Fareed Zakaria

The cultural divide that has developed now is one in which I think for somebody like J.D.

Vance, Russia are actually the good guys, right?

As you said, they're white, they're Christian.

In fact, Putin often makes the point of Putin is culturally a neoconservative.

I mean, he's against all the licentiousness of Western liberalism.

So, by the way, is Xi Jinping.

And it's why they don't like Europe.

Exactly.

They worry that the kind of acids of Western liberalism will change their societies as well.

And so in many ways, the Russians and the Chinese are not just balancing against the West geopolitically, but they're balancing against them culturally.

because they don't want these forces of modernization and liberalism to infect their societies.

But the twist now compared to the Cold War is they have allies within the West who feel the same way.

This is what's so different about this moment, whereas we've faced adversaries in the past.

We've faced ideological adversaries, geopolitical ones.

But what's strange is we now have within the West

very important strong forces that kind of agree with our enemies.

And that's what is such a kind of

That's what makes it so difficult to navigate foreign policy because you watch Trump on Russia and Ukraine, and it's pretty clear everyone tries to find some rationale.

He hates the Ukrainians, he likes the Russians.

He hates Zelensky, he likes Putin.