about russia. talks between moscow and the west this week brought the sides no closer to compromise. >> it is russia that has to make its dark choice. de-escalation in diplomacy or confrontation and consequences. >> will putin invade ukraine again? will he capitalize on kazakhstan's unrest? i will talk to vladimir putin's chief spokesman, dmitry peskov and then to two former top western officials who negotiated with the russian president. also, the pandemic has wreaked havoc in schools and hospitals and on our mental health. but how much damage has it done to american democracy? the harvard scholar danielle allen, who's running for governor of massachusetts, spent most of the last two years thinking about exactly that. she'll tell me what she's learned. but first here's "my take." as we watch inflation spike upward at a pace not seen since the early 1980s, experts are debating whether this is worrying and long term or benign and transitory. i'm not a economist but as a student of history, i do wonder if the return of inflation is part of a larger shift that is taking place across the world. to put it simply, for decades in country after country, economics trumped politics, but now from china to turkey to the united states, politics is trumping economics. the conquest of inflation is one of the most far reaching changes of our time. countries used to think they had to live with and manage escalating and rising prices. when they got out of hand, they often had severe consequences. unlike unemployment, which affect just the small percentage of people who don't have jobs, inflation affects everyone. and unlike unemployment, which shrinks what you might have earned in the future if you had a job, inflation shrinks what you have now by eroding the value of all of your savings. that's why high inflation has been so often associated with political turmoil from germany in the 1920s to iran in the 1970s to latin america in the 1980s. we forget now, but as recently as the 1980s, inflation was rampant across much of the world. countries like brazil, argentina and peru had inflation rates that were measured in the thousands of percent. the united states kicked off the decade with over 12% inflation. and in european countries like italy, it rose above 20% and most of these countries, the cause was some combination of large government deficits, lax central bank policies and external shots like the oil crisis of the 1970s. these crises produced a policy revolution. central banks became more independent and focused on taming inflation. governments in the developing world became more fiscally responsible. in some cases, chile and mexico, they briefly tied their currencies to the dollar. one crucial reason that countries like italy were willing to give up their currency in favor of a common european one was that they believed that essentially merging their monetary policy with germany's would enable them to fix their inflation problem. in large measure, it worked and by the early 2000s, country were congratulating themselves for having won the war. it all seems part of a paradigm where governments recognize the power of free markets and free trade. thomas friedman used the metaphor of the golden straight jacket to explain what happened. governments placed themselves in a situation where their policy options were tightly constrained by markets and as a result their politics shrank but their economies grew. over the last few years, it has seemed as though the opposite is happening almost everywhere. look at turkey, which by the 2000s had become a model developing country, taming inflation and spurring growth. its policymakers were lauded across the world. today turkey's president has abandoned even the pretense of rational economic policy, using that policy to reward friends and punish foes and advocating monetary policy that is the opposite of what most experts believe would work. chile, which was considered the most fiscally prudent country in latin america, now appears to have taken a path towards a more familiar left wing populism. or consider the poster child of developing countries, china, where economic growth was the north star of policy making. today xi jinping pursues policies that often attack the private sector in key growth areas like technology. as the scholar elizabeth economy has pointed out, it is china, not america, that began the move to decouple the two countries economies ' economies and embrace protectionism and economic nationalism when xi announced his made-in-china strategy and for its part mirrored its protectionism with its own subsidies. the western world has followed suit. driven by an understandable concern about middle class wages and inequality, economic policy is no longer oriented towards economic growth. tariff, relief and substance packages all reflect that politics has trumped economics. central banks everywhere have rushed in over the last decade to take extreme measures in response to the big shocks of the age, the financial crisis and pandemic. as sherman notes in the mid-1990s, not one country in the world had a debt-to-gdp ratio of 300%. today, 25 countries have exceeded this mark. the old obsession with economics over politics was overdone. it achieved great successes but it created other problems, such as wage stagnation. but the current emphasis of politics over economics seems more dangerous. it allows politicians to engage in patronage policies, protectionism and short-term gimmicks to prevent ordinary people from feeling the pain of a crisis. in the long run, however, one wonders if it is the same ordinary people who will have to pay the price. go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my "washington post" column this week. and let's get started. ♪ after three rounds of high-level meetings between russia and the west this week, the two sides are no closer to compromise over de-escalation on the ukrainian border. the russians express frustration that the united states has not responded to a series of demand that include ukraine never joining nato and rolling back nato activities in eastern europe. washington says these demands are nonstarters and that russia could be laying the groundwork to fabricate a pretext for an invasion. so what exactly is moscow's end game? kremlin's longtime spokesman, dmitry peskov, has been by vladimir putin's side for two decades. one of his closest aides. i talked to him on friday in an exclusive interview. mr. peskov, pleasure to have you on, sir. >> it's my pleasure. it's my pleasure, thank you. >> why has russia brought these proposals -- some people would say why has russia created this crisis now? many of the things that are being talked about, the russian demands, the draft negotiations, these issues have been around for a few years. what has happened in the last few months or few weeks that has caused this to become a kind of urgent crisis with russia amassing more than 100,000 troops on the ukrainian border? has something changed very recently? >> well, you know, it started in the beginning of the '90s. when germany was reunited and when the then soviet union and soviet union leader mr. gorbachev said okay to that, there was a promise by the american side. unfortunately, not fixed in a judicial legally binding guaranteed document, but there was a guarantee that nato would never -- would never expand its military infrastructure or political infrastructure eastwards. unfortunately, the opposite thing started to happen since then. and nato's military infrastructure started to get closer and closer to the borders of the russian federation. the united states started to deploy different -- different weapons, different launching systems and so on and so forth, closer to our border with each year. this all led to the situation when we started to feel endangered by that and our nation of security was endangered. so what you have mentioned is not a story of the last couple of months or couple of weeks. it's a story of a couple of decades, a couple of decades when nato -- by the way, nato is, in our understanding, it's an organization that was tailored and was created for confrontation, not for defense. and nato is not a dove of peace. it is not a dove of stability. it is not a dove of prosperity. nato is a weapon of confrontation. and this weapon of confrontation with each year started to get closer and closer to our borders. and after 2014 when a coup happened in ukraine, ukraine started and ukraine had said it would be oriented more closer to nato membership. at first they were just words, but with the time being, we have seen the gradual invasion of nato into ukrainian territory with its infrastructure, with its instructors, with its supply of offensive and defensive weapons, teaching ukrainian military, so on and so forth. that brought us to the red line. that brought us to the situation when we -- when we couldn't tolerate it anymore, and this was the main reason for president putin to say, guys, this is a real threat for us and this is a real threat for stability and security in european architecture. let's find a way out. let's produce some guarantees for us. let's think about returning nato's military infrastructure back to the borders of 1997. let's get freed of the idea of ukraine's membership to nato and also let's get rid of the idea, let's abandon the idea of deployment of any offensive weapons on the territory of ukraine next to our borders. this was the main idea, main proposal of president putin. so we are quite a big country, and we're too big and we're too important to keep silent against this danger. so that was the main reason. >> so let's talk about the proposals. as you say, the core of it does seem to be about ukraine's potential membership in nato. and i'm wondering if there is a possible compromise here. russia does not want ukraine to become a member of nato. the truth of the matter is, ukraine is not likely to become a member of nato anytime soon. nato runs by consensus. you would need 30 votes. clearly those votes do not exist. and yet nato has a policy of what it calls an open door, which is it does not in principle rule out any country might apply to be a member. is it possible to imagine a compromise where in effect there is a statement that says there's no present plan for ukraine to become a member, but we don't rule out that at some point in the future that might happen for ukraine, as for any other country? is there a potential compromise there? >> well, there is also space for compromise, excluding some principle concerns. and here we're talking about principle concerns. russia has never had to distance a political will for negotiations to the country. president putin was willing, was willing all the time and he's willing negotiations with nato, with the united states, based on the mutual -- mutual respect and readiness to take into account each other's concerns. so nato -- you're talking about open-doors policy for ukraine, but you cannot create a security of one country at the expense of the security of another. so the reason and understanding of instability of security. and it's extremely important, extremely important. we have to find out a combination to solve this problem taking into account concerns of russia. we don't know what the outcome is going to be. we have these three sessions of negotiations. there are some understandings between us but in general, in principle, we can now say that we are staying on different tracks, on totally different tracks. and this is not good. this is disturbing. >> and we will be back with more of my interview with vladimir putin's longtime aide, dmitry peskov. hroat lozenges. show your sore throat who's boss. new mucinex instasoothe. works in seconds, lasts for hours. can dove stop 98% of daily hair damage? sandra treats one lock of hair with dove. glowing areas represent hair damage. dove precisely repairs so there are 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>> yes, de-escalation in ukraine. first of all, there are no russian troops in ukraine. there are no russian troops in donbass. there are russian troops on russian soil, russian territory next to the ukrainian border. it's quite understandable. >> you know international observers say there are russian troops not wearing russian uniforms but there are russian troops in donbass. >> there are no russian troops in donbass. i'm a spokesperson to the kremlin, and i can officially tell you there are no russian troops in donbass or on ukrainian soil. but there are troops next to ukraine on russian borders. and we find it necessary to keep them there because of the very intense situation and very unfriendly environment created by various training of nato, jet fighters, nato spy planes, nato's military infrastructure moving towards our borders. we have to respond. we have to take measures of precaution. that's why we have our military guides and military there. >> do you have some kind of timeline at which point you will say the negotiations have failed and are you then prepared to take military action? >> well, we're not speaking about military action. this is -- you have to understand, no one is threatening anyone with military action. this will be just a madness to do that. but we will be ready to take counteractions. so if you continue to say that, listen, russians, we're not going to take into account your concerns, nato will continue to expand, no, we're not going to have ukraine's side, nato, but for the time being legally it will be possible, we're not going to say we will not deploy any offensive weapons on ukraine's territory and nato's military infrastructure will stay next to your border and we will even for the time being get even closer, if you tell us that, we'll have to do something. what is the timeline? what is the timeline? well, of course, we're not speaking about tomorrow. we're not speaking about hours, but what was meant by our president is that we don't want to see a process for the sake of the process. so we don't want to see a month-long or yearlong negotiation discussing our disagreements. we want to feel for the beginning the readiness to take into account of concerns. right now unfortunately we fail to do that. next on "gps," i will ask dmitry peskov how moscow would respond to further american sanctions, and what he really thinks of joe biden. for strength and energy. woo hoo! ensure, complete balanced nutrition with 27 vitamins and minerals. and ensure complete with 30 grams of protein. ♪ ♪ (ringing) - hey kaleb, what's up? 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(giggling) how not to be a hero: because that's the last thing they need you to be. you don't have to save the day. you just have to navigate the world so that a foster child isn't doing it solo. you just have to stand up for a kid who isn't fluent in bureaucracy, or maybe not in their own emotions. so show up, however you can, for the foster kids who need it most— at helpfosterchildren.com back now with the final part of my interview with kremlin spokesman dmitry peskov. do you worry about the kind of sanctions that are being proposed? president biden i know told president putin in the phone call these will be actions of a kind that are substantially more extensive than ever done be befbefore. >> well, i understand that washington is -- is a great fan of introducing sanctions against different countries. and what was meant for the last kind of sanctions, even sanctions mentioning sanctions against the leadership of russia. of course, it's beyond our understanding, potentially this kind of sanction can lead to discontinuation of any relationship between our two countries, which will not be in the interest of moscow nor either washington. it will be a great mistake. of course, every time we would like to just -- just to ask people in washington, can you recall any example of a situation when sanctions helped you to solve a problem? whether sanctions were really effective in making a country to make certain steps? this never happened. this never happened. and, well, we got used to live under american sanctions, and to some extent, we're trying to take advantage of them, in terms of developing our domestic economy, our domestic production, compensating a deficit of certain import parts and elements, by producing our own. so it gives a boost to our nation's economy. so that's why we're quite big and we're quite self-sufficient to be fragile against the sanctions. you have to understand it. >> let me ask you finally, mr. peskov, you said some very generous things about president biden. you said he's one of the most experienced politicians in the world. you've said that he and president putin have a good relationship. you've said the negotiations have been started in good faith. are you optimistic that things are going to de-escalate, that there's going to be some search for stability? or are you pessimistic and feel things are spiraling downwards? >> well, i sincerely believe that the wisdom of our two leaders, political wisdom of president putin and his political experience and political wisdom and political wisdom and experience of president biden is a good soil for continuation of attempts to find a common ground. but there is a critical situation here. the critical situation is the situation around the concerns, national concerns of russia. if we see political will from washington to try to take it into account somehow and to discuss it with us, then it's common ground for continuation. if we continue to get response in the way, no, it's out of question, we're not going to discuss it, then it will be reason for being pessimistic. >> all right, we will leave it at that. it's always a pleasure to have you on, and i hope we can do this again. >> my pleasure. next on "gps," how should the west respond to russia's rhetoric and actions? i will talk to two former western officials who have sat across from president putin at the negotiating table. their thoughts on putin's threats when we come back. slash... and this is the basement slash panic room. maybe what your family needs is a vacation home slash vacation home. find yours on the vrbo app. wet dishes? 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>> well, no, i don't believe >> well, no -- yes i believe they're preparing for military conflict but the steps they are taking is to go down this path. the steps they have been taking for months is an effort to engage seriously on what they believe their primary concerns are, and that is this position of nato expansion of europe and in the past 30 years. we heard in recent days threats of escalation, possible placement of russian nuclear architecture in cuba, for venezuela, for example. i think this is an effort to underscore from the kremlin standpoint, it's not only ukraine's security at risk, not only europe's, it's the united states. the hope is that will compel the united states through a series of issues. >> radek, how do you rate the same conditions? >> well, president putin is a serious and intelligent leader but he's a gambler and gamblers sometimes overreach. let's get something straight. i was at the geneva summit in 2008 when we denied ukraine a membership action plan. there are no nato facilities or offensive weapons in ukraine, and russia is a nuclear power. ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal under the budapest memorandum of '94 in which russia guaranteed ukraine's borders and security. the idea of ukraine being a threat to russia is as absurd as canada being a threat to the united states. >> tom, what radek says is true, of course, russia did guarantee that security. it does seem that it is trying to rewrite or roll back the concessions or the strategic reality that developed over the last 20 years where nato has moved to incorporate poland and hungary and countries like that. how much give is there? is there room, as i was asking, is there room for some kind of compromise do you think? >> i do think there's some room for compromise. i think what the russian position is at this point that we need to address the intrusion. they have laid out extreme positions almost in the form of ultimatums that are unacceptable to the west. the challenge i think for diplomacy is to thread the needle of our position that nato retains an open door, that countries of the former soviet union, if they so desire, are free to associate with any country in a military/political type of arrangement and that includes nato. on the other hand, russia has made it quite clear that it needs to seek some sort of security buffer zone in europe to feel secure, and the focus of this is obviously on ukraine. go ahead. >> radek, i wanted ask you, we can talk about the united states more, but europe is a big player here or should be. would europe back up a tough line against russia? right now gas prices in europe are sky high. were there to be any kind of confrontations, sanctions against russia, there would be kind of an energy crisis in europe on the scale of the 1970s in the u.s. are europeans willing to deal with that? the german leadership certainly, they're doing nord stream, which actually helps russia, hurts ukraine. i don't hear them being very strong right now. will europe back the united states were it to be compelled to take a tough line? >> i think president putin was very surprised that europe imposed sanctions for the invasion of ukraine before, for taking over crimea and invading donbass, and i think there would be consensus to increase them further. remember, russia also needs to settle their gas. we can buy gas from the united states. huge tankers are on their way now that we have at our mg terminals. i think russia needs to calculate, for example, if she invades, putin needs to mute the operation. >> tom, do you think fundamentally the best way to deal with this is deterrence or diplomacy? i realize there needs to be a combination of the two. >> that's correct. >> but at some level it feels like there's a tension here, the more you back ukraine to strengthen it to deter russia, the more the russians are going to feel that the u.s. is not listening to their concerns. >> i think absolutely. we've done very well on the deterrence track so far. i think we need to do more on diplomacy. and i think what we ought to give serious consideration to is something i would call the moratorium on the further expansion of nato eastward, for a defined period, say 20 to 25 years. the period is not set in stone. that's a matter of negotiation. but the idea here is to have a period that's long enough so the russians can say that we have met our major security concern, which is about nato's expansion eastward. this is a long enough period, in fact could be forever. at the same token, we have not compromised our view that the door to nato is still open, and that means we have to have a short enough period so it doesn't look like we've given up our abandoned ukraine. >> all right, on that potential note of compromise, i have to close. we will doubtless be back with the two of you to discuss this because this crisis isn't going away. thank you. some of my best memories growing up, were cooking with mom. she always said, “food is love.” so when she moved in with us, a new kitchen became part of our financial plan. ♪ i want to make the most of every meal we have together. ♪ at northwestern mutual, our version of financial planning helps you live your dreams today. find a northwestern mutual advisor at nm.com . . . psoriatic arthritis, made my joints stiff,... ...swollen, painful. emerge tremfyant®. tremfya® is approved to help reduce joint symptoms in adults with active psoriatic arthritis. some patients even felt less fatigued. serious allergic reactions may occur. tremfya® may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms or if you had a vaccine or plan to. emerge tremfyant® with tremfya®... ask you doctor about tremfya® today. american democracy is under great strain these days. first and foremost from the current nature of american politics itself, but the pandemic has also tested our political system and displayed weaknesses for all to see. my next guest, a harvard scholar danielle allen, has been busily studying and write begun what we can learn from the pan dem beingy. her new book is "democracy in the time of coronavirus." danielle, welcome. you spent a lot of time putting together groups of frying to do something about this, both in massachusetts and around the country. you come to us as a scholar. you're running for governor of massachusetts. if i were to ask you what was the single weakness that the pandemic exposed in american society and politics, what would you say that was? >> thanks so much for having me and for all the amazing work that you've been doing on democracy. the single greatest weakness exposed is that we've got a broken social contract. we don't trust each other. we don't trust our government, and we don't trust each other or our government because for years, folks have been asked to pitch in, pay taxes, work hard and haven't really gotten basic protections, access to basic health resources, basic security, and when the pandemic hit that broken social contract has shown in spades. we had a split screen reality where some folks got protection, others, hard working people and frontline workers and the like really didn't. so the fact that we have this sort of underlying problem of distrust and broken sense of connection meant everything else we tried to do is so much harder, so much harder to achieve than if we a strong social contract. >> i'm struck by the degree to which politics and polarization has gotten into covid because it's really quite almost unique in america. i mean, america didn't have a very strong anti-vax movement before covid. if you look at covid places like france were much worse in terms of suspicion of the vaccine and then it became trump versus the rest, republican versus democrat, and now we've politicized this public health debate that it's difficult to imagine a collective response on anything because there's always going to be opposition. so in that specific case, you know, which still remains hugely problematic. only 62% of americans are double vaccinated. is there a solution? i mean, what would you do to try to get us back to where we used to be which is the vaccine mandates all over the country? you can go to public school if your kids weren't vaccinated. how do you get back to that ethos? >> well, i think it's a lot of work, you know. this is one of the reasons i'm running for governor in massachusetts. our democracy is what we live or die by. the pandemic really showed us that, and it will take movement on multiple fronts in order for us to get back there. we have to equip ourselves at the local level. we have decision-making tools that are polarizing, and i think it's mrs. our culture and how we orient ourselves towards one another and recognizing that we have a set of multiple things that we care about. we care about public health and freedom as well, and we don't need to start by assuming that those things are in competition. we need to start by asking the question how can we align those different goods and ideals that we do actually hold in common? >> a lot of people believe that social media drives polarization even further, intensifies it and certainly on -- on -- being you know, looking at it objectively i think it's fair to say that there is some truth to that. do you have any ideas about how you change that dynamic or you address it? >> i do think that we have to face the fact that facebook has broken our democracy. i don't think it's intention a. unintended consequences but it's for real. it really has supported the spread of misinformation, and we have sort of information ecosystem that doesn't give people healthy diets of information, healthy opportunities for deliberation and conversation. i believe it's really necessary to rebuild a healthy ecosystem of local journal yimp so i am proposing that we tax the revenue that social media companies get for advertising and then use the resources to fund the re-establishment of clarity in local communities what counts as good arguments and the kinds of debates we want to have. >> you sound at the end of the day optimistic. is that something that you get out of having gone around, you know, on the -- campaigning around the state? >> yes, absolutely. campaigning is just the most incredible source of hope. i'm a doer and an implementer. you know, when i see a proib jump in and do everything in my power to fix, it and as i travel around massachusetts i have discovered i'm by no means alone. there are so many people in our state who are doing incredible things to bring health to their communities, to bring healthy partnerships, to build bridges honestly. there's an amazing partnership between social justice activists and lynn to build an alternative dispatch program. there are leaders all over our commonwealth who are forging a path out of these dark, hard times and i'm working really hard to bring the same spirit to this effort. >> danielle allen, pleasure you have to on. >> thanks a lot. >> i will see you next week. >> i will see you next week. $ to uplift the senses and transform your mood. air wick essential mist aroma. what can i du with less asthma? 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