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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Ukraine Flips the Script with Incursion into Russia; Putin Put Unexpectedly on the Defensive; Interview With Journalist Sarah Smarsh; Interview With Climate Activist And Investor Tom Steyer. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired August 18, 2024 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:41]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: 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.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA (voice-over): Today on the program, a stunning sight not seen since World War II. An enemy country invading Russian territory. 12 days ago, Ukraine's forces major cross-border incursion into the Kursk Oblast. They are still there and the fighting is fierce. We'll examine what is happening on both sides of the story with a former Ukrainian defense minister and a Russian journalist in exile.

Also, how to appeal to America's heartland. Democrats are seen as the party of city slickers, while country folks support the GOP. But Democrats hope Tim Walz could reclaim some rural voters. Kansas journalist Sarah Smarsh tells me why she thinks it just might work.

And this summer the world has witnessed storms wildfires, and some of the hottest days in modern history. Is catastrophic climate change inevitable? Activist and former presidential candidate, Tom Steyer, tells me he still has hope.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's "My Take."

The Middle East is today as close to a broad regional war as it's been in decades. There are many explanations for this tense reality. But one force casts a shadow over all of them -- Iran.

Iran has decided it has more to gain than to lose by pursuing an aggressive policy directed against Washington and its allies in the region. This new and dangerous reality results from one factor above all -- the collapse of any coherent American policy towards Iran.

Consider the failure of Washington's current approach. Since Donald Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, U.S. policy toward Iran has been one of maximum pressure. The number of sanctions against Iran rose from 370 under Obama to more than 1,500 during the Trump administration, making the country the most sanctioned on the planet.

While the other partners in the nuclear deal negotiations, European powers, Russia and China objected, the U.S. use secondary sanctions to effectively block them from trading much with Tehran. The Biden administration has mostly continued the Trump policy with a few modifications and relaxations.

And what has been the result of the Trump-Biden policy of maximum pressure? Freed from the constraints of the nuclear deal, Iran has massively advanced its nuclear program. It now has 30 times more enriched uranium than the deal allowed, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The deal created a yearlong breakout time. The period necessary to produce the nuclear fuel needed for a weapon.

In July, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Tehran is one to two weeks away from breakout capacity. Meanwhile, Iran has responded to the pressure from abroad by forging closer ties with an array of sub-state groups in the region, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and militias in Iraq and Syria.

Together this axis of resistance has plunged Israel into its longest and most perilous war in decades, diverted about 70 percent of vessel traffic out of the Red Sea and turned Iraq and Syria into reliable client states. By virtually any measure, Washington's policy towards Iran has failed.

Why has maximum pressure not worked?

Hadi Kahalzadeh, a research fellow at Brandeis University, has authored a careful study that comes to an important conclusion.

[10:05:01]

The expanded sanctions regime has had adverse consequences for the Iranian middle class, causing them to lose faith in the reformist politicians who supported a new round of diplomacy. Iranian hardliners invoked the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal to show that they had been right all along to dismiss the negotiations as a sham.

As European and other international companies began to withdraw from Iran, the hardliners opened the door to Chinese investors and called on their own loyal business interests to fill the vacuum. Even after a reformist, Masoud Pezeshkian, was recently elected president, he still has had to cave to the religious and military establishment who hold real power.

The truth is that for almost a decade, Washington has had an attitude towards Iran, unrelenting opposition and pressure, but not a strategy. The Obama administration tried an approach that paired extreme sanctions with a way out for Iran if it would restrict its nuclear program. By containing Iran's most potent threat, Obama hoped the country would end up being less aggressive in its neighborhood.

International experts agree Iran largely adhered to the nuclear deal. Tehran, however, did not wind down its regional activities, which were never part of the deal. Could nuclear negotiations have led to some kind of broader relaxation

of tensions? It's impossible to know because in two years, Trump took power and reverse policy altogether.

The Biden administration could have changed course, but feared that doing so would trigger too strong a reaction from Republicans. The problem is that the current approach does not amount to a strategy. Rather it is an attitude based primarily on pandering to American domestic audiences by looking tough. It's a vague notion that unrelenting opposition will yield something. Maybe a collapse of the regime itself.

Now, I dislike the Iranian regime and everything it stands for. I admire the brave women and men who have opposed it in the streets and paid a heavy price for their opposition. I applaud those who have tried to moderate the country from within, knowing that bucking the regimes anti-American history and DNA. I hope that one day this great nation will be able to return to its rightful place of prestige in the region and the world.

But hope is not a strategy. The United States and its allies need to devise a policy towards Iran that recognizes the reality that the Islamic republic exists, and then put in place threats and punishments to deter it but also incentives so that it has a reason to relax tensions. This will not lead to a detente, let alone cooperation with Tehran. But it could reduce the many frictions that may tip this volatile region into a long and bloody war.

Go to CNN.com/Fareed for a link to my "Washington Post" column this week, and let's get started.

For many months now, Ukraine has seemed to be stuck in a grinding war with Russia. It's been using up its limited resources to try to stop Russian advances while at the same time unable to claw back territory Putin has captured. But last week Ukraine flipped the script when it launched an attack into Russia's Kursk Region, capturing territory and taking soldiers prisoner. It is the biggest foreign incursion into Russian territory since World War II.

Joining me to talk about it is Andriy Zagorodnyuk. He served as Ukraine's defense minister and is now chairman of the Center for Defense Strategies, a think tank in Kyiv.

Andriy, welcome.

ANDRIY ZAGORODNYUK, FORMER UKRAINIAN DEFENSE MINISTER: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Tell me what is Ukraine's strategy in doing what it has just done?

ZAGORODNYUK: So, first of all, we'd like to move the problems to Russia because so far the whole weight of the war, everything which is they're doing to us, it's been on the territory of Ukraine and they -- lots of their people are not even looking at that, there's no one even been paying attention to that. And Russia is feeling comfortable because essentially whatever they lose, they lose on our territory. Whatever they gain they gain and they popularize it and they're

telling this -- about this to the whole world. So we were bringing the war to their country in order for them to start diverting their troops from Ukraine and actually taking care of their territory rather than trying to grab ours.

[10:10:00]

Ukraine does not need Russia territory forever. We don't have any kind of appetite to grab somebody else's land. What we need to do is we need to make sure that they fail at occupying ours.

ZAKARIA: You've talked to the soldiers in the field. What have you learned about the Russian army, Russian morale as you conducted this operation?

ZAGORODNYUK: So, first of all, everybody was quite surprised because the area was very little guarded. There's been several units of conscripts and not much else. And of course, lots of them just ran away. The special forces from Akhmat Battalion, this is quite popular unit in Russia, they also ran away. And there was no resistance from the local population. Most of the people left, and right now, of course, there are fights.

There are some units arriving from the other places and it's not an easy operation at all. But at the same time, Ukraine has taken under control more territory of Russia than Russia over the last year. And Ukraine did it over the -- more than, just a bit more than a week.

ZAKARIA: Somebody from the office of the president said that Ukraine is doing this in order to strengthen its hand at the negotiating table, repeated the point you made. Ukraine has no ambition to acquire Russian territory.

Do you suspect that negotiations are going to begin in -- at some point, you know, in the next year?

ZAGORODNYUK: Ukraine has initiated a peace summit process in which there is a possibility that Russia will take part one way or the other. It's very difficult to say about the actual prospects of negotiations because a lot of Ukrainians and including analytical community are very skeptical about the actually ability of Putin to reach any constructive agreement and actually his ability to negotiate good faith.

He has done enormous amount of war crimes. And apparently those war crimes showing that he is all in, and he's not thinking about the getting things back to the normal. And that's why it's very difficult to imagine the zone of possible agreement between Ukraine and Russia in this situation. And -- but of course if Russia is not diverting the troops right now and doesn't start to address that problem in Kursk, Ukraine may hold that land until the political settlement period.

And it's very difficult to predict what happens then. But for sure there will be a major factor during that possible political settlement process. ZAKARIA: And do you suspect that there will now be more Ukrainian

incursions into Russian territory?

ZAGORODNYUK: We certainly can say there will be more surprises to Russia because there is a strategic culture in Ukraine, and that strategic culture is all based on a symmetry because Ukraine cannot fight against Russia, which is much bigger army with more resources, with more soldiers, particularly the way they treat their soldiers. They don't care if they die or get wounded and we do, and a lot of more equipment and ammunition. And so for us to have a symmetrical war that's not the road to victory.

So we need constantly to be inventive. We constantly need to be innovative. And I cannot say what next operation will be, but the key thing is that it will be surprising.

ZAKARIA: And finally, Andriy, give us a sense of the mood in Kyiv. What has this done to Ukrainian morale?

ZAGORODNYUK: Well, the fact that people in Kyiv see that Ukraine went symmetrical big time, that Ukraine is not -- you know, is not focusing only on the playbook which Russia trying to impose on us, that we innovate, that we're bringing new, new types of warfare. And a new operations, of course. It raises the mode because for a while there's been a very exhausting war, which is still lives in the east.

Whatever happens in Kursk we still need to understand that in the east, we have extremely difficult operations happening right now. But Ukrainian people see that there's still an element of surprise we can bring this. Still our commanders can come up with something innovative and shock Russians. And that of course raises the mood here.

ZAKARIA: Andriy, thank you so much. So insightful to hear from you on the ground in Ukraine.

ZAGORODNYUK: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, how is Ukraine's incursion playing out in Russia? I'll ask the Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:19:12]

ZAKARIA: For decades, Vladimir Putin has styled himself as a strongman, leading an invulnerable state. But last week that image appeared to unravel as Ukraine's army captured a slice of Russia. What will this mean for Vladimir Putin and Russia's strategy?

Mikhail Zygar is a former editor-in-chief of Russia's largest independent news channel, TV Rain. He left Russia in 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine.

Welcome, Mikhail. Let me first ask you, what is Putin's strategy? Before we get to the incursion, what do you think he -- what is his, you know, what is his plan? What is his timetable? MIKHAIL ZYGAR, FORMER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, TV RAIN: You know, he has been

very much confident that everything is according to his plan.

[10:20:03]

And actually, I've heard a lot that the initial plan was to have a huge success before the American presidential elections and Russians were boasting with their capabilities to take city of Kharkiv, which is the second biggest city of Ukraine by the Ukraine by the end of the summer. But it has no one to blame except for himself because he is really the person in charge of everything, what's happening there. He has appointed himself obviously as the real minister of defense back in May this year.

ZAKARIA: So when he looks at this, do you think that this is a kind of strategic setback on the scale of something like the Prigozhin mutiny? How should we rate what has just happened in Kursk?

ZYGAR: You know. it's compared to Prigozhin mutiny by many people. I don't think that for Putin it's the same scale. I don't think that he is too dramatic about this because I think he's clearly very delusional and a lot of -- all of my sources in Moscow are very confident that they say that in couple of days Russians will take back all the territories in Kursk Region. They are very sure that it's not going to last long and Ukrainians won't be able to hold all those territories.

At the same time, which means that they don't care about their civilian population. Russian army has only one method of taking territories, by destroying everything, everyone who lives there, all the buildings, all the houses. So obviously they are trying to -- they will be trying to recapture all those territories by eliminating everyone, all the civilian population, and blaming Ukrainians.

ZAKARIA: Mikhail, let me just press you on one thing. I want to be clear that you're saying that the Russians in retaking Kursk will engage in such indiscriminate warfare, bombing, shelling that they will be killing Russian civilians in doing so.

ZYGAR: Yes, absolutely. I have no doubt that that's going to be their strategy.

ZAKARIA: Mikhail, let me ask you about the Russian population, civilian population as best you can tell, you follow it all very closely, how is the Russian population and probably what matters most is the population in cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow. How are they reacting to these developments? Are they aware of them?

ZYGAR: You know, I think they are aware, but we have seen that most Russians are trained hard to pretend that nothing is happening. That's the way how Russian propaganda wanted Russians to think about this war and they achieved that, at least I would say 70 percent of the population prefers business as usual. They feel that the war is really far, that it doesn't affect them. It doesn't affect their everyday life. Russian economy is not collapsing and a lot of people feel that they can go on. ZAKARIA: You have said something very interesting that for Putin, this

is not a war for Ukraine. It's a war for Russia. Explain what you mean.

ZYGAR: I don't think that he really needs to occupy all Ukrainian territory. It's much more a symbolic act of restore Russian -- Russia's greatness, greatness of the Russian empire to make Russia great again. That's his real slogan. And now he feels that the war is probably, that's the best method to consolidate the nation, to mobilize the nation, and to make sure that there is no dissent, that everyone is loyal, and silent and is afraid.

So, yes, that's the best way for him to keep the whole country under his control, and yes, and he's interested to continue this war as long as he can. And that's why when a lot of Ukrainians say that they do not believe that President Putin could be serious when he's speaking about possible negotiations, yes, he -- for him, any ceasefire, any negotiations is only a pause because he's interested to get -- he's interested to have the whole Russia under his control and continuing this war is the only method to make sure that he's there forever.

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ZAKARIA: Mikhail, pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for these insights.

ZYGAR: Thank you. Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, in recent years, Democrats have struggled to appeal to rural voters. Could all that change with Tim Walz on the ticket? We will explore when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Over the past three decades, the Democratic Party has been losing support from America's rural voters. These communities say they have felt alienated and ignored by the Democratic establishment.

[10:30:00]

The Republican Party has filled that void with candidates like Donald Trump, who strategically centers the struggles of non-urban voters in his rhetoric. But my next guest says Democrats have a unique opportunity in 2024 to win back some of those votes. Journalist Sarah Smarsh is the author of the forthcoming book, "Bone of the Bone: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class." She joins us from Kansas where she was born and still lives today. Sarah, welcome.

SMARSH: Hi, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: So, when I look at the Democratic Party's decline in this group, rural white, working class white, non-college educated white, whatever -- however you describe it, and the rise of the Republicans, what strikes me is the Democrats do seem to be offering various economic measures to try to help the situation. What the Republicans are offering is more cultural politics. Appealing to the traditional values of this group kind of culture war politics. It seems as though culture trumps economics in this story, would you agree?

SMARSH: You know, politics is an irrational business. It's a psychological and felt and emotional one. And to be ignored is an invalidation. It hurts even if that group meanwhile has policy going on that does benefit your place in class and people to a larger extent than the other side.

If they aren't looking at you, if they aren't speaking to you in very direct ways, and going to you, you know, visiting on the ground a 50- state strategy has not been employed for some time by the Democratic Party, is sort of a calculation of resources. I'm sure.

But in that calculation, there was a sense of, you know, where is the Democratic Party? It's not showing up here. They're not knocking on my door. They're not talking directly to me.

So even as their policies may have been superior in terms of benefit to that people and space if you've got another side that's looking directly at you, even if the things that they're saying are wrong and lies and, you know, unfortunately to my mind, often hateful and destructive and corrosive to the social fabric it's at least a validation that you exist. And I think that that is actually where the conservatives have found a lot of traction.

ZAKARIA: This issue of being ignored seems to me very central. Do you do you feel personally that you understand that feeling? I mean, you grew up in Kansas. You then, you know, went to college and it kind of moved out of your comfort zone into different social groups and social classes. What was it like for you?

SMARSH: You know, we are just -- we're kind of apolitical people as an experience. That's how it felt. We're out working in the wheat field. We're just trying to survive, eat, get by. And I then went on to be a first-generation college student. First out of state university here in Kansas, and then onto an Ivy League institution for graduate school. And that's where I really got a class awakening about the extent to which the place I came from was indeed foreign too and often negatively stereotyped by the very people who were becoming my friends and colleagues and allies, often well-meaning, well-intentioned people.

But when you've never been somewhere, when you've never looked a particular type of person in the face, when you've never set foot in, what is often, you know, casualty derided as flyover country that void leaves a lot of room for negative assumptions. And I saw those firsthand.

ZAKARIA: So, what is the opportunity for the Democrats?

SMARSH: Well, I'll tell you what. I think they've got a winner in vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz. He, of course, hails from a small town in Nebraska. Well, they've described him as having a middle-class background. It sounds like working class to me. I wonder if that might be the Democrats kind of scared of using that term, but they're embracing his rurality and that's good and that's right. He looks and sounds and feels like my place here on the great plains.

And just strikes me as the sort of authenticity and plainspoken direct common-sense sort of guy or gal or person that is a kind of a signature of the culture, of this place that has felt left out. If you look at that ticket and you're seeing him for who it is then I don't imagine you could feel left out anymore.

ZAKARIA: So, I think for you it seems like that feeling of being seen, of connecting, almost a kind of intangible emotional connection is most important because that's what then opens up the possibility for people to listen to your policies and your programs.

SMARSH: Absolutely. Perfectly said. Yes.

ZAKARIA: Sarah, pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much.

[10:35:00]

SMARSH: Thank you, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, July 21 was the hottest day on Earth since record keeping began in 1940. Then the following day broke that record again. So, is there any hope for staving off catastrophic climate change? My next guest surprisingly says, yes.

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[10:40:02]

ZAKARIA: If you want to live a meaningful life in an era that will be defined by climate change, then fighting climate change needs to be a meaningful part of your life. There's no excuse for fiddling while the planet burns.

Those words come from my next guest, Tom Steyer. The billionaire investor left Wall Street over a decade ago to devote his life to fighting climate change. He has a sustainable ranch and invest in clean tech companies. He has funded pro climate candidates and activism and mounted a presidential run himself in 2019. Now, he has written a book called "Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We'll Win the Climate War."

Tom, welcome. So, let me ask you the first question that comes to mind is if you are saying that right now we have green technologies that are cleaner, faster, better, why isn't the problem solved? In other words, won't firms just adopt the thing that is cleaner, faster, better? Why do you need to write this book? And why is it that when you look at the amount of energy we consume we're still close to 80 percent fossil fuels, which is about where we were 35 years ago?

TOM STEYER, CLIMATE ACTIVIST AND INVESTOR: Last year, 2023, in terms of new electricity generation globally, 86 percent of it was renewable. ZAKARIA: That's electricity?

STEYER: Yes.

ZAKARIA: That doesn't count transportation, fuel?

STEYER: No.

ZAKARIA: It doesn't count the stuff that goes into plastics?

STEYER: Absolutely. But if you look at that that is a place where -- that is a huge part of what's driving the future because we are going to electrify the planet. We are going to have electric cars. We're going to electrify our homes.

ZAKARIA: But then we've got to make sure that electricity is not being provided by coal --

STEYER: Absolutely. And my point the new electricity generation is 86 percent renewable. The issue is not what's being built, it's what's being kept. We have a lot of dirty old fossil fuel plants around the world that need to be replaced.

ZAKARIA: But wouldn't they be replaced if it's cheaper, faster, better?

STEYER: There's a difference between replacing a plant that's already been built and building a new plant. It has got to be enormously cheaper to replace a plant where you've already spent all the capital expenditures to put it in place, as opposed to if you're going to build a new plant, then you put them side-by-side and pick the cheaper, better alternative.

What we're seeing around the world, though, is that cheaper, faster, better alternative, but it also happens to be clean is coming in in multiple places.

ZAKARIA: So, it seems clear now. Solar and in some places wind is cleaner, faster, cheaper. But people say the problem is, the sun doesn't always shine, the wind doesn't always blow. And you need, you know, backup capacity. What's called baseload capacity. Or you need the ability to store that energy from the sun or the wind for long periods of time. What is the solution going to be to create that baseload capacity?

STEYER: Right now, enhanced geothermal exists is competitive in terms of price. The question is, how big can it be?

My experience is, when you start looking for something you start finding a lot more than when you aren't looking for it. It is something which could be really big, but we need to find out how much electricity generation can come from basically steam and hot water thousands of feet below the Earth's surface.

Secondly, when you talked about batteries, in order to turn solar and wind into permanent energy sources, you need to store them. And right now, there are batteries, but they don't have very long duration. It's a matter of hours.

I have talked to the people working on the new battery generations. They are very confident that we will have a couple of revolutions in battery duration this decade. So, by 2030 we'll be in a place where we can store enough energy so we confidently get to 80 percent renewables on the grid. And the last thing is whether we can do safe, small grade, nuclear energy.

ZAKARIA: Modular.

STEYER: In all cases, the comparison is to natural gas. Because natural gas is thought to be a bridge fuel. The issue here is that natural gas solves a short-term economic problem. The need to have baseload fuel and assumes that that's the problem you're trying to solve. But it ignores a larger forcing mechanism which is we need to have an inhabitable planet. And it is very hard to look at the costs to the planet of building all that fossil fuel infrastructure for the next 35 to 50 years. And think that somehow that's going to be OK.

ZAKARIA: So, what do you -- trying to change in the world by writing this book and by doing the things you're doing?

STEYER: Well, the point of the book is to try to combat what I think are the two preeminent memes around climate and energy.

[10:45:04]

The first one is that this society is driven by fossil fuels and it always will be. So, give up on the idea there's going to be a change there. That's just not true.

The second one is we're in a doom loop. There's nothing we can do to solve this problem. Basically, throw up your hands. I'm saying the technology and the ability to solve it is way better than people understand.

In the past, when America has decided something is important, and we've gone about it together to do it, we've succeeded. It has been a point of huge national pride. It's really what this country was invented for was to be the leader in terms of societal change and doing the right thing. I'm asking people to join together and pitch in to win.

ZAKARIA: On that optimistic note, Tom Steyer, pleasure to have you on.

STEYER: Fareed, thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, Bangladesh has been beset by chaos after its leader was forced to flee the country. I'll tell you what lessons this crisis can teach us about the rest of the world when we come back.

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ZAKARIA: And now for the last look. For years, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina seemed untouchable. The daughter of the country's first president, a man known as the father of Bangladesh, Hasina, presided over the country for 15 consecutive years. During that time, she consolidated power, locking up opposition leaders, appointing loyalists to the courts, and maintaining an iron grip over the army and police.

And then suddenly it was over. Earlier this month, she fled the country, forced from power by throngs of protesters, mostly young students who flooded the streets, demanding her ouster. It is telling that the trigger for the protests was not a rigged election or state violence, both of which have been attributed to Hasina's rule, but rather jobs specifically the lack of them.

Bangladeshis were demonstrating against a quota that would have set aside 30 percent of highly coveted public sector jobs for descendants of freedom fighters who helped win Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan in 1971. Critics claimed the quota was a gift to members of Hasina's Awami League as many freedom fighters were tied to the party.

What has played out in Bangladesh in recent weeks, certainly reflects widespread disaffection with Hasina's rule. But it also has roots in a deep economic malaise in the country.

It wasn't always this way. Bangladesh has previously been touted as one of the most inspiring economic success stories in the developing world. Its economy grew at an average of 6.6 percent per year in the decade preceding the pandemic. Its booming garment industry sent cheaply made clothing and textiles to companies like H&M and Zara, and lifted millions of workers, many of them women out of poverty.

Its per capita GDP at one-point surpassed India's. And its economy grew to be bigger than Denmark's. But Bangladesh's economic strength also had a hidden vulnerability, joblessness.

As "The New York Times" notes, Bangladesh's leaders, including Hasina, doubled down on the country's garment sector, which accounts for more than 80 percent of exports. A single export economy made the country susceptible to global economic headwinds.

In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, demand for clothes went way down. As NPR reports factories shuttered and more than 1 million workers lost their jobs. Eventually demand recovered only to face another setback, inflation.

And Bangladesh faces other economic problems. Its scarcity of power infrastructure means it relies on imports to meet its energy needs. Like many developing countries, Bangladesh offers subsidies for fuel. But when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the cost of fuel shut up. Bangladesh raised prices for petrol, diesel, and kerosene by more than 50 percent which led to a wave of unrest.

Hasina may have calculated that as long as she delivered growth, her people would look away as she grew increasingly authoritarian. But protesters complained that the economic gains under Hasina's rule were concentrated in the hands of an already enriched political class. According to Chatham House, nearly one-fifth of young people are not engaged in work or education in Bangladesh. As "The New York Times" notes, more than 300,000 graduates compete for 4,000 government jobs each year, which explains the outrage over a policy that would result in so many of those good jobs being year marked for special groups.

The chaos in Bangladesh holds lessons for poor countries all over the world where bulging youth populations and economic malaise lead easily to unrest. Neighboring India also struggles to provide jobs to its burgeoning youth population and has faced protests in the past because of it.

[10:55:05]

But India and Bangladesh, despite their jobs crisis, are still growing economies. Sub-Saharan Africa is facing an even worse problem a jobs crisis with stagnant growth. The average per capita GDP there peaked in 2014 at $2,000.00 and has never recovered since. And like Bangladesh and India, that part of Africa has a large youth population. Seventy percent of its citizens are under the age of 30.

Kenya and Nigeria have both faced protests this summer over policies tied to their ailing economies. What Bangladesh shows all these countries is how easily progress without a broad foundation can be undone, how swiftly a nation can turn from an exemplar to a cautionary tale.

Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.

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