Who's Advising Donald Trump on Foreign Policy; Russian President Vladimir Putin's Syria Surprise; Who's Responsible for the Rise of Trump?
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria. We have a great show for you today starting with Russia's surprise move pulling out of Syria without any warning, saying the job is done. I'll talk about that and more with the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass. A man who Donald Trump says he trusts on foreign policy.</s>DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I like him a lot.</s>ZAKARIA: What does Haass have to say about the Donald? I'll ask him. And who's the blame or congratulate for the rise of Donald Trump?</s>TRUMP: We're going to win, win, win, and we're not stopping.</s>ZAKARIA: Many say it's his own party. But political analyst and author Thomas Frank says perhaps we should look across the aisle at the Democrats. He'll explain. Then it's a $400 billion a year business. Drugs. It's illegal, lucrative and risky. It runs like a big business. The economist Tom Wainwright will tell us about it. And astronaut Pierce Sellers has lived an amazing life. More than 30 days in space, three shuttle missions, six space walks. He's gazed down at the earth from 220 miles up in space. Now he doesn't know how much more time he has on this planet and what he has decided to do with his last days will inspire you.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've got 500 days. I'm going to use them.</s>ZAKARIA: But first, here's my take. The Republican surrender has begun. Having described Donald Trump as an unacceptable, unconservative, dangerous demagogue, the party establishment appears to be making its peace with the man who keeps winning primaries. The "Wall Street Journal" editorial page argued vociferously against Trump for months pointing out that he is a huckster and a catastrophe, warning that if Donald Trump becomes the voice of conservatives, conservatism will implode along with him. Yet this week it ended a lead editorial urging Republicans to continue to see if Mr. Trump can begin to act like a president and above all to decide who can prevent another progressive left presidency. Marco Rubio has called Trump a con artist and compared him to third world strongmen. He has said Trump has no ideas of any substance, has spent a career sticking it to working people, is trying to prey on people's fears and encourages violence at his rallies. But he says at this moment he intends to support whoever emerges as the Republican nominee. So do John McCain and House Speaker Paul Ryan who has taken the rare step of intervening in the campaign three times to reprimand Trump for his ideas and rhetoric. Even Lindsey Graham who has called Trump the most unprepared person I have ever met to be commander-in-chief will not explicitly say he will not vote for him. Indeed, there is currently just one Republican senator has committed to not voting for Donald Trump. Ironically, conservatives today are in somewhat the same position that Republican moderates were in 1964 as Barry Goldwater steamed towards the Republican nomination. It's difficult to understand today how dramatic a break that was for the Republicans. As Geoffrey Kabaservice documents in his illuminating book "Rule and Ruin," the party had prided itself on its progressive stand on race from Abraham Lincoln onward. Goldwater, on the other hand, had opposed the Supreme Court's 1954 decision to integrate schools in "Brown versus Board of Education' and the pivotal 1964 Civil Rights Act. A hundred years of Republican work on civil rights would be thrown away, the moderates felt, were they to nominate Goldwater. Trump marks in many ways an even larger break from the past than Goldwater. The modern Republican Party has been devoted to free markets, free trade, social conservatism and expansionist foreign policy and fiscal discipline especially on entitlements. Remember that the speech that launched Ronald Reagan's political career was an attack on Medicare.</s>RONALD REAGAN, 40TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: : To disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project.</s>ZAKARIA: On every one of these issues Donald Trump either openly disagrees or, as with abortion, has a fast track record of disagreement with conservatives. Over the last decades Republican support for immigration reform and free trade has already been collapsing. But Trump's nomination would transform the party into a blue-collar populist, nationalist movement with a racial element, much like many others in the Western world. This would be a very different party from Ronald Reagan's or Paul Ryan's. 2016 might well go down as a critical election. One that scrambles the old order, perhaps without setting up a new one. In this respect, it looks like 1964. Also an election that realigned politics shifting southern whites to the Republican Party ever since. Then too there was enormous energy, new voters and a candidate who thrilled his supporters. Then, too, the establishment could not muster the courage and unity to oppose Goldwater. Too scared to push back against the energy and devotion of new populist forces. So instead the Republican Party went to the polls in November divided and it lost 44 states. For more, go to CNN.com/fareed and read my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started. After 9,000 sorties by Russian jets, President Vladimir Putin suddenly announced this week that he was pulling his forces out. Did he succeed? Did he fail? What explains the decision and what does it mean for the battered country and region? To discuss this, Richard Haass is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and Clarissa Ward is a senior international correspondent for CNN, just back from a daring reported trip into Syria. But first I have to ask Richard about something that made the news two weeks ago that concerns him personally. When asked who his foreign policy advisers are, Richard, as you know Donald Trump has been very cagey, recently said he consults himself. But one name he mentioned was you. And it has everyone wondering what the nature of it was. You told NPR you offer all the candidates briefings as part of the Council on Foreign Relations' mission and that that he in fact took you up on it. So I guess my question is, what was he like in that meeting? Ben Carson says there are two Donald Trumps. There's a thoughtful intelligence man when you meet with him in private. Did you find that?</s>RICHARD HAASS, PRESIDENT, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, as you said, we offered briefings to all the candidates, Democrat and Republican alike. Quite a few took us up on it, quite a few have also come to speak at the Council. I don't go into details of any of the meetings or briefings, but as you would expect lots of questions are asked. I tried to explain what I see as some of the fundamental currents of the world. And there was a back and forth. In the case of Donald Trump we spent about an hour together, it was the end of -- it was the end of August.</s>ZAKARIA: You know there is a petition that has been signed by a whole bunch of very senior Republican foreign policy officials including, for example, Robert Zoellick, the former trade representative and deputy secretary of state, denouncing Trump and committing not to serve in a Trump administration. If Donald Trump asked you to be secretary of state, would you?</s>HAASS: What you saw in that letter was in some ways the -- a reflection of the tensions within the Republican Party on foreign policy. You had realist and I suppose I am one of those who believe that the purpose of American foreign policy ought to be to influence the foreign policy of others, tend to be multilateral. You have people who are more neoconservative who see the purpose of American foreign policy more to transform others often done unilaterally. The two groups of people reflecting those two schools were quiet critical of people like Mr. Trump who come from a different tradition, as you know. It tends to be more nationalist, more suspicious of America's role in the world. More critical of allies who are seen as not doing their fair share. So I thought that letter simply reflected again the debate within the party. We've got a long ways to go. We're seven or eight months away from the election. Let's see how things play out.</s>ZAKARIA: That was a very thoughtful answer, Richard. But it didn't answer my question. Would you serve as a secretary of state?</s>HAASS: Fareed, it's so premature. I'm not even considering that sort of thing yet. I've got a great job, a full-time job. It's just speculation on steroids to start imagining who's going to be the nominee, who's going to be the president, and who's going to serve. I think questions like that are just simply way ahead of where we are. One thing we should have learned from this electoral cycle is nobody has any idea how things are going to play out.</s>ZAKARIA: All right. Let's get to substance then. Clarissa, give us a sense of the kind of fundamental facts on the ground first. Has the Russian mission succeeded in what its effort was which was to secure the Assad's regime and its grip on power in Syria?</s>CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: As you said, it was quiet clear spending time on ground that the real purpose of the Russian military intervention was to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and certainly in the province of Latakia and also particularly in Aleppo, there were significant gains made by the regime on the back of that Russian air cover. At the same time I think a lot of people were very surprised by Russia's announcement that it was sort of mission accomplished because there is still work to be done in terms of if the Assad regime wants to take back Aleppo entirely, for example. And so I think a lot of people are trying to speculate what was the real reason behind Russia's decision to withdraw these troops. Are they worried that there's mission creep? Are they worried that they're hemorrhaging funds and their economy at home is already hurting so much with these low oil prices and sanctions?</s>ZAKARIA: Richard, what do you think? Is this a success for Putin?</s>HAASS: Well, absolutely. I don't know if you want to call it the Powell doctrinsky, but this was an attempt to use overwhelming military force for narrow limited political objectives. It's succeeded. What's interesting, you know, the Russians were not trying to transform Syrians into a Jeffersonian democracy for good reason because Russia is not a Jeffersonian democracy and they weren't trying to expand the rid of the government over the entire country. It wasn't an attempt to pacify all of -- all of Syria on behalf of Assad. So it was very limited, they shored up and propped up their government and now things can play out and I think it was good for Russia's image in the region and on the world stage as a country that's willing and able to do something on behalf of an ally or proxy.</s>ZAKARIA: Clarissa, there are reports that ISIS meanwhile has lost an additional 20 percent of its territory, is running out of cash. Did you on the ground get the feel that those reports are accurate?</s>WARD: Well, we had just been in a part of the country where ISIS had a strong presence just months ago. And what was very clear to see I think the main thing that has been hurting ISIS is this real focus on taking out the oil infrastructure. We visited several oil installations that back in the day would have been making ISIS a pretty penny. But they had been taken out by coalition airstrikes and definitely that lack of revenue has absolutely hurt ISIS. We know also that they've lost significant amounts of territory particularly to the so-called Syrian Democratic forces, the YPG Kurdish forces sponsored by the U.S. But they're also being created and looking for ways to expand elsewhere. We've seen a huge uptick in their activity in Libya. They're striking deals with Boka Haram. So I think it's fair to say that they're definitely trying to think on their feet strategically and work out other low-cost, high-profile opportunities elsewhere in the world.</s>ZAKARIA: Richard, this week, Secretary Kerry said that there was genocide taking place in Syria. Labeled it as such. Does that -- you know, does that help in the political resolution in Syria, which is -- what are the consequences of labeling it in that way?</s>HAASS: It's not clear to me it helps unless you're prepared to act on it. And I don't see that the United States or anyone else is, Fareed. I think what we're heading toward is a version of Syria that we've seen now. Essentially 10 times. You've got the government controlling parts of country. You've got the Kurds, the Jews, groups like Nusra, groups like ISIS. And I would expect this is for the time being, for the foreseeable future, this is the new Syria. In some ways like Libya, in some ways like Iraq, the era of consolidated nation states in the Middle East where governments hold sway over the entire territory is essentially coming to an end and there's an increasing disconnect between what the maps look like and what the realities are on the ground.</s>ZAKARIA: Fascinating conversation. Thank you both very much. Next on GPS, inevitably the rise and rise and rise of Donald Trump. Where does it come from? What's behind it? My next guest says he can trace it to Clinton -- Bill Clinton that is. Thomas Frank will explain when we come back.