China feels about putin in another year. Rose we conclude with arati prabhakar. Everything we are doing is harnessing technology to deal with the world that has this today, very interesting range of challenges. We talked about when darpa started, very much a creation of the cold war. Today, of course, thats not the problem we face. Its the threats that we face. Its a multipolar world. So, yes the future directions of nation states matters for our National Security. Where will china go . Whats russia doing . Whats happening with north korea or iran . Those are questions but, of course, the chronic challenges of National Security today are about violent extremism flaring up, its connections to terrorism. Bremmer and problem problem when we continue. Funding for charlie rose is provided by the following rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose ian bremmer is here ab poundser of eurasia group. He recently joined Time Magazine as editor at large. Publishing top risk reports and the main geopolitical developments to watch in the coming months. His list includes the politics of europe, russia, isis and the effects of the chinese economic slowdown. I am please today have ian bremmer back at this table. Happy new year. Thanks. Rose congratulations on the Time Magazine assignment. Whats that about . What do you do with them . I will have to create a voice that can talk to a much broader constituency. We will see. I am going to talk about global catholics and hopefully people will react to it. Rose look back at 2014 first and tell me what came out of that year that shaped 2015. Well rose all of it. What came out of it were all of these dissparate headlines bringing geopolitics back to this table. It was a year we paid attention to ukraine, power politics more. We talked about all of the conflicts in asia the East China Sea the south china sea. It was the rice of isis and the breakdown of iraq and assad staying in power and violence expanding in all of these places. Political islam died. Radical islam came up as a more significant force, yet it was also a year when the United States, the Worlds Largest economy, got its footing and became robust. And if you look at this report rose the most robust economy in the world . I dont see any United States here rose what does that mean . On one thing, great things. You have oil going in to the low 50s today. Americans doing well with that. And you have got a 5 handle on American Growth in the last quarter. But you also have things happening all over the world that are very dangerous to lots of other people, also dangerous to americans directly and our intentions in playing a major role in responding there not so great. Another thing you dont see here is there is no internal china risk. I mean we have gone through years where everyone said, china is going to fall apart. Big political instability. Whats going to happen . One of the most powerful effective leaders in the world today. You are looking in 2015, the two largest economies in the world the United States and china going, dont actually figure here rose going in different directions. Going in different directions. One direction they clearly agree on is neither wants to do an awful lot to fix other peoples problems. Rose they agreed at least in part to look and address common problems, climate. A little bit yeah. Do you want to go there . Rose rose sure. They made an agreement. They made china promise by 2030, that will be their peak year. This isnt rose it deserves no attention that they walked out of there at least agreeing to something . The president is heralding it as an acheesement . When the americans and chinese wants to show they can agree. Rose they can get something done. You said today u. S. Relations with russia are broken. China is charting its own course. The ties that bind europe are fraying. Others proceed vail, hedging their plans and alliances in reaction to increasing geopolitical uncertainty. Wow. Where is the good news . The good news is what we just started with. Rose economics. Europe is good news economically. Rose greece . Europe, spains new job numbers better than at any point since the financial crisis rose the politics of europe in terms of nationalistic rightwing parties challenging it or because there is no consensus . Both and the external. Lets go to the point you raised. You asked me the you know employment in spain. Rose thats right. As a consequence, spain may be growing now. The economy is growing but the average spaniard isnt feeling it. As a consequence, a new party that didnt exist when we wroent wrote this 2014 podemos is not only the most popular in spain but is reasonably likely to get into government when elections occur in 2015. Siriza in greece is likely to win in the coming weeks in greek elections. Rose if it wins, what . Of course, as they get closer to power they moderate their position. They say they are no longer desiring to simply leave the euro zone and they are not going to default immediately, but the point is rose they say they are not going to treat the debt with the respect it has been treated in past neg occasions . What have the germans said . We expect you to adhere to 100 of that deal. Thank you very much. Rose and dont come back to United States for anything else . Dont think about it. We can handle a greek exit which is not what merkel was saying three years ago. Now, thats what she is saying. Rose what are the repercussions by greece from the euro zone . I dont believe there will be a greek exit, first of all. I think they will get right up to the line and as a consequence, it will be harder for everyone to borrow. You will see unravelling of many of the policies. Europe will get weaker. It will be a place you dont want to invest. The euro will continue to slyide. Thats different from saying its going to implode. But the likelihood of this moving towards the british referendum for exit before 2017 is going up. There is no question. You said what are the other ramifications . Externally when the euro zone crisis happened, we didnt have a russian crisis, this massive radical islam that was increasingly putting refugees on to europes borders. Now, we have that. So, the external environment is much worse as well. All of that is fine for the United States. Its enormus political pressure rose as china, economic machine slows down, okay . 7 . As European Economic forces are at work as they are Oil Prices Going down as they are, i mean its changing the Global Economic outlook. Its changing the balance of power as well. There are no signs the merging sxhooez growing at a great have any likelihood of gaining that will in the future . Many will take it on the chin. All of those, particularly selling all of these comemodityies to china. China has been the biggest engine of growth for the past decade. Certainly, they wont buy the way they did from the brazilians. Its a problem. Rose their plan is to create internal sdmand. Their 5 year plan. We dont want to ex port the economy. We want to feed the consumer demand. No one benefits more from these prices in oil. He has bought 12 18, 20s months of Oil Prices Rose the lead column in the New York Times maoists in chooiven give a new life bouyed. They pouncey on bloggers who dare mock their chairman mao. They scour newspapers for strains of western inspierdz liberal herecy and have taken down professors journalists and others being sdloil to the communist party orthodoxy. Where is china going . Not towards the New York Times. I will tell you that. The times has problems in china as you know. They might not keep their website. Rose thats because of reporting on some of the powerful families in china. Sure and a general orientation towards western values the chinese dont abide. Rose what are they worried about . What are they worried about . Rose why are they threatened by western values . I think they are threatened by anything that they feel could unravel or cause dissent to the monopoly of political power that the Chinese Communist party has rose about the monopoly of the party . Sure. The chinese dream is we want you to get rich. We are going to help you get rich. Hong kong, thats nots the chinese dream. Rose some say thats a philosophy of we will take care of the politics and we will let you make as much money as you want. The think that worries me is when putin and he get together, this is where they have commonalities, the fact that western political ideology reform is dangerous to them personally in their regimes. I do worry that even though china is much more responsible doesnt want to cause ruptions internationally tomorrow because power is moving towards them over the longterm yet the russian china relationship is becoming real. Its becoming real. Rose what are the consequences or repercussions of that . Over the longterm, the repercussions are creation of institutions that will undermine things like the dollar, will undermine american standards that have been global the ability to engage in a free and open internet, American Companies to be able to enjoy a multilateral Playing Field that is competitive for private sector organizations. The chinese are the Worlds Largest economy. They are trying to get a bunch of other countries to align with them bilaterally. So far they have countries like lao and cambodia to engage with them. Who cares . They are tiny country these versus a big country, a country that hits over its wait geo politically but very small compared to china. Thats interesting. Rose primarily energy . Its primarily energy, and thats not a great place to be today. Yet as you and i have talked about rose imagine a scenario of chinese russian cooperation. What would it be . How would it play itself out . What might come out of it . Clearly one thing that comes out of it is that the ability of the United States to punish or isolate russia for transgressions becomes nil because russia rose they immunize themselves the russians do if they do what not chinese . If they do whatever the chinese would like. So clearly, that means provide them with a lot of energy at prices that would be more favorable to china, sell them even more arms than they have had, including those that are technologically advanced. Russia already is the largest arms dealer for china. It would it would also mean supporting chinese positions in international organizations. Rose a page on International Issues anyway . On iran . It seems when the Security Council comes up and russia is going to veto the chinese are there with them. Its interesting. Rose true . Its largely true. I would say the chinese would rather generally be able to abstain as opposed to veto. They dont like to do no votes by themselves if they can avoid it. I am talking more about the creation of otiations the strengthening of the Shanghai Organization as a counterweight to nato. The creation of the sillythe silk road over Land Organization that is meant to really drive infrastructure, that will make china stronger and clearly move towards internal eurasia. Those are things that are inherently competitive to organizations like the imf and the world bank and does china want to become an alternative reserve currency of the world or some other alternative . They certainly dont want to be the reserve currency any time soon. The reason for that is of course, because they are not prepared to float the r and d bur they dont want the dollar to be the reserve currency and they dont want the americans to have the influence that comes with it. If they can fragment it, thats useful to china. The russians agree with that 100 percent. Russians are more willing to provoke conflict actively to make that happen. The chinese, less willing. The orientation is the same. Rose with respect to the chinese, it was often said that they have not been an imperialistic power. History said that. Yes. Rose not reached out to gain territory what the chinese kingdom was. Is it possible that they want to expand in geography as well as depth of influence . Depths of influence, i can take quite literally in terms of a lot of the territory they want to grab in the east and south china sea. Anyone has ever looked at the 9dash lionel against the vietnamese border, you see no one could imagine that that would be territory that china believes it could actually take or that it legitimately should have, and yet, thats precisely what they are arguing, and they are outgrowing the military at 15 , plus, a year that nobody in the region will be able to counter. So china right now is playing a relatively slow and thoughtful game. They dont want to provoke unnecessarily because they are focusing on their economy and doing so successfully. There is no question that over the longterm rules of the road for many, in fact, most countries in asia are going to change dramatically rose if you wanted to argue about what leader in the world has served the interests of his country better than anyone else, is that an easy answer . The interests of his party, i think you could make that argument. Rose the country. Building a stronger country. Not building his own power base. I think its dangerous. I think what he is doing is dangerous. I think that, you know he looks so much to soviet history and the mistakes that they believe were made by gorbachev and he did three things right. He did economic reform that they want to do glastnot. They dont want to do but he also see centralized power. Didnt work in the soviet union because you had republics that were nations and they said we want independence. In china the country is so different. The interior of china has people who want to be led the way they have been led for decades. They want growth. If that means its heavy industry and the smog is bad, well, so be it. If you go to shanghai or beijing, these are people that are living relatively wealthy lives and they want more accountability. They want more quality of life. They even want things like an independent judiciary because they are attached to businesses. They would like more intellectual property. I fear he has no willingness whatsoever to truly deceltyrant eyes power. I think he is doing the opposite. I think since he has come to power he has centralized power. Rose one way he sent tralized power is he has attacked corruption and some of his enemies have gone down and thats a positive. It en handle his reputation. I worry that risk version in china is going to create much bigger problems with their own domestic populations longterm but boy does it work well right now. There is no question. Rose tell me what mr. Putin wants. Whats the risk of what he wants in 2015. We know what he wants. He wants to maximize his influence both in his country and region. He does not want to accept being a leader of a russia in decline. And, you know, the news today with Oil Prices Going down into the low 50s is the worst possible Economic News for putin. The only thing that is supporting him in terms of popularity right now is his demonization of the United States and of the west. Rose thats popular . Thats popular. Rose among the westernsids citizenry. Across russia rose does Falling Oil Prices mean he has to do something to maintain his popularity at home . He is lashing out. I think he will do more. I think that its very unlikely that he is going to back down from his occupation in southeast ukraine. His military incursions are going to continue. Cyber attacks on American Private institutions and the white house will continue and they are getting dangerous. They are getting dangerous. Thats the interesting point. Rose we saw what happened as an example of power. Espionage, cyber warfare. Anybody you talk to in that part of the world, they say they are happening hundreds of thousands of times all the time against both government and private enterprise. You are right to raise the north korea point here because russia and north korea have some unfortunate similarities. They are both countries that hit tremendously above their weight militarily. They are both countries americans are trying hard to punish. The u. S. Has no hope of isolating because the chinese refuse to allow it. The big difference, of course lots of differences but the biggest difference is that russia is a big country. Russia has the ability to lash out and caused a lot of trouble if they want to. Thats clearly true on sigh ber cyber but other ways as well wellwell rose whats the chances they will move make steps to become a member of nato . They have gotten rid of their nonaligned status formally. I dont believe they will do anything else that is substantive in that direction in the next few months, but the fact that they have taken those steps shows a level of desseparation. They are trying to get people to Pay Attention to them. They are trying to get more economic support. Their economy is falling apart. Ukraine is the big loser here nobody really cares. A lot of people care, but nobody really cares. Its kind of like hong kong. We have these issues. And yet they are not fundamentally National Security interests of the United States and no one else has coordinated to take steps. Rose before i leave asia, japan. An election general. Ava. Rose more economics or nationalism . I would say personally, i think et cetera more interested in nationalism. Thats what res on its a more for him as a human being. As a politic, he is more interested in economics. Thats a right thing forehim to do. I think asia is geo politically going to have a bit of reprieve because you have someone who is charismatic, focusing