princess leia acertificates herself as -- i'm on a diplomatic mission to alderon. >> a step up from the prequels where laia's mother notes. >> i was not elected to watch my people suffer and die while you discuss this in a committee. >> people suffering and dying while politicians yak it up in a committee hearing doesn't really sound all that long, long ago or so far, far away. >> thanks for watching. fareed zakaria 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 a great show for you today starting with the american treasury secretary, jack lew, and his counterpart george

osbourne on another way to battle isis, cut off its cash. the economic fight against terror, also the end of the era of zero at the federal reserve. and what a british conservative thinks of donald trump. also, there is no solution to isis without solving syria. bashar al assad's first cousin will tell me how he thinks his blood relative will finally be defeated. and where does jeb bush come from? john meachem will tell us how the bush family has had such striking success in american high politics, until now. then a noble prize winner will tell us how his research into american death rates might explain donald trump's appeal. >> our country is out of control.

>> but first, here's my take. radical islamic terrorism. apparently the phrase, if you can actually say it, has mystical powers. at tuesday's republican debate, the candidates once more took pains to point out that they would speak the dreaded words that president obama and hillary clinton dare not. here's ted cruz in his opening statement. >> we have a president who is unwilling to utter its name. >> as it turns out, the first time i described the enemy as radical islam was in a column i wrote just days after september 11th, 2001. i used the exact phrase, radical islamic terrorism in another column later that month 14 years ago. i can honestly say it gives one absolutely nothing in the way of an answer or strategy to deal with terror attacks.

in fact, obama has often spoken about the problems of extremism in islam. here he is in his 2014 speech to the u.n. general assembly which focused significantly on that topic. >> it is time for the world, especially in muslim communities, to explicitly, forcefully and consistently reject the ideology of organizations like al qaeda and isil. today it is violence within muslim communities that has become the source of so much human misery. >> in his speech after the san bernardino shootings, obama again made some of these points, leading the late night comics seth meyers to offer this quip. >> so he used the words radical islam in terrorism. he just didn't use them in the right order which would be a problem if it was a spell and he was harry potter, but he's not so it isn't. >> obama and clinton have chosen

not to specifically directly describe the enemy as radical islam out of deference to the many muslim countries and leaders who feel it gives the terrorists legitimacy. president george w. bush was similarly careful in his rhetoric. the best proof that calling radical islam by its name provides no solutions is that the republican candidates had none at tuesday's debate. after all the huffing and puffing, they proposed more bombing. more bombing has proved hard because there are many innocent civilians in isis strong holds. no fly zones would require about 200 american aircraft and would do almost nothing to stop the violence which is all conducted on land and some of it via helicopters flying low enough that they are not covered by a no fly zone.

arming the kurds directly would enrage the iraqi and turkish governments, both allies. these are judgment can you tell us -- calls, not no brainers. it's not the same as fighting radical islam. strangely, after the g.o.p. candidates boldly and correctly described the enemy as an ideology which is much broader than one group, they spoke almost entirely about fighting that one group. even if isis were defeated tomorrow, would that stop the next lone wolf jihadry in new york or paris or london? the enemy is in fact radical islam, an ideology that has spread over the last four decades for a variety of reasons and now infects men and women across the muslim world. the fight must at its core be against the ideology itself, and that can only be done by

muslims. they alone can purge their faith of this extremism. after a slow start, there are now several important efforts under way, more than people realize. the west can help by encouraging these forces of reform, allying with them and partnering in efforts to modernize these societies. but that is much less satisfying than hurling invehicle tifs, calling for bans orn muslims an advocating carpet bombing. read -- for more, read my "washington post" column this week, and let's get started. on thursday there was an extraordinary gathering across town of the united nations, the united states treasury secretary was the chair of his counterparts from around the world. it was the first time ever that

the security council's finance ministers met. they were there to come up with pla plan to fight isis economically, cut off its funding. joining me now are secretary lew and his counterpart, george osbourne. explain why this is so important. it sounds grand and everyone is against isis, but what will it specifically do that will be effective now? >> fareed, yesterday's meeting was historic both because it was the first time finance ministers met, but it also is to consider a resolution jointly sponsored by the united states and russia to bring the world together to make a very strong statement that we're not going to allow isil to continue to fund itself the way it has been. we are going to work together to shut down formal and informal means of financing as best we can. and it gave us more tools to do that. we have made progress. we are working hard as the united states to make sure that the oil revenue is slowed down

by striking at their oil infrastructure, but there's also -- >> trump keeps saying we should be bombing their oil fields. i assume the answer to that is we are. >> we are bombing their oil infrastructure in a way that is making it very difficult for them to look forward to the kind of oil sales that they've had in the past. let me give you an example. we've targeted the tanker trucks that move oil in the country and we've taken 400 of those tanker trucks out in the last month, month and a half. we're going tow infrastructure around their oil refineries. but that's not the only source isil has. isil is sophisticated in terms of its financing. it started out conquering territory, seizing banks and spending the money in the banks. and it developed an oil revenue stream. we have to move as a world community to make sure that they do not have that kind of access, and that means going across border sales, formal and

informal, and stopping the flow of money into isil-controlled territory. >> george, what is the hardest part of this? is it that the islamic state, isis, is a band of thugs who operate through the cash economy and things like that, or is it that it's difficult to get countries like turkey, places like dubai to actually cooperate? is that part of the issue? >> first of all, i thought jack did a great job in getting the finance ministers sitting around that finance security table for the first time since the united nations was created. often you see the divisions played out and there's unity. that sends a message to the terrorists that they can't divide us but also the middle men. there really is no place to hide in the international community. when you come to isis, daesh,

it's of course a very unusual organization because it physically controls a lot of territory. it's one of our big challenges and one of the reasons it's absolutely got to be defeated. part of its revenues come from a kind of extortion version that extracts revenues and taxes from the people it is suppressing, but it also exports oil and other materials, and we are both militarily, british forces, u.s. forces and others, going after those external trading roots and the oil fields and the like. we've also got to cut off the financing and now you've got a united nations resolution brought forward by the united states and russia and enforced by every other country. that's a very powerful message to anyone thinking of getting involved in this business or any financial institution thinking of supporting it. that is going to be something we don't want to do. >> it's not like you can shut down the electronic transfers of

cash? >> we've done that. what we need to do now is be effective and only the world community together can do that. this resolution does exactly what george said. if you're a middle man you're not dealing with isil. isil sells something to you, you sell it to someone else and then it goes somewhere for commercial sale. every point in that process you're subject to sanctions, if you're indirect or direct. that's going to raise the price of participating but it's all that execution. we've now got to work individually and collectively to make sure that the promises made in the resolution are kept. one of the things about isil, their strength is their weakness. the fact that they control a lot of territory, a lot of people, means that they have a constant need to replenish their money. if we can diminish their ability to do that, they have to make hard choices and they get weaker, not stronger. this is not an on/off switch.

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with humira, control is possible. we are back now with the american secretary of the treasury, jack lew, and his british counterpart, george osbourne, who has one of the world's greatest titles. jack, the federal reserve finally raised interest rates.

the theory behind that is that the american economy is recovering nicely and smartly. even though there are a lot of people who think sthey shouldn' have, your predecessor says they should have kept the rates for another year. my question is, is the american economy strong enough to withstand rate rises? >> you're totally correct. i'm going what i can tell you about the american economy is here we have seven, eight years after the worst recession since the great depression and our economy is glowing. we've seen the unemployment rate drop from 10% to roughly 5%. we're seeing strong consumer demand, record level of auto sales and improvements in the housing market. i think we have a lot to feel good about in terms of the way

the u.s. economy is moving. it's not all the way where we need to go. we need to make sure that the benefits of growth are more broadly shared and that wages and workers are feeling the benefit. frankly, the u.s. economy is doing quite well. we have a lot of international headwinds and staying in a very good place. my job is to wake up in the morning making sure that we're doing as well as we can having the u.s. economy perform and that's what i'm going to do for the next next. >> the u.s. economy is the second fastest economy in the world. the fastest growing economy is britain. it seems like the united states and britain did a lot of similar things. they reacted early, very quickly and aggressively with monetary policy, reduced interest rates, reform and recap of the banking sector, rescued the banks. there's a difference on the stimulus. the united states had a stimulus, the u.k. didn't so

much. is this the right formula? is this why you're growing so fast as well, george? >> look, it's an interesting fact that the british and american economies have grown by exactly the same amount since 2010 when i took this job. and i think we both have tried to address the problems in our systems, to clear our financial systems. we were of course two of the countries most affected by the great recession. but also i think trying to stimulate job creation, make our economies competitive and dynamic. i'm a great admirer of what jack and the u.s. administration have done. and of course we are now shouldering the burden of the world's largest growth. the euro zone sadly remains weak. it was stronger than it was. there are some big challenges in emerging economies. let's take the decision by the fed -- a bit more than jack is.

i wouldn't be able to comment on the british bank of england because that's independent, but i thought the federal reserve executed this maneuver very professionally. it was well signalled. it did not cause a great deal of turbulence or trauma in the market. it's a significant moment after so many years of rates on the floor to be raised. janet yellen who i've got a huge amount of respect for has been very clear that she's going to be data driven going forward. >> they won't raise them too far too fast? >> that's what they're communicating. they're saying we're going to look at the data. the rate cycles aren't going to be as high as they were in previous cycles. we're saying something similar in the u.k. i would take this all as part of recovery, getting back to something approaching the more sort of normal monetary policy that we would have seen in

previous decades. is itself a step that our economies are getting back to strength. >> if we can get the rest of the world to use the kinds of reforms that george is talking about, the global economy would be doing better. >> we have to get to dessert. george osbourne, you're not just chancellor of the ex checker, you are a leading strategy for the conservative party. many see you as being the architect of its victories. what do you make of donald trump? you described his ideas as nonsense at the house of parliament but what do you make of it? why is it catching on? >> i think in all our political systems there is space for pop lichl and people who come up with easy answers. we've been through a tough time as a country and so has the united states. we've been through this very deep recession, the global problems are very complex and

that lends itself to people who come up with simplistic answers. but the i think about democracies, old and established democracies like our two countries, the people of america and the people of britain are actually very smart. when actually forced to choose their leaders, in the case of the united states their commander-in-chief, i think they look pretty closely who is on offer. i'm not going to get into picking candidates, but i'd say in the united states you've got some good candidates but you've got some better ones, too. >> trump keeps saying we're losing. we're losing to the chinese. we're losing to the japanese, we're losing to mexico. his whole appeal as he projects it is i will help us win. are we losing? >> fareed, i have to say that three years into my current role, i have seen the attitudes

around the world shift dramatically. three years ago people were asking how could the united states have gotten the world into a financial crises, and now the question i hear is how do we do as well as the united states. how do we get to be as resilient and bounce back. it gets to the american people. it gets to our system. it gets to the fact that we don't stay down. we innovate. we move forward. the kind of policies we've taken have made a real difference. in the look around the world this weekend as congress finishes its work, we're doing unfinished business. what this stands for around the world is american leadership. what i've heard is the world wants america to stand up. improving quota reform means we're going to stay very strong in the world. next on gps, fighting isis.

i will talk about an inside look at what is going on in syria and what it will take to bring the assad regime to an end when we come back.

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world community truly wants to tackle isis it has to find a solution in syria. the first part of the syrian solution is deciding what to do about the assad regime which has controlled the country for 45 years.

joining me now is a member of that family but he's not here to defend it. ribal al assad is president bashar al assad's first cousin. their fathers were brothers. he runs the organization for democracy and freedom in syria. you left syria long ago. your father fell out with them. we all agree the assad regime is a bad regime. it's been five years of war. what is striking to me is there have been very few defections from that regime. for a regime that has been this battered, the fact that there have been so few defections tells me that the organization that he represents have rallied around him completely but also key minorities, christians, armenia armenians, he has more support than we realize.

>> of course. not only the generals but the army, the 90% of the soldiers are also from the sunni. syria, it's a beautiful people, and we were not able to give assurances to this minority to show them that there is a viable alternative that could take the regime and that could move forward, keep their interest also that they have. this is what we have been missing for so long. we have not looked into trying to bring together a democratic opposition that share our values which is democracy and freedom but also it's to have security that's doing a conference for example, calling for all groups that should come in and commit to our values of human rights, democracy, and committing to equality of all citizens and the rule of law, regardless of secretary, religion and gender. that would ha

. >> right now the opposition seems to be main ly islamists. it follows political islam. here's why i think that that is true. for 30 years the assad regime has battled these islamists. you go back to the 1980s and the assad regime was brutally suppressing islam. i don't want to get into this in great deal but your father was commanding general and is accused of being one of the people who put down a rebellion which killed maybe 10,000, 15,000 people. my point is similply, this batt has been going on for a long time. it didn't start two years ago. >> this is where i would like you to read actually the latest declassified report by the defense agency. >> i have seen it. there are people who say your father was not centrally involved. there are others who do. >> exactly. >> my point is that the regime massacred islamists in the 1980s

by the thousands. >> the official report and the numbers, it doesn't name my father. secondly, it puts the number at 2,000 and they were members of the islamic brotherhood. >> all i'm saying is this has been going on for 30 or 40 years. this is not two years ago because the united states didn't help the moderates. this has been going on for 30 years. perhaps because the regime is a minority regime, perhaps because these islamists fear it or dislike it. for whatever reason, they've been fighting for a long time. >> yes. >> forget about what you wish would happen. what is likely going to happen in syria? >> i think it is possible. we have to try, first of all, to secure and assure those minorities and the peaceful majorities of sunnis that there is a viable alternative, that there is a viable democratic alternative. those people were looking west at the united states and other western countries. this is the democracy that they

wanted because they know very well this is the only thing that will keep syria safe. we have to find the right people that have links and are respected by the military, by the baath party and the peaceful majority of the sunnis and who will assure them to keep the institution intact and of course will fight with the united states, with russia, with the western world, the threat of islamic extremism. >> your father was involved in syrian politics. he's one of al assad's closest aids. >> does. >> does he think that bashar al assad will voluntarily leave power? >> i think if there's a situation where the people of syria, the majority of people of syria find a viable alternative that would assure that they will not be affected, that there is a genuine transition, peaceful transition to democracy, he will

have to lead. >> pleasure to have you. >> thank you. next on gps we will talk about another political dynasty, this one close to home and democratic. the bush family. many have found great success on the american political stage, so what is holding back jeb bush. i will talk to jon meacham who recently published a terrific biography of george bush senior. the dams and the railroads. ♪john henry was a steel drivin' man♪ hmm, catchy. they built the golden gates and the empire states. and all this doin' takes energy -no matter who's doin'. there's all kinds of doin' up in here. or what they're doin'. what the heck's he doin? energy got us here. and it's our job to make sure there's enough to keep doers doin' the stuff doers do... to keep us all doin' what we do.

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tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. talk to your doctor and visit humira.com this is humira at work many pundits believe that by this time in the 2016 election cycle jeb bush would have vanquished virtually all of his competitors. he hasn't done that, not even close. indeed, the latest polls show his support to be way below trump, cruz, carson and rubio, stuck in the single percentage points. so what happened to this man who

ought to have politics in his blood? to answer this, i asked jon meacham to join me. he's the author of a new biography called "destiny and power, the american odyssey of george h.w. bush." i asked how the bushes became the dynasty of our times. pleasure to have you on. >> thank you, sir. >> you talk about how the bush family has sort of almost uniquely become in modern times this great american political dynasty and you say something very interesting in the book, that perhaps they have been able to be this great dynasty not so much because they are enduring and changing but because they change so much. you point out that prescott bush

and the son goes to texas. >> right. they are powerful because they adapt, not because they endure. the bushes we know about, the bushes we talk about are those who break away from the existing mold. george bush, as you say, goes to texas. george w. bush remains in texas which was while the family moved to washington. jeb bush -- >> he becomes a born again methodist and moves with the current of christianity to a more evangelical type. >> yes. and remains very much a texan at a time when his father was always a hybrid of the two. and jeb bush went to florida and set himself up. >> and married a hispanic. married a hispanic. >> they mirror the changes in society. >> they do. you look at kennebunkport and think they're these buttoned down folks. they're very emotional. they're very -- it's a real

family. they don't sit around and talk about how to get the electoral votes in michigan. >> the key you described was going to texas which i was interested in. george h.w. bush, his father was a senator, a wall street finance guy, he's offered a job at brown brothers which is one of the blueish of blue wall street chip funds. he says i've got to do something in texas. do you think he understood that he needed to go where the demography of the country was going? what was it? >> i think it was less demography and more difference. he said to me when emphasizing the world different, if i had gone to wall street it wouldn't have been different enough. i would have been in my father's shadow. i would have been in my grandfather g.h. walker's shadow and i would have been a big man in the lynx club. you can sort of see what his life would have been like in 1948 on wall street.

he would have lived in connecticut, subscribed to the new yorker. he would have ridden the train in, played tennis at the river club, played golf every sunday after church. he would have raised money for house candidates coming through. he might have dabbled in new england politics. but even if he had done well in new england politics, think about this. a new englander -- a new england republican was never going to become president of the united states. by going to texas he made both his presidency possible and that of his son. >> when he does all this, is he also and is the family also adapting to the changing republican party? you point out something that i had actually forgotten, when he ran for the senate in 1964, he ran as a goldwater republican, not a moderate. >> right. he said labels are for cans. one of the interesting things we're seeing now in 2016 is it is a chapter in a long story.

george h.w. bush was never a favorite of the republican base as the party grew more conservative after 1964. he begins to move to the center where he is more comfortable. when he goes to congress in 1966 -- you'll love this as a political scientist -- 53% of the time he voted with lyndon johnson when he was a member of congress the first two years. the second two years, nixon is president, the number soars to 55%. he called them as he saw them. that was his ambient political reality was a washington where you can agree with the president in the morning, disagree in the afternoon, but you didn't demonize him. the irony of course is that the world we have now has taken shape in his own presidency with the revolt of newt gingrich and the house republicans. >> what do you think is going through his mind now?

there's nothing like what's going on. >> there's nothing like it. i think he loves his father. almost every bush cried at some point in my interviews with them about him. and he about them. i think he's more like his father than his brother. i think the base of the party which was trending ever rightward as early as 1964 and which -- let's remember, george h.w. bush is a remarkable man but he only won three elections on his own, two for the house and the presidency of the united states. and he had to really convince the base that he was with them. i think that jeb would do better tactically if he had a little bit more of w in him. >> meaning? >> meaning the ability to relate. whatever you want to say about george w., you knew where he

stood and what he thought. in this book, president bush 41 says he's uncomfortable with the axis of evil rhetoric. when i took that to 43 he said my rhetoric did get hot a lot of the time but they understood me in midland. they don't understand jeb in midland yet. so i think that the more he can embody that kind of tactical wisdom, i think the better off he'll be. >> john men meacham, always a pleasure. >> thank you. next on gps, what does donald trump have to do with an alarming study about the death rates of middle aged white people in america? find out when we come back.

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it's not often that a nobel prize winning economist

publishing research that everyone can understand. but the latest paper from this year's lawyer at says that despite all of the health advances that the world has seen over the last decades, despite all the people living longer lives, there is one group, and just in america, that is seeing alarming death rates. and that group is middle-aged white americans. they are, as he puts it, killing themselves in record numbers. it's a fascinating and disturbing study and it might help explain a portion of the trump phenomenon. as a "washington post" article this week pointed out, the people found to be dying at an alarming rate are the same kind of people who, quote, are largely responsible for donald trump's lead in the race, unquote. i will ask professor deeten, a princeton professor, about that shortly, but first i wanted to understand the study's basic findings. so here we have this picture of

improving life expectancy in the rich world pretty much across the board, and you found this one anomaly. >> right. >> what is it -- what explains it i guess would be the simplest question? >> explain it is the $64,000 question and that we don't really know the answer to. but, you know, there's lots of possibilities. one is that these people who are in their 40s and 50s now -- and it is only that group. we're not talking about life expectancy as a whole. we're talking about mortality rates in middle age for white, nonhispanic americans. >> why is it going down? what's interesting about it is a lot of it is suicides and things like that? >> right. people seem to be killing themselves more quickly so the rise in suicides is certainly a part of this, but so is accidental poisonings which is

the term the cdc uses to mean accidental drug overdoses, drugs, prescription drugs or illegal drugs. we're talking about things like oxycodone, oxycontin or heroin and also cirrhosis of the liver. people are doing away with themselves quickly or slowly with alcohol and drugs. >> you paint a picture like this and i think of russia with dysfunction aal societies where everything is going wrong. but what you're describing is middle aged white americans. >> black mortality rates are still higher than whites but they're falling more rapidly. >> here the chart is moving the opposite direction. >> exactly. >> let's come back to the causes. what do you think is going on? you had a quote that was in the

"new york times." you said white americans, middle-aged white americans, seem to have lost the narrative of their lives. what did you mean? >> well, that's a direct quote from my colleague in anthropology who thinks in those terms but it's a wonderful quote, i think, and it gives you a really good idea. it's much worse among people who only have a high school education or less. if you go back 20, 30, 40 years when they were joining the labor force, you could get a good job as a high school graduate in a factory. you could get some on the job training. you could think about bettering yourself over your life as you moved up the hierarchy and now -- >> and you had a place in society. there was dignity in what you did, you could support your family, you were a member of a church. >> all of that. the factory is now in cambodia or in vietnam. there's nothing left in most towns.

their children are probably moving out if they have any smarts at all and they're left washed up so they're not as well as off as their parents were. a lot of their expectations of their life were dashed and their life has in some sense fallen apart. you could imagine that leading to a world of despair and a world in which people are sus exce exce except to these world abuse. >> i feel like it unlocks some of the mysteries of american politics, the anger, the rage that you see, whether it's the tea party, the trump voter and so much is against the cambodian factory, the chinese goods coming in, it feels like it's part of what you're describing. >> that would make sense.

we have very little direct evidence. when you look at a death certificate when someone dies of suicide it doesn't say whether they were planning to vote for mr. trump. these things are suggestive but it's hard to get hard evidence. as we go forward with this we're going to look at a lot more geography than we have and so on. but that makes perfect sense to me that these people have been -- there's very little for them either from the democrats or traditional republicans. the despair in their lives has not really been well addressed by a traditional party. >> the next time we'll have to get you on to talk about what work of yours won the nobel prize in economics. it's a whole different thing. >> thank you. next on gps, hanukkah just ended, christmas is coming. is santa the star of christmas for you, or is it jesus christ?

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ever air pollution red alert this week. residents took to wearing masks or simply staying indoors, and some even purchased canisters of fresh air from canada to cope with the crises. it brings me to my question of the week, what city has the world's most polluted air? beijing, mexico city, shanghai, or new delhi. stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer. i know many of you listen to our show's audio podcast. we have a new podcast page at cnn.com/podcast. you can find easy ways to get and share our show. this week book of the week is a shameless plug. i wrote a book this year in defense of a liberal education. it explains why i think an english or history graduate just as much as an engineer can be creative and innovative.

give it to our friends, to all of them in fact. the correct answer to our gps challenge question was d. new delhi has the highest concentrations of the kind of pollution that poses the greatest health risks, according to the world health organization. agreements may have been reached in paris this month that aim to improve air quality, but it will take drastic action before citizens of these cities can breathe easy. before you go, time for the last look. 90% of americans will celebrate christmas this week. according to the pew research search, more than half of the people who do, do so as a religious celebration, not simply a cultural holiday. does that surprise you? if so, you are not alone. around the world people tend to overestimate the number of nonreligious people in the country according to the perils of perception report. it was not the only

misperception in the roughly 30 countries surveyed. people tended to overestimate the proportion of wealth that the wealthiest 1% own. great britain was followed by other developed countries like france, australia and belgium. people generally overestimate the percentage of immigrants in their country. arm tines guessed 30% of their population is made up of immigrants where it is 5%. in the united states people guessed 33% where the actual number is 14%. people overestimated the average age. in brazil people estimated the average age to be 56 where it's 31. overall the country that was deemed to be the most ignorant was mexico, followed by india. south korea was the most

accurate. the united states actually came in fifth. as people go to the polls in the coming year, let's hope their votes are based more on reality and less on perceptions. we express our best wishes to all who are celebrating this month. merry christmas, season's greetings and happy new year. good morning, it's time for reliable sources. our weekly look at the story behind the story of how news and pop culture get made. ahead this higher, are news outlets tilting the scales in favor of hillary clinton? bernie sanders has been blasting the networks and his campaign manager will join me live. later, "star wars." we are about to find out if the new flick set an all-time box office record. the data will come in in a few minutes, and the famed film critic, a.o. scott, will be here to talk about it. first this morning, an error in the "new york times." it