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GEOPOLITICS AN INDIA GLOBAL VIEW! IndiaToday ... Fareed Zakaria analyses: Trump's 'Madman Theory', Putin's Ukraine Strategy, Modi's Populism: PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQEyKOlF9RM Peter Burgess COMMENTARY I have liked the reporting by Farid Zakaria for a long time ... perhaps more than two decades. I have always liked his grasp of international affairs which for me has always seemed a lot better informed than most everyone else doing global reporting. My own view is that the world has huge potential because more people are better education now than in the past especially in the big countries like China and India. At the same time, countries like the United States have stalled. Were it not for very competent immigrants, the USA would be nowhere. With the election of Donald Trump as President ... for the second time ... the American electorate has shown how much it is out of touch with the realities of the modern world. I was born in 1940 and lived in the UK until I was in my mid to late 20s. When I migrated to North America, I was able to earn more in two months than I could earn in a year in the UK. At that time, the economy in North America and especially the United States was good for working people and times were good! Political leadership in the USA went 'off the rails' with Nixon in the early 1970s and the American economy took a massive hit with OPEC and the Arab Oil boycott in 1973. More than any other economy, the US economy was built on the production cost advantage of ultra low priced oil. Almost all major products made in the USA were made using a lot more oil than in Europe or Japan, and when the OPEC cartel increased the price of oil, production costs in the USA sky-rocketed! Europe and Japan were not impacted as much, because they had taken steps to become more oil efficient over many years, and had a tax regime to give incentive to being more energy efficient. The USA never bothered ... and it made the USA far more vulnerable to what happened in 1973. 1973 was the beginning of a multi-decade decline in manufacturing in the USA ... a trend that President Biden has had some success in reversing ... though not much appreciated by most Americans, and especially the MAGA Americans! Looking back ... there are aspects of the USA economy that have worked quite well in this last half century, but equally there are many dimensions of the USA that are problematic. The global economy is now centered much more around China than the United States and the response of the USA has been inept, to say the least! India is not having the same global impact as China ... but that is changing. BRICS is coming of age and becoming more powerful while the G7 has become old and in decline. These a very big trends, but little understood, especially in the USA. Though I am old and live in the United States, I am optimistic that the world can have a good future. However, this will not happen if the policy framework for the world is anything like what the incoming President Trump in the United States seems to have in mind. My daughter and I have attended some major tech events in New York in the last year (2024). One of the big takeaways from these events run by Microsoft and Google was that hardly any of the attendees were actually Americans! Mostly, the attendees were foreigners working in 'tech' in the USA and pushing tech in America forward into the future This was in stark contrast to the Trump theme of 'Making America Great Again' which has absolutely no substance ... frankly, a characteristic of everything Trump has done for the past several decades! Hold On! It is going to be a very bumpy ride! Peter Burgess
Trump's 'Madman Theory', Putin's Ukraine Strategy, Modi's Populism: Fareed Zakaria analyses India Today 9.98M subscribers ... 68,289 views ... 785 likes Premiered Jan 24, 2025 #chinaeconomy #indiausrelations #wef Fareed Zakaria discusses Trump's second term approach, comparing it to Modi's leadership style. He analyzes Trump's foreign policy tactics, including threats to allies and adversaries. Zakaria examines Putin's strategy in Ukraine and the challenges for Western democracies in countering Russia's aggression. #wef #fareedzakaria #rahulkanwal #ukrainewar #geopolitics #trumpmadmantheory #elonmusk #middleeastdynamics #putinstrategy #usrussia #indiausrelations #populistleaders #xijinping #fareedzakariainterview #trumpforeignpolicy #chinaeconomy #modipopulism Subscribe to India Today for NEW VIDEOS EVERY DAY and make sure to enable Push Notifications so you'll never miss a new video. All you need to do is PRESS THE BELL ICON next to the Subscribe button! 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Download App: https://indiatoday.link/wHaj Follow us: Official website: https://www.indiatoday.in/ Twitter: / indiatoday Facebook: / indiatoday Transcript Transcript 0:00 hello and welcome there is greater geopolitical and geoeconomic uncertainty at this moment than there has at any point in time in recent political history and when there are so many unknowns up in the air who better than the world's top Foreign Affairs Guru fared zakara to try and give our viewers a sense of what to make of the Donald Trump presidency and the impact this has in India and the rest of the world Farid zakar for taking our time and joining us here at the India Today Studios thank you so much always a pleasure to see you absolute Delight to have you when there's so many things happening and people wondering what's going on just as you wrap your head around the first thing that Donald Trump has done there's another big announcement he's making and then everybody's going trying to chase and understand what that means from what you were expecting from Donald Trump to what he's done in his first few days in office what are your initial impressions of trump 2.0 1:01 I think the most important one is that the guard rails are off when Trump won the first time in 2016 he didn't think he was going to win and we know this for sure I have this from very good authority and so he stumbles into the presidency and he takes with him two very important um groups of people who act as guard rails the old Republican establishment remember his first Chief of Staff is a man named Ren prus the chairman of the Republican National Committee whom he barely knew um and he brings in also three four generals because he admires generals and he thinks they're going to help him execute his vision and in both cases what he found I think I'm now going to speak from his point of view is that they were not fundamentally loyal to him I think they would say they were loyal to the country and the Constitution more than to him but whatever it was he realized these people were not going to execute his vision Trump 2.0 has none of these people there are no 2:02 members of the Republican establishment there are no generals you notice it's all people who have expressed absolute devotion and loyalty to Trump so what that means is you are going to see the Trump agenda uh enacted implemented you know as much as po now there will be some hard realities uh that you you confront domestically the hard realities are America is still a constitutional democracy so for example you know he's uh he said everyone has to get back to work 5 days a week now I am basically in favor of that I I tend to think it's the right idea but there is a federal employees union that has a contract in which they negotiated a certain work you know work work from home provision I'm sure they will take him to court I'm sure there will be some so there will be know what I mean there's there's what you're seeing now is a flurry of almost Declarations of intent that doesn't always translate and then the second of course is in the international sphere um Trump loves to 3:06 upend uh you know and to get people on edge you know I'm going to Annex Canada and it will be the 51st state obviously many of those things aren't actually going to happen so what we have to say is where is the where is the end State what is he trying to do here and in in many of those cases again if you go back to Trump one he didn't succeed uh in some cases he did so the whole right now what you're seeing is a flurry of activity and declarations uh much of it designed almost like a psychological game with his uh with his allies and adversaries you're saying he'll be able to get done what he wants and what's on his agenda but that also seems to keep changing he for example took a very strong position on Tik Tok wanted Tik Tok baned and then hours before that actually happens he gives them an extension so his agenda also seems to be very fluid and nebulous so Donald Trump for Mo the most part has very few fixed 4:04 political views very unusual I I think for a politician at his level um but what you you know and so you're absolutely right there's an enormous amount of fluidity you know he may change his mind about something I think it's worth noticing something though which is really quite stunning the the Loyalty that he has that his base gives him the trust he has so he is the man who as you say in his first term banned Tik Tok by an executive order and is base cheered he now comes and he unbans Tik Tok with an executive order and is base cheers even that unbanned by the way might not actually happen but you know again here there's a bit of a comparison with Modi Modi has some of that but I don't think I've ever seen anyone certainly not in an advanced industrial democracy with you know uh supposedly educated voters and things like that I've never seen anything like this I mean this guy can reverse himself on all almost anything and his his his base would say we support you the 5:04 Argentinian president was here if you join all the trends that we're seeing internationally what's the image of the leader who's emerging who manages to win votes at this time uh there's several similarities and some dissimilarities between Prime Minister Modi and Donald Trump and since that equation will be so critical to what happens between India and the US do you want to shed some light on similarities dissimilarities and this PO kind of leader who seems to be winning at the expense of the more liberal leader so I think the the core similarity is anti-establishment Outsider disruptor uh and that sense that you come you you're coming into Power uh you know kind of over the backs of a of a long established political uh establishment so the Argentinian is like that you know erdogan was like that when he came in Modi was like that Trump is like that now the interesting question is at what point you know after how many years in power do you become the 6:04 establishment or can you keep running as the anti-establishment candidate I mean Prime Minister Modi has now been in power a long time and yet he has managed to in some way still present himself as The Outsider this is Donald Trump's second term in the presidency but he still presents himself you know part of that the skill of a populist Outsider is to is to claim to be the outsider claim to and the right in America does it by saying all the cultural institutions are captured by the left the universities the media and things like that and again there is that similarity with Modi you know so I think they have there's a lot in common uh and they're both very skilled politicians uh I think Prime Minister Modi is a much more detailed policy wonk in a way that Donald Trump is not Donald Trump is much more intuitive he's much more uh you know he can change his mind every day I don't 7:00 think those pieces of it are less true of Modi you know mo Modi is somebody who looks at policy carefully um makes decisions in a fairly analytic way follows them through now he may make political choices uh you know not to implement something or the other but that part of trump uh is I wouldn't say it's Unique but it's very rare for somebody to come that high up in a western political establishment you know not that concerned conc ered about the details of policy president Trump is railing against Canada continuing to call Canada America's 51st state he's insisting he wants Greenland he wants to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America he wants the Panama Canal what exactly is he aiming for because surely Canada can't become America's 51st state what does he want so it's a very good question I think you know what Trump is is going for is the idea that look what is his slogan make America great again so he wants both the symbols 8:01 and substance so the symbols are you rename you know the Gulf of Mexico and you call it the Gulf of America it's a cheap thing most countries won't follow along but can you do it I mean if this the Gul of Mexico can you suddenly say it's now the Gulf of America it's I remember growing up in India you know every time You' get a Bo you would get maps from outside the country the borders would be blacked out because the Indian government did not agree with the borders that were being drawn by encyclopedia britanica between India and and Pakistan so it's a little bit like that America will call it the Gulf of America I I don't know that other countries will do it maybe a few American Allies will do it you know maybe Saudi Arabia will will will do it but but it sends this RAR patriotic signal with the with the others I think there's a very interesting um kind of worldview that Trump has which is that America's allies not adversaries allies have taken advantage of it um and that America has been you know too uh willing 9:02 to accommodate itself to to its allies if you talk to people around the world that is not the impression people have of America they have the impression of America which a very powerful country gets its own way writes its own rules gets special exemptions for whatever it wants and I think that's factually closer to the truth but for Trump he's obsessed with this idea that he needs to get a better deal for America on so everything is a part of a negotiation strategy so the Canada thing is he wants to reopen trade negotiations with Canada so throw them off guard throw them off balance try to you know get get them you know to guessing as to what's happening with Panama maybe he wants a better deal on the Panama Canal uh you know what they charge the US Navy maybe he wants to put a base there um does he really mean that he's going to go in and use military force and uh and you know invade Canada and Concord very much doubt that that that's what he's thinking I think he'll find the Canadians are proud nationalists like many countries uh with Greenland again 10:05 he probably wants significantly bigger basing rights and mineral rights and things like that you could probably get these other ways you know the the there are many ways to negotiate but Trump's way is always put the other guy on on the defensive do something that psychologically unnerves him and puts him on the back on the back foot um the danger to my mind is is America has built enormous Goodwill with these countries with its allies in Europe and Asia over eight decades and that's why these countries have sided with America in all kinds of Wars geopolitical contests against the Soviet Union against Russia against China against Islamic uh Terror you know that is built because you conduct international relations not as one-on-one transactions where you always win the other guy loses but but as relationships you're not you're not just thinking about the transaction you're thinking about the long-term relationship but is this the madman 11:06 Theory at work because all the research that I read about President Nixon and when this was attempted in the past and the academic research around it seems to say it doesn't work so it's not as if you know he can pull this off and uh be successful at it does the madman theory in your work in your mind work no you're exactly right I mean Nixon tried it very very often he talked about explicitly and the the case he was talking about um just so people understand was with Vietnam with North Vietnam as it was called then which is I'll bomb them a little bit I make it out that I could even use nuclear weapons they didn't buy it at all you know I mean Nations have a very shrewd understanding of what you're trying to do what your interests are how far you go so I I very much doubt for example he's you know threatened uh Russia with tariffs or if they don't come to the negotiating table I don't know what he's talking about because we already have sanctions on Russia the Russ no Russian Goods enter the United 12:03 States anyway so what tariffs would you know so Putin is not is not stupid he knows that that's an empty threat so I suspect that this is just part of Trump's you know it's the way he is give you an example in 2017 when he first meets the president of Panama uh he's president Trump then first thing he says to him is you charge us too much uh for our our our Navy now the Panama Canal Authority charges the US Navy $1 million a year the US defense budget is $800 billion so that is roughly 0.001% of the Pentagon budget or you know zero point but 0 0 it's the fourth decimal place why is he doing that I mean the president of the United States is trying to haggle you know and get a discount because it's his nature I mean you you know he's like a bazari he goes in you know you know people like this I know 13:02 people like this very rich people they go into chore Bazar and they will not pay the retail price and they'll say no that bag you know that bag of spices that garam masala you're charging me 14 rupees I'll pay you nine now you know for somebody worth what they are is the you know and then you finally they get to 12 rupees you save three rupees on a bag of garam masal it's that sense that I got a deal I pushed you you know and the again the danger is yeah fine you can do that but you know what does that do to the relationship what does that do to the trust but it also allows other world leaders to play a man like that because his negotiating Playbook his tactics are quite easy to understand and over a period of time leaders get the hang of it I heard Christian lagad say Europe needs to carry checkbooks when they're talking to Donald Trump so that's as far as Europe is concerned they friends but Russia China adversaries uh with a very different kind of equation do you fear they could play Trump yeah look so so so you know flatter him announce big deals you might have seen 14:05 in the last couple of days there was this big deal announced about a $100 billion data center so if you read through the lines and Elon Musk has pointed this out it's actually A10 billion investment the soft bank is putting in a five Milli billion Oracle is five and then they say they're going to raise more and I'm sure they will but money in the bank right now seems to be 10 it's very trumpian to announce 100 and then to say it's going to be 500 and now that's just thin air but he likes that you know so so everyone plays to that and says we'll we'll come up with the biggest number we can and we'll announce it and you know we and and and the other funny thing about this was so they announced the deal and then outside they asked Larry Ellison of Oracle so is the deal um you know when is it going to happen and he says well it's only could have happened because of President Trump and this year but when is going to he 15:00 said oh construction began 6 months ago so it can only happen by because of him but it already began last year but Trump is demonstrating two very different instincts one he wants to you know pull America away from the rest of the world and just look inwards on the other he says I want to be The Peacemaker I want to end Wars are those two instincts at odds with each other in your view and it seems a lot of people seem to think he wants the Nobel Prize for Peace could he get it in this term I think you're right that those are both uh that at at odds and I think the reality is there again he's very skillful politician he knows that's what his constituency his base wants to hear it's a nationalist workingclass base that thinks America has worried too much about the world and worried too much about all these wars and peace and why aren't we you know fixing the problems at home so that's the rhetoric but as you say he also you know clearly likes the idea of being the leader of the Free World likes the idea of being the most powerful leader in the 16:01 world and wants to use that in a way that you know helps the world but also helps him personally which gets us to the Nobel Prize look if the United States has enormous political leverage now I I think in some ways it has more leverage now than it's had for for decades just because China is not doing so well Russia is obviously very much on the back foot Iran has been weakened so its adversaries are all weakened and by the way Joe Biden should get some credit for that but because of that if the president of the United States puts a certain amount of time energy attention um yes he might well be able to deliver results I think on the crucial one Ukraine Donald Trump has begun to realize and you see this in his last few tweets and statements that the problem he faces in getting peace in Ukraine is not with Ukraine but with Russia it's Putin is the guy who's not willing to can he brow beat uh Vladimir Putin I saw 17:02 the post he put out on Truth social it's surreal you won't imagine that the sitting president of the United States is virtually threatening Putin you have a good understanding of Putin's mind what do you think is the thinking in Russia at this moment do they just want this war to drag on and tire the West out uh does Putin think he can win can Trump force him into some kind of a peace deal so Putin whom I have met several times absolutely thinks he can win Putin is a very disciplined uh person he's very intelligent he's very well briefed he understands his version of Russian history very well and for him that version says when Russia stays the course suffers the pain is willing to take you know take the body blows and is willing to keep going it can Outlast anyone it outlasted Napoleon it outlasted Hitler that's his model that the West is feckless there's going to be infighting among democracies they lose Faith they they will not have the 18:03 ability to have that kind of staying power he does and inexorably slowly he will grind uh the ukrainians down I think it is the challenge of the democracies to show that that's not true and in fact historically I mean the United States says you know it outlasted Hitler's Germany it outlasted Stalin Soviet Union it outlasted Al-Qaeda um but this is the always the danger with democracy so what what I think Trump has to realize is that it's all very well to talk about being a dealmaker but in order to be a deal maker you first need to put enough pressure on Putin that he feels he he needs to make a deal right now I don't think Putin thinks he needs to make a deal he feels that as long as he keeps pushing forward events will move in his in his Direction here can only make a deal if Putin thinks he's not winning on the battlefield and he's not winning but Trump doesn't want to supply weapons and money to ziny that 19:04 just ensures that Putin then has the upper hand this is the problem so how can he win and not put down the money I think he he will have to he'll find that you know tariffs as I say against Russia are it's meaningless the Russia is already sanctioned there are no you know there is no Russian exports coming out the thing that matters most to Putin is defeat on the battlefield and the only way you can achieve that defeat on the battlefield is more milit AR Weaponry to Ukraine the ukrainians are willing to die for their country they just need the weapons so what do you see happen because first it was before I come to power then it seemed to become 100 days uh will anything happen uh Within These 100 days between Russia and Ukraine that Donald Trump is trying to ensure because he's also an egoistic man I mean the more Putin pushes back the more his ego gets enraged you have you know I think Putin knows that and so the the question I have here is Putin is not going to be simp ly defiant um you know he's going to try to do something uh he's going to 20:05 very much try to get that meeting with uh with Donald Trump I think that that's a mistake the meeting with Putin should be a reward for some Russian concessions you shouldn't straight away meet with Putin Putin has been an outcast he has been a pariah he's very few people are meeting with him he's not invited to all the you know conferences he has to be careful by the way he's also under indictment uh in the hag so he has certain challenges there so there should be a process of saying you know we can imagine that there will be a summit meeting between you and president Trump if you do these so the whole thing needs to be I think this is where we get into the complexity of geopolitics and diplomacy and I think Trump would do very well to have you know some people you know who have the the negotiating skill and prowess who've done this before you know people like Kissinger understood this is a chess game you don't just you know make a statement like that you have to figure out how do you put him in 21:02 a position where you do the negotiation so I think that that is one of the limitations of this strategy of kind of Bluster and and and Bluff Israel has started phase one of uh ceasefire with the Hamas the conversation now is about whether there'll be a phase two the other question is about whether Netanyahu can push through on his threat of forcing a regime change in Iran and whether Trump back a military takeout of nuclear facilities in Iran how do you see the situation in West Asia play out and what do you think is actually going on in Trump's money so the first thing to say is it's really important to understand the Middle East has been reshaped it's a fundamentally new landscape now and that's not so much because of what has happened in Gaza let's leave that aside for a moment and I understand people have very strong views about the humanitarian catastrophe that is Gaza but put that aside for minute because it doesn't have that much geopolitical significance what Israel 22:01 did in the north the destruction of Hezbollah the destruction of Iran's air defenses total Destruction the all of that then resulted in the collapse of Assad's government in part because after all who was propping up Assad it was the Iranians and the Russians has created a completely new Middle East the Middle East for 15 years has been dominated by this struggle between Iran and its proxies the Sy Syria Hezbollah Hamas the hutis and Israel and the gulf Arabs on the other side those forces Israel and the gulf Arabs are now totally dominant Iran is on the back foot it is much weaker why was Iran found to be so weak in the battlefield why all the proxies that they built up which was supposed to be their great strength why did they just fall apart like a pack of cards I think two things one we didn't realize the degree to which the Syrian Civil War I think sapped an enormous amount of the the the strength of the hisbah militias 23:01 the Iranian militias there's a lot of money and people that went to fight to prop up the Assad government and remember that took almost 10 years so it's a very diff the second I think is a very useful reminder for us whenever we look at these kind of regimes dictatorships uh you know theocracies closed repressive they tend to be much less effective on the ground than you realize you know that they're often corrupt they're often have problems motivating people so Hezbollah started out as this lean mean fighting machine from the 1980s now it had become one of the corrupt you know political parties in Lebanon Iran itself has become a very corrupt dysfunctional regime so I think that there's a there's a lesson there that you know we sometimes think of these adversaries as 10t tall think about how everyone talked about Saddam Hussein and his nuclear weapons or even the Soviet Union in the old days you know there's there the reality about democracies and this is very true of India there everybody's always 24:02 criticizing so everyone has it's like we wash our dirty laundry in public but there's a hidden strength in that resilience and flexibility can there be regime change in Iran are the circumstances AP if Netanyahu pushes Will trump back uh a military attack on nuclear facilities what's your reading of what's happening in I don't think so I think that I think that the the Israelis have done so much damage they now know Iran is almost naked and vulnerable they could go in at any point they could destroy more but if they were to take that final step of really trying to absolutely have this kind of you you need a major major strike cuz a lot of the nuclear facilities are buried deep you then need to go into the military cantonement where they the irgc the Republican the uh not the Republican guard the uh revolutionary guards are that you know then you create a huge I mean what we have seen about the Middle East is regime change in the Middle East can go very can spiral in very many 25:05 directions and in May ways that you are not predictable I'm not sure that the Israelis that there's any great advantage to them in doing that who knows what regime would replace the but is Nan thinking the same way for him it's the greatest Victory he goes down as Israel's greatest leader if it all goes well if it all goes well BB Netanyahu is more um cautious Than People realize when the when after the October 7th attack he went after Gaza in a big way but the IDF the Israeli military had actually wanted to go north and deal with Hezbollah they said let's take this opportunity he was he didn't want to do it it took him a while to get convinced that this was the right moment so I think he has you know he's calculating he's cautious uh he may want to look he's right now frankly in a powerful position even domestically he's destroyed Hamas he's destroyed Hezbollah he's weakened Iran Assad is gone all on 26:04 his watch that's a pretty impressive uh position to be in let's speak for a moment about relations between India and the United States largely there's been bipartisan support there been some uh bumps towards the end uh on some legal cases on some targeted supposed assassination attempts in the United States but how do you see Modi and Trump and India in the United States play out over the next four years is Trump going to insist that Modi and India back America more and take America's side more openly and firmly than it has in the past I don't think so I think on this one Trump will be there will be more continuity than than uh than people might expect uh because we saw that in Trump one you know the truth is at this point India and the US's relation relationship is beyond personalities it is essentially become a structural strategic Alliance in which both s both 27:00 countries recognize there are deep benefits to uh maintaining and deepening the cooperation there are going to be problems those are dealt with in a fairly you know in a in a diplomatic way uh I I suspect that what you're going to see with Trump is very very strong geopolitical Alliance he does have a few things that he cares about which is you know sometimes around the h-1bs and India is also a very protectionist country so he may push those issues but I don't think he cares as much because India is not a big enough economic player that it affects the American economy the fact that India is protectionist and Trump doesn't particularly care about free trade he just wants a good deal with between the you know the United States and India so if India's protectionist and is has barriers to other he doesn't care his you know his concern about Canada and the EU it it's all just about America and you know you're not letting American Goods in and the same terms as so there may be a little bit of push there I actually think it would be good for 28:03 India to open up its its borders more one of the reasons India hasn't been able to move as fast in manufacturing is because it has many protectionist barriers because you know a lot of when what you manufacture these days You're assembling and the intermediate Goods that you bring in have very high tariffs so the cost of manufacturing in India is too high if Trump's pressure makes India open up a little bit it's good for India how do you see the China India Dynamic play out over the next four years China China's Army was heavily deployed on the line of actual control since Galvan almost as suddenly and abruptly as they came in they dialed back now disengagement has been proceeding do you see this uh thawing of relations between Delhi and Beijing pick paac over the next four years I think it fundamentally depends on whether she xiin ping came into Power with a very particular set of ideas a much more aggressive China 29:03 around the world a much stronger Chinese Communist party at home a much weaker private sector um and in all those areas I would argue he has failed you know his wolf Warrior diplomacy resulted in you know India becoming much more hostile to China than it had been before the himalia uh stuff Australia becoming much more hostile to China before he they made those 14o demands the Philippines which he thought he had flipped flipped back to the United States and invited American forces in you know you go country after country Europe had been on the verge of signing a trade deal with China and then you know that has completely gone away similarly domestically you look the private sector economy being uh being battered has been terrible for the Chinese economy so the question is really is China capable of course correction is Xi Jinping capable of understanding that these policies have 30:03 not borne fruit and they need to be changed dialed back there's been some dialing back as you say the troops have withdrawn but on in economic terms there's still a certain amount of economic uh I wouldn't say Warfare but there's tension between the US and between India and China I don't get the sense that she has fundamentally understood that his policy was was all wrong that he needs to look if if Xi Jinping wanted to create problems for America in Asia the single best thing he could do is have a major Rushmore with India solve the Border issue get rid of all these bans on Chinese investment and you know it's not impossible for that to happen if he may if he would really actively pursue it um he hasn't in China has 16 borders I think I'm right in this 15 of them it has resolved the one border dispute it has never resolved is with India I think there's something for the Chinese maybe it's 31:04 just this idea of it's the other India is the other big Asian power maybe it's the fact that the border is around Tibet which is a very sensitive area for China but for whatever reason the Chinese have been reluctant to fully embrace the idea of a rap rmore with India there's a lot of talk about the Chinese economy being in a bad space at this moment you're reading because it's almost like trying to read in the dark room how bad is the situation in mainland China at this moment and how could that impact she's uh game plan as he deals with Trump and the rest of the world it's it's it's in bad shape in in the in the sense that um it is not going to grow any time at the 6 7 8% that it was growing at private sector sentiment is is is bad consumer sentiment is bad there's a short-term issue which is are they willing to uh to open up stimulus so that the you know the economy can get better but I think they will face a larger challenge which is again she's 32:04 philosophy has been a turn away from the the the model that frankly made China Rich which was unleash the private sector unleash openness Innovation China even now is a much more open economy to the world than India is and that was why it grew so fast but she has decided that was you know either that's wrong or we had enough of that so if you look at give you a case study artificial intelligence she wants China to do very well in artificial intelligence but how is America doing well in artificial intelligence by allowing companies like Google and Amazon and and meta you know to and Microsoft to scale up become what they call these hyperscalers have massive capacity what China is doing is they're killing uh Alibaba and 10 cent and Buu you know their equivalents of those great internet uh digital companies they wanted to be a kind of government-led 33:00 Consortium government-led investment government-led Innovation I I mean historically that that has a mixed record and so my my guess is that that's the larger problem she thinks he can get to First World economy status through a kind of government-led government first policy now there are some advantages to government investment But ultimately you need the innovation of the private sector you need the you need need you need the trial and error also some of these things are going to go go badly and you've got to let those companies die you know as in in government we know that never happens so the whole model is I think right now in trouble and then you have the demographic challenge so I think that overall look please don't forget China is the second largest economy in the world it's 4 and a half times the size of the Indian economy this is a very impressive achievement but it does seem to be stuck in the middle-income Trap you know the number of countries that have made it past the middle- inome trap to First World status are very few sure Japan Korea maybe you 34:07 could say Malaysia is getting on that on on the way Chile in the in Latin America Israel that's it you know me think about that there almost 200 countries in the world and we can count on one hand the number of non-western countries that have BR broken the middle inome barrier it's a cautionary tale for India India isn't there yet but India will get to middle- income status before I wrap up there's a vager going on across around whether the Bromance between Elon Musk and Donald Trump lasts how long does it last or will they have a blow up soon where do you come out of that I think that musk is a unique character all the other people Trump has been dealing with um you know okay they're they're rich but they're Bankers they're you know they're a businessman of a kind that Trump understands maybe they got luckier than Trump what did and so they're richer than he is Elon Musk is on a completely different level first of all 35:02 he is really the Thomas Edison of the age I think uh Jamie Diamond call him Einstein that's not the correct analogy he's he's Edison he's Thomas Edison you know Edison invented electricity but then founded General Electric Company you know that did a whole bunch of different things musk is simultaneously running three or four of the most extraordinary companies in the world um he's technologically brilliant and he is 50 times richer than Donald Trump so when Donald Trump looks at you know somebody and he says oh I you know I respect you because you're you're you're you know you have two billion doar more than me this is in a different scale you know Elon musk's net worth is in the $400 billion range even Trump's wildest boasts don't even get you know so don't get him anywhere close to that so that all I think that Trump has for musk uh gives it gives the relationship a lot more staying power now the complexity is musk is a very strange character um and 36:02 he could blow himself up not you know so it won't be Trump that will sour on musk musk may just in what way I mean he may just decide the whole thing is is boring and he wants to take his marbles and go home he might decide but he seems to be loving it it's working well for him so far he is so far he is and you know look he loves the attention he loves the I was I was with him at the US Open uh tennis finals and you know he a he's a you know brilliant smart guy we're having a fascinating conversation Bo I did notice I mean the crowds were going crazy we were sitting on one end of the the game Taylor Swift was on the other end there was more interest in in him than in Taylor Swift and he loved that so I think he loves the you know the that's something you know you always have to remember for politicians that power of the the the the adulation of crowds is an is a it's a it's an addictive it's bigger than any alcohol or drug High you could ever get so you're not betting on a blow up between the I'm not betting on a blow up I mean 37:03 I think it's it's complicated but for for those two reasons you know Trump's admiration of of Elon and elon's uh love of this you know the adulation of the crowds they'll find a way to stay what replaces Donald Trump this is his second and I mean as per Norms last term as American president is this the new course American politics has taken because it has a bearing on the rest of the world or do you think after Trump there's a reversion to mean no I think that's you know that the point of my book in some ways age of revolutions was this is not a spasm this is not a fluke we are in a different mode you know for 30 years from the fall of the Berlin Wall we were in an age of liberalization liberalization of trade liberalization of politics openness of Technology openness of cultural identities more Cosmopolitan more Multicultural we are now in a backlash to that I don't know if it'll be a 30-year backlash but this is not a spasm 38:00 so I think we are in an age where there's going to be more cultural conservatism more uh ethnic chauvinism more nationalism more protectionism and you know we're going to navigate that because those forces uh also have to operate in the real world I mean the real world the way economies are going to grow well is if they are Market friendly not if they're you know having the state more and more so there will be a tension and there will be people always want to succeed and you see this in Trump right on the one hand he talks about America First and protectionism and tariffs and all that but M fundamentally he wants the economy to grow so there will be that tension but it's a very different Paradigm the Paradigm of from the end of the from the fall of the Berlin wall to the invasion of Ukraine 30 years roughly was liberalization the Paradigm now is a kind of you know closed restraints on 39:00 all these you know the end of openness if you will it's a it's it's a it's a politics of being more closed having barriers to immigration to multiculturalism to trade uh it's a it's a you know it's a it's a mindset of a world that says we we saw a lot of change we saw a lot of transformation but stop stop the train I want to get off or at least slow it down a little well this has been one of the last conversations we having at the world economic Forum 2025 but it's also been one of the most fascinating for taking our time and joining us and sharing your super shop insights with our viewers for zakara thank you very much enjoy the scheme thank you taking your time thank you

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