i'm ben bland in london. the headlines. to introduce an ultra low emission zone. drivers of polluting vehicles, from motorbikes to lorries, striving for cleaner air and the coming into the centre of the city city streets of london becomes the first in the world to charge drivers will have to pay to enter the area. of polluting vehicles using its the libyan government has begun a counter—offensive against rebel roads. president trump announces he troops advancing on the capital tripoli. is replacing his secretary of reports say both sides are using air strikes. officials in the capital say say homeland security. 21 people have died. i'm mariko 0i in singapore, the un has called for an urgent truce. also in the programme. and this story is the finishing touches to the biggest trending on bbc.com. it's the pyongyang marathon, election in india's history. voting where twice as many foreign visitors begins later this week. took part than in last year's race. there is a famous saying the marathon is one of the main here that the indian tourist draws in north korea. government is like a piece of flatbread, he needs to be flipped just under 1,000 foreign passport holders ran on sunday compared on the griddle or it will burn. so will it flip this time? with a50 a year ago. bohemian rhapsody picks stay with us. now on bbc news, it's hardtalk

with stephen sackur. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. the united states of america is still the most powerful nation on earth, but the way it's perceived by friends and rivals has changed radically in a generation. at the end of the cold war, american supremacy was unchallenged, and washington's commitment to multilateral global engagement unquestioned. well now, we live in a very different era. my guest is william burns, who served as a top ranked us diplomat for three decades, serving five presidents. is the us losing its capacity to lead 7

william burns, welcome to hardtalk. it's great to be with you. you have retired, you were a top—ranked diplomat for more than three decades. do you think your career encompassed the period when diplomacy came to matter much less? i think at some ways it did, you're right. i began the book with a scene that was set in the george h w bush administration when i worked for secretary of state james baker at the madrid—middle east peace conference. and that really was the point at which american power and diplomacy was at their peak. but then, over the course of the following three decades, part of it was sort of the natural evolution of events, as other powers rose in the world. part of it had to do with unforced errors, particularly in iraq in 2003

on the part of american administrations. but part of it also reflected a drift in the priority of american administrations attached to american diplomacy as a tool of pursuing our of pursuing our interests in the world. i think after the end of the cold war, there was a sense of complacency. we went through a period of significant budget cuts driven by congress. then came the huge shock to our system in 9/11, and a further emphasis on military and intelligence tools of foreign policy, with diplomacy often times treated as an under resourced afterthought. it seems to me there is a structural thing here. when you set out in the early 1990s, you were labouriously writing long reports back to washington, putting them in a pouch and it would take days for your masters in washington to get them and read them. now in the environment of 24/7 news, social media streams,

electronic surveillance, frankly the diplomat, your entire your entire life devoted to it, that role is sort of gone? i don't think it's gone, but it certainly has changed significantly. and professional diplomats need to adapt. we are slow to adapt because self—criticism is sometimes in order, and the state department is full of people who, as individuals, can be very creative and entrepreneurial. as an institution, the state department has rarely been accused of being too agile or too full of initiative. so the pace and volume of information today, as journalists and diplomats have to contend with, means there is still an enormous value in smart diplomacy, but it is in distilling that avalanche of information. let's talk about how smart diplomacy has been in your lifetime. you've written a very thick tome, which is a very interesting, detailed account of all the different diplomatic activities.

you've been involved with, primarily focused on the middle east and russia, which were your two real specialists. your contention is that america over the years has seen some really very effective diplomats in charge, from james baker, who you admired a great deal, through figures like colin powell to barack 0bama himself in more recent times. i would put it to you that actually, your account really represents how many mistakes and missteps were made during your professional lifetime. i tried to be honest about things i got right and things i got wrong. i tried to ground it not — as often as the case in memoirs, in writing what i wish i'd said or recommended, but rather what i was saying and thinking at the time, so i was able to get

about 120 documents declassified, some of which are at the end of the book. so i try to present warts and all my successes and failures as a diplomat. i guess what's interesting is the degree to which you, and let's start with russia, could see that the us was probably getting wrong the structural relationship with post—soviet russia in the 1990s, getting it wrong because of the enthusiasm for the rapid expansion towards russia's border. you advised against that rapid expansion, and nobody appeared to be listening. why? i think if you look at the first waves of the expansion of nato in the late 1990s, you could understand. i was sitting in moscow trying to offer myjudgement on what the russian reaction would be. but from the point of view of a pole with an historic sense of insecurity, you can understand the attraction... but we aren't talking about what the polls were thinking, but the conclusions drawn in washington, dc in what was ultimately in america's national interest.

and i'm focusing in on it because it matters so much today because of what we now see in the relationship between vladimir putin and the united states. i think in terms of nato expansion, as i point out in the book, the big mistake that i believe we made was in the spring of 2008 at the end of the george w bush administration, when we pushed quite hard for the opening of the door to formal membership for ukraine and georgia. and that's an issue that wasn't unique to putin, it runs across the russian political elite. and i think we had gotten into the habit of putting nato expansion on autopilot, and into the habit born of our experience in the 19905 where it seemed to us we could manoeuvre over or around any objection from moscow. already in this interview, you've used a word that seems to me quite important, complacency. there was, and you inherited it because long before you came to the state department, there was this notion of a pre—eminent america. do you think that notion

of pre—eminence led to a form of complacency which has been corrosive in the last 20 years? i think it was that sense, which was the reality at the end of the cold war, the us was the single dominant player on the international landscape. and that bred a certain complacency, and that intersected with another deeply felt emotion, which was the shock to the system of 9/11, and the sense that the united states needed to ensure that an attack like that never happened again. and the bias then was towards prevention, towards acting, a form of muscular unilateralism that caused us to pay less attention to the multilateralism. 0ne specific point that strikes me as interesting and russia, you met vladimir putin several times. now donald trump, who currently of course is guiding a very different approach to russia, at least on the face of it is different, because he wants to reach out to putin. he admires him, we know that,

and he seems to believe that one—on—one personal diplomacy, as we've seen in those extraordinary summit meetings, like the one in helsinki recently, trump seems to believe that by being with putin, spending time with him and establishing a relationship, that can have a structural impact on the moscow — washington relationship. do you as a diplomat believe that can and does matter? personal relationships certainly matter, they matter with autocrats in particular, because of their singular domination of another political system. there are necessary but not sufficient, and the concern i have about donald trump's approach to his relationships with autocrats like putin is that in his effort to curry favour to almost indulge in ingratiating himself with leaders like that, that's perceived by putin and kimjong—un as a sign of weakness and manipulability. so the focus on personal relationships is important, certainly george w bush

and james baker understood that well, but it must be coupled with a hard—nosed business of diplomacy, which means building leverage and trusting professional diplomats and others to help carry through policies as well. without that, i think diplomacy becomes narcissism. it's not a diplomacy of institutions. let me switch from russia, which you are a russian speaker, that was one of your specialists, the other was the middle east because you're an arabic speaker, as well, and you spend a lot of time in the middle east. you were involved with different capacities right through that 9/11 period, the invasion of iraq, all the way through to barack 0bama's policymaking on syria, bringing it right forward to 2011 onwards. again, it looks like a tale of missteps, mistakes, of strategic lack of direction. you were part of it? i was. i think we got some things right,

certainly going back to the madrid to the madrid peace conference just after the end of the cold war. i think the iranian nuclear agreement, which sadly we've abandoned in the last couple of years, was a significant step forward for american diplomacy. so there were other moments where we got this right. you have written about the iraq invasion of 2003, you've described how you wrote memos laying out all the potential problems that you saw with the toppling of saddam hussein. you stayed, despite the fact that the administration clearly did not listen to your advice. one has to say, you were something of an enabler? that's true, i had a conversation that i write about in the book with a senior colleague in the state department. we talked about that, and almost inevitably, that's the role that you fall into sometimes. how important is it if a senior figure let yourself truly feels a policy to be deeply misguided

and damaging to the national to the national interest — how important is it to draw a line and say, "if that line is crossed, i'm out of here? i' i have enormous respect for those of my colleagues, there were three over the iraq war in 2003 who resigned from the foreign service. there were 20 over policy in the balkans in the early 1990s. i have enormous respect for that decision. however, i also think that continuing to do the best you can and being honest about your concerns inside a disciplined profession is also important. whether i got that balance right or not, i'm not sure to this day. but we did try in the run—up to the iraq war to be honest about our concerns. two colleagues of mine and i had the most depressing brainstorming session of my career in the summer of 2002, where we tried to puncture some of what we believed were the recklessly rosy assumptions about what the day after saddam hussein's over

throw would look like in iraq. and it was more a hurried list of horrible is then a coherent analysis. but we tried to list all the things we thought could go wrong. we entitled that memorandum "the perfect storm". in reading it in hindsight, we got it about half right and half wrong. but it was an honest effort to express oui’ concerns, and that's an obligation i think for professionals. what do you think, if one adds up all of the us‘s middle east strategic key policies of the last 25 years, from israel and palestine attempting to be the peacemaker but utterly failing, one must conclude — iraq, the invasion and removal of saddam hussein, but the leaving behind of such a mess that it spilt over into syria and arguably was the cornerstone of the creation of isis and the jihadist movement. syria, the greatest humanitarian tragedy in the middle east of recent times... at the end of all that, it looks at the involvement

of yourself has to conclude that you and many others oversaw a catastrophic damage to us credibility in the region and the world ? well we got a lot of things wrong. as i said, we got some things right during that period. i think american diplomacy has its limits, and i think one of the things we learned over those three decades is the limits of our agency in the middle east. and i think all too often, both leaderships and peoples in the middle east, as well as americans, got accustomed to seeing american decisions as central to their future. the arab spring was a reminder that people in that region have agency of their own. so i would be the last person to argue we have a pristine record in the middle east, we did not. through administrations of both parties. but i think we need to learn the lessons of that experience, the limits of our agency, but also learn where we can focus constructively.

let's now talk about donald trump. and i don't wish to make it sound like i'm simply focused on all the negatives and i'm using hindsight in a very easy way for a journalist to do. i've discovered i've gotten a lot smarter since i got out of government. the fact is that donald trump ran a campaign in 2016 when, as he addressed foreign policy issues, he told the american public that they've been failed by the foreign policy establishment for the last generation. they've given you a set of received ideas, a status quo mentality which has not worked in america's national interest, and he would be different, shaking things up. as we've discussed things in this interview, it seems to me that donald trump had a point? i think anyone who got elected president of the united states in 2016 was going to have to reckon with a landscape on which our record was pretty mixed. it was also going to have to reckon with a pretty big disconnect within american society between people like me, card—carrying members

of the washington establishment, and lots of american citizens who, when we preach the virtues of disciplined american leadership in the world, in my experience most americans don't need to be convinced of the value of american engagement in the world. but they do need to be convinced if frankly, your exercise of your experience and insight has failed. and if donald trump is telling them that the state department is full of people who are elitist and don't understand america's real interest, and the intelligence agencies as well, because he included them, and he would do things very differently and get rid of all these elitists, operating his own foreign policy and intelligence gathering in a different way. that's what he said, and in a sense that's what he's doing, and we talk about his russia policy, his confrontation with china over trade, we could talk about his different approach to north korea and iran. he's shaken up all of the received ideas that you practised which didn't work.

i think some of those ideas work, and some didn't. but the point i was trying to make before is that most americans don't need to be persuaded of the value of american leadership in the world. what they are sceptical about, and what trump took advantage of, is the disciplined part of that. they see indiscipline, and the way in which american administrations and professionals have made choices over time. so in a sense, trump was asking the right questions, i just think he's supplying the wrong answers. because if you look at the public servants of the united states today, the state department in the intelligence community in the military, they are deeply patriotic, committed, they have enormous amounts of expertise that you need to draw on, not disdain. and when donald trump was asked last year about whether he was concerned of the number of senior vacancies in the state department, his response was, "not so much, because i'm the only one who matters". that is not a prescription for playing an effective american role in the world.

so those were the right questions, and elected president would have had to address them. but i think what he's supplying are the wrong answers. we are hollowing out our ability to compete effectively on a landscape which is far more competitive and contested today than it was when ijoined the foreign service. let's talk about that new landscape, it seems to me to be the one challenge we haven't talked about, the one that matters more arguably than the others, is china. that's certainly true. do you think it's time to confront, co—operate with, or contain china? i think the notion of containing china doesn't make much sense. what i think american policy ought to do, working with partners and allies around the world, is try to shape the environment into which china rises. and there are lots of countries across asia today that are concerned that china's rise comes not at the expense of their prosperity and security. so the us naturally has

an opportunity not so much to contain china, although we do need to push back against predatory chinese trade and investment practises. donald trump is right to do that, but you need to couple that with affirmative vision of what is the kind of asia you want to see? i think we have lots of assets on which to draw, to try and create not only that vision... but do you think the foreign policy machine was very how important front and centre china needed to be? i'm just quoting here a colleague of yours from the 0bama administration, kurt campbell who said very recently, "as the assumptions driving us china policy have started looking increasingly tenuous and the gap between american expectations in chinese realities has grown, washington has unfortunately been largely focused elsewhere". i think since 9/11, a huge preoccupation with the middle east. so to that extent,

what kurt said is right. but again, i think addressing the question of pushing back against certain chinese practises is only one part of a sensible strategy. the other part is to make common cause with other countries who share some of those concerns, and to create an architecture in which you create incentives and disincentives for china, as well. that would've the virtue to the transpacific partnership, knitting together a0%. .. which donald trump chose to walk away from. what we see in china today is grand ambition. the president said he wants china to be a global leader in terms of comprehensive national strength and international influence. we see the belton road policy, we see the 5g and hi—tech commitment which is making china a world leader, which worries the us more than any other nation. what we don't see it america

responding with a similar outward looking global tech driven vision. where's the american belton road? the challenge here, and this would've been what the transpacific partnership would have in part supplied, is that sense of an affirmative american view shared by lots of other countries. the same is true in pushing back against chinese trade practises. rather than start second and third—front trade with the european union and japan over steel and aluminium, it would make more sense to make common cause with them, as well. so i think china has a lot of its own challenges to deal with domestically, as well. so our relationship with china, the single most consequential on the international landscape today, will be a combination of those areas where cold—blooded lee, we need to work together, and also there's areas where we need to compete. this is what the chinese seem to think of america today, it is a very interesting quote from an international relations professor in shanghai. he says," america does not

wa nt to shanghai. he says," america does not want to lead at this time when china clearly does want to lead". did he get that right? i hope that's not the case, but i think that's the perception at some times when the chinese leadership looks at the erratic and uncertain leadership of the current administration. so i think the united states has a huge capacity to lead a lot of assets on which to draw, but we just need to have the vision and drive to be able to accomplish that. the vision and drive, i want to bring it back to the personals as we come towards the end. we talked about your own career in diplomacy. you retired before donald trump came into the white house. what would you have done if you were still a top ranking serving diplomat and donald trump came into the white house with his approach, his philosophy to foreign policy making? would you have quick? his philosophy to foreign policy making? would you have quick7m would've been really hard to continue to serve, and a number of my colleagues from my generation,

who were still serving during the transition, made that choice. i encourage my colleagues who are still serving in government to continue to serve and do the best they can, because i think american interests require that caught her profession. never mind the discussion we had about enabling, the degree to which you need to have redlines which you can't cross. in terms of your values of what you think america represents? especially asa think america represents? especially as a senior official, when you have to publicly go out and defend policies, i would've found it very difficult. and finally, in terms of the values that we talk about, do you think that is still the most important advantage america has over nations like china, with their big ambitions? the american values have something to them which chinese interests and values do not?” something to them which chinese interests and values do not? i don't think they're so much american values as they are a set of values widely shared in the world, the

value of open political and economic systems. in my experience... even with authoritarianism ? systems. in my experience... even with authoritarianism? in my experience, we get a large farther through the power of our preaching. we don't set a good example on either side of the atlantic today where we seem to be having simultaneous nervous breakdowns. but ido simultaneous nervous breakdowns. but i do believe in the value of those virtues of the way in which we look at organising our own societies, and how societies should interact with one another. but we must do a better job of demonstrating that we can actually live by those values at home. william burns, thank you very much. my pleasure. thanks so much.

hello there. the weekend brought us some pretty mixed fortunes in terms of the weather. for many parts it was cloudy and drizzly, particularly in the north and east. there were clear skies further west. this was the scene as the sunset on sunday night in barnstable in devon. heading to the day on monday, there are still mixed fortunes and sunny weather developing, but some rain around the south. we have a slow—moving weather front that will be with us for the next few days. here it is, and during monday it will be draped from southeast england through parts of the midlands, up towards northern ireland. this stone will stay quite cloudy, first thing in the morning most of us looking frost free. but a touch of frost in scotland first thing. through the day we keep that week weather front, bringing thing. through the day we keep that week weatherfront, bringing cloud and showers to southeast england into wales, perhaps 1— to showers getting to parts of northern

ireland. elsewhere, a few showers for the aisles of silly. a bit misty and murky through the north east coast, but missed it should clear leaving plenty of sunshine, particularly for western scotland in northwest england. temperatures between 10—17dc, still reason to be mild throughout the day on monday. monday night into tuesday, this weather front sticks around in the south. more of that heavy rain for similarareas, south. more of that heavy rain for similar areas, south wales in southern england. looking like a frost free night with some mist and fog. cloud pouring in off the north sea, some of these northeast sea coasts could well stay murky, but lots of sunshine developing elsewhere. but we have that stubborn front bringing more rain along the south coast of england into south wales. and you'll notice by tuesday that things start to turn a bit cooler. top at temperatures around 9-10dc, cooler. top at temperatures around 9—10dc, perhaps 13—14dc down west.

but it will turn cooler into wednesday, that's because we start to import this air from scandinavia. an easterly breeze developing at a drop until the micro temperature. by wednesday, there'll be more sunshine for most of us, still murky along the eastern coasts, and the remnants of that weather front bringing more cloud towards the southwest. but elsewhere, a lot of dry and sunny weather with light winds, though temperatures are not great for this time of year. many of us particularly towards the eastern coast are stuck in single figures. and if we look further ahead towards the end of the week, it looks mostly dry, but still rather cool for the time of year with temperatures generally around 9—13dc. that's it for now. bye—bye.