moderate the florida gubernatorial debate, live at 7:00 p.m. eastern only here on cnn. thank you for watching "state of the union." up next for our viewers here in the united states, "fareed zakaria gps." this is "gps," the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. so nine days from now, americans will pass judgment on president obama and the democratic party. but i think most people would agree that the underlying issue for most americans is actually not president obama, but the american economy.

we're barely out of the worst recession since the 1930s and the light at the end of the tunnel looks dim. unemployment is still higher today, 16 months into the so-called recovery, than it was in the worst moments of all but one post-war recession. now many experts think this pessimism will go away once the economy bounces back, but if you read the polls, many americans believe that we're in the midst of something that is more than a cyclical down tuturdownturn. it is a structural shift that is hallowing out the american middle class. for them the american dream is fading. i happen to think that the experts are wrong and most americans are right. now, why is this happening? there are two big forces at work in the world today. the first is technology. technology, particularly information technology, did not actually create massive efficiencies in corporations until the mid- to late 1990s.

then it began and now it's become a tidal wave of efficiency. here's one example. jack welch, the former ceo of general electric, is now an investor in what was in 2007 a $12 billion business with 26,000 employees. listen to him explain what that business will look like when it gets out of the recession. >> when we get back there, with the technological improvements and the changes in business, we'll have 14,000 employees. not 26. so you've got almost a 50% fewer employees to do the same amount of business. >> so that's the technology effect. the second force at work is globalization. america's great companies have all gone global. the 500 largest american economies now get 46% of their profits from abroad, and the biggest ones actually get up to

60/80% of their produfits from abroad. but average american worker cannot surf this world. he's stuck in america. so what is the answer to his or her plight? well, it's a huge subject and i can't give you a quick fix now, but i'm spending a lot of time thinking about this and writing about this. my first cover essay in "time" magazine is about just this question. it's out on the newsstands right now and next week we will have a "gps" special that will air next saturday night at 9:00 p.m. eastern and pacific in addition to our regular times on sunday. so read ti"time" magazine, watc the special. it's called "restoring the american dream." we have a terrific show for you today. first up, if you read the headlines this week, there are reports that the taliban is finally being beaten back and its commanders now want to talk. the quagmire in afghanistan seems as if it's turning around.

is it true? i'll put this question to the president's man in the region, richard holbrooke. then, a top nato official says osama bin laden, the most wanted man in the world is living comfortably, not in a cave, but out in the open in northwest pakistan. we'll talk to peter bergen about why we still can't catch him. what in the world, the premiere of china, wen joo bowe argued, but then our interview was censored in china. up next, what does this political campaign look like to the rest of the world and what's going on in the rest of the world? we'll ask our panel of great global theories. and the last look at iran's supreme leader, ayatollah. let's get started.

after years and years of dismal, dreary reports out of afghanistan, there was something of a change this week. headlines this week said that allied forces were routing the taliban in kandahar, that thighest level leaders were coming to the table for peace talks. we'll find out the reality behind the headlines. joining me now is richard holbrooke, holbrooke the u.s. special representative for afghanistan and pakistan. he joins me from the state department. welcome back, ambassador holbrooke. >> great to be with you again, fareed. >> so let's start with the talks. is it, in fact, the case that we are seeing senior taliban leaders, the kind of people who can commit the taliban to some kind of a peace deal, come out and actually talk to us? >> in the exact sense you just asked the question, my answer would be negative.

i think the press has left the impression that negotiations of the type which ultimately ended the war in vietnam in 1973 and ultimately ended the war in bosnia in 1995 are somehow breaking out. that is just not the case, fareed. what we've got here is an increasing number of taliban at high levels saying, hey, we want to talk. i think this is a result in large part of the growing pressure they're under from general petraeus and the isaf command. and in that sense, your introduction, linking the two issues, is very appropriate. >> but, um -- so, this is sort of the preconditions for negotiations. they're beginning to show an interest in negotiations. do we know whether these people are the right people? are they the kind of people who have -- who have a large

following, either among parts of the pashtun community or actually soldiers of the taliban? >> you know, once again, words matter here, and you've used the word "negotiation." i would not use that word. i know what a negotiation looks like, and these are things that you're referring to are mostly described by contacts and discussions, not involving the united states. let's not leave the viewers with the impression that some kind of secret negotiation like the famous seger negotiations on vietnam is taking place. because it's not. >> but wouldn't it be necessary to -- for something like that to happen for some kind of a peace deal to be struck? >> a peace deal requires agreements, and you don't make agreements with your friends, you make agreements with your enemies. but in this particular case,

unlike the two i mentioned a moment ago, there is no clear single address that you go to. there's no ho chi minh, there's no palestinian authority. there's a widely dispersed group of people that we roughly call "the enemy." there's al qaeda, of which there's no possibility of any discussion at all. there is the afghan taliban, under mullah omar, and that seems to be a loose organization with a very shadowy arrangement. there's the pakistani taliban, the tpt, the ones who trained, rather unfortunately and ineptly trained the times square bomber. there's the haqqani network, who do a great deal of the mayhem

and carnage inside afghanistan. and then final, there's the let, which you're familiar, you did that program. and the let is one americans don't may much attention to, but their goal is to create the maximum amount of conflict between pakistan and afghanistan. i've just named five groups, an expert could name another 30. so the idea of peace talks, or negotiations, to use your phrase, doesn't really add up to the way this thing is going to evolve. >> you from the start put a very high priority on pakistan. let me ask you about some of the reports that have come out over the last month about pakistan. there are reports that the pakistani military and the isi have been warning the various factions that are battling the afghan government, the haqqani faction, the taliban, don't make

a deal. don't make a deal. the americans are going to leave, you will still need us, and we need to make sure that pakistan's interests are safeguarded. we need to make sure that pakistan's equities are taken care of, as the phrase sometimes goes. what is your reaction to hose reports? >> i do not have personal evidence or intelligence that supports that interpretation of what has been going on. >> what about the litmus test for the pakistani military? we have discussed this before, and i asked you wing it was the last time you were on, i said, would it be fair to say that the test is, does pakistan go into north whaziristawaziristan. north waziristan, to explain to our viewers, is where most of the militant group that attacks non-pakistanis are based. those who attack afghans, indians, and western. so far, the pakistani military has launched a bunch of operations, but never yet went into north waziristan.

is it still fair to say until they do that, it's impossible to say the pakistani military has gotten serious about getting rid of the afghan terror menace? >> i would like to say, i'll stand by my previous answer, but i can't remember it, so let me just say that we have discussed this with the pakistanis. right now, they have 70,000 of their troops working on flood relief in pakistan. i've seen that personally when i visited the area. >> but there always seems to be a reason why they can't get to north waziristan. this has been going on for five years now. >> i'm not sheer here to defend pakistani military or to attack them. they know our views on the importance of this area you're talking about, and that's all i really feel comfortable saying about on that issue, except to acknowledge the importance of the subject you've raised. >> richard, you sound like

you're a little bit less optimistic than these flurry of news reports. is it fair to say that this is still looking like a pretty difficult challenge? >> well, you know, fareed, you and i have known each other a long time, and i tend to fall not either into the optimistic or pessimistic camp on issues on which i'm a participant. we have our goals, we have our strategy. it is of the most vital importance to our national security interests and it directly affects the momentumlamomentuhomeland security of our nation, as everyone knows. and we are determined to see it through. president obama personally oversees every detail related to our homeland security. and i'm not into the spin patrol of the people who are giddy with optimism on the op-ed pages of some papers or the people who say it's another vietnam and it's hopeless. it's certainly not another vietnam, for reasons you and i discussed before. and it is certainly not

hopeless. but anyone who doesn't recognize what a daunting task it is, is misleading. and the american public should understand that this is not going to be solved overnight. it is going to be a difficult struggle. it has a political component. we are not trying to win this war militarily. and a date and type negotiation is also very unlikely, but some kind of political element to this is essential, and we are looking at every aspect of this. we are talking to all our other nations about it. 40 of them assembled in rome with me a week ago. >> what do you mean when you say you don't want to win this militarily? >> i didn't say we don't want to win this mill tatitarimilitaril can't win it militarily and we don't seek to win it militarily because a pure military victory is not possible, as general petraeus and his colleagues have

repeatedly said. >> because the taliban has to be integrated because it's part of the pashtun community, is that right? >> everybody understands that the taliban is part of the fabric of recent afghan political life. they were a government that controlled the country until 9/11. secretary gates has said this, secretary clinton, myself. mullah omar himself, however, was sheltering osama bin laden and that presents unique difficulties to anyone talking about reconciliation. and this is just something that we have to examine carefully. the pakistanis also have a role to play here. and you've raised a very important issue. i think we'll return to it many times in the coming months, because we're just at the front edge of it. there's a lot more in the press about this than there is in reality at this point, but it is a vitally important aspect of the war. >> richard holbrooke, thank you very much. >> thank you, fareed. they caught on to some basic

questions that i think american taxpayers want answers. where is bin laden, where his number two, al zawahiri. where is mullah omar, the leader of the taliban? and if this were a private company, the management would have been fired and the shares would be tanking. generation ag. and vital to global security. to reach this destination, our engineers are exploring every possibility. from energy efficiency to climate monitoring. securing our nations clean energy future is all a question of how. and it is the how that will make all the difference.

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where in the world is osama bin laden? a senior nato official answered the question this week, telling cnn that the al qaeda leader was not in a cave but living in relative comfort in northwest pakistan. now, this is a guy who is 6'6" tall. there's a $25 million bounty on his head. he is probably the most wanted man in the world. and yet we can't find him. joining me now is peter bergen, who interviewed bin laden in 1997 and has been on his trail ever since. peter, what did you make of that news report? is bin laden likely to be in pakistan in some city, perhaps? >> fareed, the consensus is he's in northwest pakistan. the consensus is he's not living in a cave. he's living in a house. that's clear from videotapes he occasionally releases. his clothes are pretty well pressed. caves don't usually have laundry facilities. he's well read. he's talking about norm chomsky books he's recently read.

this is not the sort of activity you do in a cave. >> what do you think is the basic reason that he's eluded us so far? >> yeah, donald rumsfeld was asked this question some time ago, and he said in his own way, well, the world's a big place. you know, there's an element of truth to that. northwest pakistan, you know, where bin laden is believed to be hiding is 30,000 square miles. it's the size of virginia, you know, peaks going up to 10,000 feet, you know, very hostile to outsiders. it's not an easy place to find people. and, you know, historically the united states has always had problems trying to find people. fareed, if you go back to, you know, somalia in 1993, we had 20,000 american soldiers in somalia looking for the somalian warlord and they never found him. the israelis spent 15 years trying to find eichmann. they finally found him in latin america. i don't want to -- i don't want to say that it's easy to find people. it isn't. on the other hand, i think that, you know, we've been throwing a lot of money out the window,

$500 billion on our intelligence agencies since 9/11. they can't answer some basic questions that i think american taxpayers want answered. where is bin laden? where is his number two, ayman al zawahiri? where is mullah omar, the leader of the taliban? if this was a private company, the management would have been fired and the shares would be tanking. but these are not private companies. instead, their budgets just spiral upwards. >> you actually wrote about this, i thought, very intelligently. you think there's a basic shift that needs to take place in intelligence. probably easier to say than to do, but why don't you say it anyway? >> we need to get back into the sort of espionage business. people don't usually use that word, espionage. but we're not very good at spying. what we need, if we're ever going to find bin laden, is going to be a penetration of al qaeda or a group affiliated with al qaeda. i think we have got better intelligence coming out of the tribal regions in pakistan, hence the, you know, the better drone program, but i think that

as the intelligence community's risk averse, maybe if the stakes were higher and we face a bigger threat from al qaeda, some of these concerns about can somebody pass a background check, do they have relations in arab countries, have they visited pakistan, the kinds of things you'd actually want are actually hindering people being hired at these intelligence agencies. >> i think it would stun people. i don't know the exact number, but i know it's pitifully small. if you were to take the number of americans in the embassy in pakistan and the gassy in afghanistan who can actually speak the local languages, where it's urdu, pashtu, and talk to people who can penetrate the communities, it must be very, very low. >> yeah. and there's an absolute premium on force protection, which is very understandable, but it means no one goes outside the wire or very infrequently. so i was in helmand last year with anderson cooper, and, you know, there were, you know, 10,000 marines but three american, you know, state department officials in this whole massive province.

and so, you know, if you're -- you know, even if you're in these embassies and you speak these languages, it's hard to -- you know, there's a lot of rules about what you can and can't do. they're understandable, but they're not very useful in terms of getting the kinds of information you need, not just about finding bin laden but also what is the tribal structure of these places, who are the power players, the kinds of things that major general flynn, the head of intelligence in afghanistan, complained publicly about is that there isn't much a sense of the intelligence community of the kinds of things we really need to know. who are the political power players in a particular area? what is the tribal structure? these kinds of things. it's kind of amazing nine years after 9/11 these are still things that we don't really understand. >> nine years and half a trillion dollars, as you say. peter bergen, thank you very much. >> thank you, fareed. >> we'll be back. >> translator: i believe freedom of speech is indispensable for any country. adiant tinted moisturizers,

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now for our "what in the world" segment. let me read you a quote. "i believe freedom of speech is indispensable for any country." whose words are those? thomas jefferson, barack obama? no. those are the words of china's premier, wen jiabao, to me when i interviewed him just a few weeks ago. powerful words from a powerful man. and it wasn't just about freedom of speech but about political reform as a whole and about the future of china. his words were called "pathbreaking" and "eyebrow raising" by sclrs. that's why what happened next really got my attention. chinese officials, quote, harmonized, unquote, my interview with the premier. that's the chinese lingo for "censored." there was an official news blackout of the entire interview. china's official news agency reported that there had been an interview, but it didn't report any of what wen jiabao said.

and if you clicked on links to real news reports, this is what you got -- a blank page. so essentially the only place in china to read what he actually said was on blogs and social media that had been able to evade censors. then one week after cnn aired the wen jiabao interview, an open letter was sent from 23 senior communist party elders in china to the top politicians in the land. the letter quoted wen jiabao's words from his interview with me, using those words as fodder for their case against the invisible black hand of censorship. these former high-up officials called on the current leadership to respect what they say is china's constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech. then chinese media began to flout the official censorship and ran quotes from the interview. some papers putting the "time" magazine cover right on their front page. and then chinese officials re-censored it all, reportedly

ordering all websites to remove mentions and excerpts of the interview. truly extraordinary. amidst all this, the nobel committee awarded the peace prize to a chinese dissident, and once again mass censorship ensued. this time it was politicked out all over in print, on air, or online. if you type nobel prize or the winner's name into google, all you get back is an error page. now, china has dazzled world by the way it handles economic issues. but there's one area where it still remains extraordinarily backward, and that is politics, dealing with political dissent, dealing with simple information, free speech. you know, i was in india last week, and i was struck by how on this important issue, india actually has a real leg up. india handles politics, political differences, diversity, speech with great skill and openness. for china, which is such a modern country in so many ways, to have this primitive kind of phony censorship of its own premier's interviews strikes one

as unworthy of a modern nation. china is a world power. it is a great modern nation. it is a great civilization. but it has to be able to deal both with economics and politics with ease and fluency. until it does that, there will always be a gap between the world's expectations and china's reality. and we will be right back. >> and the president at last, too late, shows a little sign of knuckle. much, much too late. he's getting into a bit now, i think.

election day in the united states is nine days from today. what does it look like from abroad and what is going on abroad? we are fortunate to have in one place three great global thinkers. shashi tharoor, a member of the indian parliament, he's been everything from undersecretary-general of the united nations to deputy foreign minister of india. simon schama is a world-famous historian born in britain. he is now a professor at

columbia university. and kishore mahbubani, the dean of the school of public policy in singapore where he teaches students all he learned in his first career as a diplomat, former foreign secretary of singapore. welcome, gentlemen. i should say this line john kennedy has when he had all these nobel laureates in for an evening, he said there's never been this much talent in one room. >> jefferson dined alone. >> we've never had this much talent around the table since larry summers had a sandwich alone. simon, what do you make of the campaign? i know you've been following it. >> well, a very interesting moment, i think, actually. if there were some signs that as a columnist in "the new york times" said today, rage might not be working across the country. we might be going back to 2004 where we had a virtual cultural civil war coming out of that election. and different parts of the country very, very bitterly divided and polarized.

so whether our states that are in play, we'll be on the edge of our seats. west virginia. california is terribly interesting, whether or not meg whitman wins that or -- >> she's slipping behind. >> she's slipping behind a little bit. harry reid, i think, is unlikely to beat sharron angle, i would say. i don't quite know why. but there is sort of -- you know, oddly enough, the democrats by feeling so tim duncan, pusillanimous and apocalyptic, might actually have a sour little grin on their faces at the end of election night. it's not completely impossible now. and the president at last, too late, shows a little sign of knuckle, much, much too late. he's getting into it a bit now, i think. >> when you look at this from india, god knows indian politics can be pretty wild and crazy, what do you make of the campaign and particularly the tea party? >> well, i think the tea party is a bit difficult for most people to swallow in democracies

that are organized on something other than outrage. however, i think there is a certain degree of befuddlement about the fact that he's been given barely two years to begin to get things right, that manifested many of the problems that the country is enduring now, a legacy -- a decade of somebody else's problems, somebody else's policies, and that now he's being punished so quickly for something that perhaps he couldn't have done better. it's a very interesting alert, as it were, about the short termism of many voters' political calculations. >> how does it strike you? >> well, i think -- i would say globally, there's very profound worry about what's happening in america. because the world, as you know, needs a strong america and not a weak america. and american power, from now on, has peaked. in the next few decades, america's challenge is to manage decline. managing decline is extremely difficult. it's even more difficult when

the country is divided and getting more divided. so that leaves the whole world wondering what are going to be the consequences to us when the biggest pilar of the international system that is that has carried it for the last 60 years? and i seem to have kind of a solidity at this time. >> and we do worry whether america would solve the world on globalization for a couple of decades before this. at a time when the rest of the world has bought that prescription and is organizing itself in order to be able to benefit mutually from that process, whether suddenly america is now shutting down and moving away from the very principles it so long advocated. >> there's more talk about that an afghanistan. it's really astonishing. >> you've seen this movie before, in a sense. i mean, managing decline, britain, i mean, what was the politics of britain like? there were many similarities where there were people who were saying we're still a great global empire, we must maintain every outpost. >> but britain has long been a

sucker for the romance of ruin. it's not really been a fabulous way to sort of sell your national identity. the nation of britain becomes kind of a sort of sage athens, really, where managing the atrophies are picturesque, but britain lives on its creative wit. that is a recipe for the future. there's plenty of, you know, technological wits for america to live on, too. >> i think it's a mistake to compare what we are going through today with any previous historical moment precisely because for the first time you're living in the world where the experts don't know what's happening. >> for the first time? >> seriously. my own case in the last 20 years, i've never seen this kind of global uncertainty. and therefore we are in the much more worrying phase of history than we've ever been. that's precisely why at a time

when you need more leadership rather than less leadership in the world, the united states' capacity to provide leadership has diminished significantly. >> what does that mean when you say more leadership? of course the united states is more active. you used to denounce the united states for being more active. get it right. >> i think when you have restructured the global order and in a sense reassign responsibilities over the global system, become the head of the imf, you don't have to be european to be head of the world bank, after you've reached out for the global order, you spread out leadership. but as of now, the system relies a great deal on american leadership. and america has been happy, willing, ready to provide it. but now you have an american president who is amazingly weak,

perceived to be amazingly weak domestically, perceived to be amazingly -- >> the right kind of president, really the u.s. has to stop acting like a ceo and function as a chairman of the board. many companies have risen to position of prominence and displacing far more weight around the world. i'm speaking of india and china and brazil and south africa, and, yes, parts of the european. and the fact is you can well imagine that when kishore speaks of leadership, it can't be the old leadership of the past. it has to be in concert with others, a cooperative agreement, a sort of chairman of the board arrangement, and frankly it has to be broad based. the idea of a g-2 condominium that was floated a couple of years ago, america and china running the world, would simply be unacceptable to the rest of us. you need a kind of cooperative board system. and in my own view, we need to go away from america that issues commands to others and perhaps

one that comes up with ten suggestions once in a while. >> you're the american president who's decided to offer the world leadership, you, what are you about to do about it? give me one concrete thing which would demonstrate leadership to the world without actually the rest of the world taking offense. >> wonderful things that the united states -- >> for example. >> for example -- >> revalue the chinese currency. you can't do it. you can't order them to do that. >> well, i think, first of all, the united states can get its house in order. you mentioned earlier a 5% consumption tax, something as simple as that to change the situation. >> and that's going to thrill singapore. >> i think -- >> you know it isn't. >> i think -- >> no one's going to say, my god, there's leadership. it's a consumption tax. >> it is a mistake to think that nothing can be done. >> i wasn't suggesting that. i was suggesting that you produce something -- >> and you can't do something on the environmental front?

>> the united states has tried. which is the great world power that actually decided to resist any serious environmental regulation? not washington. beijing. so that's absurd. >> the fundamental mistake we're making here is to think that the western world view reflects the global world view. i would say, by the way, china's view enjoys much more sympathy in the rest of the world than the western world view. >> we will turn to precisely that point when we get back. china's world view and what the rest of the world thinks about it. >> i'm quite prepared unapologetically to say jeffersonian pluralism and religious tolerance is about absolute and unequivocal good thing. and i don't really care what they think about that in tehran, actually. one word turns innovative design

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hello, everyone. i'm fredricka whitfield at the cnn center in atlanta. back to "fareed zakaria gps" after a quick look at the day's headlines. the u.s. is rushing relief teams and supplies to haiti to help combat an outbreak of cholera. more than 2,600 people are sick, at least 253 people have died. and five cases have just been confirmed in the capital of port-au-prince. u.n. officials say those five patients were infected north of the capital, where the outbreak began, and they have been isolated. health officials are trying to keep cholera out of port-au-prince, where tens of thousands of people still live in tent cities after january's earthquake.

and a new video message from militant cleric anwar al awlaki. he warns islam is being, quote, exposed to fateful dangers, end quote. right now hundreds of soldiers are searching for members of al qaeda in yemen, in a region where the u.s. believes al awlaki may be. and the west pacific is being battered by typhoon megi. has dumped heavy rains on the philippines, taiwan, and now china. people there are piling up sandbags with as much as 4 inches of rain expected in some places there. now back to fareed zakar"fa gps" right after this. [ woman ] when my dance company went on tour,

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galaxy of stars, kishore mahbubani from singapore, and simon schama from london, new york, and god knows where else. kishore was saying before that, you know, we don't understand the western world view is dying, the chinese world view is something that more people have more sympathy for these days. >> on the environment. >> but i want the sirmt. fy but i want to ask a question of kishore. i'm actually struck by the opposite of what kishore is saying which is over the last month what you have seen is an international kind of condominium, almost, of countries agree with the united states that china is deliberately undervaluing its currency, that china is threatening japan unnecessarily, that china is rattling the sabre in southeast asia, that is to say, china's peaceful rise has hit a kind of big speed bump, where where people are beginning to realize, wait a minute, a bigger

more assertive china is -- we're not so sure we love that idea. i particularly found that -- i was in south korea and india, last week and in both cases they were quite concerned about china. >> i think by and large most countries see china as understandably very focused on itself, that its relationship with the rest of the world is what it can get and the chinese world view is considered more attractive would stretch credulity to me. we in india respect china, but i would be hesitant to say that we find the chinese world view more attractive than -- >> good. nobel prize winner. good for you. >> italian favor. >> can i respond to -- >> the chinese -- >> no. it's very simple. there are 7 billion people in the world. 800 million people live in the west. the rest live outside the west. if you go to the islamic world

among 1.2 billion muslims, tell me that the western world view is much more attractive than the chinese world view. >> i wish it were. i feel defensive about that. i don't care if the view of jeffersonian democracy -- >> let me finish. let me finish. >> no, let me. >> let me finish. >> that's a shocking thing to say. >> then you have latin america and then you have africa -- >> i don't care about demographic arithmetic. the face of the world depends on actually judgments about, you know, what the moral nature of a society is. >> don't care what the majority of the world thinks. >> not if they're >> if they don't think like you, you're not happy. i fully understand that. but it's important empirically to try and -- >> let's say on principle on which the peace of the world depends. tyrannical theocracy or jeffersonian tolerance. for example. i'm quite prepared unpoapoll je

ically to say jifr seasonian popularity religious tolerance is an absolute and unequivocal good thing, and i don't really care what they think about that in tehran actually except i'm a threat to everybody else. so if you're telling me that "x" number of millions of people are willing to surrender to theocratic tyranny, so much the worse for that. >> democracy means essentially that you listen to the voices of the people. the west has forgotten -- >> that's happening in iran, for example, is it? >> i would caution you, kishore, it is fair to try to make a distinction between the people in many of these countries and their regimes. >> sure, i accept that. >> the leadership might prefer china to america actually not -- >> let me just finish. it is very difficult in a western setting to explain the point that actually the majority of the world look at the world quite differently. and that's a simple empirical point. >> but they don't necessarily agree with the chinese, is all i'm trying to say. i don't find a great brazilian love for china.

i mean, i don't find a great south korean love for china. japan, for example, i find that they are much more suspicious of china than they are of the united states. >> i completely agree with that. >> no, we're adding up countries, even your not democracy is working so well. >> you also address at a very awkward moment when china is going through a very bad spot. and china overplayed its handle on japan. that's very clear. it's obvious they overplayed their hand. and what did the chinese prime minister do? arranged to speak to the japanese prime minister. they made a miss take. >> on that note, simon schama, kishore mahbubani, shashi tharoor, thank you all very much. we will be right back. what's around the corner is one of life's great questions.

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our question this week from the fareed challenge is -- violent protests have crippled france for weeks. it's all over a plan to raise the retirement age in that nation to what? a, 60 b, 62 c, 66 or d, 70. stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer. and go to cnn.com/gps to try your hand at ten more questions from this challenge. while you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly podcast. that way you will never miss a show, and the price is nothing. this week's "book of the week" is robert kaplan's great new book, "monsoon: the indian ocean and the future of american power." kaplan, who's a great

geostrategist come reporter says that while wars of the past were fought in the atlantic, the pacific and the persian gulf, in the coming years, the central arena of global geopolitics is going to be the indian ocean because of the rise of china and india, so that's where america must concentrate its efforts and where the geopolitical cockpit of the world will be. now for "the last look." that the ayatollah khomeini is a bit of a revolutionary we already knew. but did you know that he is also a social media revolutionary? it turns out that iran's supreme leader has a twitter account, or at least his office does. so we were able to follow along this week with a travel log of pictures as he went to qom, iran's holy city. here is his vehicle making its way through a throng of crowds. do they call it the ayatollah mobile, i wonder? it's quite a bit less fancy than the pope's. here are some dedicated fans and here some doves of peace, perhaps?