you can watch the full story of the 2000 election tomorrow night 9:00 p.m. right here on cnn. do not miss it. i'm dana bash in washington. fareed zakaria gps starts right now. 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 an important show for you today starting with syria. for years president obama has been insistent, emphatic. >> i will not put american boots on the ground in syria. >> but now up to 50 special force troop will go. why the change in policy? i will explore that with richard haas. the u.s. defense secretary says that president obama is considering direct action on the ground there. we will take you inside the administration's thinking on iraq with deputy secretary of

state. then, it's one year and one week until the election. but all eyes already on the polls. what do they really tell us and will today's front-runners be tomorrow's nominees. also from one child to two. china changes decades of policy. it's hoping to grow its economy by growing its family. will it work? and one of the world's most famous scientists on dr. ben carson's rejection of the theory of evolution. >> this is not something you believe in or not. this is a fact. it is a fact. it's just as much a fact as the earth goes around the sun. >> first, here's my take. i had an interesting visitor drop by my office last week, and he said something that stuck with me.

the most important contest in the world right now, he said, is between isis and us. he is rasheed, the intellectual leader. despite winning the country's first free elections compromised with its political foes and helped make tunisia the arab spring's only success. as he sees it, the real struggle is not between islam and the west but between the isis model and the tunisian model. the only way to truly defeat isis he said is to offer a better product to the millions of young muslims in the world. that better product needs to be a political system that is genuinely democratic and respects human rights but also allows islam and its values some

space within the political system, according to him. we are building the alternative model in tunisia, he told me proudly. tunisia's success story is quite fragile. not quite the fairy tale version that's recounted. they were reluctant to compromise. they left power only because they thought the country would explode if they didn't. key elements of the old guard have returned in force and the place remains fragile with the economy under severe pressure. but most transitions to democracy are marked by bitter struggles. democracy did not come amicably to taiwan or south korea or chile. the dictators resisted fiercely. it's only in retro spect that one can look back and peace calmly of peaceful democratic transitions. tunisia had some distinct advantages that helped it along. in a conversation with the country's head of government, i asked him to explain the

country's success. he pointed to three things. first he said tunisia has existed as a political entity for 3,000 years from the times of ancient carthage. second, he noted that tunisia is almost entirely sunni. it does not have the sectarian and tribal differences like eye iraq and libya. third he explained that on the first post-independence leader tunisia built strong political and administrative institutions. but in addition to all these structural and historical advantag advantages, tunisia has benefited from wide leadership. the old order, the elites were still very powerful so the country wouldn't be run by excluding them. he noted that you cannot go for total victory. in mature democracies, perhaps

the party that up with of the polls would have its way but gives the youth and fragility it's leaders decided to go for consensus and compromise. we lost power. but we won tunisia. he remained surprisingly optimistic about the arab spring. people will not go back to the old ways of tyranny. like the french revolution the arab spring has produced turmoil and violence and reaction, but eventually it will transform all these dictatorships and monarchies in the muslim world. that's a note of optimism in a otherwise bleak landscape. for more go to cnn.com/fareed and read my "washington post" column this week. and let's get started.

so what to make of the white house's apparent aboutface. the decision to spend 50 special operations forces into syria after saying for years it would not put boots on the ground. let's dig into that. joining me now is richard at the state department. he joins me from the council on foreign relations where he's the president. richard, is this a big shift or is this as the white house would like us to believe just an enhancement of an existing mission? >> it's probably closer to that. it's a significant shift. it's meant to correct the basic deficiency in u.s. policy where we haven't had a ground partner for years and we've learned we can't do it from the air or simply create a ground partner. >> but it falls way short of the kind of massive interventions we saw in both iraq and afghanistan. >> i understand the tactical issue here which is as you say kind of just allows the u.s. to operate militarily more effectively but it's partnering

with the kurds even though they present it's a multi-ethnic force. the kurds don't want to go into raqqah, defeat isis, take control of syria. they just want their enclave. so it's sort of a defensive strategy to create a safe haven for the kurds. it's almost like a humanitarian intervention rather than a political/military one to take control of syria. >> exactly right. this is not an all syria strategy. it's not wildly ambitious. i don't mean to diminish what it is. it's not the beginning of restoring syria as a country. this is essential to stabilize syria. what you'll end up with if this succeeds, probably for years is a syria of four, five, six enclaves. a government enclave, one for isis, one for groups like nusra, one for the kurds. that's the definition of success here. >> what i'm worried about is there is a tendency in these

kind of situations to do tactical things that enhance your position that are more effective, but you don't think a lot about the strategy. so what i'm trying to figure out is what is the strategy if this succeeds? if you convince the kurds to take an isis, if these ground forces in syria help, then you take over towns like raqqah where the -- isis is headquartered and you have a bunch of kurds who are now in charge of raqqah or kurds assisted by americans. that's not going to go over well with the 85% sunni syrian population who would regard that as much of an imposition. >> what i think this does is potentially stabilize the situation. keeps a bad situation from continuing to get worse. it then buys you time by freezing or slowing the situation on the ground, it gives time for some of the

diplomacy, say, in vienna to work. over time, the united states with russia, with iran and saweddy arabia and others can talk about a transition in damascus. we could work with some transitional successor government. that's the only longer term strategy. this can buy you time until you get to that point. >> what do you think of the -- of the idea of iran being invited to join these talks? obviously, they're crucially involved. iranian militias are helping the assad regime. hezbollah which is essential aided by aran is helping the assad regime. so they're a big player on the ground. would that translate to them being helpful at the negotiating table? >> that is not a victory or success for aran.

so i think they understand that at some point in this process, bashar al assad has to go. they do it as a favor to themselves. i think the russians understand the same thing. we have to be flexible that he's not going to go as the first step in a political process. i can't sit here and tell you we're going to be able to partner with the iranians here, but it's worth trying. in the meantime, by working with the kurds, by working with some arabs, we can perhaps slow the momentum of isis. i think this is a time buy, but what we're doing it helps -- not calm, but at least make the situation on the ground from getting worse. and at least it creates a backdrop where diplomacy can succeed. right now we have no backdrop. we have an imbalance of power that works against us. >> do you think that, you know, between the 3,500 troops in iraq

now the 50 in syria, the united states is reengaged in a way that, you know, they are now going to be even more in control of the situation? because what i worry about, at the end of the day, this is a very deep sectarian divide. you described it as the middle east 30-year war. we just happen to now have 3,500 troops in the middle of the middle east sectarian war. can we shape the outcome with these incremental strategic pointed interventions? >> i think that's only true if your goal is to win a war in the traditional sense. i don't think it's our goal to restore iraq. i don't think it's our goal to restore a functioning national syria. i would simply say our goal is to keep as many innocent people as we can alive, and to keep the

terrorists from continuing to roll up territory. this relatively limited involvement can do that. sometimes in foreign policy, you have ambitious goals what you want to achieve. even that relatively modest goal may turn out to be sufficiently ambitious for us. the sort of announcement made this week is consistent with trying to keep the middle east from going over the cliff rather that trying to remake the middle east in our image. >> richard haas, very, very interesting conversation. thank you so much. >> thank you. now from syria to iraq. the united states is talking about putting a handful of troops in syria, but it already has thousands in iraq. so how should we think about the united states' past and future involvement in iraq? you'll hear from the deputy secretary of state tony lincoln next.

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lasting defeat. >> so is the united states back in the combat business in iraq? ash carter said this week before the senate arms services committee that the u.s. was considering direct action on the ground. i wanted to take you inside the administration's thinking on this important issue. for that, you're about to see an interview i did for our documentary, "long road to hell: america in iraq." i sat down with the deputy secretary of state in august of the state department. in his current role and last ones as deputy national security advisor to obama and national security advisor to biden. so understand iraq in 2015, we have to fully appreciate why the obama administration pulled out in 2011. and that is where blinken begins. >> at the end of the day, the iraqis wanted us out.

that's what happened. and the body politic was clear on that. the only group that really wanted us to stay were the kurds. sunnis, shia, they didn't believe that every step along the way starting with president bush and then president obama. every step along the way, the iraqis didn't believe we would get out of the cities, we did. they believe we would end our combat mission, we did. they didn't believe we would leave at the end of 2011. in my judgment at least, we actually had to leave in order to reengage later and to get back in. >> to what extent do you think you do have a coherent, functioning partner in iraq today? >> we have an increasingly functioning partner in iraq, but it's a -- it's a work in progress. it was important to have a partner on the ground because it

was our firm belief from the experience of the last decade that the most effective and sustainable way to deal with this problem was to have people who were willing to fight for their own country, do the work on the ground with our air support, intelligence, weapons, advice. but people taking back their own country. so in the past year, as a result of these efforts and as a result of much greater coherence among the iraqis special the coalition, the territory that isil controls is down 35% from where it was when the coalition was first formed. thousands of isil members have been killed, much of their material has been destroyed. and in many parts of iraq, they are on their heels, not on their toes. but they're still capable,

obviously, of taking the initiative. they still have a base and sanctuary in syria. and the one part of iraq where things have been much more difficult is anbar province precisely because of this conflict between a predominantly shia iraqi army and a sunni population. what's changed is the realization this was a problem by the iraqi government in baghdad and a genuine effort for the first time to mobilize sunnis in the fight, to bring them in, to populate the beginnings of a national guard, to bring more of them into the iraqi army itself, to get more control over the so-called popular mobilization forces that have shia militia in them. to actually put in place funds through the u.n. to stabilize areas that were newly liberated. and we're seeing that start -- let me emphasize start, to work.

>> but was the iraq war a hopeless endeavor? >> you know, people will make their judgments about the war, whether it was wise to get into it the way we got into it, the way we prosecuted it. but by the time the obama administration came into office, that was an inheritance that we had to deal with. and given the extraordinary sacrifice of so many americans, our military, our diplomats and others, we were determined to make the best possible future we could for iraq and to live up to that responsibility. and that's what we tried to do. i think there were moments in the last years when you could see -- and indeed, we can still see, a way forward for iraq. but again, at the end of all of this, as much as we can do, it's -- it depends on the iraqis themselves. they have to decide the future

of their country. they have to decide that that future depends on them actually working together and not -- and not cross-purposes. >> it's not an an know investigation of america's historic role, a fatalism that says the united states can't affect these regions or the future? >> the question is not whether we can affect them. i think we can affect them. the question is whether what we do can truly be dispositive in shaping their futures. and i think it's our belief fundamentally that the answer is it's up to the people of the country in question to do that. we can help, we can push, we can produ prod, we can support. but it's not up to us. it comes back to this basic proposition that most of these problems and tensions are not about us. so by definition, there's not

some simple solution that is within the power of the united states. it has to be them. and the question is, what can we do if anything to maximize the potential for a positive outcome and to minimize the potential for a negative one. >> that interview with tony blinken was part of our latest special "long road to hell: america in iraq." next on gps, why in the world did china just reverse nearly four decades of policy dictating how many children its citizens could bear? they did it for good reasons, and i will tell you why western leaders should pay attention when we come back. and sometimes i struggle to sleep at night, and stay awake during the day. this is called non-24. learn more by calling 844-824-2424. or visit your24info.com.

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now for our what in the world segment. the central committee of china's communist party made a decision this week that will change the course of that country and perhaps the world. after four days of intense meetings, beijing announced it would end it's one child policy

which forbade many chinese couples from having multiple children. from now on, all couples in china will be allowed to have two children. their greatest obstacle was its demographics. it was going to have too few young workers and too many old retirees. this new policy aims to change the country's fate. i remember when the policy was adaopted in the late 1970s. i was growing up in india. and people there were envious. the mentality that produced china and india's family planning policies was understandable. four countries have little money and many mouths to feed. when couples had six or eight or ten children, they were destined

to stay poor. but the policies and the theories behind them turned out to be wrong. in 1968, the stanford biologist wrote a book titled "the population bomb." it became a huge best seller as he warned we simply do not have the resources for the number of people on the planet. today, the earth's population is twice what it was in 1968. the "new york times" has noted, and yet we have found innovative ways not just to survive, but prosper. however, the idea persists that our big problem is too many people. as was recently noted in the "wall street journal," the united nations says we will add 2 billion people implying an unmanageable strain on our resources. as countries develop, their

birthrates plunge. world population growth which has averaged nearly 2% per year for decades is now about 1%. in 83 countries comprising nearly half the global population, women are averaging less than two children, which means that couples are not replacing themselves. even in a poor country like india, the fertility rate has plummeted. couples had more than six children on average in 1960, now the average is less than three. the real problem the rich world faces acutely ais a population implosion. only the countries that adapt early to the population implosion will thrive in the baby bust era. he predicts countries will only be able to thrive economically if they become friendly to immigrants or convince their people to have more babies, which is of course much harder.

china has carefully studied the data and they are trying to adjust to the new realities out there. now, will western politicians follow suit? next on gps, the presidential race. more importantly, what sda it actually mean and do they mean anything? we danced in a german dance group. i wore lederhosen.man. when i first got on ancestry i was really surprised that i wasn't finding all of these germans in my tree.

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i don't know what to do. sfx: (doorbell) what's this? swiffer sweeper and dusters? this is nice and easy boys. it really sticks to it. it fits in all of the tight spaces this is really great does that look familiar to you? i'm no longer the butler, i am just one of the guys. trump is soaring, no, carson is now ahead. hillary has a solid lead. but wait, bernie is leading in iowa. i scratch my head and wonder what to think. what should i pay attention to, what should i ignore, and how in the world would anyone know when there are so many republican candidates in the field? so i brought in two actual experts to help me understand. joining me now, the queen of polling in iowa. and nate cohen writes for the

"new york times." so for that first question, with a huge field like this, i think to myself, how would one figure out for example, there obviously is some kind of anti-trump vote, non-trump vote, but it's probably divided among eight or nine candidates right now. is there some way to figure out what this is going to look like when it dwindles down to four? >> i agree with you. when we started polling looking at our preliminary data, how are we going to really set what the tiers are. your middle tier is gigantic and then you have people who don't even score. we were saying, we have to look at more than just the horse race question in order to really understand people's various strengths. with an index we put together, we created a way to see marco rubio for example had upside potential way early when we first started -- >> why?

what were you testing? >> his number in the first choice was not very big, but he had a very high number for second choice. and so he rose above where his first place position was. because you only get one vote. >> do you think at the end of the day, the republicans will end up with a more conventional candidate? >> i think so. and i think it's important to remember that the polls right now do not necessarily reflect where the results are going to be in the next few months. going back to the 2004 democratic race and then you look at it by iowa and the national polls, those 12 contests only get two of them right. they get new hampshire for clinton. they miss the national result in all of them. a lot is going to change. >> in other words, the people leading at this point in the race, it was all wrong? >> they all went onto lose. often times, they did go into win, santorum, registering at

the bottom of the polls. republican voters haven't really begun to think very much about this race. they're going to change their minds a lot. what we're seeing is a reflection of the media of the debate, not necessarily the underlying factors that will ultimately drive their decisions. >> can the debates -- you've been doing this for a long time. can a performance in the debate really boost people to the point that it actually starts registering? >> george mcgovern in the 1984 debate, the only statesman presenting himself that way and saying look, if you don't think i can win, vote whoever it is that you want. if you want to second a message, and he surged up to third place. so debates do matter. >> a lot of people look at iowa and say wait a minute.

huge numbers of evangelicals, totally unprrepresentative of ts country. why do they go first? >> you can make the argument that iowa is the worst place to start the process except for every place else. the benefit that iowa has is that you can conquer the state. you can't conquer texas. iowa, you can drive up to souix county and meet the people and learn it. you've got to organize people to show up. it really is a test of a campaign's ability to get things done in a way that isn't as true in other states. >> what do you think? what are people focusing on which is the wrong way to think about this right now? >> i think people look at who is at the top of the polls and they're very impressed with donald trump having 25% of the polls and that's just not that much historically.

there are a lot of candidates with a lot less than that that have gone onto win. it will not take a lot of votes to win iowa. low turnout rates with a lot of people in the field. i don't know that the way people are reading the polls right now, focusing on flashing at the top is really going to state very much how it will end up. >> on the democratic side -- >> the democratic side may just be as clear as it looks. hillary clinton may be running away to a very easy victory. >> we don't know. we never make predictions because it always includes a wish. we'll know when it ends. >> pleasure having you guys on. when we come back, one of the world's greatest scientists richard dawkins on why the republican frontrunners don't seem to understand science.

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in 1859, charles darwin published his book on the origin of species. in it, he laid out his theory of evolution eventually applying it to all animals. the opposing theory is creationism. which states that god created men and women in his own image. 98% of the professional scientists who are members of the american association for the advancement of science believe that humans and other living things have evolved over time. when the american public was polled, just 65% said they

believe that. and of the gop candidates, as you'll find out in a moment, almost none of them seem to believe it. i wanted to learn about evolution from one of the greatest scientific thinkers out there. richard dawkins is a long-time oxford professor who has written prolifically on science and atheism. he has a new memoir out. listen in. >> so if i look at the united states, currently, the republican presidential candidates, as far as i know, every single one of the declared candidates with the exception of trump about whom one doesn't know which way he would answer, when asked about evolution essentially say they don't believe it. jeb bush was asked. he said i sort of believe it, but i don't think it should be taught in schools. >> this fills me with despair. this is not something you believe in or not. this is a fact.

just as much of a fact as the earth goes around the sun. you can't not believe it. i don't believe those presidential candidates are all ignorant. i believe what they're doing, they think that they've got to say that in order to appeal to their constituency. if that's true, it's deeply depressing. >> in your book, you talk about some of this. so how would you explain to somebody who says i don't believe in evolution? what do you use as powerful evidence for evolution? >> i think the most powerful evidence is not fossils, although they are the main evidence for the actual history of life. the most powerful evidence that evolution has happened is probably molecular genetics. in darwin's time, you looked at a human hand and compare it with a bat's wing, a whale's flipper,

a lion paw, you see the same bones. you can identify them bone-for-bone. now we can do that same kind of thing, but with molecules, with actual coded letters of dna. you can actually look at long reams of code and actually compare the letter-by-letter exactly as you might compare two versions of the book of jeremiah or something. it's letter-for-letter comparison. you can actually count the number of differences in millions between, say, humans and chimpanzees, humans plus chim p chimpanzees plus monkeys. you can take any two animals you like and literally count the number of letters that's different. >> what do you say to ben

carson, teaches medicine at yale. he says he's a creationist. he thinks that god created the world, and he says you're going to tell me that the complexity of the human brain came out of a soup bowl of chemicals and stuff? >> that's what these people don't understand. they think it happened suddenly. of course you don't believe it, obviously. it could happen suddenly, but if it happens gradually, each stage gives way to the next stage and the next stage and each stage is only a tiny bit different from the one before, then you could start understanding it. you just told me all the republicans except one say they don't believe in evolution. that's a disgrace. for a senior, an eminent, distinguished doctor as he is to say that, it's even worse because of course evolution is the bedrock of biology. and biology is the bedrock of medicine. so for a distinguished doctor to not understand, i have to use

the word "understand," he clearly doesn't understand the fundamental theorem of his own subject. that is a terrible indictment. >> so when people say it's a theory, it's a theory like all of science is a theory in the sense that it does rest on evidence. >> yeah. we've got to stop calling it a theory because the word "theory" is misunderstood. it's take on the mean hypothesis. evolution is a fact. it's as simple as that. it is a fact. >> another way of putting it, it's a theory that has been confirmed by thousands of pieces of -- >> thousands of pieces of independent neutrally confirming pieces of data. >> carson, i'm dwelling on him because, you know, he is a very important republican candidate but also because i think he represents what a lot of people think. this represents the height of arrogance of humans to believe that they can understand god's mystery. >> yes. i mean, i wouldn't want to call mr. carson arrogant. he's a nice man. i've met him and i liked him.

but it is a form of arrogance to say we know what god does. the only way to know anything is by looking at the evidence, and in this particular case the evidence is overwhelming. there are plenty of scientific ideas where the evidence is not overwhelming and scientists disagree and it's over the doubt and needs further research. in the case of evolution, there is no doubt. it is a fact. >> richard dawkins, pleasure to have you on. >> a great pleasure as always. thank you very much. next on "gps," if you think american politics is a joke, let me introduce you to a new world leader who is an actual comedian. where in the world is it? find out when we come back. of my parents and my grandparents. i was getting all these leaves and i was going back generation after generation. you start to see documents and you see signatures of people that you've never met. i mean, you don't know these people, but you feel like you do. you get connected to them. i wish that i could get into a time machine and go back 100 years, 200 years and just meet these people. being on ancestry just made me feel

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in the last few months we've witnessed dr. ben carson and businessman donald trump overshadow established politicians on the campaign trail. and it brings me to my question of the week. what country just elected a

professional comedian who has never held political office as its president? indonesia, zambia, guatemala, or kazakhstan? stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer. this week's book of the week is "killing a king: the assassination of yitzhak rabin and the remaking of israel" by dan ephron. what of the great and real what ifs of history is this -- what if israel's prime minister, yitzhak rabin, had not been assassinated in 1995? a decorated war hero, rabin seemed determined to make peace with the palestinians and forge a two-state solution. in this fast-paced, well-written book, ephron takes us through that fascinating crucial moment in middle eastern history. now for "the last look." on tuesday, a guided missile destroyer called the "uss last passed within 12 nautical miles of reclaimed islands in the south china sea.

china said the operation was, quote, a very serious provocation and warned washington not to, create, quote trouble out of nothing. but creating islands out of next to nothing is what has led to all this trouble in the first place. you see, the defense department says that over the past two years china has reclaimed almost 3,000 acres of artificial islands in the south china sea, an area sought after for its strategic maritime position, so rich with natural resources that some in china call it the second persian gulf. take a look at this, which was totally transformed this year. this one fiery cross reef was built up in a year. according to the defense department, in just 20 months china reclaimed 17 times more land than vietnam, malaysia, brunei, the philippines, and taiwan have claimed over the past 40 years combined. and even after stopping its land

reclamation, china continues to worry its neighbors with the construction of facilities on the islands including a 3,000-meter airstrip. the u.s. warned this week that its patrols are expected to become more frequent, but the chinese foreign ministry said if the u.s., quote, keeps stirring this up, it will be necessary for china to speed up its construction activities as "the new york times" pointed out. this is one case in which china's amazing speed, efficiency, and determination to get stuff built might prove cause more problems than it solves. the correct answer to the gps challenge question of the week is c -- guatemalans elected television committee jimmy morales in a landslide victory. morales, who had just 1% of the polls back in april, surged to victory with a clear slogan -- not corrupt, not a thief, as reuters reported. this was a welcome mantra considering guatemala's president resigned in september and went to jail following a

corruption scandal. but morales will find that cleaning up guatemala is going to be very tough and very serious work. thanks to all of you for being part of my program. see you next week. thanks for joining me in the "newsroom." i'm fredricka whitfield. we begin with new developments in the russian plane crash in egypt that killed all 224 people on board. russian aviation officials now say the airliner broke into pieces in midair. this is new video of the crash site of russian aviation officials said fragments of the plane are scattered around seven square miles on the sinai peninsula. right now nothing has been ruled out as to the cause. but now another international carrier, emirates airlines, is rerouting flights to avoid that region. both flightor