>> Responding to crises requires an accurate and sensible appraisal of actually what's going on, what the different options might be, what the expected costs would be.

If those conditions aren't present, you're throwing a dart at a wall, whether or not you're going to get a decent response to it or not.

♪♪ >> Hello, and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer.

And today, it might feel like the world is one giant dumpster fire.

We've got a pandemic, a hot war in Europe, an increasingly contentious U.S.-China relationship.

Add to that, ever-worsening climate change.

Don't get me started on Washington.

Heck, it's even hard to be nice to your neighbors these days.

A Pew survey taken before the 2020 election found that 17% of Republicans, that's it, thought that Democrats had good ideas.

13% of Democrats felt the same about Republicans, but from crisis, there is opportunity, opportunity to collaborate, to prepare, and to manage the problems we have today to diminish the risks we face tomorrow.

And today, I am joined by two heavy hitters, Harvard Professor Steve Walt, and New America CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter.

And we'll be talking about the power of crisis.

Then, as parts of the world ditch their COVID restrictions, others are in lockdown.

We hear from residents of Shanghai after nearly two months inside.

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

>> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by... [ Air raid siren wails ] >> It's no big secret that Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine has not gone to plan, but he has achieved something nearly unimaginable.

In March, members of the U.S. House of Representatives came together with a vote of 424-8 to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and its ally Belarus.

That's right, Putin persuaded America's Democrats and Republicans to hate someone more than they already hate members of the opposite party, which in today's political climate is no small feat.

We disagree on so much, and with so many problems in the world today and so few solutions from those at the top, our faith in our governing authorities has plummeted.

This erosion of trust has become the defining story of our era.

In fact, at this point, it's worth calling in to question the entire international system.

And it's no one's fault, really.

It's just that many of today's institutions are no longer fit for purpose.

Take the United Nations, the World Bank and the IMF, for example.

They were all built atop the ashes of a war that ended 77 years ago.

That's why Germany and Japan, two wealthy and dynamic free market democracies with governments strongly committed to multilateralism and the rule of law, had no seats at the table for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's speech to the Security Council and why Russia did.

And to fix this broken system, we need a crisis.

Wasn't the pandemic a crisis?

Yes, it was.

Climate change?

Yes, that's one too.

Big tech, digital authoritarianism, yes.

The point is we need a crisis large enough to force our engagement, but not so destructive that we can't respond, a crisis that causes so much pain and creates so much risk for those in power that they finally accept that collaboration and compromise are the only protection against total defeat.

The pandemic wasn't that.

It was the crisis of World War II that created institutions and alliances that helped keep the peace and invest in global development for decades after.

The Cold War also helped build and maintain partnerships that boosted the countries that participated.

Today, I'm talking through what lies ahead with two of foreign policy's brightest minds, Harvard Professor Steve Walt and New America CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter, who served as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department under President Obama.

Here's our conversation.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, Steve Walt, thanks so much for joining me on "GZERO World."

>> Great to be here.

>> It's always a pleasure.

>> So, Anne-Marie, I want to start with you.

We have this war ongoing over two months now, Russia invading Ukraine.

For all of the tragedy on the ground and beyond -- and there is certainly a lot of it -- there has been a pretty unified response from the West, respond from NATO.

Grade it for me so far.

How do you think the United States and allies are doing?

>> Well, I think for the war itself, you definitely have to give them an A.

Indeed, when you and I last talked, we were at the Munich Security Conference at the end of February and, at that point, the betting was will Putin invade or not?

When he invaded less than a week later, most people would've said, "Two weeks, he's going to be in Kyiv if that's his intention."

A month later, people couldn't believe it.

Now, it's really extraordinary.

Not only has he not accomplished his aims, but the Ukrainians, and basically NATO behind them, are, in fact, pushing Russia back.

>> And is NATO stronger today in your view?

And if it is, is that a good thing?

>> NATO's certainly stronger.

In part, NATO has a mission.

This was the mission that NATO was created for.

So, again, if we're thinking about NATO's ability to push back against Russia, to defend against Russia, it is stronger.

The big, hard questions are now.

Finland and Sweden have said they want to join, and NATO is delighted.

My question there is, "Okay, so how are you now going to say no to Ukraine?"

You can't say it borders Russia.

So does Finland.

Obviously, the Baltics do already.

You could have said, "Well, it's weaker.

It has a corrupt government.

It isn't a stable rule of law society."

How are you going to say that when you're spending tens of billions, an extraordinary amount of money supporting that same Ukrainian government against Russia?

And if you say yes to Ukraine, well, surely you have to say yes to Moldova and to Belarus and to Georgia, and then where are you?

>> Yeah, well, so it's a measure of how significant this whole crisis is that it is actually brought Anne-Maria and I together in ways that aren't necessarily typical.

So a couple of things, I mean, I think I agree with her that in terms of the overall response that the West has made to this, it's been quite impressive, and I give the Biden administration high marks for the coordination they've been able to do.

What people have missed is both looking backwards and looking forwards.

First of all, it's been far too facile for people to say, "Well, this whole event proves that the problem in Europe is Vladimir Putin, him alone, and we had nothing to do with this, that NATO enlargement was totally unrelated to any of this.

The deterioration of Russian relations with the West over a 20-year period had nothing to do with this.

It's all Putin's fault," et cetera.

That's a very convenient explanation to throw at, and I think it's simply historically inaccurate.

So we're starting to forget how we got into this tragedy.

That doesn't justify what Russia has done at all, but it's something we shouldn't lose sight of as we try to look forward.

The second thing that worries me, and I think Anne-Marie's put her finger on it, is people have not thought very much about the endgame here.

What does an appropriate political settlement look like?

How far can you push a nuclear-armed power who's not doing well, whose ambitions are clearly being forwarded, that's going to lose power over time?

But if our objective is to drive Russia out of the ranks of the great powers, which is one way of interpreting some of the remarks that have been made by Western officials, then you have to wonder, at what point do they start considering other options?

How far do you push NATO forward, recognizing that that doesn't just involve sending Javelins to other countries, that might involve sending American troops to other countries?

So I think Anne-Marie was raising exactly the right question.

Given how well Ukraine and others have done in responding to what was an unprovoked attack, you now have to start thinking about, "Well, what do you want to see as the endgame here?

How much can you ask for?"

And one final point -- At what point do we recognize that our interests and Ukraine's interests may not be identical in every particular?

>> Is it fair to say that, at a minimum, the West should want to push the Russians out of the territory of another country that they've invaded?

Is that a reasonable outcome?

>> It's a reasonable outcome.

The question is whether or not it's a realistic outcome, how much risk you're willing to run to do that, including the possible risk of the use of a nuclear weapon, which is an option Russia has and one they've talked about.

They've alluded to.

Another lesson that you might draw from the Ukraine crisis is that Russia was not nearly the military threat people thought it was.

Its ability to conquer to other territory in the face of opposition is actually quite limited, and Russia is going to get progressively weaker a a result of the war.

The Western sanctions are going to have an effect.

There's going to be a brain drain of talented young Russians who have the opportunity to leave.

So, in fact, the threat that Finland and Sweden are going to face going forward is probably going to be lower as well.

So it's at least mildly puzzling that this is the moment that they suddenly wanted to abandon decades of a neutrality tradition.

I get it, why they're doing it.

It's up to them to make up their own minds about this, but it, I think, does suggest that it's their sense of Russian intentions, the willingness to take risks, the willingness to use force, and not an appraisal of Russia's actual capabilities that is driving this.

>> Now, I do think it's interesting that President Putin has come out recently and said, "Well, really, it's not about Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

It's about NATO developing infrastructure in those countries."

So I mean, perhaps, backing down from what was an overly aggressive perspective now that his bluff has been called.

Certainly, supporters of NATO accession for those two countries will make that point.

>> Right, I think that's true.

>> So this show is not just about Russia-Ukraine today.

It's also about crisis and response to crisis.

And it's kind of interesting that the beginning of the pandemic, Fauci was a national hero and everyone concerned and coming together in the United States, massive economic plan.

And, in relatively short order, things get really politicized and not just in the U.S., of course, but also around the world, the world more divided on the back of the pandemic, not less.

The United States more divided on the back of the pandemic, not less.

What lessons didn't we learn as a consequence of COVID?

How do we look at COVID and the pandemic differently through a lens of geopolitics and international relations than we are the Russia-Ukraine crisis that we see right now?

Anne-Marie, you want to start?

>> I think one of the lessons we learned, and perhaps it was predictable, but a pandemic that is relatively slow-rolling.

This was not Ebola.

This was -- is a virus that has killed millions of people, but that at the same time, people could say for quite a long time, and even now in the United States, it's like an intense case of the flu.

That doesn't provide that kind of crisis moment where people have to pull together, like the Crash of 2008, where Obama is able to get the world together in the G20 and, by 2009, to say we have to do something right now.

Like the War in Ukraine, where there's an immediate issue, and you have to respond in real time.

This was too complex, hitting different countries in different ways, every country, of course, responding in its own way.

There is certainly more that could have been done had Trump been willing to get together with the Chinese and others and the WHO at the outset, but at the outset, we didn't know enough about the virus.

So I think one of the big lessons here is, if you're going to use a crisis effectively for change, you have to be able to have the right time horizon, the right group of countries, and a very specific set of goals.

It is possible that we will be able to do that now with respect to building a better global health infrastructure, but then the sense of urgency, although it should be there, is already... >> Is not.

>> ...draining away.

>> Except from the Chinese case, where there's a lot more urgency, but a lot more anger and unwillingness to cooperate with the United States and the West.

>> Exactly.

And honestly, the United States bears responsibility for that, or I should say bears some responsibility.

We refuse to work with the Chinese to vaccinate the world.

The Chinese vaccine is not nearly as good as the Western vaccines, but it's better than no vaccine.

And had the United States said, "The priority for the global economy, for the global health system, for humanity, generally, is to vaccinate the whole world, and we're going to bring India and China and the Europeans and us together to do it," we really would've had a far better shot.

We didn't.

We rebuffed all Xi's attempts.

Maybe they were feints.

Maybe they weren't.

And China is now much less willing to cooperate with us.

>> Steve, credible?

I mean, of course the Chinese were lying for the first several weeks about whether or not there even was such a thing as COVID and lied to the WHO and their own people.

Do you think there was really an opportunity for the West, for the Americans to work with the Chinese in terms of a global COVID response?

>> Yeah, I think that one of the unfortunate things is you had, essentially, a lot of the wrong leaders in a lot of the wrong places at exactly the wrong time.

So I can easily imagine a different set of people in China, in the United States, in a number of other countries coordinating a much more effective global response to this.

What I find really surprising about COVID is that it's run counter, at least in some countries, to our normal expectation.

Our normal expectation is that when a crisis hits, the authority of the estate goes up.

Think of what happens in a war, right?

The economies get mobilized, prices get controlled, people get drafted.

>> And popularity goes up.

>> And popularity goes up, and you've got some of that.

You got some of that response everywhere -- governments trying to do more, trying to impose rules, limiting travel, things like that.

But remarkably quickly, that began to dissipate.

You began to see challenges to state authority, certainly in the United States, but also elsewhere in some other countries as well.

And of course, that undermined the ability to respond to the pandemic as effectively as we could have.

And the second thing that I think is instructive about this is it is always difficult at the global level to get people to make sacrifices on behalf of others.

People wanted to keep the vaccines at home for their own populations first before they shared them, even though the problem was simply going to continue.

If the virus could continue to mutate someplace else, it was eventually going to go from South Africa to the West and we'd be dealing with it again.

It's hard to get them to do things in the collective interest rather than self-interest.

And it's hard to get people to make sacrifices in the short term to deal with a problem over the longer term.

And that's, I think, the future problem we're going to face is, yes, post-COVID, we'll say, "Well, let's have a better plan in place for the next one."

And my concern is that interest and commitment to maintaining those preparations will dissipate if we get 5 or 10 years where nothing bad happens, and then, suddenly, the next virus, maybe a worse virus comes along and we'll be back in the same problem we have had this time around.

>> So last question before we close, I mean, we're in this environment where democracy, particularly in wealthy countries in the last 10 years, has taken a hit.

We've seen a move towards more illiberal democracies and more hybrid political systems consistently over the course of the last couple decades.

We also see that the U.S.-China relationship has no trust.

It's the most powerful relationship in the world.

It continues to erode, but we have all of these global crises.

Given that, given the ones we've talked about today, and also some of the ones we haven't -- climate change, for example, others -- to what extent is that making you, as people, as students of global politics and changing global systems, are you becoming sort of more hopeful in this environment or are you becoming less?

Steve first.

>> I'm less hopeful for several reasons.

First of all, the fact that we have several really monumental crises upon us now.

If you had to pick one to solve, it would be hard.

If you try to solve all of them simultaneously, it's especially difficult.

And at some point, you have to worry about people just throwing up their hands and saying, "This is all too big of a challenge."

But the second thing actually goes back to something I said earlier.

When you face a crisis, the temptation to go for stronger executive authority, to turn it over to a strong man, to let the government solve the problem, to abandon democracy, abandon liberty goes way up.

That's, again, what happens in wartime.

And I don't have too much trouble imagining that, as these various crises escalate, as they get more serious, and as they look intractable, many countries will start deciding that the only way to address it is by very strong central authority.

So I think an additional challenge we're all going to face is preserving effective democracies in the face of multiplying and interacting crises.

>> Anne-Marie, the last word is to you.

>> Well, I am more of an optimist.

I'll just have to say, this is a historic occasion that Steve Walt and I have agreed on pretty much everything, but here I recognize his concerns.

I think they're completely right.

I am more optimistic because there is so much crisis.

The other way to look at this is there's all this intersecting crisis that the United Nations feels as well, right?

Secretary Guterres knows that the UN is completely outdated.

It's set up in 1945.

The Security Council are the victors of World War II.

He understands, though, at this point, something really does have to give.

And many, many other countries who have a stake in global governance are recognizing we need a new and better system.

We are not going to get a San Francisco moment, where we come together and revise the charter.

That is absolutely not going to happen.

But there is a lot of room for different G groups, right?

You could take each of these issues -- health, refugees, climate, sort of just responding to this kind of crisis -- and create subgroups that are anchored in some of the more functional UN institutions in ways that will be incredibly messy.

You won't be able to map it nicely.

You won't be able to say, "Here's the headquarters and here are the people in charge."

But we do, I think, have the ability to build stronger global capacity to address a number of these problems.

Involving Global South, I would just say the most powerful countries all over the world in different areas.

And I would conclude by saying a lot of the folks who are not around the table -- that's the civic groups, the CEOs -- but it's also the women, the people of color, the folks whose voices simply aren't being heard.

I'll end with this.

It's a moral outrage that the United States is spending $40 billion to push Russia out of Ukraine and cannot pass Build Back Better to take care of our own children.

That is a crisis that is being felt in the United States and in other countries who are looking at what we're spending money on and what we're not spending money on that I think also will have political ripple effects that will bring us bigger change.

>> Anne-Marie Slaughter and Steve Walt, we can't fix global problems.

We can at least get the two of you together.

Thanks so much for joining today.

♪♪ China's Zero COVID strategy has crippled global trade and led to empty shelves at shops around the world.

But the policy is having the most dramatic impact at home, where residents of Shanghai have been in lockdown for nearly two months.

"GZERO World's" Alex Kliment reports.

[ Birds chirping ] >> The birds of Shanghai are in song while the city's 25 million people remain cooped up in their homes as part of the world's largest COVID lockdown.

This dawn chorus is something that Chinese writer Yang Shen says she had never noticed outside her window until now.

She thought that spending long hours at her desk writing would have prepared her for this lockdown.

>> It turns out there's a big difference between "I don't want to go out" and "I can't go out."

>> While most of the world has relaxed COVID restrictions, China has doubled down on its Zero COVID policy.

In Shanghai, most residents are only permitted to leave their homes for mandatory COVID tests, but the virus isn't Shen's biggest worry.

>> I have to compete with millions of people online, on all the apps to buy vegetables, fruit, daily supplies, because if you're not fast enough, it will be all sold out.

So it's kind of really scary.

We're not scared of the COVID, but we are scared of starvation.

>> Shen and her husband have gone to daring lengths to find a little variety in what they eat.

>> We also have cherry trees downstairs in the yard, in the compound, so what we do, we wake up like 6:00 in the morning, we sneak out the building, and we try to steal some cherries and then we make cherry jams.

>> But moves like that can cause trouble with nosy neighbors and the local communist party committees.

Camilo Cadena, a Colombian-American artist who has lived in Shanghai for the past five years, recently took a stroll in his compound's courtyard during a brief period of looser restrictions.

>> Within minutes, my partner, who's now back in the United States, sent me a picture that a neighbor had sent her of me sitting in the driveway.

From hundreds of feet away, she's like, "Hey, isn't this your fiancé?"

>> Cadena has since decided to leave China, but that's not an option for most locals.

The government has now all but forbidden Chinese nationals from going abroad.

There have been isolated protests against the harsh measures with residents banging pots and pans from their balconies in anger.

[ Metal clanking ] But although the World Health Organization has questioned Zero COVID's effectiveness, some experts say China's adherence to the policy is about something bigger.

>> This campaign against COVID is framed as a competition between two political systems, by authoritarianism and liberal democracy.

The stakes has become much higher that they also make it difficult for China to exit from that strategy.

>> Shanghai officials now say they aim to end the lockdown by June.

For Yang Shen and her fellow Shanghainese, that moment can't come soon enough.

>> Every time I post anything on my social media, I say something like, "Okay, summer is coming.

When can I get out of this prison?"

>> For "GZERO World," I'm Alex Kliment.

♪♪ >> That's our show this week.

Come back next week, and if you like what you see, you're hoping that more crisis is going to lead to more opportunity and you just want to know what the next crisis is, why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com?

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by...