[Fareed Zakaria:] Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria. We will start today with the prisoner swap for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl and the firestorm it has produced. I have a great panel to talk about the issues that the case has brought to the fore. What is a human life worth? And what about when that human is an American soldier? Then what is it like to be held by the Taliban? What goes on in the heads of the Taliban foot soldiers? I will talk to David Rohde who was held by America's enemy in Afghanistan for seven months and 10 days. Also why one of the most important cases before the Supreme Court is about teeth whitening. Then the consequences of global warming may seem far off for you, but for this man, they are now. The president of an island nation struggles to figure out how to stop his country from sinking literally. And white, black, Asian, we're all the same, right? My guest says wrong. New research shows that the races have different genes that make us different people. A controversial theory that we will explore. But first, here's my take. The controversy over Bowe Bergdahl has largely obscured what should have been an important initiative by the Obama administration. The president's trip to Poland was one more step in what is going to be the central task of American foreign policy over the next decade deterring a great power challenge. You see, the world today for most countries is stable, peaceful and open and it rests on an order built by the United States. Since the end of the Cold War, that order has not been challenged by any other major world player until now. Russia's actions in the Ukraine are a serious challenge and President Obama has responded to them seriously enacting some sanctions, rallying support in western Europe and reassuring eastern Europe. The president's critics in Washington feel this isn't enough, that he is showing dangerous weakness. In a spirited essay in "The New Republic", the conservative writer Robert Kagan argues that Obama is forgetting the chief lesson of modern American foreign policy. Instead of leaning back, Washington needs a, quote, "pervasive forward involvement in the affairs of the world," unquote, he says. Kagan's model of a successful American strategy is the FDRTruman administration as World War II ended. Even when new threats were unformed, that administration maintained massive military power and talked and acted tough. But Kagan then notes, seemingly unaware of the implications, what followed in the later years of the Truman administration was the Soviet Union challenged America across the globe, China turned communist and deeply anti-American, and North Korea invaded South Korea. In other words, all of the things that leaning forward were meant to deter happened anyway. Kagan's main example undermines his central logic. And today's tasks are far more complicated than previous ones. The United States is seeking to deter China from expansion while also attempting to integrate it into the global economy and global order. Even with Russia, the goal is not to force the collapse of the Russian regime, which would not be replaced by a pro-western liberal democracy, but rather to deter Moscow's aggressive instincts and hope over time it will evolve along a more cooperative line. Imagine if the United States were to decide to combat China fully and frontally, building up its naval presence in the Pacific, creating new bases and adopting a more aggressive and forceful attitude. China would surely respond in a variety of ways military, political and economic. This would allow almost all the countries in Asia, even the ones worried today about Beijing's assertiveness because China is their largest trading partner and the key to their economic well- being. What they want from Washington is a kind of emergency insurance policy, not a new Cold War. Even with Russia while European countries have understood that Moscow needs to pay a price for its behavior in Ukraine, they all want Russia as an economic partner. Their goal is to set a price for bad behavior but maintain economic and political bonds and hope that these grow over time. The challenge for Washington then is not simple deterrence but deterrence and integration. A sophisticated, complicated task, but the right one. Leaning forward sounds great. Echoing as it does show Sandburg's famous mantra to lean in. But while that's a powerful and inspirational idea for women in the workplace, it is a simplistic, dangerous guide for a superpower in a complex world. For morefareed and read my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started. So let's get to some of the deeper issues surrounding the release of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl and the swap of Taliban prisoners for him. Joining me is David Rohde, the Reuters columnist who was taken hostage by the Taliban and held for more than seven months. Bret Stephens is the foreign affairs columnist for the "Wall Street Journal" and Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst and director of national security studies of the New American Foundation. Welcome. Bret, I have to start with you. Even for you, you have written a fiery column this week in which you asked a former a soldier what he thought should be done with Bergdahl. The former operator suggested a firing squad might be appropriate.
[Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal's "global View" Columnist:] Well, I wrote that in part because this was just after the weekend where the administration, you heard Susan Rice talk about Bergdahl having served with honor and distinction but in the military community it became very clear very quickly that he had perhaps served with not the greatest honor and distinction and there's a great deal of anger. This Special Forces operations soldier I talked to was involved in trying to locate him and at least he claimed that American soldiers died in the search for Bergdahl. I know that's controversial. So my point wasn't to endorse that view. It was simply to suggest that not everyone shared in the administration's enthusiasm for the release of the soldier in exchange for these five hardened Taliban commanders.
[Zakaria:] So should we have done everything we could to bring him back as we do with other prisoners of war?
[Stephens:] We should have made a great effort to bring him back, absolutely, irrespective of the questions of his desertion. Ultimately I don't think this is about the circumstances of Bergdahl's service. I think it's about the price the administration was prepared to pay for his release and also the the way in which they played this. Because I understand that there are agonizing moral choices that an American president faces when dealing with the lives of servicemen. But I'm wondering whether we didn't pay too high a price to have him redeemed. This is one soldier being exchanged for five of five Taliban commandoes
[Zakaria:] The Israelis is good for a thousand.
[Stephens:] I'm glad I'm glad you're citing Israeli military policy as a precedent. I think Israelis make a mistake and they pay for it in the fact that it creates a moral hazard so that Hamas, Hezbollah, have an incentive to take other Americans. Who is the next American, by the way, who's going to be taken hostage in exchange for a ransom?
[Zakaria:] So, Peter Bergen, you understand this very well. What is the distinction here that we should think about between an army officer you know, an army sergeant, who is regarded as a prisoner of war and we routinely do prisoner of war exchanges as does every country in the world and a hostage for a terrorist group where we are told that we shouldn't do this thing because of moral hazard, it encourages hostage taking. You don't want to reward terrorism.
[Peter Bergen, Cnn National Security Analyst:] Yes, I think Bret is right. You know, it was not the circumstances of how Bergdahl left his post is immaterial. But, you know, we are talking about a prisoner of war exchange. I think you raise a very good point, Fareed. It's not you're not negotiating with a terrorist from a technical point of view. By the way, the Afghan-Taliban is not designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist group. The Haqqani network which is a subset is, and there was a long debate in the administration whether to designate it or not. In the end they were designated. The point is but I think on the question of the big question that Bret has raised is, who are these people? How then to resolve it. I think there are three points you can make here. One, you know, Qatar is one of the richest countries in the world, it's also a very efficient police state. They have made a guarantee that these guys will be bound from travel. By the time they are allowed to travel a year now, combat U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan will be over by then for six months. We will not be in this state of war in Afghanistan in quite the same way. So both from a legal and military perspective, it's a very different situation at that point. And at that point, you know, American presence will be much smaller so the idea that they may well pose a threat, no one is pretending otherwise, but the threat they pose is a year if now whereas we got this guy back right now and that was a definite delivery rather than some punitive problem that may exist in a year from now. It may not even be that a big deal.
[Zakaria:] So would you have done it, Peter? You feel like
[Bergen:] Yes. I totally we are fully this was always the deal. There was no, you know, we'll send you maybe two people or three people. There's deals for these five guys was a deals. You either have a deal or you don't.
[Zakaria:] What do you think, when listening to this question of, is he a prisoner of war, is he a hostage of a terrorist group, you were a hostage. You were not you were a reporter.
[David Rohde, Columnist, Reuters:] I'm surprised this case unfolded that there has been less so little scrutiny of Pakistan. I was held for seven months in Pakistan. Bowe Bergdahl was held there for five years. Last night on CNN, David Sedney said that the Pakistani military made no effort to pressure the Haqqanis to get Bowe released and they made no effort to find him. We've given at least, you know, $15 billion in aid to Pakistan in this entire thing. So that's a huge question to me.
[Zakaria:] Impressive. Your original in your original if I can just interrupt.
[Rohde:] Sure. You have this in your original "New York Times" article there's this one compelling moment where you escape with a couple of people, Afghans, and you finally make it, you escaped from the Taliban and you make it to Pakistani army post and your guys, the Afghans coming with you say, well, for god's sake, don't go there. They'll just take us back to exactly the place we came from. And I agree. And I don't know why there isn't more anger at Pakistan for example. And there was a mention of Israel and its trades. You know, France and other European governments in the last three years have paid over $100 million in ransom to al Qaeda affiliates. So they were looking for U.S. soldiers before this case was done. They're looking for U.S. civilians. There's a half dozen U.S. civilians in captivity right, you know, now today. So Bowe must answer questions but vilifying this one soldier instead of looking at this larger dynamic I think is unfair.
[Stephens:] David rightly points out, there are Americans that are being held all over the place. We have a set number of things that we can give them. Do we really want to get in the business of constantly bribing Haqqani network people, Taliban people, al Qaeda people, because Americans who get themselves into trouble in
[Zakaria:] But this is American tourists. This is American
[Stephens:] Yes.
[Zakaria:] This is an American soldier who was fighting in a military operation.
[Stephens:] Yes. And there is there is good evidence that there's a former CIA officer who is being held by Iran. Exactly what price or may have been held by Iran for many years. What price are we going to pay for him? Judgments have to be made by any administration about the value and the sacrifice a country exacts for the redemption of the this is a difficult moral issue and I can understand how this administration had wrestled hard with this issue and said quietly we're going to bring him back. This was treated as an occasion, what was supposed to be a great triumph for the administration, a clear cut case where all Americans were supposed to celebrate. And I'm not surprised that a lot of soldiers who paid a very high price looking for Bergdahl are not are not so impressed by the administration's claims.
[Zakaria:] Thank you, gentlemen. David Rohde, stay with us. When we come back we're going to go in-depth with you on what it is like to be held by the Taliban.