Return to Transcripts main page
Fareed Zakaria GPS
Latest on the Paris Investigation; Thwarting Terror and Fighting ISIS; Interview with Ambassador Gerard Araud; Interview with Secretary of State John Kerry. Aired 10-11a ET
Aired November 22, 2015 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[10:00:20] 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 coming to you live from New York.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZAKARIA: This week a world on edge in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. We'll bring you the latest from the investigation and we will talk about the response. How can ISIS be defeated? How big is the threat now? How seriously should we take the new threats?
I have a great panel to discuss all that.
Next, the French ambassador to the United States on the question everybody is asking -- why France?
And is Islam the problem? Some surprising answers from the former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom.
Also in a week's time world leaders will gather in Paris -- yes, Paris -- for a long planned meeting. Planned before the attacks. Secretary of State John Kerry will be there and he will tell us why it's so important.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZAKARIA: But first here's my take. Henry Kissinger has noted that in his adult lifetime the United States has fought five major wars and began each one with great enthusiasm and public support. But in all of them, Americans eventually began to ask, how quickly can you withdraw? In three of these conflicts he says the United States withdrew its forces unilaterally.
Today we're watching the similarly powerful and understandable enthusiasm for a much expanded war against ISIS. But let us try to make sure we understand what it would entail not just to start it, but also to end it. One place to learn some lessons might be from a strategy that has been relatively successful.
The war against al Qaeda. As Peter Bergen noted in 2012 a year after Osama bin Laden's death, the group's leadership had been destroyed, its resources had disappeared and its support among the Arab public had plummeted. It has not been able to launch an attack on Western soil since the London bombings 10 years ago.
Now it did not always look like that. After 9/11, officials and experts spoke of al Qaeda with the awe and fear they now reserve for ISIS. Once the United States and its allies began battling the group it inspired or directed several terror attacks across the globe including the bloodiest in the West since 9/11, the Madrid train bombings which killed 191 people. But those attacks did not mean al Qaeda was winning the war on terror anymore than the attacks in Paris last week mean that ISIS is winning. In fact it's possible that as ISIS loses territory on the ground, it is resorting terror abroad.
Now what explains the success against al Qaeda? Many experts pointed that genuinely global counterterrorism operations, especially the sharing of intelligence, as well of course as military operations. Others note the fact that the group overplayed its hand in Iraq. ISIS is different because it has territory. Defeating it militarily would not be difficult, but to keep it defeated, someone would have to rule its territories or else ISIS or a variant of it would just come back.
ISIS draws its supports from Sunnis in Iraq and Syria who feel persecuted by the non-Sunni governments in both countries. In this sense ISIS is more akin to the Taliban than al Qaeda. Remember al Qaeda was a gang of foreigners lodged in Afghanistan as guests of the Taliban but the Taliban itself is a local group with support in the Pashtun community of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
And this local support explains why the U.S. has not defeated it after 14 years of warfare and tens of thousands of American soldiers and now many more Afghan troops.
And keep in mind that in Afghanistan the U.S. has a decent local ally in the government that has considerable legitimacy. In Syria, it has no local ally. The Kurds are a crucial ally and they should become even more important in the months ahead but they are an ethnic minority and they cannot govern Arab lands that American troops were to liberate.
[10:05:05] This essential problem, the lack of a credible local ally, makes ground operations in Syria harder than in Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam when each case the U.S. did have a partner. This is to counsel despair but to suggest strategic patience as President Obama rightly says. ISIS is not nearly as strong as the hysteria of the moment suggests. It is surrounded by deadly foes on all sides. Many countries are fighting against it from Sunni Saudi Arabia to Shiite Iran, from the United States to Putin's Russia. From neighboring Jordan to faraway France.
Its territory is shrinking. And its message is deeply unpopular to most within its land. Witness the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing its barbarism. The West has advantages in certain crucial areas. Counterterrorism, intelligence, airstrikes, drones and special operations. It has the money, technology, knowhow, and international cooperation. And it can hammer away for months, even years.
But if instead, panicked by terror attacks, Americans were to send soldiers into the deserts of Syria, it would enter the one arena where ISIS has the decisive advantage. And after a few inconclusive years, people would start asking, how quickly can you withdraw?
For more go to CNN.com/fareed. And read my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started.
Let's get straight to the latest from Paris. Joining us now in that city is CNN's international diplomatic editor, Nic Robertson.
Nic, what is going on in Belgium in particular where there seems to have been this very alarming terror alert. What is the latest?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Well, in Brussels, the alert is still at the highest level that it's ever been since the alert system was created about 10 years ago. The concern is that there may be a very imminent possible terrorist action that may involve weapons and it may involve explosives. The subway system is shut again for the second day yesterday. Stores were closed in the center of the city.
Police were checking vehicles very closely. Clearly looking for people on the highways here in France. There are still police at some of the traffic stops. The way you pay to go along the highway here. Those traffic stops, there's still some police there.
In both Belgium and in France at the moment, there is still concern that more broadly than just the situation in Brussels, more broadly concerned that there could be another terrorist action. The ringleader is dead. Turkish officials yesterday arrested somebody Belgian authorities could have scouted out the sites to attack the targets in Paris a little over a week ago. That will help French investigators.
But the man on the run that both the French and the Belgians are looking for, Salah Abdeslam, is still whereabouts unknown and last seen crossing the border last weekend into Belgium. But the terror threat in Brussels at the moment and the concerns there seem to indicate that the Belgian authorities are extremely, extremely worried and are taking the most cautious action possible to avoid a terrorist event that could in any way mimic and kill as many people as the one here did in Paris, Fareed.
ZAKARIA: Terrific reporting. Thank you so much, Nic.
That was Nic -- CNN's Nic Robertson in Paris for us. And joining me here in New York to talk about all of this, the intelligence, the political foreign policy stuff, Philip Mudd, the former deputy director of the CIA, Counter Terrorist Center, and Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Phil, I want to start with you. Whenever these events take place, an attack takes place, we look back and say, we should have known these guys. But I mean, you have been there in real time. There are thousands of leads at all times. And, you know, what turned out to be leads, 99.9 percent of them are false. Were there genuine mistakes in this case? PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Well, I think there's a
couple of ways to think about this. The day after, you're always saying, here's the data on this, how could you not have seen this in advance? You've got to go to the day before. You've got a sea of information, whirling down, let's say 5,000 cases in Europe. And you've got to boil it down to one case. You can't do that with a 100 percent probability.
I think what we may find here is not necessarily that you can find every one of these cases but that Europe, when it gains information on its citizens, some states are still reluctant to pass that information to another state when they're violating the privacy of a sovereign citizen. For example, if you're radicalizing, that's not illegal. Do you want to tell a our neighboring state one of our citizens is traveling, he has not committed crime but we have information that he may be going down a path of radicalization? That's a tough choice.
[10:10:06] ZAKARIA: For a democracy, this is a really tough choice. Radicalizing, you're basically -- yes, that's freedom of expression, freedom of opinion. How do you -- what do you do about that?
RICHARD HAASS, PRESIDENT, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, I actually think not just in Europe but here in the United States we're on the cusp of what will be a second great debate about the balance between individual privacy and collective security. And the sorts of questions you just raised are going to come to the fore. And the answer is I think the pendulum is going to have to swing. Not dramatically. We're not talking going to the other end but somewhat in the direction of greater collective security. So we are going to have to gather more data, more information about societies and about our populations.
ZAKARIA: Do you think that this will extend to being able to kill a French citizen on a battlefield if, you know, again, they haven't committed a crime. You know, we've crossed that bridge with Anwar al- Awlaki. The British just did. Are the French now facing this issue?
MUDD: I do. I think this is one of the great untold stories of this war. People debated, it's not widely known. Presidents of countries having the authority to authorize the killing of a citizen on foreign soil when that citizen can't be brought in for the judicial process. We've had, as you said, with an American, with the British citizen.
If you're the French president and you find with the Americans because the Americans are likely to develop intelligence on this, that you can locate the perpetrators, you then have the choice, do you allow that plot or plotters to continue because you can't bring them home to justice immediately or do you authorize a targeted killing? And I think given what the French president said after this event you're going to have a third country say, it is appropriate for the leader of a country to authorize the killing of a citizen on foreign soil without a judicial process.
ZAKARIA: Richard, you've dealt with the Europeans for many years. This is a case where, you know, you need more Europe in a sense. You need the Europeans to share more, to deepen that ties, but the politics is less Europe.
HAASS: Absolutely right. You need much more sharing. You're not seeing it. We're also going to see a whole change, I think, to what's called the Schengen area, the idea that once you get into Europe you're essentially free to move around. Those days are over. So rather than European -- the European project moving forward in some ways, Fareed, I think we're actually more likely to see it move backwards where the balance between nationalism and Europeanism is about to move more in the direction of nationalism.
ZAKARIA: Fascinating. When we come back I'm going to ask Richard about Hillary Clinton who gave a big speech about ISIS hosted by him. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:16:52] ZAKARIA: We are back now talking about the aftermath of the Paris attacks with Richard Haass and Philip Mudd.
Richard, you had Hillary Clinton, you hosted her for a -- she gave a speech and then she did a Q&A admittedly with me but I wanted to know what you thought. It seemed to me when I asked her directly is this like President Obama suggesting an intensification of the current strategy or are you proposing changes to the Obama administration's strategy, she said no, this is an intensification. She was pretty careful to try to keep herself close to President Obama.
Do you think her strategy makes sense and is in fact an intensification?
HAASS: It is an intensification. I think you're talking about potentially larger numbers of American special forces, a greater sharing of intelligence. All of that is consistent with the idea of doing a little bit more, probably more air strikes and more intense bombing campaigns. But she was also saying, we're not going to repeat what we did in Afghanistan or Iraq. We're not talking about large amounts of American ground forces taking on a combat role. She I think correctly emphasized the need for, as you were talking about, local allies and local partners.
We can't turn this into a narrative that will play into ISIS' hand that this is somehow a large Western crusader army coming in. We need local partners. We've got the Kurds in Iraq to some extent. What we've got to find are local Sunni tribes on the ground. We can't invent them. We tried that. We have got to find locals on the ground willing and able to fight. So I think that was one big part of her speech.
The other was on refugees. Clearly drawing a sharp line between herself and much of what we're hearing in the Republican Party but much more open to the idea of refugees as in the American political tradition and not in any way posing a fundamentally greater security threat to this society. And I think theirs is right. We've already -- you know, just the numbers. If you're talking about 10,000 or 25,000 refugees that pales in comparison, say, we have three million Muslims in this country. We have millions and millions of tourists every year.
And the danger is if we get fixated on the number of people coming in as refugees, which by the way we can bet, then we run the risk of alienating an entire community, maybe an entire generation which could actually create the much greater security problem all of us want to avoid in this country.
ZAKARIA: You're saying this, you've worked in four Republican administrations. That is not the position being taken by leading Republicans right now.
(LAUGHTER)
HAASS: I'm prepared for prolonged unemployment if that's what -- but also, again, there's something about the DNA in this country. Look at the First Amendment. We don't have a religious test in this country. So I think we've got to be open for refugees in a smart way. And this is Phil's, you know, expertise. We've obviously got to vet. We've got to have a smart immigration system.
But immigration is central to the American narrative. Refugees, taking them, a spirit of generosity. Sure, we've got to have our eyes wide open. Sure we've got to vet people and make sure there's not a security (INAUDIBLE) coming in within it. But I believe we can do that and still remain consistent and true to our principles.
ZAKARIA: Our vetting is pretty good. Most people would not realize, you know, how many Syrian refugees we took last year? Thirty-six. We're pretty tough on them.
Phil, what do we do on the military front? When you talk about this strikes, you know, we're bombing stuff. But what is the strategically important thing to do in Syria?
[10:20:02] MUDD: First, I would say patience. In the wake of these events we get emotional responses including from the French saying this is war. I'd like to step back and say we're actually not losing. These jihadists have lost territory due to the Kurds partly in Iraq. They've been hammered in Raqqa, their home court. Their leadership that's been hurt. We've talked about intelligence successes against leadership over time. So one of the questions is how to work with partners to continue the military strikes.
Like it or not how to deal with people like Russians, the Russians, to figure out is there a political solution. Bite our tongues and say the Russians are part of the solution there and accept something that people in this country don't like and that it will be difficult during a political season. Well, actually despite the attacks making gains, patience works. Rapid plans that don't have an ultimate end game that involve things like peace with the Russians on how to bring peace on the ground. That's not going to bring long-term solutions.
ZAKARIA: And do you think there's a way to take out the brains of the operation in Syria through airstrikes?
MUDD: We've got to step right out two things. Number one, holding territory, you need people on the ground to hold territory. But the people fighting for territory among ISIS aren't threats in New York. That is point targets that you can beat with airstrikes if you have the right intelligence. Over time you're going to have to slowly eliminate safe haven so those nerve centers for ISIS don't have a place to germinate. But short term, yes, air strikes were effective against terrorists. They're not effective against insurgents who hold territory.
ZAKARIA: Richard, what Philip is saying patience, you know, we can grind these people down. Do you think that -- briefly, is that correct? And can the American political system deal with that? And there was an attack in America, God forbid, the impulse to do something emotional will be irresistible.
HAASS: It is essentially right. It doesn't mean, though, inaction. It doesn't mean staying the course. I think it does mean intensification. And if, God forbid, there is an attack, we should be much prepared to do a lot more safe from the air or look for ways to accelerate support for locals. But we've also got to look for ways to compete with them in the digital stage. To go after their recruiting, to close the Turkish route for recruits, and we've got to take greater steps to make ourselves less vulnerable. We can never make ourselves invulnerable as a society but there are things we can and should do to reduce our vulnerability to terrorism and we should do those things.
ZAKARIA: Both of you, terrific conversation. Thank you so much.
Now if you're really interested in understanding the rise of ISIS, don't miss my latest documentary on the subject. It's called "Blindsided: How is Shook the World." It airs on Monday night at 9:00 p.m. Eastern.
Next right here on GPS, the French ambassador to the United States to answer a question many are asking in the wake of Paris. Why Paris? Why France?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:26:42] ZAKARIA: Paris has now been hit by well-planned and theatrical attacks twice this year. First of course were the "Charlie Hebdo" attacks in January where a total of 17 people were killed at various locations around the city. Then last Friday's savagery where more than 125 people were murdered.
But why Paris? Why France? Well, to help answer that question I have France's ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud.
Thank you so much for joining us.
GERARD ARAUD, FRENCH AMBASSADOR TO THE U.S.: Thank you.
ZAKARIA: Do you think that there's something that makes Paris an easier target? I'm just talking now about from the point of it has so many public spaces, it has -- there's so much movement. And you have the reality of an open Europe where once somebody comes in across a border in what is called the Schengen lands, those countries that have signed this treaty, they can move around Europe. They never have to show a passport again.
ARAUD: Of course, you know, you can go from Paris gate for $50. You take a bus and you are -- 36 hours later you are in Istanbul where you vanish because there are networks which will bring you to Syria. And you can come back. And that's our main problem. We have hundreds of thousands of young Europeans, in a stumble where you vanish. There are networks that will bring you to Syria and you can come back. And that's our main problem.
We have hundreds of thousands of young Europeans, hundreds of young French who are going to Syria. They will come back, radicalized, military trained, are able now to deprive some from their passport and try to prevent them from leaving France, possibly anti-Semitic. So we are involved now to deprive some youth from their passport and try to prevent them from leaving France. We are going also to investigate these guys when they are coming back. But there are some of them we have not identified. We don't know that they left. So it's quite a challenge.
ZAKARIA: What about the issue that people have raised which is that France has an alienated and unassimilated Muslim population. I was reading a piece in the "New York Review of Books" which presents this almost unbelievable statistic that points there are about 7 percent to 8 percent of France is Muslim. But if you look in French prisons 70 percent of the prisoners are Muslim.
ARAUD: You know, if we look at a statistics of American jails, you have also, unfortunately, disproportionate representation of some minorities.
ZAKARIA: Yes. But not at that --
(CROSSTALK)
ARAUD: You know, it's obvious that we have a problem of integration of the Muslims, not only in France but also in the rest of Europe. What is specific to France is that most of the French Muslims are Arabs. In Germany they are Turks and in the UK they are coming from Bangladesh or from Pakistan. And which means that as Arabs they are sensitive to what is happening in the Middle East but also they can unfortunately look at the propaganda of the Islamic Emirate, which is in Arabic. So it's also something which makes us the fault line of the problems.
And last point, I know that there are some social problems but it's not because you are unemployed that you are blowing yourself, you know, in a theater. It's something which is much more particular, and which is -- and the problem is radical Islam. Very, very obviously.
ZAKARIA: Well, clearly it is, but the question is why does radical Islam find favor with these youth?
[10:30:03] Are they alienated? Are they - is there - is there something going on there that one can do something about?
ARAUD: It's interesting. When you look at the social profile of the terrorists. Look at it and you'll see that most of them, actually, were not alienated in the economic sense. They have jobs. You know, one of them was a bus driver in the French - in the Paris public transportation system. He resigned to go to Syria. So, there are social - social problems, but there is also the problem of this particular attraction of radical form of religion.
ZAKARIA: Is French secularism too hard line? There are only two countries in the world where it is impermissible for a woman to wear a head scarf. France and Turkey, because they both have this enforced ...
ARAUD: Actually, you don't have the right to wear any religious, which means not only the scarf, but also the kippah or the cross in the state institutions. So, you can wear it in the street. You know, really, and - but it's true that we have to think about the relationship with religion. You know, you are a secular country. But, you know, American secularism was to protect the religion from the state, while our secularism is to protect the state from the religion. Because it was the fight against the Roman Catholic Church in the 19th century. So, we have to maybe we have to think about it to adjust it, our secularism to the - to Islam, but we have to keep our values. For instance, also, the equality of the woman for, you know, really when you have, you know, some people say, oh, the swimming pools will be open one hour for the men. One hour for the women. It's not acceptable. Only - sorry, the women and the men are equal. And they should live together. So, we have to find the right balance to defend our values. But, of course, the Muslims have their religious rights in the French society.
ZAKARIA: So, ISIS claims that the reason it attacks France in Paris is because it is a center of, I think, prostitution and Sodom and Gomorra in a sense ...
ARAUD: Yeah.
ZAKARIA: That was a biblical allusion, but - but that's the idea. What do you say to that?
ARAUD: Oh, we're proud to be there. And I think we have to send a message that actually joie de vivre, the French joie de vivre, we're going to keep it. Yes. We are a center of abomination for these guys, and our intention is to remain such.
ZAKARIA: Great pleasure to have you on, Mr. Ambassador.
ARAUD: Thank you very much.
ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, how much of this is a problem with Islam? My next guest has been studying religious extremism for decades. His answer will surprise you when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:37:12]
ZAKARIA: Events like the attacks in Paris make the majority of us wonder why. And none of us can really understand what would push someone to do something so barbaric, so cowardly.
Well, my next guest has been studying religious extremism for years. And he wrote a recent book about it that is terrific. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of Britain, is the author of "Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence", which is really an important book that I urge you to read and buy.
Rabbi Sacks, let me ask you the simple question that so many people ask. Is this about Islam?
JONATHAN SACKS, AUTHOR, "NOT IN GOD'S NAME: CONFRONTING RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE": Well, clearly, you know, if a terrorist is committing murder while shouting Allahu Akbar, God is great. This is a religious act. And as equally known doubt that ISIS is saturated in texts from the Koran and the Hadith, and a religious reading of history, that we are into tremendous moment of apocalypse. So, yes ISIS is a religious movement.
ZAKARIA: And how do you - what does one do about a movement that as you say, steeped in religion that proclaims itself as defining Islam when clearly, you know, it represents a very small minority. There is 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. How do you - how to think about that problem?
SACKS: Well, what I've tried to say in the book, is ISIS didn't come out of nowhere. This radicalization of Islam has taken many decades, the Muslim Brotherhood was born in 1928, (INAUDIBLE), inspiration for some of this was writing in the 1950s. Within the 1970s, the petro dollars were used in the Middle East to fund madrassas that put forward what until then had been a very minority form of Islam.
So, I think we have to think long and plan long. I've written this book really to encourage young Muslims to think differently about religion, especially in a global age. Reflect on the fact that Islam won its greatest admiration when it was most open, most tolerant as it was in al-Andalus in Spain and the 10TH to 12TH centuries. What I'm trying to do is say, let's see if we can grow moderates within the great face to counter the extremists.
ZAKARIA: One of the things you stress in the book is that every religion has had these seeds of extremism and that it is through this kind of reform that you get rid of it. But you are cautious against the kind of blanket condemnations of Islam. You know, you try to use a very soft touch.
[10:40:00]
ZAKARIA: Well, Islam is a great faith that's had remarkably wonderful periods of history. In the early middle ages it was the epitome of tolerance. And then Spain, as I say, under the Umayyads, Jews, Christians and Muslims lived together in greater freedom than at any other times in the Middle Ages. Not liberal democracy by our standards, but at least an advance on anything until then. All I can say from Jewish and that matter, Christian history is that when religion turns violent, it begins by murdering its enemies, it ends by murdering its co-religionists. And it then inflicts a self-imposed injury on faith itself. The violence in Judaism internally in the first century caused the catastrophe that took his nearly 2000 years to get over. The violence between Christians, Catholics and Protestants in Europe in the 16 and 17 centuries, led to four centuries of secularization. Religion begins when it chooses the part of violence by assaulting its enemies, but it becomes its own most serious victim.
ZAKARIA: And in a sense the pattern you're describing is exactly what we're seeing where these terrorist organizations began as exclusively anti-Western, but now it's the Sunnis killing the Shia. How does one grow moderates? What is the - what is the path forward? You know, how should particularly westerners view this, you know, what is really an internal debate within Islam. How to help the good guys?
SACKS: Well, you know, what you try and do is try and create a situation, in which moderates see good practice in other faiths. See the arguments set out. That's what I've tried to do. And that way you speak to people's outerism. At the moment young Muslims are hearing only the radical extremist voices, the voices that shout loudest. But I know with my encounters with Muslims in Britain and the United States and indeed, many of them from the Middle East, that they are looking for another way, another voice. Something that will speak to the better angles of their nature. And in that way, we outside Islam, can do our best to help those within Islam to develop the courage to choose a different and better way.
ZAKARIA: Very briefly, Sacks, in 30 seconds, are you hopeful?
SACKS: I'm not an optimist but no one with real faith can ever lose hope.
ZAKARIA: Thank you. Lord Jonathan Sacks. I hope you will all stay with CNN after "GPS" today. I will be on "Reliable Sources" with Brian Stelter talking about the media's response to terror, which is very important.
Up next, on "GPS", a week from tomorrow many of the world's most important and most tightly protected leaders including Barack Obama will gather in Paris. Yes, Paris. And the Secretary of State John Kerry will explain why the meetings in Paris are so very crucial.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ZAKARIA: One week from tomorrow one of the most important meetings in the world is set to begin. It will convene many of the world's most important leaders including President Obama. And it will be held in Paris. Yes, Paris under extremely tight security. The city of lights will play host to one of the biggest meetings ever held in France. A conference about how to save the planet. The so-called COP21 meeting hopes to get global agreement on how to stop global warming. Many say that the meeting is the last chance to make a deal. When I sat down with the United States Secretary of State John Kerry last week, I asked him about whether it could work.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ZAKARIA: Let me ask you about climate change, Mr. Secretary. You are embarking on a big push for the Paris summit. You gave a speck this week. In that speech, you are very eloquent in criticizing critics in the United States who are still skeptical about climate change. But what do you say to those who say look, that's all well and good, but the real skeptics in a sense are countries like India and Indonesia and to an extent even China despite some changes that still continue to use massive amounts of coal and huge amounts of carbon dioxide. And whatever the United States or Western - or Europe may do, that's the real problem. And in those countries they want to develop. They're not going to stop themselves from developing. So, we will just cripple ourselves without doing much for climate change.
JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, Fareed, that's the challenge. And it doesn't make a lot of sense to develop and kill yourself as you do it. We've learned lessons about the downsides of the way in which we have produced energy, electricity and power and transportation and so forth over centuries now. And we have to move to a low carbon economy, all of us. If the United States all by itself tomorrow were to drive carpool to work and bicycle to work and plant a bunch of trees and lower our emissions to zero, we can't solve the problem alone. India, China, every country in the world has to be part of it. Now, that's why President Obama reached an agreement with President Xi, a ground breaking historic agreement to join together to announce the intended emissions reductions that both countries would make as part of the Paris negotiations in hopes of inspiring other countries to do the same.
[10:50:10]
Well, guess what, now over 150 countries have announced their targets for emissions reductions including India. They're not enough yet. And for about anybody, we've all got to move more. But if we come together in Paris, and I believe we can, and hopefully we will, to have an ambitious set of targets that we will all try to reach not, you know, that we all agree to, voluntarily, try to reach. That will be an incredible signal to the marketplace, which already is seeing investment move into clean alternative renewable different kinds of energy production. The solution to climate change is energy policy. So, it's a question of what choices we need to make in order to preserve our ability on this planet to produce food, to have water, to live where people live today without massive dislocations of human beings, without massive damage from intensified storms and wildfires and droughts and all of the downsides that we're already beginning to measure.
So, this is actually opportunity, not downside. And I think Paris will help define the full breadth of that opportunity. It's going to be trillions of dollars that will be invested in these new lower carbon energy sources and I think it can - has the chance of transforming everybody's economy for the better.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZAKARIA: Next on "GPS," according to a new report, the deadliest terror group on Earth in 2014 was not ISIS. We'll tell you what it was when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ZAKARIA: My previous guest, Secretary of State John Kerry ruled out Iran for president earlier this year. But he said, he hasn't closed the door on the idea forever. It brings me to my question of the week: "How many secretaries of state have gone on to become president? Two, four, six or eight? Stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer.
This week's Book of the Week is "Little Rice: Smartphones Xiaomi and the Chinese Dream" by Claire Sharkey. My guess is most of you don't know the world's third largest cell phone company after Apple and Samsung. It is Xiaomi, China's largest phone maker. Claire Sharkey, one of the smartest people writing on technology spent a year in Shanghai asking whether Xiaomi's rise tells us that China can innovate. This is must reading for anyone interested in the future of technology, or business, or China, which is sort of all of us.
And now, for the last look, the terrible events in Paris last week were followed by police raids, airplane groundings, bombings in Africa and a sense that terror is all around. But is terror really on the rise? Well, according to the annual global terrorism index, published by the Institute of Economics and Peace this week, the answer is yes. 32,658 people were killed by terrorist attacks in 2014. That's up 80 percent from the previous year. But let's unpack the numbers. 78 percent of terror that's occurred in just five countries. Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria. Most of those are war zones. Now Boko Haram and ISIS were responsible for more than half of all that's attributed to terror groups. And Boko Haram was the deadliest terror group in the world, killing 6,644 people last year. Overall the report says, just 2.6 percent of deaths from terrorism have occurred in the West in the past 15 years.
Any death is tragic, but it is important to keep the numbers in perspective. 32,658 were killed by terror last year. In the United States more than 33,000 are killed by firearms annually according to the CDC. And we do not live in terror of our neighbors who own guns. We should respond to this global increase in terror by continuing to track terrorists and their funds, recognize that governments will have to do more monitoring of communications, by trying to stabilize the unstable parts of the world from which these furies emanate. Use military and political means to do so, but we should not cower in fear or change our lives.
In short, we should not be terrorized. The correct answer to the GPS challenge question is C. Six. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren and James Buchanan, all filled the Secretary of State post before becoming president. Should Hillary Clinton succeed, she will be the first former secretary of state to rise to the presidency in 160 years.
Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week. Don't forget, Monday night at 9 p.m. Eastern, you can catch my ISIS documentary "BLINDSIDED: HOW ISIS SHOOK THE WORLD."
