Editor's note: Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst, is a director at the New America Foundation and the author of the new book, "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden - From 9/11 to Abbottabad."

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

On Monday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate a series of recent leaks that critics charge are designed to bolster the national security credentials of the Obama administration. ...

The recent leaks involve stories in The New York Times, Newsweek and the Associated Press that range from the hitherto undisclosed role of the United States in cyberattacks on Iran's nuclear facilities to details about the president's decision-making surrounding the selection of the targets of the CIA drone program in Pakistan and Yemen and the penetration by a spy of al Qaeda's Yemeni affiliate.

Have those leaks, as Romney claimed on Monday, "put American interests and our people in jeopardy"?

Read more from Peter Bergen

Editor’s note:Geneive Abdo is director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute in Washington. The views in this article are solely those of Geneive Abdo.

By Geneive Abdo, Special to CNN

Ever since Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah proposed forming a political federation among the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the pros and cons have been fiercely debated across the Middle East.

For many Arabs in the region, particularly Shia communities in Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and particularly Bahrain, such a proposal suggests an attempt to form a dominant Sunni bloc that would tip the balance of power at a time when tensions are escalating between Shia and Sunni Muslims in the wake of the Arab uprisings.

Five countries in the GCC — Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — are Sunni-dominated societies. Only Bahrain, the sixth GCC country, has a Shia majority. With the sectarian conflict in Syria escalating and spilling over into Lebanon, the violent clashes between the two sects in Iraq, and the uprising in Bahrain by a predominantly Shia opposition, the proposed political federation is likely to enflame the regional conflict.

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Editor’s note: Khairi Abaza is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and he is also a former senior official in Egypt’s secular liberal Wafd party. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Khairi Abaza.

By Khairi Abaza, Special to CNN

Egypt’s historic presidential election will not settle the future of the country in one fell swoop, but it traces the contours of a new regime in which the key political actors may ultimately be forced to compromise with one another.

Though unofficial results, released by the state-run Al-Ahram news website, show Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi eking out a narrow victory, in a sense it doesn't matter whether he wins or loses to Ahmed Shafiq, who served as prime minister in former dictator Hosni Mubarak’s final hours. After 15 months, neither the military nor the Muslim Brotherhood has the wherewithal to grind the other out of existence.

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By Fareed Zakaria

We know that texting while driving is dangerous. Spain's prime minister learned recently that texting while negotiating a bank bailout is also a bad idea.

Mariano Rajoy reportedly typed out this message to his finance minister: "We're the number four power in Europe. Spain is not Uganda."

I don't know how it leaked out, but Ugandans have taken their dissatisfaction to Twitter using the hashtag, "Uganda Is Not Spain." FULL POST

This week, hundreds of world leaders and tens of thousands of environmentalists are convening in Rio de Janeiro for the U.N.'s Conference on Sustainable Development.

Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” says the Rio+20 summit will be a wasted opportunity and that the U.N. is focused on the wrong things. He says that for every person who might die from global warming, 210 will die from health problems caused by a lack of clean water and pollution.

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By Fareed Zakaria

We tend to think of dictators as all-powerful leaders who act with naked cruelty and impunity. Think of Bashar al Assad in Syria. Or, for a celluloid reminder, think of Sacha Baron Cohen as Gen. Admiral Aladeen, a North African despot.

But the film "The Dictator" — and our imagination of dictators — is getting outdated. The new dictator is more evolved and more attuned to how people think.

A new book highlights that trend. It's called "The Dictator's Learning Curve" by William Dobson.

Dictators have gotten smart, Dobson writes, to keep pace with changes in technology. Old-school oppressors like Mao, Pol Pot or Idi Amin could keep their atrocities relatively secret. That's not possible today. If a dictator tried to orchestrate a mass killing and keep it secret, he'd likely fail. It would end up on YouTube. FULL POST

When were the Olympics first televised in the U.S.? Who was the first woman in space? How much is Nobel cutting its prize money?

How much do you know about the world? Test yourself on these questions and more in the quiz above.

And check out some of the past weeks' quizzes.

Editor's note: Nader Hashemi is director of the Center for Middle East Studies and an assistant professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. He is the author of "Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies." The views expressed in this article are solely those of Nader Hashemi.

By Nader Hashemi, Special to CNN

Egypt suffered a political earthquake Thursday when the country’s Supreme Constitutional Court effectively dissolved the democratically elected parliament and ruled that Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister can remain a presidential candidate.

These events have been widely interpreted as a “judicial coup,” the start of a “counter-revolution” and “the end of Egypt’s Arab Spring.”

While the situation is still in flux and the future is unknown, there is one claim can be made with certainty: this is a naked power grab by the country’s ruling military.

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All this on "Fareed Zakaria GPS" Sunday at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET.

On "Fareed Zakaria GPS" this week: It’s all about the economy. Fareed weighs in on why Mitt Romney is wrong to say he’ll cut taxes on his first day in office; a debate on Europe with Robert Skidelsky versus Niall Ferguson; and environmental author Bjorn Lomborg on why next week's Rio+20 summit will likely be a waste of time. Also: The new dictator has evolved and gotten smarter.

Also: What to do about the European Union? London’s colorful, conservator Mayor Boris Johnson has a simple answer. Break it up.

"What would be great would be, I think, if the European leaders could face up to the reality, shrug off their egos, shrug off all their political capital that Europe has collectively invested in this project, and say, look, we made a mistake," he tells Fareed.

Watch more in the video above and from these excerpts from the show: FULL POST

Editor’s note: Thorbjørn Jagland is chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee and secretary general of the Council of Europe. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Thorbjørn Jagland.

At long last, it seems, Aung San Suu Kyi can deliver her Nobel lecture.

The pro-democracy campaigner from Myanmar will be in Oslo on Saturday to accept the Nobel Peace Prize she won in absentia more than 20 years ago.

It will be one of the greatest events in Nobel history, and it gives us the opportunity to reflect on human rights and what they require of us.

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By Fareed Zakaria

A day after Governor Scott Walker won his recall election, the New York Times wrote, "The biggest political lesson from Wisconsin may be that the overwhelming dominance of money on the Republican side will continue to haunt Democrats." Democrats have drawn much the same conclusion. "You've got a handful of self-interested billionaires who are trying to leverage their money across the country," said David Axelrod, Barack Obama's senior campaign strategist. "Does that concern me? Of course that concerns me."

But then how to explain the landslide victories in San Jose and San Diego of ballot measures meant to cut public-sector retirees' benefits? What should concern Axelrod far more is that on the central issue of the recall–the costs of public-sector employees–the Democratic Party is wrong on the substance, clinging to its constituents rather than doing the right thing.

Warren Buffett calls the costs of public-sector retirees a "time bomb." They are the single biggest threat to the U.S.'s fiscal health. If the U.S. is going to face a Greek-style crisis, it will not be at the federal level but rather with state and local governments.

Read more about the staggering numbers and why this has happened in my TIME column

Editor's note: Egypt's highest court on Thursday declared the parliament invalid, and the country's interim military rulers declared full legislative authority, triggering a new level of chaos and confusion in the country's leadership. Here's a post from last month, where Fareed Zakaria examines the problem of Egypt's military dictatorship.

By Fareed Zakaria

If you look at Egypt moving forward, there's a great deal of emphasis placed on the various political parties and what they may stand for and what they're going to do. But we have to remember: The real obstacle to democracy in Egypt continues to be the people who run Egypt — a military dictatorship. FULL POST

As the talk of who's arming whom in Syria continues, there's one area the U.S. is arming Syria: with technological know-how.

CNN talked with Jay Newton-Small, who recently reported for TIME magazine on some of the technology help the U.S. is giving the Syrian rebels. Here's an edited version of that conversation.

CNN: What did you find out in your reporting?

NEWTON-SMALL: It's fascinating, because for months you've seen this proliferation of videos from behind Syrian lines. And you wonder, because Syria has got such control over their Internet, how are these videos getting out? Have the dissidents suddenly become expert hackers or have they hired expert hackers? And it turns out, actually, no. FULL POST

Editor's note: Soner Cagaptay is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a GPS contributor. You can find all his blog posts here. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Soner Cagaptay.

By Soner Cagaptay, Special to CNN

Washington’s ties with Ankara have improved significantly in recent years thanks to a personal relationship between President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The two leaders have been in frequent contact, building a rapport that has translated into closer Turkish support for the U.S., including Ankara’s 2011 decision to participate in NATO’s crucial missile defense project.

Yet a crisis could be waiting in Syria.

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Editor's note: Christopher Sabatini is the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and senior director of policy at Americas Society/Council of the Americas. Ryan Berger is a policy associate at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas. The views in this article are solely those of Christopher Sabatini and Ryan Berger.

By Christopher Sabatini and Ryan Berger, Special to CNN

Speaking in Santiago, Chile, in March of last year, President Obama called Latin America “a region on the move,” one that is “more important to the prosperity and security of the United States than ever before.”

Somebody forgot to tell the Washington brain trust.

The Center for a New American Security, a respected national security think tank a half-mile from the White House, recently released a new series of policy recommendations for the next presidential administration. The 70-page “grand strategy” report only contained a short paragraph on Brazil and made only one passing reference to Latin America.

Yes, we get it. The relative calm south of the United States seems to pale in comparison to other developments in the world: China on a seemingly inevitable path to becoming a global economic powerhouse, the potential of political change in the Middle East, the feared dismemberment of the eurozone, and rogue states like Iran and North Korea flaunting international norms and regional stability.

But the need to shore up our allies and recognize legitimate threats south of the Rio Grande goes to the heart of the U.S.’ changing role in the world and its strategic interests within it.

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