President Donald Trump: The World Was Hit By The Plague From China; Will The World Change Post-COVID?
ZAKARIA: On Thursday the President told Fox Business he wasn't interested in speaking to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. In fact, Trump said America could cut off its whole relationship with China. Is that even possible in this interconnected age? Richard Haass is the President of the Council on foreign relations and the author of a terrific new book titled "The World: A brief introduction." We'll get to that in a second. But I want to first ask you, Richard, we almost have an almost bipartisan consensus that we have to get very tough on China. Trump is saying what he's saying. Biden's attacks on Trump are not that this is a bad idea but he was there first, and that Trump has been cozying up to China. You heard Rahm Emanuel say that a bit earlier. Where does this go and is it a wise strategy for America?</s>RICHARD HAASS, PRESIDENT, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Fareed, it's one of those times where I actually begin to question the desirability and wisdom of bipartisanship. I think this anti-China push underestimates china's limits and weaknesses. I think it probably exaggerates its ambitions, most important it seems to me to place China at the center of American foreign policy is misplaced. We can and should push back against China, that's not going to make us competitive. That's all about our schools, our infrastructure, our research and development funding. And overseas we can push back against China, that's not going to make us safe against the next pandemic or against terrorism or against climate change. We need a 21st century foreign policy, and pushing back against china is only one part of it.</s>ZAKARIA: And what do you think is behind this sort of - the Republican's push Mike Pompeo, Peter Navarro to investigate the origins of the virus? Because even they seem to acknowledge, even Fox News reports that they think this was essentially accidental. They might have accidentally gotten out of the lab or accidentally gotten out into the wet market. I'm trying to understand what difference does that make? Why is this push about, you know, are they culpable in some way even if they are admittedly - you know, it happened by incompetence or accident.</s>HAASS: Look, we could learn something and then it could help us deal with the next pandemic or even prevent it. But let's just call a spade, a spade. It's deflection, its politics, and China - China should be roundly criticized, Fareed, I think you would agree with that, with how it handled the outbreak of this pandemic, these markets should have never been opened. They silenced the public health people. They misrepresented, they didn't cooperate with the world. Even if China had behaved well, if they were a textbook citizen, that doesn't let us off the hook. Here we are four, five months later we still can't test anything like the scale we need to. It doesn't explain our lack of stockpiled equipment. I think it's right to look at China. It's right to ask for a full investigation, we might learn something. But let's not kid ourselves, position heal thyself. We should take lessons on where we got it wrong.</s>ZAKARIA: I want to look at one of these issues through the prism of your book. You talk about in the book that globalization is a reality, how we deal with it is a choice. Very well put. When I look at the W.H.O., I sort of think about it in that context, which is that everybody is attacking it, but the truth is we have these global problems, these pandemics, these viruses that spill over borders. And then the question is can you have some kind of global response and the truth is the W.H.O. is very small, pretty - modest funding, and most importantly it's not allowed to push back against other countries. Yes, it didn't push back against China, absolutely clear. It also doesn't push back against the United States.</s>ZAKARIA: That's - we've designed these international institutions not to deal with the global problems, and it strikes me as a perfect example of the point, you make in your book that the problems are getting global, but the solutions are remaining local and national.</s>HAASS: Exactly right. There is enormous gap between global challenges and responses. One of the most common phrases in our businesses international community, and the deep dark secret there's not much of one. In everyone of the area whether it's climate change or global health, we need to narrow the gap. And if it's turns out as impossible to improve the W.H.O. because China and other sovereign governments won't allow it, let's form a club. Let's form an arrangement where ourselves and other like-minded countries set the rules, build the capacities to help the world. It's not W.H.O. or nothing, that's the best approach and principle, but if it is not in practice, let's works around it.</s>ZAKARIA: We also seem to be seceding a certain amount of leadership. President Trump has now said you know may be we'll cut back our contributions by 90 percent. Wouldn't the Chinese then say we'll expand? That's what they've done in the U.N. every time we stepped back, the Chinese say great, this gives us more opportunities for global leadership. I don't get how we'll dominate the international system by constantly abdicating.</s>HAASS: The reason you don't get it is because we won't. We're creating all sorts of space and opportunity for China, even though China is essentially in many cases pushing a really flawed agenda, if there's no push back they're going to prevail. So we need to be more involved. One lesson of the pandemic is that we ignored globalization and ignore the world at our peril. The other has got to be not only is isolationism deeply flawed, but unilateralism is. We have to get on the field. We have to play. You can't win the game unless you play. All too often this administration has taken itself off the field.</s>ZAKARIA: Let me ask you finally, Richard, about American soft power. This is a concept that a friend of ours, Joe Nyer wrote about a lot. When you think the world looks at the way everybody seems to have screwed up in the United States, not just Trump, the CDC got the wrong tests out, the Department of - HHS has not been able to put a testing regimen in place. Do you think that affects the way that people look at American empowerment? You spent so much time as an American diplomat, do you think the fact that the United States is clearly not the world leader in the response to this COVID; will it affect our ability to persuade pressure, encourage things around the world?</s>HAASS: The short answer Fareed is yes. Foreign policy is not just what military people or diplomats say and do. It's also about who and what we are. The example we set. If we had been incompetent in dealing with this virus, that would have sent the message. If American politics were functional rather than dysfunctional that would send a powerful message. When we had something like the financial crisis in 2008 that sent a powerful message but the wrong kind of message so everything we are as a society, as an economy, as a political entity, that says something to the world. People around the world get up in the morning and they say do we want to be more or less like the United States? Do we want to emulate them, depend on them? Are they impressive? Are they reliable? So a big part of our policy is not foreign. A big part of foreign policy is what we are.</s>ZAKARIA: As always, Richard, huge pleasure to have you on. Thank you.</s>HAAS: Thanks.</s>ZAKARIA: Next on "GPS" if you're expecting massive change for the better or worse post-pandemic, think again. That's what my next guest says and she wrote the book on pandemics.