This is GPS, the Global Public Square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria, coming to you from New York.
Today on the program: How to lose friends and diss people. Chrystia Freeland, former deputy prime minister of Canada, explains how Canada has reacted to Donald Trump's crusade against America's neighbor.
Then diesel. Why is Trump rewarding Russia with a 36 million barrel deal?
And Saudi Arabia, the powerful Middle Eastern nation, is getting hit by the Houthi rebels next door. How is this happening? I'll ask Princeton's Bernard Haykel.
Finally, we will tell you about one Western country that has been able to do what everyone else says is impossible: build amazing infrastructure.
But first, here's my take. In a very well-written speech last week, delivered against the magnificent backdrop of the Acropolis in Athens, Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged the West to rediscover what made it exceptional. He described the qualities that defined Western civilization as the fire of passion, strength, courage, pride, and celebrated its ambition, nationalism, and relentless pursuit of excellence. He warned that the West had become ashamed of the very things that made it great.
Rubio is right that the West has sometimes lost confidence in its own traditions and ideals, and it shouldn't. But Rubio himself seems deeply confused about what made the West exceptional.
Consider the qualities he celebrates: courage, strength, ambition, and pride. Genghis Khan had all of these in abundance. So did the Persian emperors, the Russian tsars, and the rulers of Imperial China. Every great civilization has celebrated its warriors, glorified its conquests, and believed in its own superiority.
What truly distinguishes Western civilization is not its military power or national pride, but its intellectual and political traditions. From Greek philosophy and Roman law through Christianity, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment, the West developed a set of ideas that challenged the arbitrary exercise of power. Reason, scientific inquiry, individual liberty, democracy, the rule of law, and universal human rights became central to Western civilization and set it apart.
Other cultures have traditions of morality, justice, and human dignity. But in the West, these ideas evolved into revolutionary political propositions: that every human being possesses certain rights simply by virtue of being human; that governments exist to secure those rights; and that no ruler or tradition stands above scrutiny. The most radical feature of these ideas, in part inspired by Christianity, was that they were universal. They applied not just to Westerners but, in principle, to everyone.
Consider slavery. The West practiced slavery on a vast and brutal scale, as had virtually every major civilization in history. But the West also produced a powerful abolitionist movement, drawing on Christian beliefs, Enlightenment ideals, and the struggles of enslaved people themselves. Western societies developed principles that could be used to condemn their own conduct.
Similarly, for centuries, Western societies treated women and religious and racial minorities as second-class citizens, as did most other civilizations. But Western ideas about equality and individual rights helped generate movements for women's suffrage, religious tolerance, and civil rights. These movements did not reject the West's highest ideals. They demanded that the West live up to them. Martin Luther King Jr. appealed to the Declaration of Independence's idea that all men are created equal precisely because its promise was universal, even if American society had repeatedly betrayed it.
This is also true of imperialism. Almost all great powers have sought to extend their dominion. The West was extraordinarily successful at it, and one can marvel at its enormous reach. But Western societies also ended up recognizing the rights of colonized people and questioning the morality of the conquest and the brutality of colonial rule. This capacity for self-criticism is not a weakness. It is one of the West's greatest strengths that it can force itself to live up to its own ideals. It is also part of the relentless use of reason that has made the West lead the world in science and discovery.
And this brings us to perhaps the most important point Rubio misses. The West's extraordinary influence over the modern world has not come simply from military conquest or economic domination. It has come from the intellectual attraction of its ideas.
Western power was often resented, resisted, and ultimately expelled. Yet the ideals associated with the West endured because people everywhere could claim them as their own. The British ruled India for nearly two centuries, often through exploitation, repression, and violence. Yet when Indians won their independence, they did not discard parliamentary democracy, constitutional government, an independent judiciary, or the rule of law. They embraced these institutions, adapted them, and combined them with their own traditions. India adopted universal adult suffrage from the birth of its republic, an extraordinary commitment to political equality in a poor, largely illiterate country. That is the remarkable power of the West's formulation of universal ideas. Anyone can embrace them and gain power through them.
Marco Rubio is right that the West should take pride in its history and achievements. But while the things that Rubio emphasizes—strength, courage, and national glory—did make the West mighty, they are not what made it transformational. Its most enduring achievement was not that it conquered territory, built mighty armies and monuments, or produced wealth. The Ottoman Empire did all of these things. What made the West exceptional was its ability to transcend the narrow claims of tribe, nation, and empire to develop ideas about freedom, equality, and human dignity that could speak to all people everywhere.
The West conquered much of the world through force, but it changed the world through ideas.
I wish that the Secretary of State of the United States would celebrate these ideas and that this administration would live up to them. Go to fareedzakaria.com for a link to my Washington Post column this week, and let's get started.
Canada and the US have long enjoyed the ultimate friendly neighbor arrangement, defined by close economic ties, shared security interests, and mutual trust. Then came Donald Trump, whose administration in his second term has pursued an aggressive trade policy against Canada that has led to an all-out trade war.
They'll ask me, 'Who's the worst to deal with on trade?' And I said, 'That's easy, Canada.'
Unless we forget, he renamed Lake Ontario, Lake America.
Chrystia Freeland has negotiated with Team Trump on behalf of Canada. She was Canada's deputy prime minister during Trump's first term. Her new book, 'Unreliable Boyfriend,' is a memoir that discusses how Canada and the world have tried to manage in the Trump era. She joins me now. Chrystia, always a pleasure to have you on. So normally with books we would read out the great praise that you have received on your book. I'm reading now from what you have put at the back: 'Totally toxic. She will not be missed.' President Donald Trump, the worst. Howard Lutnick. Trump even said worse things about you. He said you are nasty, a whack job. And that's all because you were negotiating for Canada with Trump. So for everyone trying to figure out, how do you negotiate with this man? How did you negotiate with him? Because at the end of that whole process, you did produce a deal that he said was the best trade deal in the history of the world.
Exactly right, Fareed. And you know, Nancy Pelosi supported it and Donald Trump supported it. I think it could be the only thing they have ever agreed on. We had a three-part playbook for negotiating with Donald Trump. Number one: do agree where you can agree. Canada and the United States do have a lot of mutual interests, and I think it's important to find those areas where you genuinely think it's good for your country and do deals there, work together.
Second thing, and this is so important, was something we called the donut strategy. And the donut strategy was about the fact that the president of the United States is a very important guy, but he's just one man, and there's the whole America around him. And we just fanned out in a very systematic way and tried to talk to every single American, to mayors, to businesses, to labor leaders, and we tried to get the whole country to do that because we knew that ultimately the relationship between Canada and the United States is mutually beneficial, and we thought if we could make that case with Canadians, that would help.
The final thing, which I wish more countries and actually more Americans recognized, is you cannot capitulate. If you do that with Donald Trump, he will just push you further and further and further. You have to be prepared ultimately to stand up for yourself and your country.
And when you were doing all these things, did you get the sense that, you know, all the authority was ultimately vested with Trump, or you were negotiating with Jared Kushner a lot, who was his son-in-law? How did it work? Did everything have to be approved by Trump?
So, the key person was Bob Lighthizer, and that was very important,
The trade rep. Because Bob is very, very tough. He is unapologetic in, you know, being an America First guy, but he's also really smart. You can do a deal with him, and he ultimately recognized that having a good trade deal with Canada was good for the US. And I think Bob had enough self-confidence and enough authority that he could persuade the president to do as he advised.
And that feels very different from Trump 2.0. So I know you're not in the government now, but when you watch, doesn't it feel like there aren't the Bob Lighthizers of the world and the John Mattis, the generals that he appointed, you know, these very serious, seasoned policy professionals? What you now have is a group of sycophants who basically just do whatever they think the king wants.
I think that's right. But they could behave differently. You know, there are people there who could be serious people—a Marco Rubio, a Scott Bessent. They could play the kind of role that Bob Lighthizer or a Mike Pompeo or Rex Tillerson played. They're choosing not to.
The other big difference, Fareed, is Republicans. And we did have Republicans on our side who were ultimately prepared to stand up to Donald Trump. And I really want to emphasize they did it because they believed it was in the US national interest.
These are people like Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, who's a free trader, free market guy,
Chuck Grassley, John McCain, Mitch McConnell. We really felt that there was serious support among the Republicans for a good deal with Canada. I write about that, and you know, we'll see what happens. But the midterm, you know, polls are predicting a real shellacking for Republicans in the midterms. Maybe that will mean that Republicans rediscover their spine and speak up for the interests of their constituents, which would mean saying, stop this trade war with Canada.
In the book, you talk about how other countries, obviously Canada, but others as well, are trying to navigate this world where the United States has become the unreliable boyfriend, because it's all America's allies that are feeling the pressure the most. The Canadian approach has been to really search for new friends, or not, or deepen relations with new friends. You call it friendshoring in the book. The European Union, India, even better deals with China. Do you think ultimately that is the path everyone will take, to kind of diversify away from too much reliance on America?
It's certainly what's happening now. And you know, I think one of the things which is so perverse about the current approach is America is being more punitive towards its friends than towards its adversaries. Canada is being treated much more harshly than Vladimir Putin's Russia. I mean, think about that for a minute. You know, in what universe is Russia a better friend of the United States than Canada? In no universe.
And you know, for me, what is tragic about this is America is destroying the alliance that it so effectively built up in the post-war era. You mentioned China, Fareed, and what I really worry about is China is the big winner from what is happening right now.
All right, stay with us. Next on GPS, I ask Chrystia Freeland about the state of play in the Ukraine war as Donald Trump seems to have fully turned his back on that country. Up next, the administration has recently struck a deal to allow Russia to sell diesel fuel. It also threatened to stop providing intelligence to Ukraine. Further, Ukrainian authorities reported restrictions on their access to the military version of Starlink, which is critical to Ukraine's military operations. Elon Musk says the ultimate authority on doing that is Donald Trump. Has the president now fully turned his back on Ukraine? More now with Chrystia Freeland, Canada's former deputy prime minister. In January, she became President Zelensky's economic development advisor. Were you surprised by what Donald Trump has done? I mean, in a way, he's been inching towards this really for forever, but it does seem like he has essentially sided with Russia and against Ukraine.
I was horrified, but I wasn't surprised because it's been clear to me from the very outset that President Trump has been on Russia's side and has been actually doing what he can to harm Ukraine. And I think it's really important to say that clearly because there are people—the late Senator Lindsey Graham was one of them—who tried to act as if, no, no, no, the president really wants to help Ukraine. You're just misunderstanding him. His heart's in the right place.
We have the spectacle of Melania Trump, you know, hosting these events where she's wanting to support Ukraine's abducted children. But I think it's important for Americans in the first instance to really live with the horrible reality that their president is helping Vladimir Putin in his criminal war against Ukraine. Think about that for a minute.
And do you think that it derives from a kind of idea of the fascination with the strongman? Do you think it's because Trump tried to blackmail Zelensky in his first term and get him to investigate Joe Biden, and Zelensky refused? What do you think's behind it?
You know, Fareed, I am not the president's psychoanalyst. I think we have to judge him by his actions, and what we've seen is a clear pattern of siding with dictators rather than siding with democracies. Putin is the best example, but there's also North Korea. There's also China. And meanwhile, the democracies get constantly beaten up by this president.
What, you know, to me also, and this is horrible to recognize, you can't overlook corruption, and Putin is prepared to pay to play. Democracies are not.
How significant do you think this reversal now is going to be for Ukraine on the battlefield?
It's significant, but I have confidence that Ukrainians will rally because they have no choice. And I think what we're seeing also is the Europeans having a sort of stiffened spine and recognizing that Ukraine has to win, otherwise they're going to face a squeeze from Putin and from the United States.
The other thing that gives me some hope, and here, Fareed, you may think I am being naive and overly optimistic, but I am hopeful this will be a wakeup call to Americans, particularly to Republicans. I was really comforted by the bipartisan letter that six Republican senators signed, and I brought the letter because it speaks to me to what is being destroyed right now.
For decades, America has stood as the bastion of freedom against tyranny, and American presidents have embodied our nation's resistance to tyrants. Putin is a tyrant. That is the America that we grew up with. I think that's the America that you chose to become a citizen of. And I think that this is really—it's a Rubicon moment. And I hope that Americans will recognize it, and we'll recognize more is at stake than Ukraine. I think America's soul is at stake here.
