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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Why Do the Taliban Always Come Back?; Tackling Syria, Israel and the TPP; Interview with Michael Froman; Interview with Bill Clinton, Matteo Renzi. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired October 11, 2015 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:10] 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.

[10:05:01] 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?

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.

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.

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.

(CROSSTALK)

ZAKARIA: But what is the chance of this small -- as you put it, this small investment is going to defeat ISIS?

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.

ZAKARIA: You were shaking your head.

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.

ZAKARIA: So you think --

BREMMER: It's a pretty good one.

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 --

(CROSSTALK)

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.

[10:10:04] ZAKARIA: What do you think?

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.

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 (INAUDIBLE).

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.

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?

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.

ZAKARIA: Do you think Obama should do anything to counter Putin?

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.

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.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: And we are back with Ian Bremmer, Julia Ioffe, Bret Stephens and Peter Beinart.

Before the break Peter said the fact that Russia is bombing Syria, the fact that Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemen does not mean these countries power positions are improving. In fact it might be the opposite.

You obviously disagree.

STEPHENS: No, obviously in Syria we have a metastasizing cancer. You saw that in the growth of ISIS and the chaos in Syria. Now of course the horrific refugee crisis. The United States does have an interest. It has a humanitarian interest but we also have a geopolitical interest. You know, in 1991 we created no fly zones over northern Iraq. We saved a lot of Kurds by doing that but we also effectively helped create the Kurdish Autonomous Region which you and I probably agree is the single biggest American achievement in the Muslim world in the last 25 years.

ZAKARIA: But when we think about Syria, which is to my mind more messy, because what you're talking about is any U.S. involvement would have to be aimed at essentially dislodging Assad from power. OK. We dislodged Hussein from power. We thought we had good guys who are going to take -- pick up, total chaos, civil war, 10 years, 400,000 people dead. We did it in Libya, we dislodged Gadhafi, we thought it would work out well. We had democrats, total chaos. We did it in Yemen. Total chaos.

It feels like we know how this movie will end. If Assad is dislodged from Damascus, what do you think is going to happen? Total chaos.

STEPHENS: Look, the -- we don't say, OK, we have overcommitted in the past. But the answer to that is not completely --

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHENS: First of all, Syria is many countries. And just because we can't solve the riddle of Syria doesn't mean that we can't do a lot for places like the Kurdish areas of Syria to help sustain some kind of opposition. Something in that country that is decent and a source of instability.

BREMMER: I would just say that the problem with Syria is not Obama's policy. It's the fact that what Obama has been saying consistently, he doesn't bear any reflection to that policy. And Putin has put the life to that very effectively in the last week.

ZAKARIA: Israel. What is going on with this rise of terrorism? What do you think -- des it represent something bigger?

[10:20:07] BREITBART: Yes, I think what it represents is that both among Israelis and Palestinians, Israeli Jews and Palestinians, the forces that actually genuinely want a two-state solution, a real two- state solution, one year that (INAUDIBLE), has been weakening and weakening and weakening over time. And so what you're seeing is a growth on both sides. Growth -- in most of the people in Benjamin Netanyahu's government really essentially want Israeli to have a permanent control over most of the West Bank and among Palestinians the growing forces are people who either want one secular bi-national state or one Islamic state.

And this violence is a product of the fact that the two-state vision that I happen to believe in very, very deeply is growing weaker and weaker on both sides.

ZAKARIA: Again I'm guessing you disagree.

STEPHENS: Well, look, I also wanted two states and I want a decent Palestinian state that can provide for its people in some genuine way and not simply be a thorn in the side of its neighbors. The problem here is the failure of leadership by Mahmoud Abbas, by Abu Mazen, in that he has on the one hand tried and is trying as far as I know to tamp down violence. On the other hand he stokes it and he contributes to it politically, for instance, by going to the U.N. and declaring that the Oslo Accords are null and void.

And so what you need is to generate a Palestinian leadership that -- wants a two-state solution, wants a Palestinian state, but is actually committed to that in some serious way and it's in a sense talking out of both sides of its mouth.

ZAKARIA: We've got to move on. I just have to ask you very quickly. As a refugee you wrote a very moving piece about why the United States should take many more refugees in. Maybe not 200,000 which is what Donald Trump thinks. But you think we should take more than we are taking.

IOFFE: Yes. Absolutely. And I think America does quite an excellent job of taking in immigrants, refugees, absorbing them, making them into Americans and the case in point. The thing that I -- the point that I was trying to make in that piece is the idea of a refugee is actually a pretty politically subjective idea. I was a refugee because I was Jewish from the Soviet Union. But mostly not because, you know, there was war where we're living in Moscow or we were in imminent danger but because there was political will in Washington. American Jews lobbying Congress for years. I mean there was a political will.

ZAKARIA: Other people fleeing other problems were not called refugees.

IOFFE: That's right. So we were able to get refugee status, get on a plane and in 10 hours we were in Washington, D.C. We didn't have to pay smugglers. We didn't have to make a dangerous sea crossing. These are things that can be solved politically.

ZAKARIA: We didn't get a chance to talk about TPP. But you are the geo-economics guy. What do you think of the Trans-Pacific pact?

BREMMER: Well, I mean, it's 40 percent of the world economy. It's deeper integration. It is a real pivot to Asia. It's by far the part of the world that we need to engage with the most. And China which opposed it when it was first announced, now the leadership is actually saying yes, these are important standards over time we need to align. In fact they used to talk about the World Trade Organization. This will go down as the single most important successful foreign policy legacy of the entire Obama administration, the fact the Hillary Clinton has decided as the former architect that she's now opposed to it is astonishing to me.

ZAKARIA: We have to leave it at that.

You heard it here, Ian Bremmer says the Trans-Pacific Partnership is the most important foreign policy success of this administration. Hillary Clinton as you noticed says it's no good. Next on GPS we will sort it out with the architect of that deal. U.S.

Trade representative Michael Froman.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:27:28] ZAKARIA: Some say it is the cornerstone foreign policy accomplishment for the Obama administration. But the president's former secretary of state came out against it this week. I'm not talking about the Iran nuclear deal but about something called the Trans Pacific Partnership. It is a massive trade deal negotiated by the United States with 11 different nations comprising 40 percent of the global economy.

So why is Mrs. Clinton now against something that according to CNN's count she has pushed 45 times in the past publicly. And if it's such a great deal, why is the administration being secretive about the details? We will get to all of that with my next guest, the man who oversaw the deal, the United States Trade representative, Michael Froman.

Mike, nice to have you on.

MICHAEL FROMAN, U.S. TRADE REPRESENTATIVE: Good to be here.

ZAKARIA: First, 11 nations. This took six years. It's quite an accomplishment. And I've got to ask you what is the key to getting a deal of this magnitude? What did you learn about negotiating?

FROMAN: I think it took a lot of persistence by all 12 countries working together to reach an agreement that's going to create jobs and increase wages, and promote growth across the whole region.

ZAKARIA: It was six years in the making during a good bit of that time the secretary of state you were dealing with was Hillary Clinton. Publicly she supported it as we point out 45 times. Was she very supportive privately as well?

FROMAN: I won't comment on presidential politics. Just to say that we're all focused on making sure that through this agreement we can level the playing field and open markets for our exports.

ZAKARIA: But you must have been surprised by her opposition?

FROMAN: Well, again, I think the key thing is to focus on having the deal on the table. Having people have a chance to read it. Get into the details so they can make a judgment about it. We're convinced it is a very high standard deal. It opens markets around the world and eliminates 18,000 taxes on U.S. exports. It raises labor and environmental standards around the world. It establishes new disciplines and new challenges in the global economy. All of which reflect American interest and American values.

So I'm convinced as the people sit down and take the time to go through it in detail that they'll come to a positive judgment.

ZAKARIA: So if this is such a good deal, why is it all secret? FROMAN: Well, you know, it's not all secret. We put out a lot of

information about it along the way. And we're looking forward to getting the text released as soon as possible. The lawyers are working right now to finalize the tax and then to prepare it for release. We hope to get it out within the next 30 days.

[10:30:01] But throughout, it's an international negotiation, and you got to have some ability to negotiate this freely with other parties to get to the best possible outcome for American interests, and that's what we've done.

ZAKARIA: What do you say to people like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, who say the result of these kinds of agreements, American jobs get shipped overseas?

FROMAN: We got 95 percent of all of the world's consumers living outside the United States. And some of these are the fastest growing and largest economies in the world. Asia, the Asia Pacific region will have 3 billion middle class consumers in the next 15 years. And for us to be successful, for us to keep businesses here, to manufacture, to grow things here and ship them abroad, we need access to those markets. That's how we are going to grow good-paying jobs here in the United States. We know that export-related jobs pay up to 18 percent more on average than non-export related jobs. So if we can tear down these barriers, level the playing field, increase our exports, we're going to lead to more good-paying jobs here in the United States.

ZAKARIA: And the overarching strategic idea, as you say, is this pivot to Asia, to focus on Asia, to make sure that China does not, as the president has said, write the new rules of international trade and commerce. So there is a very strong foreign policy component to this, and the pivot to Asia was of course something strongly supported by Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state. Do you hope that a President Clinton would follow through on a policy that she was very much part of creating?

FROMAN: I think this is a key part of the rebalancing towards Asia strategy. It's one of most concrete manifestations of that policy. And it underscores that the United States is a Pacific power, that we're going to be involved in the region, and that our partners in the region very much want us to be embedded with them, economically and strategically. And I think the logic of that will continue to hold going forward.

ZAKARIA: Could China see this as a kind of containment strategy the United States is ganging up with all its allies and trying to in some way shut China out?

FROMAN: TPP is not directed against any country, including China. It is directed at establishing high standards for the region. Rules of the road that reflect our interests and our values. And it's meant to encourage other countries to raise their game as well. We already have countries who contacted us and who want to be considered for the next tranche of TPP partners. And we expect that more countries will join over time, if they are able and willing to meet the high standards of the agreement.

ZAKARIA: Michael Froman, the man who negotiated the TPP, thank you.

FROMAN: Thanks for having me.

ZAKARIA: Are you interested in Hillary Clinton's thoughts on trade and this apparent flip-flop? Well, make sure to tune in to the first Democratic debate right here on CNN. That's Tuesday night at 8:30 p.m.

Next on GPS, I'm going to show you how you can work 30 hours a week and actually be more productive. Really. When we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Now for our "What in the World" segment. This week Sweden took center stage as this year's Nobel Prize winners were announced. But there's another reason why the Swedes have been in the news lately. The country that brought us Volvos, baby Bjorns and Ikea, is pioneering a bold concept in the working world. The six-hour workday. Businesses all over Sweden are foregoing 9:00 to 5:00 shifts for a 9:00 to 3:00 day or some variation, to improve their employees' quality of life but also their productivity. Can working less actually give businesses a competitive advantage? Consider a study cited by the Atlantic that found that those working 40 hours or less per week outperform those who work more than 55 hours per week on certain tasks. In another study, a Stanford economist concluded that the number of hours somebody works isn't directly proportional to his output. At about 48 working hours, productivity actually goes down.

Tony Schwartz, the management expert, has explained in the Harvard Business Review that people work better in short bursts rather than long grinds. And in Sweden, companies have been raving about the six- hour workday. Filimundos (ph), which develops apps for children, says that the shorter days give employees more energy, and they work better as a team with fewer disagreements. Brapp (ph), another web outfit, says it has a competitive advantage over other companies with its shorter shifts as the Guardian reported, since it can attract and retain great workers with such a great perk.

In the United States, web companies like Relevance and Treehouse have reported stellar employee retention rates after implementing a four- day workweek, and Google's Larry Page has also supported that idea, the Atlantic points out. Yet, despite these arguments for shorter workdays, American workers seem to be spending a lot of time at the office. A 2014 Gallup survey found that American adults working full- time put in an average of 47 hours per week. Nearly a full business day more than the typical 40-hour workweek. Almost one in five Americans work 60 hours per week or more. U.S. workers logged more hours on average than many other countries in 2014, according to the OECD, including the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan.

It's worth remembering that a pioneer of the modern American workplace, Henry Ford, cut back his employees' hours as part of his revolutionary approach to making his workers happier and more productive. He had his doubters at the time, but his competitors soon imitated his success, and the rest is history. It's time to revolutionize the American workplace once again and move away from that now outdated 9:00 to 5:00 factory model of work.

[10:40:00]

As a progressive website Alternet has pointed out, today's white collar knowledge workers have about six hours of productive work in them each day, not eight. Technology has disrupted the workplace to a certain extent already, but there's a lot more innovation that can be done, like shifting around working hours and encouraging input from employees on how to get the job done. Throughout the 20th century, America innovated its way to become the most vibrant, productive nation of workers on earth, with superior ingenuity and creativity. It's time we invented more productive ways of working in the 21st century and more pleasant ones as well.

Up next, did some European leaders ignore the refugee crisis until it became politically expedient to pay attention and look like heroes? Incredibly, that's what one European leader, Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, will tell you when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:45:00]

ZAKARIA: Last week I brought you part of a fascinating discussion I had recently at the 10th annual Clinton Global Initiative with President Bill Clinton, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and the legendary investor George Soros. But there's more great stuff for you to see. This time they're talking about the future of Europe. Mr. Soros started us off talking about the deep divisions the euro crisis had created.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE SOROS, INVESTOR: I'm a great believer in the European Union. (inaudible) embodiment of the open society. Unfortunately, it was actually inspired (ph) the imagination of my generation, and still around. The -- it has unfortunately, we converted from a voluntary association of free and legal nations, devoted to principles of democracy, human rights and so on, who were willing to sacrifice part of their sovereignty for the common good, into something radically different, because of the euro crisis. It became a relationship between creditors and debtors, where the debtors had difficult meeting their obligations, and the creditors were in the driver's seat, and they set the conditions that (inaudible), and that created this tension between creditor and debtor, which is by its nature unequal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: So given that unequal nature and given the many crises Europe faces today, how does it get back on its feet? Here is Italy's prime minister, Matteo Renzi.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MATTEO RENZI, ITALY'S PRIME MINISTER: But the question is, where is the strategy of Europe for the future? And I think, this is my point of view, in the last month, we discovered, and for me it's the first experience for me, so I'm not able to understand if this is correct, but I really -- I'm really surprised to the lack of (inaudible) by some leaders in the European Union.

For example, refugees. We discussed a lot about refugees, and the people told us in the European Council, this is a problem of Italy. I remember some colleagues, some colleagues of prime minister, who told me, this is your business, not ours.

After the crisis, after the picture in newspaper, the same leaders who told us in June this is your problem, realized interview (ph) incredible. I open my doors. I open my house to refugees. The same leader who told me this is your business two months before. So my -- it's not a joke. It's a drama. I have my diplomatic adviser look at me with preoccupation. I don't say the name. OK.

(LAUGHTER)

RENZI: So what is the problem for Europe? The lack of comprehensive strategy. I know for Italy it's important to (inaudible), and we do, but we ask to European community an idea for the next ten years, 20 years. And the lack of vision could be the first problem, more than division. The lack of vision is a problem more than the (inaudible) division in this moment in the continent.

ZAKARIA: We are way over time, but I want to ask you, President Clinton, since you haven't weighed in on this issue of reform, why do you think it seems so hard to achieve reform in Europe? My theory is, you go to Italy, you go to France, if I were living there, I wouldn't want reform. It's the greatest life in the world. These beautiful countries. Amazingly rich. Incredibly nice work rules. You can take long vacations. You can retire early. I mean, they've had -- they've created this paradise. Now they are being told, guess what, this is all going to change. You got to work harder. You got to retire earlier. It's stuff for politicians to take stuff away, when for the last 30 years they've been elected saying here's more, here's more.

BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.: It is. And they created a good society. But it's a question of how badly they want more growth.

[10:50:00]

That is, I believe if the immigration or refugee problem can be turned from a problem into an opportunity, just take the Syrians, for example. They are overwhelmingly literate, productive, and historically secular, not super religious, and particularly not in terms of political violence.

Europe is old. The only European country that's younger than America is Ireland. And the Irish were growing like crazy before they got brought low by a bad, you know, banking bubble, because they had lots of immigrants, many from Central and Eastern Europe. To make them even younger.

Having lost it, I can tell you, youth matters.

(LAUGHTER)

BILL CLINTON: The demographics of a country will define how many new jobs you can create, how much you can allocate to consumer spending. A lot of these things. They are very productive. France has high productivity growth. They have to, because they have static work rules. So they have to heat (ph) up (ph) -- the Germans still have a higher percentage of their GDP in manufacturing and in exports than Japan. And they had it partly because the Greeks and the Italians and the Portuguese and the Spanish, to borrow money at German interest rates and to buy German stuff, as well as their own. Italy still has some of the great craftspeople in the world. Northern Italy for most of the last 30 years, has had a higher per capita income than Germany.

You have to, but in order to do this and make these decisions and trade-offs, you have to be able to have a sane conversation and people have to be secure enough to think about it. Do I think they can have higher rates of growth? I do. Do I think they can grow like China? No. Because they don't want to give up, and they shouldn't, the level of social solidarity and economic equality that they have achieved, certainly greater than we have. But they can have higher rates of growth. But they have to do it in a -- together. It's just a decision to be made.

And I think what you said is right. This whole thing should have a revision in the European idea. But it should be a revision upward, not downward, in my opinion.

ZAKARIA: Gentlemen, thank you very much. Real pleasure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, what Mickey, Minnie and Mao have in common. When we come back.

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[10:57:00]

ZAKARIA: This week California's Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the End of Life Option Act. It's all about quality of death. It may be a grim topic, but it is something we ought to talk about more. And the Economist's intelligence unit recently ranked 80 countries by quality of death, analyzing factors like palliative care, affordability, care quality and levels of community engagement. It brings me to my question, which country ranked No. 1 in the 2015 quality of death index? The United Kingdom, Taiwan, the United States or Mongolia? Stay tuned. We'll give you the correct answer.

This week's book of the week is Anne-Marie Slaughter's "Unfinished Business." This is not just the most important book on working women that I've read recently, it's the most important book about the workplace of tomorrow, and how to get it right. Men and women must read it.

And now for the last look. When you think of theme parks, you probably think of rollercoasters and ferris wheels, falls and splashes, Mickey and Minnie. But how about Marx and Lenin? Well, welcome to the Communist Party Theme Park. The Chinese government's latest entry into that country's burgeoning $3 billion a year market. Here you are cordially invited to explore the Communist Party's values. Wander through cartoon statues of Chinese Olympic medalists, soldiers and astronauts. Enjoy replicas of the Communist Manifesto, or check out a kaleidoscope of socialist values. Tourists can enjoy reading bios of Communist figures, and can even take an oath to become a party member. Every child's dream, right? Well, the government has been criticized for spending money on this propaganda park, as the Guardian reported, and for the park's lackluster ambiance. Perhaps they should have included flashier rides like a Communist coaster, a Mao mountain, or a Tower of Tiananmen. Perhaps now that. They might have taken a page from their Russian neighbors and focused more on the Red Army rather than red ideology. Russia opened Patriot Park this summer, dedicated to Russia's military. Referred to as a military Disneyland, it attracts tens of thousands of visitors who want to spend time enjoying Russia's latest military weapons. Then again, it might be better for children to play with Chinese manifestos than missile systems.

The correct answer to the GPS challenge question is A, the United Kingdom ranks No. 1 in the Economist's intelligence unit quality of death index. Taiwan ranks sixth and the United States ranks 9th overall. Mongolia ranks first out of the low-income countries.

Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I'll see you next week.