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

I'm Ian Bremmer.

And today, we are looking back at the remarkable power shifts of 2022 and what it might mean for the year ahead.

From the largest European land invasion since the Second World War to the effective coronation of the world's most powerful person in Beijing to a big political comeback for Democrats in Washington, it has been quite the year.

Before we go dunk our heads collectively in one large eggnog bowl -- sounds strange -- let's talk about what it all might mean for 2023.

And I'm joined by New America's Anne-Marie Slaughter and The Atlantic's Tom Nichols.

Don't worry, I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

>> Merry Christmas.

>> Merry Christmas, Mr. Santa Claus, sir.

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

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At First Republic, our clients come first.

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Additional funding provided by... ...and by... >> Power is fleeting, maybe history's oldest lesson.

From the rise and fall of the Roman Empire to the British Prime Minister, who wilted faster than a head of lettuce, and when it came to three of the biggest global stories of the year, 2022 showed us just how quickly the sands of power can shift.

Let's start with the war in Ukraine.

In the early hours of February 24, it became clear that Putin's "special military operation" was going to be far more than a few precision strikes.

A nuclear power, second in military might only to the United States, had launched the largest invasion on European soil since World War II.

And you can understand why Ukrainian President Zelenskyy signed off on his call to European leaders the next day by saying, and I quote, "This may be the last time you see me alive."

Fast-forward a few months, and not only is President Zelenskyy still with us, but he's welcoming the likes of Boris Johnson and Ben Stiller -- I don't know who's more relevant these days -- to the Presidential Palace in Kyiv.

His blue-and-yellow-banded troops have inspired the world by repelling Russian forces throughout the country.

And while the war is very far from over, Zelenskyy has the West, pretty much the whole West, on his side.

A rejuvenated NATO is poised to welcome Sweden and Finland into its fold, and sanctions are crippling Russia's economy.

Today, Ukraine's president is Time's Person of the Year, while Russia's president is a pariah, with world leaders literally edging away from him during photo shoots.

At 5'7", Putin was never a tall man, even in heels, but nearly a year into his disastrous war with Ukraine, he's never looked smaller.

And then there's China's President Xi Jinping, much bigger than Vladimir Putin.

He cemented his status as the most powerful person on the planet this October when he accepted a historic third term as the general secretary of the Communist Party.

But he too is facing challenging times.

China's zero-COVID policy, meant to shield his nation from the pandemic, created ongoing lockdowns and sparked surprising protests.

And earlier this month, the government announced a sudden rollback of those rules, But the damage may already be done.

In October, youth unemployment stood at 18.7%.

That's high.

At a time that China's economy is slowing overall, Xi Jinping's government also faces ongoing global tensions over human rights abuses, including treatment of its Muslim Uyghur population.

And finally, here in the United States, things weren't looking so good for President Joe Biden back in the run-up to the midterms.

He went into November 8th with a blistering 41% favorability rating, not good, and once-in-a-generation levels of inflation.

And yet, when the votes were counted, the Democrats defied history.

Though they ceded the House majority to the Republicans, they managed to keep those losses to single digits.

Very surprising.

And on the Senate side, they held on to their majority.

It also is the first time since 1934 that the President's party had a net gain of governorships in a president's first midterm.

None of this was good news for former president Trump.

His handpicked candidates grossly underperformed at the ballot box.

Whether that's going to kneecap his 2024 re-election bid -- he's already running -- or not, far from clear.

What will all this mean for the year ahead?

I'm discussing that and more with New America's CEO, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Tom Nichols.

He's author and staff writer at The Atlantic.

Here's our conversation.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, Tom Nichols, thanks so much for joining us on "GZERO World."

>> Great to be here.

>> Thanks for having me.

>> So I want to start with the war in Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has just been named Time's Person of the Year.

Changed immensely how we think about the global order this war.

Anne-Marie, start me off with your most unsparing take on what you think this invasion means for the world.

>> This war has simultaneously dramatically sharpened the "geopolitical great power politics are back" view of what is wrong in the world, and at the same time, led us to focus a lot more on the global challenges of energy shortages, climate more broadly, food security.

If you think about the Biden national security strategy issued in October, they said, for the first time, these two sets of challenges are equal, equally important, and both of them are dramatically sharpened by the Ukraine war.

I will say, I think, longer term, this war will mark a high point in the willingness of nations to stand up for the world of the UN charter, but it will also be a turning point in where nations get their energy and will speed us to a green transition.

>> Tom?

>> I don't know how the international system finally heals from the reality that one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council is a nuclear-armed rogue state now.

This is the thing that kind of keeps me up at night, that there is no real exit for Russia, even in the medium term.

Even if Putin were to leave the scene tomorrow, there is a reckoning here.

Russia got the benefit of the doubt after 1991.

After 70 years of communism, the rest of the world said, "Bygones.

World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, a lot of bad things happened.

We understand.

This is Russia's chance."

Well, 30 years later, there isn't another chance.

Russia's not getting the benefit of the doubt the second time around, but we are stuck with all the institutions in which Russia is going to punch above its weight in every way.

This is now one of the most powerful countries in the world, at least by measured in megatonnage, deciding that it will obliterate its neighbors at will.

And I'm not sure -- I wish I could say I see the long term here, but I'm not sure how this ends with the international system that we once knew intact.

I think, I want to be optimistic and say, I think the international institutions are going to prevail, that Russia will be the part that has to change over time.

But this is something that I just didn't think I would see 30 years after the end of the Cold War.

>> I don't agree with Tom that there's this dramatic change, where suddenly, one of the great powers of one of the permanent members of the Security Council is a nuclear rogue state.

I agree that that may be the way the Europeans see it, more than they ever have before, maybe the Americans.

That is not true of the rest of the world.

I really think many, many other nations in the world are looking at this war and saying, "This is a north war, this is an east-west war.

It's not our war."

And the biggest changes I see in the international system are all those countries.

An Indian recently said to me, that, instead of talking about the Global South, we should talk about the global majority.

All those countries are demanding their place at the global institutional table.

And that means a lot of turbulence, in lots of different parts of the system.

>> If the institutions hold, we will have no one to thank more than Vladimir Putin.

>> True.

>> This is proof again that Vladimir Putin is a terrible strategist, because the Russians were getting what they wanted.

Institutions were weakening, and suddenly, 32 nations in NATO, including Finland and Sweden, the European Union, actually acting like a transnational union that has a common interest.

The Russians have created exactly the world they thought they were going to forestall.

>> So Russia's in a dramatically different position as Putin is going into 2023 as he was going into 2022.

China, of course, also is looking a little different, not because of the Russian war so much, but rather -- Yes, Xi has had this incredibly successful party congress, but China's economy is looking a lot more dicey.

There's a lot of freezing of China's industry that's been occurring from all the state intervention.

And of course, we saw all these big demonstrations, not massive demonstrations, but still unprecedented in recent years in China.

And now, they are suddenly saying, "Oh, the virus has changed.

No more zero-COVID."

Not going to be easy to pull off.

How do you think China and Xi are positioned globally as we look ahead to 2023?

Start with you, Anne-Marie.

>> I think it's going to be a rocky year for China.

I really do.

For one thing, the zero-COVID policy fed on itself because as people stayed locked down and they didn't get vaccinated, and people will look back and say, "Why on Earth didn't the Chinese government, with all its power, simply insist on vaccinations, even with a less effective vaccine?"

But once you've done that, you've got a population, of course, of over a billion people, including many, many old people, who are not vaccinated.

And so, now, we are going to see deaths, and the question is, how many?

How fast?

But that will have its own fallout, both socially and economically, for Xi, and in addition to just navigating the overall shift in policy.

It is very striking that right after this congress, where Xi is supposedly at the apex of his power, you see successful demonstrations, right?

He is changing his policy.

That means he thinks he can't just maintain it.

It also means that notwithstanding probably the most repressive apparatus in the world, or certainly one of them, he couldn't stop these demonstrations, right?

They went from city to city.

There are small demonstrations that are local all the time in China.

It's one of the ways, in fact, that the Chinese government lets Chinese blow off steam and figures out how to adjust policy.

But if you see anything like the deaths that we saw in the first four or five months of the pandemic, it's not going to be possible to shut that information down, and at the very least, his infallible leader who is guiding China toward 2049, when it will become a middle-income country and be recognized as the great power that it has always deserved to be, that narrative is going to be badly dented.

And again, you're going to see economic fallout as well.

>> So, Tom, how big a bump in the road is this for China's role on the global stage?

>> What's really striking about this is how the Chinese regime has been revealed to be, has been cut down to size as just another government that has to deal with a bunch of problems that governments have to deal with, like a pandemic.

And even to me, again, it feels like a little bit of a Cold War echo, if only they weren't using their own less effective vaccine.

And the idea that the Chinese could just clamp down on dissent and could continue their role as an economic superpower and maintain all of that kind of facade of invulnerability, I think has really been -- and I think that's frankly a good thing that that facade has been kind of pulled down a bit.

I'm sorry for the loss of life and the loss of productivity and all the other things that have happened from the pandemic, but I think we were kind of convincing ourselves of a narrative that the Chinese government could do almost anything.

>> Anne-Marie, the other big conversation that's happening around China right now is to what extent there is and/or there should be a level of economic decoupling between the West and China, both on the national security side, but also in terms of more investment at home, more focus on domestic workforces.

All of these things very different than the globalization arguments, of course, that dominated the global economic conversations for so many decades.

How do you feel about this in the China context?

>> There has been some decoupling, and there will undoubtedly be more, but it has to be limited.

I think it will be limited, simply because for whatever is happening to China and Chinese growth this year, it has still been the fastest growing economy, the hundred-pound gorilla or 800-pound gorilla on the global stage in the last 20 years.

And so, we're shifting things to Vietnam.

We're shifting manufacturing back home, some degree of that.

Absolutely, the pandemic showed us that we were too dependent.

But I look around at U.S. business and global business.

Look at the European Union, and again, the EU is China's greatest trading partner.

We are not moving to anything remotely like, not only full decoupling, even 50% decoupling.

I think you're looking at 10 or 15%.

That still has an impact, given how big the numbers are.

But I think it's worth remembering, China is far better governed than either Russia or Iran.

China really has delivered a far better standard of living for its people.

The Chinese government is broadly supported.

There is absolutely dissent, but I think it doesn't make sense to compare it to Iran and Russia, given economic policy, social policy, even health policy, even with all these difficulties.

So overall, China's a force.

We have to continue to engage with them.

And then, going back to where we started, on the global challenges, so food security, energy security, water, climate change, pandemics, if there's another pandemic, and there will be, we have to work with China, because without China, we really don't have a chance of addressing these really big global threats.

>> One more big topic, got to get to the United States.

I want to ask, Tom, given what we just saw from the midterms, were people too overexcited about how much trouble American democracy is in?

>> Oh, no.

I think we're still completely underestimating how much danger American democracy is in.

We had a narrow escape.

Had some small margins gone the other way, we would be in a world of trouble right now.

Do the counterfactual in your mind of election deniers and various other kind of kooks and weirdos taking over state offices because I think one problem is we still concentrate too much on the big picture of, who's the President?

Who controls the Senate?

But when you look at things like Secretary of State, state legislative chambers, governorships, and so on, we had a narrow escape.

And it's not done.

They're all coming back for another bite of the apple in 2024.

So the idea that we're somehow overestimating threat to democracy, if anything, I think we are way too complacent.

So no, I don't think democracy is out of the woods here in the United States by a long shot.

>> Anne-Marie?

>> Well, I agree in many ways.

If you look at these margins, so Raph Warnock won by 1%.

These are tiny, tiny margins.

And I think it's only a turning point, depending, and I agree with Tom, on people continuing to perceive that democracy really is at risk.

At the same time, to me, probably the most important part of the midterms is not Democrat versus Republican, but Republican versus Republican.

It's the rise of DeSantis against Trump, that is critical, I think, to ultimately isolating the Trump wing of the Democratic Party.

And DeSantis is actually proving that you can pursue Trump policies but without Trump's willingness to just trash the system completely.

Long term, there's still a danger there.

But for my money, it's very important to rule out the most extreme, the people who are willing, exactly as Tom said, to simply stand against the Constitution and to claim that their views are more important than our democracy.

And that's that split within the Republican Party that, I think, we will see evolve in very important ways over the next two years.

>> Now, Tom, Trump is running for the presidency, though it's hard to see it, in the sense that he's not actually campaigning yet.

What do you think the likelihood is, give me a percentage, that he actually can get the nomination?

>> Oh, wow.

If I had to pick right now, I'd say it's well over 60, 70%.

Simply because the base is with him.

And this is the one place, and I agree almost entirely with everything Anne-Marie just said, except for the way that this discussion, I think, is isolating Trump as part of the problem.

The problem is that the GOP base wants these kinds of politicians.

It's not just Trump.

They want Kari Lake, they want Doug Mastriano.

A million and a half people in Georgia thought that Herschel Walker should be a United States Senator, somebody who would've been laughed out of the room.

Doug Mastriano, somebody that would've been just ruled out of bounds by a better Republican Party 10 years ago.

It's not much of an improvement if DeSantis runs, by basically grabbing the reins of the same base and then governing in the same way, but less offensively.

>> So final question, because we've been picking on the GOP side here.

I want to ask, Anne-Marie, if Joe Biden comes to you right now and says, "Anne-Marie, do you think I should run again," what do you tell him?

>> Right this minute, I'd say, "yes."

>> You would?

Why?

>> I would actually say "yes," because I think he's accomplished a lot.

Because he is, in fact -- he was able, for many, many reasons -- this wasn't love of Biden -- but he had delivered some real legislative achievements.

Now, look, his health, his sort of fitness, that's a matter for him and his family to decide, and his doctors.

But there's no sign right now that he really can't do it.

And actually, I look at this two years in and I think he's done a lot of very important stuff.

And that actually is, I think, the strongest platform to run on right now.

>> Okay.

Tom, Biden's your gladiator, your Caesar, give me the thumb.

>> [ Laughs ] >> I'm with Anne-Marie on this.

I'm amazed that -- >> My goodness.

>> I'm amazed that this is even a question because if you just took Biden's kind of old guy ambience out of this and said, "here is the record of a first-term president, with all of these legislative achievements, holding NATO together during a major European land war, escorting the economy out of the doldrums, looks like we're starting to tame inflation, on and on and on, and a first-term president with his party in the majority, not only completely limits the gains in the House but actually gains seats in the Senate," there would be nobody saying, "You know what that guy ought to do?

He needs to step down."

No one would say that.

It's purely a matter of because he's old.

And yet, Donald Trump is within a few years of Joe Biden's age.

We're so used to Joe Biden back in his day, being that sort of parody of himself, that now he's a 79-year-old guy, and everybody says, "Yeah, he's lost a step."

>> Now you know that the problem we have, Tom, is that the older you get, the younger those people look to you.

[ Laughter ] >> That is true.

>> Tom Nichols, Anne-Marie Slaughter, always great to see you.

Glad to bring you together on television for the first time.

>> Was great fun.

Thank you.

♪♪ >> And now to "Puppet Regime" at the North Pole, where Santa gets a letter that causes some big, big problems for him and the reindeer.

Roll that tape.

♪♪ >> Ho, ho, ho.

Merry Christmas.

>> Merry Christmas, Mr. Santa Claus, sir.

>> How are my unpaid interns?

I mean, my dear elves.

>> Busy as ever, sir.

We've been getting swamped with Christmas wishlists, but we've been separating them into three piles.

>> Yeah.

One of them's from people still trying to get Bad Bunny tickets.

The other is from Republicans begging us to stop Trump from running.

>> Ha, I'm Santa.

Not DeSantis.

>> Ha, good one.

>> Anyway, what's in the third pile?

>> Well, it's actually all letters from the same person, sir.

Here, listen to this one.

"Dear Santa... >> I have been very good this year, but with Republicans controlling House and Europeans losing nerve, I must ask you, my less reliable hope, please send weapons.

Signed, Volodymyr.

>> I suppose we could do something for him.

After all, Putin is definitely on the naughty list.

>> Mm-hmm, sure.

>> I'll see what I can do.

Now, if you'll excuse me, Mrs. Claus and I have to get smashed on coquito, while you all work overtime.

>> You hear that?

Santa's going to help out Zelenskyy.

>> We're going to have to contact the boss about this.

Let's go.

>> Hello, unpaid spies.

I mean spies.

What have you got?

>> Good afternoon, sir.

[ Clears throat ] [ Deep voice ] Oh, wait, we don't have to talk in those stupid voices anymore.

Sir, the fat man is selling weapons to Ukraine.

>> Over my dead buddy.

>> I think that's the idea.

Yes.

>> I'll show that Santa Claus a thing or two.

♪♪ [ Cellphone rings ] >> [ Gasps ] Hold on, dear.

It'll just be a minute.

>> Is that your wife?

>> No, it's just business.

Ho, ho, ho?

>> Cut the crap, you decadent idiot.

If you help that Nazi in Ukraine, I will cut off gas to your workshop, poison Rudolph, and invade North Pole.

There are many Russians in the Arctic already, and they must be rescued from your tyranny.

>> What?

Wrong number.

Oh, goodness me.

Whatever shall I do to appease both sides?

>> Ah, yes.

Merry Christmas to me.

It looks like Santa really answered my...

Wait a minute.

These are toy weapons.

How am I supposed to continue fighting with these?

Ah, I should have just asked for warm socks.

>> "Puppet Regime"!

>> That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like what you see, or you don't, but you just want to go back to 2022 again and see, maybe things changed, maybe they weren't what you remembered, 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...