think the challenge at least in that i'm just the. japanese media reporting that tokyo's olympic chief is set to step down the shitter morning it has been facing growing calls to resign for making sexist remarks about women before the japanese prime minister sparked outrage to saying the women board members talk too much. it is good to have you with us holloway dream for the good here in doha the headlines from al-jazeera were just 90 minutes away now though we're less than just about 30 minutes away from hearing more all the evidence against former u.s. president donald trump as his impeachment trial and to this a 3rd day so far we've seen impeachment managers to live a never before seen footage of the capitol hill attack on january 6th democrats of label trump insights in chief and so they came

draped in trump's flag and used our flag the american flag to batter and to bludgeon and at 230 i heard the term flying banging on house chamber doors. for the 1st time in more than 200 years the seat of our government was ransacked on our watch more now from hydro castro almost expect from thursday's proceedings. have up to 8 hours to conclude their case against president trump former president trump and the indications are that the pitcher managers plan to use most of that a lot of time yesterday we saw that summary of the cringe worthy video that the senators were made to watch particularly those republicans who are planning to acquit trump as these impeach managers took them right back to january 6th to

relive those moments of fear in of panic and the response to that from democrats in the chamber has been as expected calling it a strong case. leader has warned government workers to return to work or face action to 6 days of mass demonstrations made online also last people to avoid gathering jus to coronavirus but protesters are demanding the release of their elected leaders including on san suu kyi and that the joint to step down but u.s. president joe biden has had his 1st conversation with china's leadership jinping and he says the telephone call lasted some 2 hours on his feet here on al-jazeera off of the bottom line which is coming up next.

hi i'm steve clements and i have a question president joe biden says america is back and that he wants to press the reset button on u.s. relations with the rest of the world but what does that mean let's get to the bottom line. joe biden campaigned on promises to destroy the pandemic create jobs and tackle the systemic racism that's baked into america's collective psyche judging by the flurry of executive orders biden has signed in his 1st few weeks he's focusing on his domestic challenges but he's also going international too so after a break the u.s. is back in the paris climate accords back in the world health organization and trying to get back into the u.n. human rights council last week joe biden spoke at the state department to make the point that diplomacy is back that washington wants to work with other nations to solve big problems and to pursue america's core interests he talked about russia's

attempts to undermine american democracy how he'll need strong alliances to face the rising power of china how we'd like the united states to accept more refugees and how we'd like to see an end to wars like that we have in yemen right now which has been going on for more than 6 years some of the things that he left out of that speech are interesting too like relations with iran or what kind of future recedes for palestinians and israelis today we're talking with someone who can help us make sense of it all retired colonel lawrence wilkerson worked in the leadership of the state department during the george w. bush administration and before that sir for decades in the united states army colonel wilkerson it's great to see you again thank you so much for joining us today as i open it the me beginning joe biden has spoke on at the state department on february 4th let's listen to this clip. defending freedom champion opportunity upholding universal rights respecting the rule of law and treating every person with dignity. that's the ground meanwhile our of our global policy our grow will

power that's our and exhaustible source of strength that's america's abiding advantage. though many of these values have come under intense pressure in recent years even pushed to the brink in the last few weeks the american people are going to emerge from this moment stronger more determined and better equipped to unite the world in fighting to defend democracy because we have fought for it ourselves colonel wilkerson what are your reactions to joe biden's initial scaffolding in framing on american engagement in the world he's put a lot on the table there are a lot of things he wants to do what do you think of what he said so far. joe biden being a new year is i've known him for at least powell if not directly for almost 20

plus years and he had no other choice than to say what he said let's look at his experience long years on the senate on relations committee and then years in the chairmanship and then the minority leader on this is joe biden and frankly it's a breath of fresh air after 4 years of paul from the domestic challenges that are confronting it including the pandemic of course and the foreign policy and security challenges confronting him are daunting. i think he's gotten off to a pretty good start i hope he can bring to fruition even a quarter or a 3rd of what he's pronounced as his objectives but i think he got off to a good start and i for one will be a supporter of it larry i find you know the challenge for any administration and you were the person who kept order at the state department as colin powell chief of

staff how does biden keep his presidency from becoming a reactive presidency rather than having the contours of a strategic approach to american priorities. that's a good question and it's a question we asked ourselves at the state department as we learned about your job your bush and richard cheney the vice president increasingly. it's difficult but i think he's laid down some markers he's going to have tremendous challenges in the domestic arena and i think that alone is probably going to make his overseas initiatives difficult simple to bill if not challenging bill because he's going to be so focused on these domestic issues the fact that he's put some of these key people even people who are foreign policy gurus so to speak into the domestic arena is indicative of glad. the pandemic is not all he's got to confront of course as

you mentioned in your opening remarks he's got to confront this white supremacy this eventuality will element in our country which motivated a significant portion of trump's base and hasn't gone away as a matter of fact as we've seen in the last week or so it appears to be that the republican party my political party is morphing into a cult call that is mostly composed of these kind of people so we can we can talk about this and we can say it's not a problem we can toss it off as a little domestic terrorism but it's going to be an enormous problem in terms of the any kind of unity that joe biden wants to bring to this country which will be necessary to meet some really colossal challenges not least of which is the challenge of the climate as we're seeing now with the glacier melt then the region of india along the thai border which is just the beginning of that glaciers are going we're going to have this kind of flooding and they were going to have no

water as the glaciers and the rivers they'd be dry up completely so there are huge challenges huge challenges i wouldn't want to be joe biden drunk. he has no choice he's. he's got to work on these things so that the name of the game is taking that job when you know you when the bush administration left and you were not there at that time you were in the bush administration for the 1st 4 years of it but when they were leaving and the obama administration was coming in i want to acknowledge that you and i work together and we looked at things like where could barack obama send different segments to the world then and we identified 3 areas if he changed the way gravity works with cuba with israel palestine and with iran it would set a different signal to the world that america was back and that it was going to contribute to global stability now he worked on all of those some to varying degree what do you think the defining challenge is for a biden administration coming in to genuinely send in different signals to the

world are where is the what are those you know give me some wilkerson strategic clarity on what buttons matter more than others. well he's already dealt with the principal one that everyone wants to talk about and that could go a ride any moment and that of course is the country in the world that's rivaling us not in some ways surpassing us china. his statement that i have it here extreme competition but we need not have conflict that's exactly the way to look at it that's kind of the way we looked at it in the 1st bush administration will we talk about strategic competition but we didn't talk about war so that's a portfolio he's got to manage let's look at the asia pacific an important region of the world almost all trade in that region now is with china dominantly not with the united states anymore but with china dominant the whole power situation is changing we must awaken to that i think biden understands that but the congress

knows not what do i mean change this change because we are no longer had germany and the pacific there are 2 of us now and that's a difficult balance to maintain particularly when allies which we have a plenty in the region are so she can jalil with that giant call china our economy and purchasing power parity now surpasses ours i suspect it will continue to do that. this is a difficult challenge but you mentioned cuba you mentioned iran these are places where he can pick up some perhaps low hanging fruit certainly with cuba just get back to the point where president obama was in affecting some sort of report model without iowa and with the romney's already standing wants to reenergize the p. o. a now pale and trump left some land mines significant land mine in the intricacy and complexity of the sanctions that they put on iran they sanctioned the knees of

the red ants on the locusts in iran so it's going to be extreme and i know something about this i work with those. you on wind american sanctions with great difficulty especially when there are so interim. playland left so those are some low hanging fruit areas but they're not that easy to accomplish in the iranians i've already said sanctions relief is going to be there with pro quo or re-entering the agreement fully and going along with there are so yes there are some things out there he can do china russia russia look at what we need to do new start expires this month and my dad has said he's going to do it we should have been doing this a long time ago we need to reestablish nuclear arms control in the wall let it become a tattered regime that's very dangerous so yes there are some things he can do the numerate and some of them they need to do them swiftly and. most most important of

all the instrument with which to do him is diplomacy. one of the challenges and many of the things you just laid out quite beautifully whether it's with iran whether it's confronting and dealing with russia is that there are a lot of middle countries involved both in the middle east in europe. that that have been looking at american behavior the last few years and not sure that the america they thought they knew was going to be a good ally on their dark days and that they've been to some degree heading their bets very frustrated with our course in iran what would you put forward larry what are you thinking of biden ministration thinks it needs to put forward in terms of trust building with allies that may not believe in an american bounce back. steve miller on the middle east is a particular area of challenge right now largely because of us miscalculation

and even strategic error the invasion of iraq in 2003 leads the list in that regard we turned loose a total chaotic mess in the lot when we invaded iraq we destroyed the balance of power there and we put iran in the catbirds the. what we need to do now what we what we've done over the years as you well know we have changed from a strategy that i was part of the implementation all for so many years in the military where we had forces offshore we called it all shore balancing we didn't have so many forces on shore look at that area now general mckenzie has the most powerful unified command and the unified command plan central command he has more forces then he can throw it people any time he wants to and need worry about him sometimes doing things like putting ballistic missile and attack submarines in the persian gulf an extremely dangerous thing to do for those about souls and doing

other things like he looks as if he's trying to is fight a war over there buddied up with mohamed bin saddam on in riyadh that's not the way we should be dealing with that region we should be trying to stand that huge military apparatus down that to a certain extent value d. the largest air force base in the oil in kuwait the largest true perception of disability in the world and behind this bit elite the largest and most powerful plea now we need to do something different in that region and i hope president biden will figure that out and i hope his secretary of defense will be right there with even tony blinken that sextape and we'll calm this down a little bit and let the region handle many of the problems there at the same time i hope i'm hearing right that he's going to take a different tack to the palestinians because the last administration virtually under gerry cush mirrors on able hand abandoned the palace standing abandoned them and sincerely said what my president in 2002 or so said daughtry carone over to you

from minister we've been doing this for 40 years enough means weren't so you can do what you want to do and what it is that man it is meant israel turning into increasingly and the archives state in both derision. and the west bank and it made me would be an apartheid state with regard to anyone who is jewish a little bit of the primary territory the middle real solutions god you've got to get a handle on it and the handle as to represent the unions are more front leaning what the trump administration was doing and that that meant that anyone who got a new leadership why would a boss is no longer a monster they need to find some younger more energetic more dynamic more capable leadership and they need to get it ready to run for their money and we need to help them do that so their love act of challenges in the law i couldn't agree with the

more i think and the you know it is interesting that 15 years of mahmoud abbas 11 years after his term extended they become kind of irrelevant if you will to just about every party so replenishing a leadership bringing in youth hopefully that is not top part of that you know corrupt stagnancy you know i completely agree but let me have let me ask you to go a bit deeper on iran and saudi arabia for a minute so with regard to iran there are elections coming up there too and as in any nation there is a struggle between hardliners and reformers that seems to be in every country in the world so what we do now will play into that with saudi arabia we have intelligence estimates said that mohamed bin psalm on likely gave the order to have jamal khashoggi killed we've just cut off arms sales and supplies to saudi for the continuation of the yemen war so things are going to shift there neither party is one that we're particularly comfortable with you know to say the least how does

america get its interests right in that situation i think i heard you say we ought to step back and let them solve the problem but but are they so important that we just can't withdraw. i have i take the importance of the relationship with saudi arabia seriously in the military that was part of my portfolio for a long time at u.s. pacific command i take their relationship with little spark to the u.a.e. and others encounter very seriously to the with the g.c.c. it was always the. american a divorcing his asian and thought amongst itself more than that was noble i answered but i have to say that it hasn't worked what we've done up to this point it's not work in any serious way now let me back up and say one of the reasons reasons it hasn't worked lately is because we made such a mess in 2003 within the way in beijing interact but that said that miss needs to be cleaned up as best as it as best they can and the way you do that is you get

saudi arabia and its allies on that side of the goal could be will and iran and you get them to talking you get them to understanding that it is in their best interest and the ability interest of the region to get them together and not to be so confrontational the only reason the saudis think they can be crowned confrontational in a serious stance and especially on within so a month is because they got the united states backing they got the superpower backing when they got $80000000000.00 in arms sales and so forth yesterday i spent some time with the branch committee on national legislation trying to help them why don't let or to president biden and they've done a magnificent job of it by letters headed by the white house right now and it may be tails that things that he ought to fill in the somewhat ambiguous policy statement he made with regard to getting the saudis to stop the war in yemen that's

an important ingredient to all of business i'm saying we need to stop that brutal conflict and pulling the united states out of support all military support for the saudis in terms of office. and that needs to be defined comprehensively and more laundry not narrowly like the pentagon likes to do usually is a 1st step you have to get that conflict stopped and then you have to get there on riyadh talking to one and all the rest in order to you and you have to get them convinced that the best way to bring payslips the building and ultimately prosperity to that region is for them to stop this constant by any grudge bearing that they have and get to doing things lead help all of them at the same time the code 19 pandemic is a case in point iran because of our sanctions is perving right now really hurting it was unconscionable what pompei always doing in terms of using unmanned tarion reasons to sanction iran just unconscionable they couldn't even get mask and basic

ingredients the p.p.p. you need to go with one thing they couldn't get any of the stuff we need to stop that too that we need to take a different approach to the region steve and their approach needs to be more balanced needs to be more diplomatic than military and it needs to be as holding peoples hands as they negotiate their own agreements rather than are trying to compel them to it by dropping bombs on their territory that's been our policy for the last 20 years or so let us bomb you a little bit and we'll fix you that doesn't work and we've proved. colonel we're talking to you in part today because of your deep knowledge of the state department but you also have deep knowledge of the pentagon i remember when bill clinton came into office there was concerns about a gap between bill clinton and the pentagon and whether the pentagon would ultimately 'd sabotage various clinton initiatives i remember the same thing when barack obama came in on whether the pentagon was also really going to be

a veto on some of the things barack obama was trying to do and we know those struggles they've been documented as joe biden is coming in as come in we also know from the past that there's been some ambivalence among you know major leaders in. the pentagon i mean you know i just just remember afghanistan and others where you have generals that basically mocked joe biden when he was vice president what is your sense does joe biden going to have a pentagon under general lloyd austin now secretary lloyd austin that is going to execute his policies or are they going to become a constraint and a separate tour joe biden's foreign policy course. that's a very good question stephen let me back up to the suspect on one of your comments the worst thing for a little obama did in his 2nd term if not most terms was will it be operation led into it by hillary clinton and samantha power no others but i had

a conversation with him in the white house and he started a conversation with reason words there is a bias and is down toward war and then with secretary kerry right beside him he began to talk about that in the way that it was the error that it was so the pentagon was objecting to that bob gates did not sign up for that war so there is a possibility and with lloyd austin there and i think that's a reason to want to put it where there's a distinct possibility that the pentagon will be more amenable to what are the bad moments in there that we might think otherwise. now you're right there are certain people and i put at the top of the list general mackenzie the aggrandizing power seeking give me some more forces central command commander right now. if i were biden i'd be and austin i'd be watching him really close it looks to me like he wants to be another storming norman get him self another war that he can be famous

and his command can be the main participant all so i wouldn't have anything to do with someone like that and if by nasa to fire a few people as for example you recall dick cheney did it but the 1st game came in a sector defense then so be it but the pentagon's got to go along with what the president wants to do unless the president is like the former one and wants to use the pentagon for domestic purposes as it was clear from one to do i don't think that will be joe biden i think joe biden in the pentagon particularly when will it all spin is the secretary of defense i'm going to get along quite well and i think he needs to listen probably to the pentagon with regard to the use of both very force as much as he might to blink an eye at the state department i recall powell telling me many times in my own experience there is out there warmongers in the cabinet cabinet sometimes lived in boggy bottom more than they did at the $500000.00. so you have to be careful there but biden has an experience this

is probably the most experience president that we've had with regard to foreign and security policy and to a certain extent domestic policy to buy all the time he spent in congress that we've had since george h.w. bush. and i think that is my teaching and my study has demonstrated to me my students would probably verify this mean most important asset a president can bring to the white house in the beginning and conversely that the most dangerous element if he doesn't have it is experience. knowing what he's doing . regular as a learning moment or day you're well colonel lawrence wilkerson former chief of staff of the department of state thanks so much for sharing your wisdom and thoughts and insights with us today we really appreciate it thank you thank you stephen. so what's the bottom line joe biden may say america is

back but this isn't a disney movie can't say abracadabra and like magic everything is fixed the world still trying to get over the weirdness of a superpower that said screw you with it's america 1st narcissism for the last 4 years biden wants a lot of things and many are good he wants america to welcome more refugees want to elevate rights globally he may enjoy a honeymoon phase of goodwill in some corners of the globe but then it's going to get tough he's going to be tested by friends and by photos at least the world's problems are won't be dealt with through tweets and sound bites from the president yelling over the sound of a helicopter but in a messy world where trust in america's intentions and character are low we just have to wonder how much will he be able to pull off and that's the bottom line.

jump into the story there is a lot going on in this and julia not global community when i talk about the misinformation i think we all want to feed that we and where it be part of the debate don't ever take anybody's one word because there's always a difference when no topic is off the table we have been disconnected from our land we've been disconnected from who we are who would love to hear the new and e.t.p. part of today's discussion this stream on out is there. it's america's worst kept secret cracked open the time of a pandemic exposed in the time of trump through the turmoil of 2020 the big picture traces

a century of racial injustice to reveal how philanthropy politics and economics preserve structural inequality keep the white a supreme and black in its place the race for america part 2 on the jazeera. told to own their own. tell us all in a case well some of the stuff you compensated civilians or we listen to the only music you hear is your own the most beautiful music in the world is silence we meet with global newsmakers and talk about the stories that matter although to 0. is on it change because. people believe in a place that is bigger than their. way well a fundamental political or my city around the state representative they put themselves to make the. yes something that we. should have

taken this long to do that in the name of scott jimmy's a blank ragusa we have a disco to slosh and born to create new areas we have to change this culture and one of the fortunate ones that can mean anything that is my love but all the people that majority of these legal research talk about are just good hardworking people that want to live the american dream like our ancestors these are going to refugees are terrified that they may be forced to return to myanmar. will come today from every one of us. even those working quietly behind the scenes. so you can relax enjoy the breaking news.

and when you leave with a smile we know a day's work is done. welcome to our home. hello i'm a very unfit it is 1700 hours g.m.t. mid day in washington d.c. and we're taking you straight to the u.s. senate where day 3 of former president donald trump's impeachment trial is just getting underway the democratic beachfront managers are accusing trump of inciting the deadly insurrection on capitol hill last month so far they've released never before seen security video to demonstrate just how close rioters got to members of congress some of whom they threaten to kill they've also argued trump's campaign of misinformation at his.