- We are back in a period of superpower competition that will probably go on for decades and that, if we're lucky, remains a Cold War.

[soft instrumental music] - Hello and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer.

And today, we are talking about China, Russia, and the new era of major power competition.

More than three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, America is no longer the sole dominant voice on the global stage.

China has emerged as a world leader and economic powerhouse.

Russia's rattling its nuclear saber in Ukraine, and getting closer with rogue states like Iran and North Korea.

And both countries are increasing their military and economic cooperation to counter Western influence.

At a February 2022 summit, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin described their friendship without limits.

But, how true is that really?

And is this the beginning of the end of U.S. dominance?

Are we at the beginning of a new Cold War era?

Those are some of the questions that my guest, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and "New York Times" national security correspondent, David Sanger, asks in his latest book, "New Cold Wars, China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, "and America's Struggle to Defend The West."

I'll bring you that conversation.

And later, it's Vladimir Putin on Broadway, sort of.

But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

- [Narrator 1] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Narrator 2] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains, with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform, addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

- [Narrator 1] And by... Cox Enterprises is proud to support "GZERO."

We're working to improve lives in the areas of communications, automotive, clean tech, sustainable agriculture, and more.

Learn more at Cox.career/news.

Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and... [upbeat instrumental music] [gentle music] - What do America's adversaries have to gain and lose from the U.S. presidential election in November?

The 2024 Trump versus Biden rematch will be the first time in U.S. history that candidates from both major parties have sat in the Oval Office.

That means both Russia and China have a good idea of what either a second Biden or Trump term will look like, and an interest in manipulating the outcome in their favor.

Moscow's preference for Trump is fairly obvious, despite Putin saying the exact opposite in February.

[interviewer speaks foreign language] - Biden.

[speaks foreign language] - Analysts dismissed the comments as classic Kremlin doublespeak.

Biden's worldview runs totally counter to Putin's.

His administration is leading a coalition of Western allies against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and he's pushed for NATO expansion, which Putin views as a critical threat to Russia itself.

Intelligence agencies have also confirmed Russia's attempts to influence the 2016 and 2020 elections in Trump's favor, and so mistrust in the U.S. electoral process, warning that the Kremlin is likely to ramp up its efforts in 2024.

But now officials say China is copying Russia's playbook using bots and AI-generated misinformation to spread conspiracy theories and amplify support for President Trump on social media.

It seems counterintuitive.

Trump, after all, regularly attacks China on the campaign trail.

His administration imposed billions of dollars in tariffs on Chinese imports.

They say they'll do more if they become president.

Why would Beijing support a candidate so openly hostile to its interests?

Two reasons.

The first is influence.

Like Putin, President Xi believes that strong nations should control their regional spheres.

Under Xi, China has been ramping up aggression in the South China Sea, not just against Taiwan, but also other neighbors like the Philippines.

Biden meanwhile has consistently described his administration as a global defender of democracy in the face of rising authoritarianism.

- Democracy is still a sacred cause, and there's no country in the world better positioned to lead the world than America.

- [Ian] Meanwhile, Trump's Unilateralist America first worldview is inherently skeptical of treaties and alliances.

He once called NATO obsolete, and he suggested he'd let Russia invade countries who don't meet spending obligations.

- One of the presidents of a big country stood up, said, "Well, sir, if we don't pay "and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us?"

No, I would not protect you.

In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.

- Trump worries U.S. allies in Asia a lot more than a second Biden presidency.

Then there's the chaos factor.

Trump's White House was defined by disorganization.

His policy positions often change.

Just look at TikTok.

Political polarization increased more among U.S. voters during Trump's presidency than any other in the modern era.

And from the sound of it, the second term will be even more tumultuous.

A politically chaotic U.S. is very good for Russia.

Now, in China, with an economy that benefits from global stability, that's not so clear.

But with America distracted by its own problems, there's more room for other countries to step in to fill the void.

Many of Trump's supporters will say the opposite, that Trump's policies will protect American jobs, defend U.S. interests, to borrow a phrase, to make America great again.

But it's hard to ignore the fact that America's biggest rivals are putting their thumbs on the scale, betting a Trump win will serve their interests as well.

What happens after the election in a battle for global influence?

David Sanger is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and "New York Times" national security correspondent.

His latest book, "New Cold Wars, "China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, "and America's Struggle to Defend The West."

And here's our conversation.

David Sanger, the book is "New Cold Wars."

Congratulations, and great to see you.

- Thank you, great to be back with you.

- So, I mean, you've been talking to these leaders, U.S. high-level leaders, and around the world for a long time now.

And the premise of the book is that the United States had this belief after Soviet collapse that we weren't gonna have to fight these Cold Wars anymore.

And it turns out that, in many ways, we were mistaken.

- We were mistaken in many different ways.

And the core of the book, and the core message of the book, is we are back in a period of superpower competition that will probably go on for decades and that, if we're lucky, remains a Cold War.

It's a Cold War that bears almost no resemblance to the one that you and I are old enough to remember, because in that Cold War, we had a single competitor, and we weren't dependent on them, nor they on us for very much.

And the only thing we really got from the Soviet Union was caviar and vodka.

And while, we certainly wouldn't wanna give that up, we could've lived without it.

This is a three-way competition.

It's Russia, China.

Obviously from China, we have levels of interdependency we never saw in the Cold War.

And yet, we somehow believed, Ian, we somehow convinced ourselves that the profit motive was so great for China, and the need to sell oil and gas was so great for Russia that, basically, their territorial ambitions, their sense of competition with us would all melt away.

And it was in some ways the greatest intelligence failure, or at least the greatest intelligence assessment failure of the past 30 years, greater than whether or not Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction and so forth.

- Now, I wanna get to where the relations are today.

But so much of this is steeped in history.

In the early days, post-Soviet collapse, when Yeltsin was president, there did seem to be both a moment and an intention to engage with, to join with the West.

That eroded pretty quickly when Putin became president.

Where do you think the opportunities were lost?

Where was the assessment wrong?

- So, Yeltsin, of course... We tried to promote a great democracy, but we also at the time expanded NATO.

And that brought a huge amount of anger from those sitting in the background in Russia who were fulminating about the loss of the old empire.

And that included a man named Vladimir Putin who made his way up from KGB officer in Dresden during the collapse, through to City Hall in St. Petersburg, and then on to the presidency, chosen in many ways by Yeltsin himself, which was pretty remarkable.

For the first few years, it seemed like a pretty good bet that even Putin would go along with the old plan.

There were moments...

I was covering the White House for the "Times."

It was my first White House correspondent stint.

Putin came to Crawford, Texas.

He and Bush held, basically, a town hall with high school students from a nearby town.

They're joking with each other back and forth.

Bush went back and did the same thing in St. Petersburg with Russian students who just wanted to know how they could get to Europe and the United States on visas.

Bush and Putin met more than two dozen times.

Joe Biden has met him once as president and probably never will again.

- [Ian] Yeah.

- So this was a great era of hope.

But even later in the Bush administration, as Russia began to turn inward, as it blamed the U.S. for some of the terror activity that had taken place and so forth, this began to fall apart.

And then, in 2007, Putin showed up at the Munich Security Conference and he gave a speech that basically said, "There are parts of Mother Russia "that have been wrested away from us that must come back."

And it was such a shock that Bob Gates, then the defense secretary, had to stand up and respond to him.

- As an old Cold Warrior, one of yesterday's speeches almost filled me with nostalgia for a less complex time.

Almost.

- But even then, we maintained the hope through the Obama administration, through certainly in the Trump administration, that somehow or another, this was just Russia acting out.

And in the end, they wouldn't undercut their interests.

Seven years after the Munich speech, Putin takes over all of Crimea, says, "This is truly part of Russia."

A year later, in 2015, Germany signed the Nord Stream 2 contract with Chancellor Merkel saying he's a reliable supplier.

So, what was Vladimir Putin supposed to conclude from that?

"In the end, they'll make some noise "if I take over all of Ukraine."

- "But I can get away with it."

- "I can get away with it."

- Now, if we move on to China, before we get to today... - [David] Yeah.

- Different kind of mistakes made with the Chinese, a belief that if you integrate the Chinese into the global economy, into Western institutions, they become rich, they're gonna politically reform.

Clearly, that bet, that pretty big bet, has not played out for the Americans.

Talk a little bit about what's behind it.

- So it seemed like a good bet at the time.

- Clinton bet.

- It was a Clinton bet.

And I remember going to Beijing several times with Clinton.

And on one of them, he stopped off at Beijing University on the way out of, back to the United States, and gave a speech to students, and basically said, "The internet will set you free.

"As soon as the internet takes over in China, "this will be the crumbling of the Communist party.

"You will all see how the rest of the world operates, "how market economies operate.

"There are sprigs we are seeing coming up in China, "local elections, so forth.

"The roots of democracy are here."

I believed this stuff at the time I was hearing it, but it became pretty evident, pretty clearly that the Communist party had learned how to take these same digital forces and use them for the most explicitly designed repression techniques we have ever seen.

And they took it in a different direction.

Now, there were many times that we had good reason to think we could work with the Chinese, really, up through Obama.

Obama reached a climate agreement with Xi Jinping.

Obama and Xi reached any number of other economic agreements and worked together with Russia to contain Iran's nuclear program.

They worked together pretty well on North Korea.

It's hard to imagine any of that happening today.

Here, the turn was President Xi himself.

As Joe Biden was entertaining him as when they were both vice presidents, and Biden thought he knew him, what they missed was that he really was an autocrat at heart, whose plan was to expand the nuclear program, crack down on the same freedoms that we thought were coming together.

And the intelligence reports during the Xi transition reflect none of this.

They basically say, "He will not challenge the West.

"He will not challenge Taiwan.

"He will focus on the domestic economy."

We got him completely wrong.

- So, when we talk about the China-Russia relationship, I mean, certainly, the Chinese have not been providing the Russians with the direct military equipment that the Iranians have, that the North Koreans have.

Also, the Russians can't be comfortable with the idea that the Chinese are becoming the dominant economic player with political influence in Russia's backyard, countries like Kazakhstan, for example.

Very significant.

How do you see that playing out going forward?

- At this point, Vladimir Putin has no choice, right?

He needs that technology desperately, especially at a moment that the West is doing some sanctions.

Although you and I could sit here and debate how-- - How effective they are.

- They are, right.

And actually, I think the technology sanctions have been more effective than the-- - Than the economic sanctions, I completely agree with that.

- That's right.

So he needs that Chinese technology.

In some ways, he needs it more than the arms.

He can get the arms free, he can get the drones from Iran, he can get artillery from the North Koreans, even if half of them are duds.

And over time, that relationship will build up and they will become, I think, better suppliers to him, unless the U.S. can get in the way of that.

But, he does not have a choice except to deal with the Chinese on Chinese terms right now.

And Xi Jinping knows it.

But it's useful to Xi, because, look, Xi Jinping, what was his biggest concern three years ago when Biden came in?

That the U.S. would finally get serious about moving everything to the Indo-Pacific, and confronting him over the South China Sea, and defending Taiwan, and so forth.

So if you're Xi, the two best things that can happen to you is that the U.S. is tied up in Ukraine or ripping itself apart about the aid, and consumed again in the Middle East.

That's what they needed.

- One other fundamental question that I think does make these countries differ, at least for now, and I'm wondering if you agree with this, is that a country like Russia, kind of like Iran, kind of like North Korea benefits from a significant degree of chaos on the international stage, an international vacuum of power that allows them to take advantage and operate.

They want things to break down.

The Chinese need the international system to function for China's own stability.

They need to be part of a functioning international marketplace.

Russia doesn't.

How important is that difference?

- It's a critical difference and a big theme of the book, because in examining this Russia-China relationship, China wants to be the top dog by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution and of Mao declaring the state.

And they wanna be the top dog of something worth being the top dog of.

The Russians have no hope for that, so their only source of power is as a disruptor, and that's the friction between these two that may come into play.

That said, there are moments when, if they can control it, China loves having the Russians as a disruptor, including, as I said before, keeping us tied up in Ukraine.

And then, there's one other area.

You know, in the last few weeks, Ian, it's been really interesting if you've just watched the home page and the front page of the "New York Times," you've seen stories about what the Russians are doing to fuel instability and disinformation campaigns in the United States, not by injecting in the kinds of created news that the Internet Research Agency did in the days of Prigozhin, but instead, just amplifying the sounds of chaos in our own system.

And we've written the same stories about the Chinese.

They may have an interest, the Chinese, in a working international order, but they have a true interest in a United States that's eating itself apart and that can't focus on China policy, on industrial policy, on keeping them from getting their chip equipment.

An America that would say, "Gee, if we're not gonna send our real forces to Ukraine, "why would we ever send them to Taiwan "100 miles off the Chinese coast?"

And so, they have every incentive, both of them, Russia and China, to be subtle actors in the background of this coming presidential election.

And that's one area where, if they are not cooperating, it would pay them off considerably to coordinate.

- David Sanger, great to have you.

- Great to be with you.

[gentle instrumental music] - This spring, Russia's Red Square is coming to Manhattan's Times Square, to Broadway.

A new play called "Patriots" captures a chaotic Russia in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Oligarchs amassed money and power and wanted to shape the political future of their nation.

An unknown ex-Deputy mayor of St. Petersburg emerged as a top pick to lead Russia into its future.

You know his name, Vladimir Putin.

Here's "GZERO's" Tony Maciulis.

- Am I really being lectured on morality by a KGB hack?

- The state must reclaim its assets and its authority.

A country cannot be run by businessmen.

- [Tony] It's a Shakespearean drama ripped from the headlines of Russian history.

Now on Broadway, "Patriots" is set in the chaos of post-Soviet era Russia.

- Most of the play concerns the 90s, which was this extraordinary time in Moscow in particular and Russia more widely, where the new Russian state was being established under the Boris Yeltsin administration.

It was the beginning of a kind of liberal free market in Russia, gang culture with huge crime problems from a nascent mafia.

We follow the first oligarch, the oligarch who kind of began, really, the kind of change of Russia, Boris Berezovsky, and then, also, a quieter former KGB officer, Vladimir Putin.

- Emmy and Tony Award nominee Michael Stuhlbarg plays billionaire Boris Berezovsky, orchestrating the political rise of a relatively unknown Vladimir Putin, played by Will Keen, who originated the role in London.

You've been inhabiting Vladimir Putin now for a couple of years.

Has he changed for you at all, getting to know that character through these years?

- It does feel like it, the filter on it changes every day, because something else happens every day.

It feels like the play has overall become darker and darker because of events.

It does seem to become more and more perturbing.

[bomb booms] - The first or the early readings that we did with Peter Morgan were actually before the invasion of Ukraine even.

And subsequent to that, the ongoing war there, the suppression of distant voices.

Of course, the tragic fate of Navalny much more recently have cast a huge shadow over what we're doing.

And we have changed the play.

The play on Broadway is a different play.

- [Tony] But the central tension of the script, written by "The Crown"'s creator Peter Morgan, remains the same.

Berezovsky promotes Putin as a successor to Boris Yeltsin, an attempt to create a puppet presidency as oligarchs ruled behind the scenes.

He then watches in horror as his plan falls apart.

- Putin was my mistake.

Getting rid of him is my responsibility.

- Oh!

- Boris is one of many that got in the way or became an outspoken critic of how Mr. Putin ran his country, runs his country, and consequences were suffered because of it.

- Those colors of victimhood, the extent to which he is violent and volatile and unpredictable and vengeful grows out of a sense of hurt, of the world having done him wrong, or Berezovsky having done him wrong.

- [Tony] "Patriots," which opened a limited run on April 22nd, also captures universal themes about political polarization and deep ideological divides.

- I think the play is definitely a warning about how, once you lose freedom of speech and free democracy, power can accelerate very quickly.

I think it's a warning about how narratives of national identity can be both inspiring but also very dangerous in the wrong hands.

- I also find that the play has tremendous resonance in terms of this country and what it means to be a patriot, especially at a time when we're so divided as a country, not just economically, but philosophically.

It's a kind of exploration, as well, about what it means to love your country.

There's a million ways to show that, and there's a million ways to feel it.

[audience applauds] - [Tony] For "GZERO World," I'm Tony Maciulis.

[gentle instrumental music] - That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like what you see, or even if you don't but you're hoping that we can avoid a new Cold War, we've got what you're looking for.

Check us out at gzeromedia.com.

[lively upbeat music] [upbeat tune] - [Narrator 1] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Narrator 2] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains, with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform.

Addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com - [Narrator 1] And by... Cox enterprises is proud to support "GZERO."

We're working to improve lives in the areas of communications, automotive, clean tech, sustainable agriculture, and more.

Learn more at Cox.career/news.

Additional funding provided by Jerre and Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and... [upbeat instrumental music] [upbeat tune]