>> A lot of these strongman appeals are sort of emotionally linked issues, and they have to do with a sense of loss of control of the nation, that we have this nation that kind of to some extent controlled its own destiny, and now it's part of this big, globalized economy and sort of emotionally it is our piece.

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

I'm Ian Bremmer.

And on today's show, is globalization, that economic, social and political web that's connected the world for decades on the way out?

And is the era of the strongman leader here to stay?

After two years of an ever evolving pandemic and months into a war in Ukraine that shows no sign of stopping, the global order feels more fragmented than ever.

But is it?

I'm joined by the Financial Times' Gideon Rachman, who just wrote a book on the world strongman.

Then, how the war in Ukraine is creating food crises around the globe.

And of course, I've got your "Puppet Regime."

>> We've tracked down the elusive Biden in its natural habitat.

>> [ Snoring ] >> 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... >> Do you want to understand globalization?

Why don't you consider the banana?

It's a miracle fruit.

It's seedless.

It's sexless.

Every banana you've ever eaten was a clone.

An estimated 100 billion bananas are consumed annually across the globe.

That's a lot of bananas.

With India alone producing 29 million tons per year.

How many bananas is that?

I have no idea.

But it sounds like a lot.

In many African countries, bananas provide the average person with up to a quarter of all daily calories.

And in the United States, it's been the highest selling fresh fruit crop for generations.

That's right.

Your grandmother was eating just as many bananas as you are right now.

It is, in short, the world's most popular fruit.

But bananas weren't always a bumper crop.

In 19th century America, they were considered a delicacy and even taboo due to their evocative shape.

I don't make this stuff up.

And dozens of U.S. military interventions in Latin America on behalf of banana companies led Esquire magazine back in '34 to popularize the term "banana republics."

The fact that Americans today eat more imported bananas than the apples and oranges growing in their own backyards is by design.

The banana trade, dominated by a few giant companies, has been costly.

It's been brutal, and it's been wildly successful.

It's been globalization in a nutshell, or a banana peel, which makes no sense as a metaphor.

Bananas remain popular today, globalization a little bit less so.

For generations, goods, services, people, ideas and capital, they've moved faster and faster across borders as the world has moved towards a single global market.

I generally like that.

But in recent years, we've seen plenty of pushback against free trade, against international policing, and against the promotion of a liberal international order.

And we've seen a wave of populist and anti-establishment political figures who have achieved positions of power by embracing that story.

To name a few, Donald Trump and America First, Britain's Boris Johnson and Brexit, China's Xi Jinping and his Common Prosperity doctrine, as well as populist leaders in developing nations like Brazil, Turkey and India.

To these leaders and their supporters, globalization has meant a loss of control.

That's meant job insecurity, price instability, demographic shifts and cutthroat economic competition.

With rising global temperatures, two years of a pandemic and unceasing war in Ukraine, many countries are prioritizing their own citizens over global trade.

Just last month, India announced a ban on wheat exports, reneging on an earlier pledge to export 10 million tons this year.

And Indonesia, the world's largest palm oil exporter, announced a similar ban in April.

On the other hand, the world today remains more interconnected than ever, particularly in the digital space.

The United States and China rely so much on each other commercially that they can't commit to a cold or hot war.

And while Russia has antagonized most of the West, it's far from becoming a North Korea type pariah state.

So when I look at a Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi, I keep wondering if these strongman leaders really want to reverse the tide of globalization or if they really just want to shape a different version of it, more palatable to their sensibilities.

To help answer that question, I'm joined by a man who's out with a new book on the world's strongmen, The Financial Times' Gideon Rachman.

And here's our conversation.

Gideon Rachman, great to be with you, man.

>> Good to be with you.

>> And your new book, "The Age of the Strongman," and their consolidation of power, their nationalism and their ability to undermine the institutional structures and frameworks in the countries.

Tell me what -- of the structural factors that are making this happen.

What's the one that you think is hardest to turn around?

>> Well, I think probably the one that's hardest to turn around is how to operate mass migration.

I think resentment at minority groups is often a big pitch for these strongman leaders.

It's really striking that, you know, obviously Trump, when he came in, was sort of "build the wall" and even attempted to ban all Muslims from entering the United States.

>> That was the first thing he tried to do.

>> Indeed.

But if you look at Modi in India, it's a very majoritarian -- it's Hindu nationalism, really, more than even an Indian nationalism and aimed to a considerable extent at the Muslim minority.

In China, you know, they've interned a million Uyghurs.

And again, it's a sort of majoritarian thing.

And in Europe, I think a lot of the kind of far-right figures are campaigning on the idea that the nation is at risk because of social change and migration.

And yet I think migration and mixed societies are kind of the way of the world and we all have to get used to it and learn to, you know, to look at the benefits of it.

But there's a very sort of strong generation of strongman leaders who are finding it's a very fertile theme for them.

And so, you know, you could say inequality is another driver, but it's easier to think of, well, there are economic policies, adjustments you can make to make -- I mean, it's hard, but you can imagine the policy adjustments that would deal with that set of resentment.

>> But if you can demonize those people... >> Exactly.

>> Right.

>> Demonizing those people is kind of key for a lot of these strongman leaders.

And those people aren't going anywhere unless you do something really kind of horrific, like a mass internment.

>> Now, it's interesting that in the case of Ukraine, we are seeing these mass numbers of migrants coming into Europe and coming into countries that have some strongman leaders.

>> Yeah.

>> And that hasn't driven them, even though they're clearly outsiders.

But they're European outsiders.

Is that enough?

>> Well, I think the European outsiders thing does matter.

I mean, I think the people, you know, it's pointless to deny that people are more likely to feel compassion for people who maybe look a bit like them, whose lives look a bit similar and so on.

You know, even in London, we would watch the videos from Ukraine and say, "Boy, you know, their flats don't look so different from our flats.

They're walking the dog like we are."

It doesn't look like Yemen or Tigray, which seems that much further away.

And I think there is something human.

I mean, why do they say the Arab world is particularly upset by the Palestinian issue more than the rest of the world?

Because they feel a closeness to them.

So I don't think it's that surprising that, you know, if you're Poland, even if you've been very resentful or fearful of migrations of Muslims, which really isn't happening even in Poland.

But the Ukrainians are next-door neighbors.

Plus, I think they feel what's happening to them could happen to us.

There's a common sense of threat about Russia.

>> One of the stats that always struck me, and I'm sure you've seen it, is when you ask Europeans how many Muslims actually are in your population.

And the guesses are between five and sometimes 20X what the numbers actually are, because that demonization works so effectively in the politics.

>> Absolutely.

And I think, you know, in France, for example, actually, they don't even know because they don't -- their census doesn't count them because it's part of a sort of ideological thing.

But yeah, absolutely, I think that people feed off anecdote and maybe, you know, in big cities, the populations of immigrants of all sorts, Muslims and others, are quite visible and so on.

But it was interesting, say in the U.K. during the Brexit referendum that the areas of the country that felt most strongly about immigration were probably the areas that have had least of it.

It was something that was going on in people's heads rather than, you know, London, which is a massively migrant city.

I think now almost 40% of the population was born overseas.

And if you count people like me whose parents were born overseas, you're getting up to 80%.

It's extraordinary.

But it voted very strongly to remain in the EU, which was the sort of pro-migration vote, whereas areas that had had less migration were much more suspicious of it.

>> Now, since we're talking about migration, of course, at some point you get to a tipping point.

In the United States, we expect the country demographically to become minority white by 2045.

Now, a lot of people would presume that at some point you just don't have the numbers anymore to continue a strongman policy that's focusing on aggravated, undereducated, white men.

Do you buy that?

Do you think that this trajectory is just going to break at some point demographically?

>> Well, specifically in the U.S., well, it would be nice to believe it, but I think that the Democrats may have put too much faith in that idea because...

I mean, one of the interesting things is the growth of the Hispanic vote for Trump.

Exactly.

And so a lot of his rhetoric about illegal migration might appeal to legal migrants who say, "Well, you know, I've come here legally."

>> And some of that in Germany too.

>> Yeah, absolutely.

And in the U.K., you know, I speak to, you know, recent Indian migrants and so on who will say, "Well, you know, you can't have all these sort of illegal people coming in."

So it's a complicated issue.

It's not, I think, a given that there won't be some minority support for Trumpism.

I mean, I think we're actually seeing evidence to the contrary because provided it steers clear of pure racism, you know, overt racism, and says that it's, you know, Americans first, the Americans who are here rather than the outsiders, I think that can appeal to recent migrants as well.

>> And do you see this as fundamentally hand-in-glove with a fragmentation of globalization that will also continue?

>> I think it's very closely related.

Yeah, because I think that, you know, a lot of these strongman appeals are sort of emotionally linked issues.

So globalization and migration are not exactly the same thing, but they're related and they're to do with a sense of loss of control of the nation, that we have this nation that kind of, to some extent, controlled its own destiny, and now it's part of this big, globalized economy and jobs are being shipped away and disappearing and our borders are crumbling, that sort of emotionally it is our piece.

And so America First contains a migration element, but it also contains a very strong element of protectionism, saying, you know, bring the jobs back, et cetera.

And then if you look at some other things that are happening in the world that aren't strictly related to it but that feed in, like the pandemic, which suddenly makes people focus on the fragility of supply chains and goodness, does it make total sense to have whatever -- I can't remember the precise stat -- but 80% of our personal protective equipment made in China?

So those kinds of arguments are also coming in.

Plus, the growing geopolitical rivalry where people begin to even on the kind of liberal pro-globalization and in economics begin to say it doesn't make sense to be this dependent on a country that may be an adversary.

And we've seen with Russia that actually the economic relations which were built up, which we thought probably unbreakable... >> The Europeans, which the Europeans thought.

>> Absolutely.

>> The Americans did not.

>> Yeah.

Yeah.

Actually get broken by geopolitics.

And so obviously people begin to think, well, might that happen with China?

>> Interesting, of course, though, that that is only happening with the advanced industrial democracies in Russia.

It's not happening at all with the developing countries and Russia, even though those features of nationalism, protectionism are found in those countries, too.

>> Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think it's one of the most interesting things about this crisis is that our initial assumption in the West was "whoopee, we've united the world against Russia."

And then you look around.

>> No, you haven't.

>> And no, you haven't.

And actually, I mean, this stat that at the UN, 50% of the world's population did not vote.

Okay, I mean, that's partly because India and China about 40%.

>> Yeah.

>> But yeah, you know, significant countries that you would classify as democracies.

>> Mexico, Indonesia.

>> Mexico, Brazil, South Africa all abstaining.

And I think it's for complex reasons.

I mean, I point to a couple.

I mean, one is that they will say, "Look, you're so horrified by what's happening in Ukraine.

But, you know, America invaded Iraq.

There was a lot of people killed there, you know, and there are other terrible violence going on that's not getting the headlines."

So they'll say, "You're being a bit hypocritical."

>> And there's some truth to that.

>> Yeah, absolutely.

It's not an easy argument to completely dismiss.

And they will also say, "Oh, and by the way, these sanctions that you're imposing will have a cost on us because it's raising the price of energy."

>> The Europeans still buy gas.

>> The price of food.

Yeah, exactly.

And I think also there's a geopolitical thing that at some level, they don't really want to go back to a unipolar world.

So they think, you know, if the U.S. actually does effectively crush Russia or cut them off from the world, then, you know, even if we don't approve of what Putin's doing, he's kind of another option in the way that China's another option.

And they think, "Well, maybe one day the U.S. will disapprove of us and they will do the same to us."

>> So, Gideon, of the strongman leaders out there, who's the one that actually kind of appeals to you the most?

>> Gosh, that is difficult.

I wouldn't say -- I'm running desperately through my head.

I certainly don't like Putin for obvious reasons.

>> No, not who you don't like.

I want to know -- Come on.

>> I'm waiting for one to come up that I can think I can approve of.

>> There's got to be someone.

>> Putin no, Erdogan no.

Erdogan is just a -- A friend of mine's just been in prison for 18 years.

>> Well, that'll make you like him less, that's true.

Not the friend, I mean Erdogan.

Yeah, yeah.

>> Xi I can't say I'm particularly fond of.

Who are we getting to?

Modi, I think, is an interesting figure.

I actually increasingly think he's a sinister figure, but you can make a case that, you know, he is elected, he is genuinely popular.

He is trying to kind of mobilize a sense that India is on the move, is modernized and so on.

And he hasn't done -- The kind of worst fears about Modi have not yet been realized.

You know, there hasn't been mass communal violence or mass imprisonment, although people are concerned about it.

But I think he's had a pretty negative effect on media freedom.

You know, people are a little worried about the courts in India, so it's hard to say he's entirely positive.

But Boris Johnson I was attacked for including in the book and it was a slightly marginal call, but I think Brexit and Trump are linked phenomena.

So I had to sort of -- I felt that that you had to kind of discuss it.

Bolsonaro is kind of a bit of a joke, really.

It's hard to say.

>> So Modi is the one that potentially appeals to you.

>> Yeah, but I wouldn't -- I wouldn't say that.

>> Because he's standing up for India on the global stage?

Because his economic policies have been more successful?

What is it that -- Where is it that you'd give him credit?

Where is that that you'd say, "Yeah, I kind of get that"?

>> You know, I have to say I'm not a fan of the guy.

>> No, I get it.

But no one's the villain of their own story, right?

And so, I mean, when you write a book like this, you want to try to understand the narrative.

And when you do that, sometimes you say, "Okay, I see that" or "Yeah, that kind of resonates with me."

>> I think another thing you could say about Modi and one of the reasons that he's popular and actually one of the reasons why I think I mistakenly said in 2014 he was worth a try, and I now slightly regret having said that, but actually, even Obama said that, you know, in 2015 -- was writing essays about what a great guy.

>> And said we should let him in, remember, because he was on the blacklist and then they said, "No, no, no, we're going to give him a visit to the U.S." >> I think he said something like he represents the promise of a new India and all that.

>> Yep.

>> And I think the fact that he has come from genuinely humble a background is -- >> He isn't corrupt.

>> Yeah.

>> Personally.

>> He isn't personally corrupt.

And also, you know, there was something a little odd that, you know, in this country of 1.3 billion people that the ruling elite would seem to be such a narrow group of people.

And I think that he's an unusual Indian leader.

He's genuinely come from the lower middle class and he obviously has a rapport with huge numbers of Indians.

And I think that one of the arguments you can make about populism and the relationship of strongman leaders to populism is that people like me can sort of say effectively, "This is sinful.

You know, you shouldn't go anywhere near it."

But they are actually identifying real -- >> Real demands, real grievance.

>> Absolutely.

And they are often right that the globalist elite of which the two of us epitomize are out of touch, you know.

They get something.

I mean, you know, so it was interesting ahead of the French election where, you know, people thought Le Pen might be the first female strongwoman.

And I was talking to a French political analyst who, again, was not going to vote for Le Pen but he said, "Look, the far right has been building and building and building in France over 20, 30 years."

>> And did again in the last election.

>> And just keep going.

And he said, you know, maybe in a democratic system, ultimately they have to be given a try.

I'm not sure I agree because I think that if they get given a try -- >> They can do a lot of damage.

>> But that is an argument that these leaders often are popular and you've got to ask yourself why.

>> Well, there's another argument, of course, which is that if you see these movements growing as a "responsible" leader that believes in rule of law, if you don't do anything and take the bold, courageous, maybe steps that will get you voted out to actually start providing for disenfranchised people in your country, then you are ultimately responsible for the rise of the strongman.

>> Yeah.

No, and I think that, you know, democratic or liberal leaders face a series of dilemmas about what parts of this agenda should I actually try to deal with, you know, and appropriate and so on.

You can see it on migration, where countries like Australia and Denmark, for example, have adopted very Draconian migration policies that, you know, would have appalled liberal opinion 10, 15 years ago and do still to some extent.

But I think because they said, "Well, this is what our population wants and if we don't do it, somebody else more extreme will take up the banner."

So the Danish government has adopted quite a lot of the policies that used to be labeled far right.

>> Biden on immigration.

>> Yeah, well, absolutely.

>> The family breakup is still going on.

>> Yeah.

We saw what happened to Merkel.

>> Yeah.

>> On that issue.

>> Well, actually, she did survive.

>> But it was the biggest hit she took.

>> Totally.

And, you know, the subsequent election, I remember talking to officials of her, and they said her rallies were ugly.

You know, that you often couldn't hear her speak because of the sort of anti-Merkel chanting in the background.

>> Gideon Rachman.

The book is "The Age of the Strongman."

And it's just out.

Good to see you, man.

>> Thank you very much, Ian.

♪♪ >> As you've heard before on this show, the war in Ukraine is having a big impact on global food systems.

And since we last reported on this issue, the situation has only gotten worse.

"GZERO World's" Alex Kliment reports.

>> Today, the world is facing the biggest food crisis since World War II.

The pandemic and climate change have already disrupted food supplies.

But Russia's war in Ukraine has made it all worse.

Before the conflict began, some three dozen countries relied on Russia and Ukraine for more than half of their wheat imports.

The two countries also produced roughly 75% of the world's sunflower oil, a common cooking oil around the globe.

>> The impact of the war is global and systemic.

As many as 1.7 billion people, one third of whom are already living in poverty, are now highly exposed to disruptions in food, energy and finance systems that are triggering increases in poverty and hunger.

>> But not everyone is feeling the impact of this crisis equally.

In the United Kingdom, fish and chip shop owners are getting battered by high costs and uncertainty about the sourcing of their fish.

Andrew Crook has been in the industry for 22 years, ever since his parents opened up The Chippy in the city of Preston, near Manchester.

>> We're experiencing a massive increase in the cost of oil.

Our fish has already doubled because of the post-pandemic inflation.

We're still waiting for the tariff that's been announced to be introduced on Russian whitefish.

>> Known as a cheap and hearty meal that's high in protein and calories, fish and chips has long been a staple food for the British working class.

In fact, during World War II, when the government was rationing tea, butter and meat, fish and chips was spared in order to make sure that the country's factory workers were well-fed for the war effort.

Crook now runs his own shop, The Skippers of Exton, and heads the U.K.'s National Federation of Fish Friers.

He's already seen many fish-and-chips shops close and he worries that over the next nine months, fully a third of them could go out of business entirely.

While people's livelihoods in wealthy countries are under pressure from this global crisis, it is hitting the world's most vulnerable even harder.

Yemen, a country already reeling from a brutal civil war, COVID, cholera and a blockade of its ports, saw food prices rise by 170% last year.

And one third of the country's wheat imports come from Ukraine.

>> There's around 17 million people that are going to bed hungry.

That means a mother that will skip a meal to make sure that their children can eat properly.

We're very often on the brink of a famine.

And what we know is that when there's a famine, it's already too late and there's a lot of people that are starving.

>> Experts say that to get out of this food crisis, the international community must work together to lower trade barriers for food and reopen Ukraine's ports.

In the meantime, all around the world, billions remain unsure of where their next meal will come from and how much it may cost.

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

♪♪ >> And now to "Puppet Regime," where we ask, why won't Joe Biden wake up?

>> [ Snoring ] >> Magnificent.

We've tracked down the elusive Biden in its natural habitat.

The Biden's critics often misinterpret this behavior as an involuntary reaction.

But actually, it's the Biden's way of escaping a hellish reality into a restorative world of dreams.

>> Inflation is down for the ninth week in a row as prices... >> The GOP is working with Democrats on gun control as a... >> Reports say that Donald Trump has simply vanished.

>> We're getting news that Vladimir Putin has stepped down.

>> Joe Biden has united America.

>> Everyone's hair smells great now.

>> But as the elusive Biden knows, the midterms are fast approaching.

The Biden knows that, correct?

Joe, Joe, you've got to wake up.

Joe!

>> [ Gasps ] Did I win re-election?

>> "Puppet Regime"!

>> That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like what you see, you just love talking about bananas and other fruit -- tomatoes, that's a fruit, you know it is -- 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...