just going to turn around and say, United States, we're coming after you simply because you're doing this, well, as George will told me this morning on "First Look," he said, what are we going to do? We're going to — not going to fall to the threat because we're going to make him mad? He's already mad.

  I think the administration is doing everything it possibly can.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And, David, I mean, just picking up on all of that, it your sense that the West is prepared to hang in there indefinitely?

  I mean, they say they are. We talked to a Defense Department spokesman this week, John Kirby. He said, we're going to be there as long as necessary.

  Is that realistic?

• David Brooks:

  Yes, the Chinese diplomats keep getting quoted in the press saying, the Western alliance will fall apart, the West can't take the economic costs.

  There's really no evidence of that at all. Western Europe is not just following the U.S. They are firmly resolved. If any way, in many important ways, they're leading the way.

  And, look, the big picture here is that most of us have spent the last 25 years in an era of greater globalization, of greater trade across barriers, across borders, of greater exchange of ideas, greater cultural exchange, some amount of cultural convergence.

  That stopped about seven or eight years ago. And the war in Ukraine has really accelerated what you might call de-globalization, what I think of as a global culture war, where we get — we divide at least into two economic zones, a Chinese-dominated one and a Western-dominated one.

  We divided into different cultural zones. Our cultural values are now diverging, not converging. The amount of trade across borders is now decreasing. Immigration is decreasing. So we're living in a world in which walls are going up, and people are basically forced to pick sides.

  And the West is becoming closer together, and the authoritarians are getting closer together. But it makes the struggle over Ukraine the first real struggle in what could be a decades-long contest between authoritarianism and the democratic West.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Jonathan, what would you say to that, and to this question of whether you think the West is prepared to hang in there as long as it takes?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Oh, I do think the West is prepared to hang in there for as long as it takes.

  And I have been saying on our air pretty much from the beginning that this war, while it is Russia — a Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is a war between democracy and autocracy. And that explains why you have the Baltic states ringing the alarm on a daily basis, saying, hey, you need to send in — let's have permanent bases here in the — NATO bases here in the Baltics, because Vladimir Putin is not going to stop in Ukraine.

  It explains why Sweden and Finland, which have been determinately neutral, they didn't want to be a part of NATO, now actively talking about joining the North Atlantic Alliance. This speaks to what David was just talking about, but also how they view the situation in Ukraine in the rest of Europe.

  They see, basically, Ukraine as the canary in the coal mine. And if democracy does not win out against Russia in that campaign, then the Baltics, Poland, Slovakia, all those on the Western — the Western border of Russia, those NATO nations, are very worried that they are next.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Just one other quick question about Ukraine.

  And that is President Biden, David, at one point, off the cuff, referred to what's going on there by the Russians as genocide. How much do statements like that matter?

• David Brooks:

  Well, we have already called him a war criminal.

  What it does is, it forecloses the idea that, at some point in the future, we can have normal business with Vladimir Putin, that we can have a G7 or a G20 or whatever G you want to go to. The idea that, ever again, the West can go to summits with him, have him visit the White House, whatever you want to do, that's just never going to happen.

  And it makes that untenable, and I would say rightly so.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Jonathan?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  It puts pressure on Putin. It paints him into a corner and does make him unacceptable abroad.

• Judy Woodruff:

  I do want to turn to two other things.

  One, David, is the bad news we got this week on inflation, actually affirming what we have already been seeing. It's at historic highs in this country. Much of the economic picture is scary. But at the same time, we know the unemployment numbers are down. We know wages are going up. There was even a report about consumer confidence being up.

  What's at the core of this? And how worried should the Biden administration be?

• David Brooks:

  Extremely.

  Inflation is the number one concern in the country right now. And even though wages are going up, real wages are going down, that is, wages after accounting for inflation. And so we have had several months now of negative wage — real wage growth. And so that is a real problem.

  Now, it's true that wages — or inflation is rising everywhere in the world, fuel everywhere in the world, food everywhere in the world. But the U.S. inflation rate is significantly higher than in most other comparable nations. And so that has to be because of two things.

  The one is Federal Reserve policy, but two is our extremely expansionary fiscal policy, federal spending. And so that's — I think that means that any further spending initiatives are going to be extremely unpopular and are probably not going to happen.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Jonathan, how big a political worry is this for the president?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  A huge political worry, because inflation is just one of those things in the economy that the president has zero control over.

  There was one bit, glimmer, a faint glimmer of good news in the inflation data. Even though inflation rose your year over year in March by 8.5 percent, the glimmer of hope in that data is that, in the month-to-month, inflation increase was less than in previous times. And I think that is giving hope, at least to some economists and certainly some in the Biden administration, that maybe the March numbers are the beginning of the — it's the plateau, that these inflation numbers are coming down.

  But the longer it takes for those inflation numbers to come down, Judy, the more worrisome is going to be for the administration.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Right.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  They're going into a midterm election year, the Democratic Party, where, historically, they are set to lose the House. Their hold on the Senate is tenuous.

  And high inflation numbers, on top of high gas prices, high grocery bills, is just going to make a very restive and anxious populace that much more angry and looking for someone to blame.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Just a glimmer in those inflation numbers.

  And I mentioned a consumer — there was a consumer survey that showed confidence going up in a way that the economists hadn't expected.

  But I do want to reserve the last minute-and-a-half or so, David, for the report we just heard from Geoff Bennett on Jared Kushner getting this massive investment from the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

  I mean, what lines are there, what lines should there be for this kind of thing to be going on?

• David Brooks:

  Well, to me, the mind-boggling thing is, Jared Kushner is not a private equity guy. He's a commercial real estate guy.

  And to suddenly open up a private equity firm, these are different enterprises. It's like me doing surgery. Like, no, you just can't switch. And the fact that the Saudis would invest, it's clear political sort of mafioso behavior, that you help me, I help you, maybe down the road, you help me. It's just classic mafia-like corruption.

  And there's not much more to be said, except for it's shameless.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Jonathan?

  (LAUGHTER)

• Jonathan Capehart:

  It sounds to me like it is MBS giving basically a payoff to his buddy Jared Kushner, who protected the Saudi weapons sales that Congress was trying to rescind after evidence came forward that MBS ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, who was a global opinions columnist for The Washington Post.

  And for a senior American — United States official to do that is unconscionable.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And yet it happened. There are no rules.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Right.

• Judy Woodruff:

  I mean, David and Jonathan, I mean, there no lines. There are no legal limits to doing something like this, are there, David?

• David Brooks:

  No. We used to think people were restrained by common decency. But that train went away a long time ago.

• Judy Woodruff:

  All right, we're going to leave it there.

  David Brooks, Jonathan Capehart, thank you both.

• David Brooks:

  Thank you, Judy.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Thanks, Judy.