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Fareed Zakaria GPS

The Crucial Role of Political Parties in America; Obama Across the Ocean; To Brexit or not to Brexit?; Islamophobia, Migrants and the Future of Europe; Legalizing Heroin Shots; Building Good Teams; Interview with Amb. Zalmay Khalilzad. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired April 17, 2016 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:13] FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: 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 terrific show for you today starting with an all-star panel to take you on a tour of the world. From the United Kingdom to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Both stops on Obama's overseas trip next week. From Putin's power plays in Russia to an imploding Brazil.

Also, here's a New York value that Ted Cruz would probably hate. Government sanctioned heroin highs. But like many other New York values, this one actually makes a lot of sense. I'll explain.

Then Ambassador (INAUDIBLE). He served the United States as ambassador to the U.N. He is the nation's highest ranking Muslim ever to serve in Dublin. What does he have to say about the anti-Islamic rhetoric on the campaign trail?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think Islam hates us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: And what makes some teams winners and other teams losers? I'm not talking about baseball or football but business. Google has spent the last four years trying to figure out the answer to this question. It will surprise you.

But first, here's my take. Having recently discovered how the nomination process actually works in the Republican Party, Donald Trump is furious.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: If they wanted to keep people out, this was a dirty trick, these are dirty tricksters.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: In fact, Mr. Trump is right on the first count and wrong on the second. Political parties do have mechanisms to keep people out. But far from being a trick, they are the crux of what makes parties valuable in a democracy.

Political scientist Clinton Rossiter begins his classic, "Parties and Politics in America" with this declaration. "No America without democracy. No democracy without politics. No politics without parties."

In a large and diverse country in order to get things done, people need some devices to navigate the political system, organize themselves, channel particular interests and ideologies and negotiate with others who have differing interests and views. Political parties have traditionally played this role in the United States. And they have often played it as a counterweight to the momentary passions of the public.

At the heart of the American political party is the selection of its presidential candidate. This process used to be controlled by party elites -- mayors, governors, legislators. In the early 20th century, an additional mechanism was added to test a candidate's viability on the campaign trail -- primaries.

Still, between 1912 and 1968, the man who won a party's presidential primaries became the nominee less than half the time. Dwight Eisenhower was not chosen by primary voters but in a complex, contested convention.

1968 was the year things changed. The radicalism that swept the Democratic Party also cast aside its rules for selecting nominees, favoring direct primaries over all else. The Republicans copied the Democrats, and soon the parties ended up with the system we have today. The result of these changes has been to hallow our political parties. Turning them into empty vessels for the most successful political entrepreneur of the moment.

In describing these trends in a book on democracy in 2003, I wrote that without strong parties, all you needed to run for president was name recognition and a fundraising machine. I predicted that the party-less system would be good for political dynasties, celebrity officials and billionaire politicians. The frontrunners in both parties in 2016 fit this description.

What is the harm of this new open system? Well, we can see it now. A party without internal strength and capacity cannot shape the political agenda. Instead, it simply reflects and amplifies the noisiest popular passions. The old system steered toward moderation because it was run mostly by local and state officials who had won general elections and then had to govern. Today, delegates are chosen by primary voters, a much smaller, narrower and more extreme slice of the country.

It's ironic that the old smoke-filled rooms were in some sense more representative of the general voter than the open primaries of today. The old parties drew their strength from neighborhood organizations, churches, unions and local business groups.

[10:05:02] The new parties are really just Rolodexes of Washington professionals, activists, ideologues, fundraisers and pollsters. These professionals are more extreme and less practical, they seek to turn large, diverse parties into ideological battleships.

Now the old system is almost dead. But in the current Republican race, it is trying to revive itself perhaps one last time to save the party from a dangerous demagogue. This is not an assault on democracy. The people will vote in November, and that vote is final. Meanwhile, we have an effort by one of the core institutions of American politics to shape the choices facing voters in that November election. Sometimes to strengthen democracy, you have to restrain it.

For more, go to CNN.com/fareed and read my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started.

2016 is the year in which President Obama has to put the finishing touches on his legacy both foreign and domestic. On the foreign side he's expected to hop on Air Force One and travel all over the world this year. Last month's trip to Cuba and Argentina was just a warm- up. On Tuesday, he will take off for Saudi Arabia, the U.K. and Germany.

To talk about the greeting he will receive at all these stops and more, let me bring in my great panel. Ed Luce is the Washington columnist for the "FT," Julia Ioffe is a columnist at Foreign Policy and a contributing writer at the "New York Times" magazine. Brett Stephens is the foreign affairs columnist for the "Wall Street Journal." And Gideon Rose is the editor of "Foreign Affairs."

Gideon, first stop, Saudi Arabia. There are a lot of people who look at Saudi Arabia these days and feel, you know, oil has plummeted. They're facing all these problems. The war in Yemen, the war in Syria. It is highly unstable and finally, after many such prognostications have proven wrong, Saudi Arabia is on the verge of collapse.

GIDEON ROSE, EDITOR, FOREIGN AFFAIRS: This is not going to be a fun stop because the relationship of the United States and Saudi Arabia is not on good terms and both leaderships have expressed their discontent and disgust with the other. So it's not going to be a fun meeting. But there's no real reason to believe that the Saudi regime is in any danger of collapse. It's proven the skeptics wrong. It's still a strong U.S. ally. Maybe not a loved positive relationship but there's enough common interests to keep the relationship together and to keep cooperation going whether there's an intelligence cooperation or cooperation against Iran, ISIS, Assad. But it's not going to be nice one because they've said bad things.

I don't know why the president in his Goldberg interview for the "Atlantic" came out so explicitly with so much time left and expressed his disdain for so many important allies.

(CROSSTALK)

ZAKARIA: He's still playing the game. It's odd that he's revealing stuff that you kind of want him to wait for his memoirs to do, Brett.

BRETT STEPHENS, FOREIGN AFFAIRS COLUMNIST, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Yes. I mean, he has to be careful that this isn't a replay of Jimmy Carter visiting the Shah of Iran in the late 1970s and praising it as an anchor or pillar of stability in the region. Now I disagree --

ZAKARIA: You think that it has the danger that like the Shah, the Saudis could topple?

STEPHENS: I think persistent low oil prices, the fact that ISIS could be looking to expand into Saudi Arabia. A bad war with Yemen. There are a lot of factors here that could lead to the destabilization of this regime, particularly if this trio of leaders doesn't work out.

ZAKARIA: And I think the point you would make is they're more stable than you think because they've got huge foreign reserves. They can borrow money forever.

ROSE: They have internal legitimacy, they have good financial situation compared to other places. They have strong control over their territory.

Look, let's be honest. There aren't a lot of strong functional states in the Middle East. Iran is one, Saudi Arabia is one. That's one of the reasons why the United States is actually trying to be on decent terms with both of them. Their balancing games have to be played. But it makes no sense to screw up your relationship with one of the few remaining countries that's actually functional in the region.

ZAKARIA: And then he gets to Britain which seemed functional for the last few hundred -- few centuries and now appears to be, you know, Scotland was trying to leave and now you have -- how serious, I don't think most people outside Britain realize this is pretty serious. Britain could actually leave Europe.

EDWARD LUCE, COLUMNIST, FINANCIAL TIMES: It's quite impossible. It's almost 50-50 in the (INAUDIBLE) now. Look, David Cameron was leading the remain in Europe campaign. The prime minister is not very popular at the moment. His father was one of those with a Panama trust fund. He's got in trouble over that. Perhaps a little unfairly. And he's asked Obama in who -- and the timing is very deliberate. A few weeks before the referendum, who is very popular in Britain. Very popular. He gets sort of plus 75 percent approval ratings there. Cameron doesn't.

[10:10:04] And the use that Obama can play for Cameron is that those in favor of Brexit, of Britain leaving Europe, of the strongest transit, their argument is that America will simply replace Europe and we're going to free trade agreement with America, and it will all magically just be an Anglospheric world that will work out far better. And Obama's in the hopes of David Cameron going to say that's not going to happen. You're not going to get an FTA, you're not going to get this sudden magical new transatlantic alliance. Your value to us as an ally is proportionate to your influence within Europe. And if you leave Europe then you're going to squander that.

Whether Obama can actually say any of that directly in public, rather than hinted it, is another matter. There's going to be a lot of people, or as Johnson, the mayor of London, being one of them, waiting to pounce on him if he gets too political, if he crosses too political of a line. ZAKARIA: Does all this kind of European instability, the migrant

crisis, Brett said, does it help the man you study so carefully, Vladimir Putin?

JULIA IOFFE, COLUMNIST, FOREIGN POLICY: I think it absolutely does. And if you look at the Freedom House report that came out recently about democracy and democratic rights, declining sharply in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet satellite states. If you look at the Islamophobia rising there, that very much plays into Putin's hands and he has been trying very hard with his informational propaganda with channels like RT and Sputnik and other kind of more subversive means to drive wedges wherever he can between the U.S. and its -- and its European allies hoping to -- that that might ease the sanctions load on Russia.

And just trying to fragment it. I mean, that's a classic Russian game, trying to fragment Europe to then work in those divides.

STEPHENS: Well, one of the most likeliest outcomes of Brexit, and one of the reasons I think on balance oppose it, is that Brexit would mean Scotland would likely then try to leave Britain and join Europe. Maybe Whales will be shorn off as well as the results of that. You do want -- I mean. there are great advantages to a United Kingdom. And by the way, for the United States we also want a strong Britain. It still remains our central pillar in Europe. So an England that is small, that is isolated and perhaps increasingly tempted by populous politics, I don't think it's a game for British liberty or European or transatlantic security.

(CROSSTALK)

ZAKARIA: We've got to leave out.

ROSE: Our world is going made basically.

(LAUGHTER)

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, Julia just mentioned the provocative new study out this week from Freedom House that says that democracy in Europe is threatened by Islamophobia. Is that really the case? We'll discuss is when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:17:22] ZAKARIA: And we are back with the "Financial Times'" Ed Luce, Julia Ioffe of Foreign Policy, the "Wall Street Journal's" Brett Stephens, and Gideon Rose of Foreign Affairs.

Ed, there is this study Freedom House puts out that says that Islamophobia is the thing that is weakening democratic values in Europe. The argument being what you have is the migrant crisis and a lot of right-wing nationalist politicians taking advantage of it and essentially scuffling a lot of protections of rights and minority rights, and the rule of law, things like that. Do you think the situation is as severe as the report points out? LUCE: I wouldn't say it's weakening democracy. I'd say it's

weakening constitutional liberalism. Whether you look at Hungary or Poland. Poland is the new government. The law and justice government there which is a right-wing Catholic government is attempting to gut the constitutional court there to basically pack it politically. But democracy, I don't think, as in -- they're all --

ZAKARIA: Because they're all popular.

LUCE: Yes. A lot of this is --

ZAKARIA: They're all popular.

LUCE: Hungary is another example.

IOFFE: I think it raises larger issues, underlying issues about Europe and what it means to be a German, Frenchman or woman, Brit, that, you know, I spent some time in Germany with migrants, with refugees and talking with Germans around the camps. And they said that, you know, even 20 years from now when these people get papers they still will never be Germans and we don't know that their kids will ever be Germans. And this is -- you know, this is a country that's been most open to the refugees.

I think it gets at the idea of what is, you know, German identity, Danish identity, and that it's not a very absorptive environment and -- but it is still an environment that's open to the world and has to take in -- it has to absorb these people but can't.

STEPHENS: But, look, I mean, I think this is part of the poison of low growth. Germany took in huge Muslim immigration during the boom years of the post-war era and it was able to absorb them because it was able to absorb them into a growing 4 percent, at least 3 percent growth economy. When you have decades of stagnation, that is just going to magnify all of the normal problems associated with any kind of integration.

(CROSSTALK)

ROSE: No, but I have to say, it pains me to say this but I agree with Brett, which is that it's more a symptom than a cause. Certainly in the States. Maybe less so in Europe. But I mean yes, there's a lot of anger out there, a lot of dissatisfaction, and looking for a target. Then you have populist politicians that come along. Illegal immigration is actually declining in the U.S. and yet Trump was able to make a big deal of it and raise all this stuff.

Syrian refugees, nobody was caring about Syrian refugees. They're not even in the same category as illegal immigrants but they happen to be brown and foreign and different and in some ways so they become a target, too.

[10:20:08] ZAKARIA: Quickly, we're going to talk about one thing, which is, is the world economy going to blow up? Because the great super star Brazil seems on the verge of collapse. The president is about to be impeached or maybe if not impeached has I think an approval rating under 10 percent. What happens?

ROSE: Well, Brazil, I don't think, if Dilma goes, I do not think that Temer is a particularly strong replacement.

ZAKARIA: This is the vice president.

ROSE: The vice president. So I don't think you're going to see a dramatic change. The question is how do you get Brazil back on the track with a structural form of lively, dynamic economy, attracting a powerful emerging market vibe. The current vice president is not the answer to that question. But I don't think it will destroy the world economy overall. But I wouldn't bet on Brazil coming out of its front any time soon.

ZAKARIA: This is all part of this world of declining oil prices.

STEPHENS: Yes. I mean, Brazil is the country of the future and always will be. It's an old saying. I mean, just a few years ago the "Economist" had this cover of the Jesus in Rio kind of taking off like a rocket. That looks like a disappointed promise. But look, Brazil is I think a $2 trillion economy. It is not large, but in the scale of the world commodity. And by the way, low commodity prices have all kinds of advantages especially if you're paying for your consumer.

ZAKARIA: What happens to Russia in a world of low oil prices? Can Putin maintain his grip on power. So far his popularity goes up.

IOFFE: It stayed about the same. It's kind of ebbed and flowed. I think -- there's this uniquely Russian phenomenon called good tsar, bad boyars. The boyars are the rulers around him. So every poll shows that Russians distrust and dislike the police, the courts, the schools, the bureaucrats, the foreign ministry, the defense ministry. The one person they continually like is Vladimir Putin. So on questions of corruption, they say that if it weren't for Putin, it would be even worse. And so what I want to say about Brazil, is I think what's happening is actually a sign of health because what's -- for example, what the Panama papers revealed about Russia is far worse that anything Brazil has done. And everybody just shrugs their shoulders and says, well, that's just how it is, that's Russia, or if I were in their place I would do the same.

STEPHENS: It's just investment in cellos.

IOFFE: That's right. And the courts will never go after these people. They're going instead after the people who are trying to fight corruption in Russia whereas in Brazil you're actually seeing kind of cleaning up house, like -- it's like a very bad food poisoning. You have to get the toxins out.

ZAKARIA: Final though, Britain. You straddled both worlds very well. What do people think in Britain about the American Republican right now?

LUCE: I think they have a sort of sickly horror they're gripped by it. Trump, you know, had a golf course in Scotland. Well, he has a golf course in Scotland and when one moves to try and deny him a visa to visit Britain, so instead of -- his mother was born in Scotland. He's half seen as local and therefore people feel the right to despise him more disrespectfully than they would if it was sort of pure non- British.

ZAKARIA: That is so British.

(LAUGHTER)

ZAKARIA: Thank you all very much. Pleasure.

Next on GPS, in recent years in America, about 34,000 people are killed by guns. Another 34,000 are killed by traffic accidents but a stunning 46,000 were killed by drug overdoses in 2013. When we come back, global and local essence about what to do about heroin.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:27:25] ZAKARIA: Now for our "What in the World" segment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Senator Cruz, you suggested Mr. Trump, "embodies New York values." Could you explain what you mean by that?

SEN. TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You know, I think most people know exactly what New York values are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz has made it very clear that he is not a fan of New York values even as the Republican primary comes to the Empire State this week. Cruz might be even more appalled by New York after hearing this story.

The mayor of Ithaca, New York, 29-year-old Svante Myrick, wants to allow his residence to legally shoot heroine. That's right. Under the mayor's proposal, drug users in his quiet upstate town, home to Cornell University, could walk into a taxpayer funded injection center and get high.

There is a powerful purpose here. Keeping heroin addicts alive with medically supervised highs while introducing them to treatment to fight their addictions.

Heroin abuse is a nationwide epidemic according to the CDC. Fatal overdoses nearly quadrupled between 2002 and 2013, ravaging small towns like Ithaca. In fact drug overdoses killed over 46,000 Americans in 2013. That's more than gun violence, motor vehicle accidents murder, and suicide. Heroin deaths are a big proportion of those overdoses.

Criticism of Ithaca's supervised injection plan has been withering. A state legislature called the proposal preposterous and asinine according to the "New York Times." Many feared that such a facility would only encourage more drug abuse. But similar programs have been up and running in several other countries for years and have achieved some remarkable success.

Vancouver, Canada has been home to the Insite facility since 2003. The first legally supervised injection site in North America. Every day there hundreds of addicts use injection boots with access to clean syringes overseen by nurses. Treatment and other health services are also available on site.

The result of the effort has been impressive. Fatal drug overdoses in the blighted neighborhood around Insite plummeted 35 percent compared to just 9 percent in other parts of the city according to the British Columbia Center for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. And not one fatal overdose has occurred at the site itself, Insite says.

[10:30:06] ZAKARIA: Those using the injection booth with 30 percent more likely to enter rehab. The site also saves taxpayer dollars by preventing expensive medical procedures for the addicts that treats in the cells.

The Canadian medical association supports the facility as the Canada Supreme Court which rule its favor to continue it's operation in 2011.

Insite has been proven to save lives with no discernible negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada before it declared.

Worldwide, there are more than 90 supervised injection sites mostly in Europe. The first opened in 1986 in Switzerland where there are now 22 facilities that actually give heroine to addicts with the hope of treating them.

If that sounds crazy, consider this. Opioid related deaths from 1995 to 2013 most of which were heroin related dropped by 2/3 in Switzerland. If the United States had cut heroin related deaths by that much in 2013 alone, over 5,000 lives would have been saved. Maybe if because bold proposal, it's New York values aren't so bad after overall.

Next on GPS, you can stock up management books from here to the moon and they'll all tell you how to put together a great team for business. But Google spent years actually studying the subject and they say the answer lies in one word, safety. I'll explain when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:35:41] ZAKARIA: Google has had notoriously difficult application and interview process, if you don't believe me, just Google, Google interview questions and try them. But does putting together a bunch of brainy types who score well on those kind of tests necessarily equal success?

Well, Google has been working for more than four years now to figure out exactly how to best put together successful teams. The results so far are fascinating. Who was part of Googles team that investigated the teams and Charles Duhigg wrote about the effort in his new book "Smarter, Faster, Better". Charles, why did you write this book? CHARLES DUHIGG, PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING REPORTER, NEW YORK TIMES: Well, we're living through this period of economic change. And at the core of it like many other economic revolutions is just basic question of what productivity is. And I become fascinated by this and began talking to researchers and neurologist and psychologist.

ZAKARIA: But you were concern about the lack of your own productive.

DUHIGG: I was concerned about my own productivity. I was concern about learning how to become more productive. How I could take advantage of what we've learned about the nature of productivity. And what we found is that most productive people in companies, they then to push themselves to thing slightly differently. Particularly, in these eight ways one of which is teams, how teams come together.

ZAKARIA: So what you found was that wasn't just about the personal productivity but group productivity.

DUHIGG: That's exactly right. In today's economy and today's business places has everyone notice, teams are essential to how work gets done.

ZAKARIA: You thought about the issue even when you were in business school working on a team in Yale. But what do you learn?

JULIA ROZOVSKY, PEOPLE ANALYTICS MANAGER, GOOGLE: That's right. So, you know, when I think about my experience of Yale, what is most interesting is how the research we did at Google has helped me understand that experience a little bit better of why some teams did incredibly well and while others, despite having such fantastically smart people in the room felt we were missing out on some of the potential.

ZAKARIA: Why did Google call this project, project that they had you run called Project Aristotle?

ROZOVSKY: So Project Aristotle got it's name because the team should be greater than some of its parts right in that attributed to play Aristotle. And what the project was is really an effort at Google to try to figure out how do we make a rock star team and we spent years trying to answer that question by conducting many, many interviews following hundreds of teams at Google and trying to learn as much as we can about them.

ZAKARIA: And what is the answer?

ROZOVSKY: It's a great question. So what we learned is there are few common themes that really separate the most effective teams at Google from the rest. But by far, the most important thing is the sense of psychological safety on the team. And what I mean by that Fareed is being able to take a risk and make yourself really vulnerable with your team members without feeling like they're going to shoot you down or ridicule you as a result.

ZAKARIA: Now this is fascinating to me because, you know, on campuses, better than this debate about safe spaces and a lot of sort of hard line type saying this is all coddling nonsense. But what your research seems to show is there's something to this idea that a safe space makes people more willing to take risks, bare themselves in some way.

ROZOVSKY: Right.

DUHIGG: I think that's absolutely right. And in fact, there's a lot of research beyond Google, including Google's work to show that that's true. There's a researcher named called Amy Edmondson whose spend her whole career setting teams and setting physiological safety. And what's she found is that physiological safety has these two components. First of all everyone on the team has to feel like they could speak equality.

Now that doesn't mean everyone speaks the equal number of minutes in each meeting. But that overtime there's an equality on how much people speak up. But that in its own isn't enough. You also need to have what's known as social sensitivity essentially to the people on the team demonstrated that they're listening to each other. Do I pick up on your nonverbal cues? Do I ask what's on your mind if I haven't heard you talking a couple of minutes?

By showing that listening behavior, I'm actually drawing you into the group and I'm creating that safe space that allows for psychological safety and allows for you feel like you can take risks.

ZAKARIA: So now I've spent time with Google people. And most of them strike me as very smart. But they do not suffer fools. They do not, they're very blunt if they think something is stupid.

ROZOVSKY: Yeah.

ZAKARIA: Do you find that telling people, telling these very smart summa cum laude in math from Stanford types that, you know, part of what you have to do is to listen to the weakest member on your team or the most different member on you team. And how did that go across.

[10:40:12] ROZOVSKY: Yeah. So, you know, a Google, data is everything. It's powerful. So being able to look at the type of people that you're talking about and saying listen, we followed hundreds of teams at Google. We analyze thousands of things about them and statistically, what's most important is being able to take a risk with your team members. It's data driven and it's concrete. And because of that, it helps people believe that this really matters.

ZAKARIA: Another team work you found was Saturday Night Live. Again, you would think these are bunch of smart asses who, you know, I was going to make jokes at each other. They are not going to spend a lot of time coddling each other and yet.

DUHIGG: That's exactly how they came together. You know, it's exactly right. If you talk to people about Saturday Night Live about why that show exceeds. They'll say it's a miracle, right? You have a bunch of egomaniacal, comedians and writers who basically for most of their lives hated other people and they get together and make a live show every week. And they'll say that the reason why is because of Larne Michaels the executive producer.

Because he runs meetings in a these very specific way, he forces everyone in the room to speak up. You have to say something. And then he'll stop a meeting if you're looking distracted and say, Fareed, I notice you're looking up. What's going on in your life? What's happening with you? Why aren't you in this conversation?

As a result everyone feels that they have to speak and if everyone's listening to them. And what's interesting here is that there's a basic tension I think in Saturday Night Live, at Google and these findings between efficiency and productivity. But efficiency would say get the expert to stand up, have him say his piece and then everyone else shut up and listen.

ZAKARIA: Yeah.

DUHIGG: Productivity often times mean you listen to the weakest member of team. You ask them to speak up. You interrupt a meeting to saying what's going on inside your head and you look distracted. That's how we get really productive instead of simply busy and efficient.

ZAKARIA: Has it changed the way Google operates?

ROZOVSKY: It definitely had. And although many things has changed as a result of this work, my favorite one is that over 10,000 Googlers have had a conversation about psychological safety on their team after we release the work.

DUHIGG: Fantastic.

ZAKARIA: Julia, Charles, pleasure to have you guys on.

DUHIGG: Thanks for having me.

ROZOVSKY: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, the highest ranking Muslim to hold office in the American government. A great American immigration success story, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad will join me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:46:52] ZAKARIA: Zalmay Khalilzad has an amazing life story, especially in this day and age when such fear of foreigners is being stirred up in the United States. Born and raised in Afghanistan, Khalilzad moved to the United States and became a professor at Columbia went to work at the State Department in the tumultuous days of the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan.

He ultimately rose to become U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan after the invasion, then U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and finally U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. In that role, he was the highest ranking Muslim ever in the United States government. He has just published a book about s life. "The Envoy: From Kabul to the White House. My journey through a turbulent world."

Zalmay, pleasure to have you on.

ZALMAY KHALILZAD, AUTHOR, "THE ENVOY": It's great to be with you Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Describe growing. You grew up in a world different world and came to America at very different time. Let's talk a little.

KHALILZAD: Well, I grew up in Mazar-i-Sharif in Northern Afghanistan. A small town of about 50,000. Historic area of the world. Mazar-i- Sharif was one a great centers of world trade, of education of civilization in Central Asia. But over time it has become relatively poor isolated country on the boarder of them and Soviet Union.

ZAKARIA: What brought you to the United States?

KHALILZAD: There is a program called the American field service that brings high school student junior and high school from around the world. And I was one of those who were selected from Afghanistan to come to the U.S. I had never left Afghanistan and had yet moved from the 50,000 city in Mazar to the 500,000 town city Kabul a city, which seemed like a cosmopolitan city compared to Mazar. But then to come to New York from Afghanistan was a huge shock.

ZAKARIA: So one of the things I saw when I was reading about when Trump announced that he was going to ban all Muslim from entering the United States, somebody write. Would that include Zalmay Khalilzad?

KHALILZAD: And Fareed too.

ZAKARIA: But particularly you because you have been ...

KHALILZAD: That's right.

ZAKARIA: ... American ambassador of the United Nation you have hold cabinet rank.

KHALILZAD: Right.

ZAKARIA: What do you think when you hear Donald Trump who's a Rebulican whose a Republican front-runner and the leader of a party you have served for say Islam hates America?

KHALILZAD: I think Islam of course has been a religion for over a thousand years and there's nothing in Islam that hates America. I think that there are some extreme Muslims who have hostile actions towards the United States and I understand that some people are concerned about that and we all should be concerned about that and do what we can to defend ourselves.

But I'm an example of you can be a Muslim. I've never felt any tension leave along conflict between being a Muslim and being an American and representing America in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan and there's many others like me.

[10:50:08] I think that what we need when our assets diversity, I could be effective in part as I was because of who I was and my background and understanding of that area of the world.

ZAKARIA: And you also in your work as ambassador, U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan and Iraq, presumably, you must have seen the degree to which the U.S. needed Muslim allies to fight the extremist. I mean, I think about now when we talk about, you know, we should go and fight ISIS, but there are tens of thousands of Muslims fighting ISIS.

KHALILZAD: Absolutely. Well, the biggest divide is not between America and Muslim, the biggest divide is among Muslim -- unfortunately, right now, the world of Islam is going through civilization level of crisis between moderate, extremist, traditionalist and now we've adde beside the ideological issue the sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunni related to political rivalry between major powers of the region, Iran and Saudi Arabia as the key players.

We can't fight those wars ourselves. We can't address them ourselves and by ourselves. We need locals to address them and if they -- have to solve their problems, but we can help and our diversity assists us in being a source of good health.

ZAKARIA: When you were there in Baghdad, in Kabul, did they look at -- did the locals look at you and say, oh, there's a fellow Muslim, so he'll be nice or did they basically look at you as an American.

KHALILZAD: Oh, they looked at me as an American but an American that understood. In some case I spoke their language. I knew their history, their traditions. So I think that helped me become more effective. I was to them something unbelievable. Something that only can happen in America, that here someone, one of there own, someone (ph) of that region went to America and became an American and now either presents the most powerful country in the world.

ZAKARIA: If Donald Trump became president and asked you to serve in his administration would you?

KHALILZAD: Well, I am an American. I want to help my country, the United States. I think a leader that's willing to unify America, not divide America and to follow an intelligent long-term strategy that as elements of defense and offense against those who wish us ill but also as positive engagement I would be more than happy to offer my views and advice to any of our leaders.

ZAKARIA: Pleasure to have you on.

KHALILZAD: Well, it's great to be with you. Fareed, thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, do pirates make good prime ministers? Well, one nation is about to find out.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:57:12] ZAKARIA: And now for my question of the week. The biggest accompany of the United States in a certain field filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy this week. What field was it? Oil exploration, coal mining, solar panel production or wind turbine manufacturing.

Stay tuned and we'll tell you the great answer. This week's book of the week is "The Fall of the Ottomans, The Great War in the Middle East," by Eugene Rogan. As the Middle East is collapsing all around us, if you wanted to know where it all began and when, read this great book by a great Oxford historian.

And now for the last look. Iceland's Prime Minister was the first obvious casualty of the Panama papers resigning following massive protests in his country. The election will be held as fallen Iceland may find itself with an unlikely leader, a pirate. I don't mean a swashbuckling sailor with a parrot on his shoulder. I mean a member of the pirate party.

According to a poll released this month, more than 43 percent of Icelanders would now support this party that believes in transparency, responsibility in politics and freedom of information. The pirate received just three seats in parliament in the last election but they would win a stunning victory if the election was held today as Reuters has pointed out, and a 43 percent of Iceland has voted for the party, its leader would likely be prime minister.

The party's current share is a former WikiLeaks activist who that describes the party as the Robin Hood of power, a woman named Birgitta Jonsdottir. She's not just a politician, she's an artist and a poet who describes herself as poetician. Here's a verse she pinned in 2003. "I dreamed last night that I was going into politics. That I was going to be the first woman prime minister in Iceland. It was a true nightmare.

Jonsdottir told us none of those serving in the prior party need akin to take on the roll of prime minister. A pirate poentician waking up with the nations hopes of revolution on her shoulders even though she doesn't want this job. This could be the flip side of getting rid of the old corrupt professional politicians.

The correct answer to the question of the week was, B, Coal mining giant Peabody Energy filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week citing an unprecedented industry downturn.

According to Bloomberg, the coal industry has lost an astonishing 94 percent of its market value in just five years. The downturn expert says it caused by many factors including declining coal prices and the lower cost of energy from other sources natural gas, renewables, the IEA projects coal consumption in OECD countries will drop 40 percent by 2040.

[11:00:02] Thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.