Why Do the Taliban Always Come Back?; Tackling Syria, Israel and the TPP
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST: This is GPS, GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria. It's been a busy week in world affairs and we will put it all in perspective. Syria, what exactly is Putin's end game? Israel, what is behind the recent uptick in violence there? Will it get worse? Refugees, how many should the United States take in? All that with an all-star panel. Also, a nuclear deal with Iran. Normalized relations with Cuba. Big accomplishments but was a deal reached this week even more important. I will talk to the United States trade representative, Michael Froman, about negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And another workweek is about to begin. How would you like to work just six hours a day, get paid full salary and not get fired for it. We will show you how. But first, here's my take. Recent setbacks in Afghanistan from the fall of Kunduz to the errant U.S. bombing of a hospital in that city once again raised the question. Why after 14 years of American military efforts is Afghanistan still so fragile? After all the country has a democratically elected government widely viewed as legitimate. Poll after poll suggests the Taliban are unpopular. The Afghan Army fights fiercely and loyally. And yet the Taliban always come back. The answer to this puzzle can be found in a profile of the Taliban's new leader, Akhtar Mohammad Mansour. It turns out that he lives in Quetta. Some of the time, the "New York Times" reports, in an enclave where he and some other Taliban leaders have built homes. His predecessor, Mullah Omar, we now know died a while ago in Karachi. And we will of course all remember that Osama bin Laden lived for many years in a compound in Abbottabad. All three of these cities are in Pakistan. We cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan without recognizing that the insurgency against that government has credibly accused of being shaped, aided and armed from across the border by one of the world's most powerful armies, the Pakistani army. Periodically someone inside or outside the U.S. government points this out. Yet no one knows quite what to do so it's swept under the carpet and policy stays the same. But this is not an incidental issue. It's fundamental. And unless it is confronted the Taliban will never be defeated. It's an old adage that no counter-insurgency has ever succeeded when the rebels have a safe haven. Well, in this case many experts believe the insurgents, the rebels have a nuclear armed sponsor. Pakistan has mastered the art of pretending to help the United States while actually supporting its most deadly foes. Take for example the many efforts American officials have recently made to start talks with the Taliban. It turns out they were talking to ghosts. Mullah Omar had been dead for two years, all the while Pakistani officials have been facilitating contacts and talks with him. This is part of a pattern. Pakistani officials from former president Pervez Musharaf down categorically denied that Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar were living in Pakistan despite the fact that former Afghan president Hamid Karzai repeatedly pointed this out publicly. The Pakistani army has been described as the godfather of the Taliban. That might actually understate its influence. Pakistan was the base for the American supported Mujahideen as they battled the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Up to the Soviet Union retreated from Afghanistan in 1989 the United States withdrew almost as quickly and Pakistan entered that strategic void. It pushed forward the Taliban, a group of young Pashtun jihadis schooled in radical Islam in Pakistani madrasas. Talib means student. Now history is repeating itself. As the United States draws down, Pakistan again seeks to expand its influence through its long standing proxy. So what should America do? First, says Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's former ambassador to the United States and the author of "Magnificent Delusions," the U.S. needs to see reality for what it is. Quote, "When you are lied to and you don't respond, you are encouraging more lies," unquote. He argues that Washington has to get much tougher with the Pakistani military and make clear that its double dealing must stop. To do this would be good for Afghanistan and stability in that part of world but it would also be good for Pakistan. Pakistan is a time bomb waiting to explode. It ranks 43rd in the world by the size of its economy according to the World Bank. But it has one of the world's largest armies. It has the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world and the most opaque. It maintains close ties with some of world's most brutal terrorists. Its military consumes 26 percent of all tax receipts by some estimates while the country has 5.5 million children who don't attend school. The world's second highest number. As long as this military and its mindset are unchecked and unreformed the United States will face a strategic collapse as it withdraws its forces from the region. For more go to CNN.com/fareed and read my "Washington Post" this week. And let's get started. Let's get straight to the rest of this week's development in Syria, Russia, Israel, the Mediterranean and elsewhere with a really terrific panel. Ian Bremmer is the president of the Eurasia Group, a global risk consultancy. Julia Ioffe is a columnist for foreign policy, Bret Stephens is a foreign affairs columnist of the "Wall Street Journal," of course, and Peter Beinart is contributing editor at the "Atlantic" and many other titles but we've got to move fast. Julia, you have studied Putin for a long time. What do you think is going on? Is this a sign of weakness or strength? Is he desperately trying to shore up a failing ally or is this an ingenious power play?</s>JULIE IOFFE, COLUMNIST, FOREIGN POLICY: I think it's a little bit of both. I've always said he's not a strategist. He's a tactician. He runs tactical circles around Washington. But it doesn't mean that he's -- that he has a strategy for the long run or if he does that it's a good one. So you don't know what's going to come out of his being in Syria. Right? On the other hand, he is -- you know, his economy is cratering. His military is still a lot weaker than the U.S. military.</s>ZAKARIA: Bret, you wrote a column basically saying well, this is -- this is kind of very smart and if only Obama could be this active. But he could get bogged down. He was defending a regime that has -- you know, that has 80 percent of the population against him.</s>BRET STEPHENS, COLUMNIST, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: No, I agree with Julia. This is not a reprieve of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan hundreds of thousands of troops, thousands of lives lost. This is sort of the way Trump invests in real estate. Very small, really a relatively small investment of a few planes, couple of thousands soldiers. And with a potentially large payoff if it works. He shores up an ally. Russia has always wanted to expand its ambit particularly in the eastern Mediterranean. He's exploring an alliance with Iran. If he manages to defeat ISIS he's going to look, or it's like Syria has closed against ISIS.</s>ZAKARIA: But what is the chance of this small -- as you put it, this small investment is going to defeat ISIS?</s>STEPHENS: Well, there is a chance that what it will do is at least shore up a kind of Alawis stand, if you will, in Latakia and then in Damascus. And proved that he is a reliable patron to client states. And that's in his interest, by the way, to show that at least Russian power is power that you can depend on.</s>ZAKARIA: You were shaking your head.</s>IAN BREMMER, PRESIDENT, EURASIA GROUP: Well, I clearly don't think he's out there to destroy ISIS, neither the Americans, but we've been saying that the Russians haven't -- I don't think he wants to take casualties. That would be very unpopular back in Russia. But the Europeans think that Syria is more important than Ukraine. And if you're a European that wants to fix Syria or make it stable, you now understand the only road is going to go through Moscow. If you combine that with the fact that the Russians now have told the paramilitaries on the ground back in Ukraine, back off your election, which they've done and they have also kept -- suddenly the cease-fire is actually working. The Russians see that they can clear the Europeans off and the Americans. That's a strategy. That's not a tactic.</s>ZAKARIA: So you think --</s>BREMMER: It's a pretty good one.</s>ZAKARIA: You think that the Syrian maneuver is to get the Europeans, you know, grateful to the Russians and therefore for Europeans to back off of sanctions against Russia. The sanctions expire in December. And they have to --</s>BREMMER: Absolutely. I don't think the Europeans are with the Americans. I think they're moving farther apart every day. And they're shoring up Assad, as both of our colleagues have said. I don't think this is a bad move for Putin.</s>ZAKARIA: What do you think?</s>PETER BEINART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. It seems to me one thing that this is likely to do is increase terrorism against Russia, right? I mean, you have to allow to stand but basically you put yourself on the opposite side of the entire Sunni world and a lot of people who now have a lot of access to Russia through Chechnya so it seems to me, yes, there may be some geopolitical benefits from this and it seems to me you're going to end up with a lot more terrorism in Russia as a result.</s>IOFFE: Peter makes an excellent point. All the Muslims in Russia are Sunni. Putin is aligning himself with an exclusively Shiite coalition. He is somebody -- and he's doing it in part to export a lot of the -- a lot of the terrorism to the Middle East but it's inevitably going to blow back on him. The other thing he's doing is moving into areas that the U.S. has traditionally dominated. So just this week a representative of the Russian Defense Ministry came out and said hey, look at Afghanistan, it's a total mess. You know, this is really concerning to Russia. America is messing it up badly. So, you know, moving into Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, moving into traditionally or like what has been for the last decade or so America's</s>STEPHENS: But if you think of the way Putin has sustained himself in power, the KGB agent becomes the Leningrad technocrat becomes the reformist president in his very first term, those early years. Then becomes the patron of the Oligarchs. He's like a frog who jumps from lily pad to lily pad. And as he feels one of them sinking under his weight he jumps to the next thing. And this is how he sustains his power. I agree with what Ian said, by the way, it also helps shore up his domestic problem which is in a sinking economy what do dictators do? Distract the people.</s>ZAKARIA: Russian economy and sanctions, why has the price of oil having sanctions? Why has it not produced more of either a sense of restraint on Putin's part or some opposition?</s>BREMMER: Well, it has produced of course a sinking of the economy. It's going to contract by 4 percent, 4.5 percent. But the central bank has worked hard. They have stabilized the rubble. And if you look over the grand tenor of Putin as president and prime minister and president again, per capita income in Russia has actually gone up a hell of a lot. They are effectively blaming the United States for the sanctions. And his popularity which is there is no local opposition, you get hurt a lot if you're an opposition in Russia. And 90 percent of the Russian get their media primarily from television which is controlled completely by the Russian state. RT is pretty effective, right? I mean, Voice of America is what it used to be. And at the end of the day I think that that machine together with the fact Putin is able to actually show some victories geopolitically, beat the rest the couple of times, that's working pretty well. He also scored seven goals, by the way, this week for his 63rd birthday in hockey. They love showing that stuff.</s>ZAKARIA: Do you think Obama should do anything to counter Putin?</s>BREITBART: No. I think Obama is looking at this, as he said, if you want to get into a quagmire in Syria, be my guest. I wish we had said the same thing to the Saudis in Yemen. And not gotten involved in that. I mean, just because a country has more troops and more planes flying over another country does not mean that it's stronger. Right? I don't -- it's hard to see even if it helped Putin domestically in some way, very hard to see how it ends well so I think Obama's point of view is go ahead.</s>ZAKARIA: All right. We are going to come back and we're going to talk about the violence in Israel. We will also talk about the trade pact all when we come back.