>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> we begin with the ongoing crisis in ukraine. they voted overwhelmingly to secede and join russia. russian president vladimir putin

has signed a decree recognizing crimea as a sovereign and independent state. kiev has called the referendum illegal. european union and the united states have responded by placing sanctions on high-ranking officials. president obama spoke earlier today. >> we continue to make clear to russia that this will only further isolate russia and diminish its place in the world. they will continue to stand together to oppose their territorial integrity. this will exact a greater toll on the russian economy. going forward, we calibrate our response based on whether russia chooses to escalate or de-escalate the situation. >> joining me now, tom friedman also from "the new york times" david sanger.

they look at some of the criticism angles at president obama's leadership. david, let me begin with you. you say the obama policy is being put to a test in ukraine and in crimea. what is the policy and what is the test? >> charlie, if you think about the first term in the obama administration he deliberately moved to a light footprint strategy. we've talked about it before on this show. the theory was that the era of sending 100,000 troops or 150,000 troops to a country for six of seven years to do nationbuilding had to end. the light footprint was about using drones which he has used far more than president bush, using cyber in cases like iran, using special forces to do a quick in and out. then he uses the treasury department as his favorite non-combatant command and that

was very successful in bringing iranians to the table. we don't know whether or not that's going to work. the light footprint, as one of president obama's advisor said to me, has run out of gas. dealing with problems like assad or vladimir putin going in to a sovereign state and taking over crimea, threatening the rest of ukraine, special forces and may be the usual economic tools do not work terribly effectively. he tried to ratchet up the pressure and did so today with sanctions on individuals in the kremlin and so forth. this is not a strategy that yields very big results right away.

it may over time or it may in the long term. more importantly, it will probably not be effective in getting any of the recent action in crimea reversed. after three years of the strategy, assad is stronger than he was one year ago and there is no telling if any of this is having any real effect. >> he is like pollyanna, john wayne and henry kissinger in the same month. what is he required to be now? >> he has acted in those ways because he is reflecting, i think, the feeling of the american people. there is a deep ambivalence in getting involved in a place like syria which can only be resolved, in my view, with the boots on the ground down someone monopolizing the use of force there.

there is no easy way to come in from behind and i think americans are deeply wary of getting involved in a place like that. in crimea, you have a peninsula that was part of the soviet union and given away essentially in 1954 to ukraine where the people there speak russian and want to be part of russia. the question really is how deeply are you going to get involved in trying to reverse that? the responses are measured to interests. i do not buy this manifest weakness.

ronald reagan said it would not be a good record for his behavior. george w. bush did not go to war to reverse his intervention in georgia. a lot of this is drive-by criticism. you drive by and say that you didn't and everybody laughs. it has no connection to the real options at hand. it does not reflect anything the american people really want right now. >> americans want to focus on themselves here and get their own nationbuilding in order rather than involving themselves somewhere else. if we do that, is there a vacuum of leadership in the world that someone else might inherit? tom? >> my feeling right now, charlie, is the most important thing that we can do is rebuild our strength. it is partially like vietnam but in ways it is different.

neither of which have produced outcomes that i think anyone in america would argue were worth the investment. we spend about $1 trillion in afghanistan and iraq. under the bush administration we cut taxes. for the first time in american history, we cut taxes while fighting two foreign wars, let alone one. as a result, we are fiscally in a different place and we see the impact now on the pentagon budget more broadly. my own feeling is that we have to rebuild our strength at home and what worries me is we are neither doing nationbuilding abroad or at home at this open scale that we need and it really does lead to the kind of vacuum you are talking about. i think we make a lot of

mistakes in the world, the united states. lord knows we do. we have this hugely important role whether it is protecting the sea lanes in the pacific and financial markets but they will grow up in a fundamentally different world. in the wake of what happened the last decade, we have to take a step back in order to play the role i think we need to play in the world. i will support that. what worries me is we are taking a step can't we have the civil war at home between our own version of shiites and sunnis, republicans and democrats, so we are neither doing the type of nation building we need to be doing at home or abroad. >> you have seen this written time after time by both

analysts, drive-by and others as well as officials in countries like saudi arabia and israel who cite the syrian failure to bomb when the president said he would not take it to congress, but what we will do with the russians is to get them to destroy chemical weapons as a sign of weakness. >> particularly in the arab world, the one thing you hear about the most. i don't think it has to do with the way the president came out. i think he made a pretty good case a week or two ago that he came out in a place in which the syrians, more slowly than we would like, are dismantling the weapons. the problem is how he got there, making a series of threats and backing away from them. you talked a little bit before about national interest and tom talked about national interests.

if there is a big difference between the obama doctrine and the bush doctrine, it is that obama is driven very much by national interest. then he wants to make sure that others in the neighborhood who rely on those are in the game as well. even not going to libya in a big way without the arab league and nato going there first. that makes sense in a world where you have to rationalize american resources and a world that you have to recognize that we cannot get into every site but it does create a vacuum and there are some global comments that we are simply not going to go into deal with. there are some places, like syria and crimea where he you come to the determination that it is not in our direct national interest. >> tom, do you believe crimea

will be a disaster for vladimir putin? >> it could be for two reasons. in the wake of what happened today, as david said, the president announced sanctions on a limited number of russian officials, but they did not total up the number of people sanctions but think about the signal that sends to investors in russia. the signal that sends is to beware. that is the first thing i'm going to watch. what are the long-term implications of investing in russia? the second thing that could really haunt putin about ukraine is about crimea and the ukraine much larger is that, in effect, his seizure of ukraine could have the impact -- could -- on the united states, europe, and particularly germany. in changing our energy policy the way the 1973 arab oil

embargo had an impact, you will recall in the wake of the 1973 oil embargo, that is when we changed the standards. the long-term implications of launching but particularly germany, that's at the center of this. it is a different energy path that produces far less western dependence on the oil and gas and that could be a huge loss for putin but only in the long run. >> i think what is notable about president obama's strategy in many people among the most commendable elements of it. is he does play the long game. i think over time, putin could well come to regret this even if

he takes short-term steps to cut off gas to europe. europeans need the gas and putin needs the revenue. when you play the long game, it can look like you are losing short tactical conflicts. right now, he has got to make sure that putin does not move from crimea to the rest of ukraine. he needs to escalate this well enough that it signals that the price will be truly higher if he goes into ukraine. i'm not sure he's doing the same calculus that president obama is. >> there was a wonderful quote in the economist's issue of a russian reacting to putin's intervention and crimea in the name of russian speakers. it was a guy living in central russia.

he have a lot of russian speakers. we are really suffering. we suffer with no jobs, no infrastructure but the morning after these things, his poll numbers are up and everyone is happy, solidarity with russian speakers at home and abroad, i get it. let's see how this plays out over time. the ruble has been hammered. russian markets have been hammered. we will see what happens to foreign direct investment. there is always the morning after him the morning after the morning after. the morning after the morning after is where the real laws of gravity start to take hold on currency markets, long-term investments. let's see where we are in six months. >> do we assume that putin will act rationally? or will his messianic ideas about the russian spirit of influence cost him to take risks that he would not have taken any more strategic mind? >> it's a very hard call on

that. if we understood more about his mind, there probably would have been more intelligence agency warning that he was getting ready to react to what was a big loss to him in the ukraine by going in and taking crimea. that was a surprise. we are not very good at doing this, charlie. we misjudged the chinese of the past year about how aggressively they would create an air defenses own or begin to threaten some. we misjudged the north koreans. the question there is whether or not they would act rationally and two years ago, most intelligence reports you heard suggested that kim jong un's uncle would be running the country but now he is dead and there's no question who is running the country right now. we are not really good at understanding inner motivation a

matter how good the nsa may be at picking up conversations. >> there is something very old about the story and we talked about russia's spear of influence and it's a store coal connection to crimea and the ukraine, and to key avenue in particular. there's also something new going on. there are new things and what is new is we live in a world now of the amplified citizen, the superpowered individual. we sought to in egypt. they took to the streets and said that we are not just a bunch of chickens. we have seen ukrainians now come to the streets in very large numbers and say we are not just a bunch of cattle so you get to decide our future in the eu and russia. i would encourage everyone to stand back a little bit. maybe we are in the middle of something very new here. for the first time, every leader today is in a two way

conversation with his people. the day of one-way conversations is over. who may have all of these cold war instincts and all of these russian nationalist impulses, and they are not irrelevant, but i would argue there is something new going on in the world today. i'm keeping my powder dry. i want to see how this plays out. i don't think this is a straight line back to russia at all. >> tell me why, as you wrote in the column and i interviewed one of the political leaders in tunisia, why is tunisia the exception to the consequences of the arab spring? >> it is two things. the tunisians after much internal struggle and some loss of life came to the only political conclusion that is possible in any of these pluralistic societies. that is going forward, the prime central political doctrine has to be no victor no think wished.

everyone has to be included in the political outcome and in tunisia that mean secular and religious forces. no victor, no vanquished. but tunisia had that no other arab country had at the scale was civil society, unions, business groups, women's associations among lawyers associations that turned out to be mediators between the two big factions there which were secular and religious camps. those two things and the fact that they had an internal moderator did not have to resort to key factors. they also had a more homogenous society. >> you also have to consider the idea of drawing a red line and things like that. sometimes you are better not to

put it in that way unless you are prepared to defend it in a certain way. >> i think you are exactly right. we have seen this happen a few times. you mentioned the syrian chemical weapon red line. before that, the president had come out nearly three years ago now and told president assad in syria that he had to go. yet, there was no plan at the white house to ensure that he did that. and while it's very important to play the long game and while i agree completely with tom that it is not at all clear how crimea is going to work out, you had to have a plan in place so that when the american credibility is put on the line, you have a way to enforce it and make sure there is a price.

it has been a pretty steep learning curve for this administration. i think he was more measured in the case of crimea. if anything, the president has been out ahead of his european allies. he has been dragging chancellor merkel and other europeans along in trying to stiffen their spines on sanctions. they have more to lose in the course of this than we do. here, in the case of russia, he has a real leverage. egypt is the case where the leverage has turned out to be overrated. if you continue to jail journalists, beat up dissident and it turns out in the end they did not care that much about military aid. we have to remember sometimes this is not really about us and we do not hold that much leverage. >> they could get it from other sources, it seems to me, and

part. >> i go back to minnesota. minnesota north stars game and at the end of every broadcast, when you win say little, and when you lose, say less. great foreign policy principal. when you win, say little, never try to draw a red line in a pool of blood. that's what he was trying to do in syria. who is going to notice our red line in what is a homegrown civil war where either you are on the ground and monopolizing force or no one will pay attention to you? in the end of the day, the middle east only put a smile on your face when it starts with them. it's a very important thing to keep in mind about the ukraine as well. i think ukraine can succeed in breaking free, at least the part of ukraine that wants to break free and join the eu or have a future with europe if they

remain united themselves. if you do not see the ultra-naturalistic parties take over and if they are inclusive of the more russian speaking parts of the population. first and foremost, it depends on they do. if they can hold together and they aren't divided, they are abusive of russian speakers or they get drawn into it who will try to do witches make them abusive and that is the play book that assad did to undermine the opposition by dividing them and making it appear that they were being abusive. what the ukrainians do first and foremost will be the most important thing. if they can't pick this is the free ukrainian people united about their future, wanting to be a part of europe and the european union against a putin demanding they be part of some

cockamamie eurasian whatever, which is basically nothing more than an oil and gas union, i think he loses in the and. >> there is a sense of the president working the phones in order to develop a united front in this. having brought the europeans to a point where they thought it out to first happened. >> this is their neighborhood and they have to take the lead. they're going to have to take the lead in the financial assistance and they're going to have to take the lead. ultimately, merkel will have to lead on this. he does, i think, respect angela merkel. by the way, that is something who needs to be very careful about. germany has gone down a path of nonviolence, basically, of having a very small military and armed forces. does russia want to reawaken

germany as a sleeping military giant? if they go too far in ukraine, they could do that, too. >> i think part of the reason you saw the president gets so engaged with the europeans, one of the most intense moments i have seen in covering this white house where he has been on the phone every day with european leaders is that his importance that he could reverse a process that bill clinton really got going nearly 20 years ago. and h w bush before him. the more they got wrapped up with europe, the more their behavior would be somewhat controlled. now, in this moment, they have reached the point where the russian elite have said that

this is the wrong way for us to go. the more we are engaged with them, the more they will have their tentacles into us. we need to be a separate power. when you have seen president obama doing in these phone calls is essentially getting europeans accustomed to the fact that he may have to throw the entire process into reverse. they may have to think about a life separate and apart from being integrated with russia. that is a very difficult thing to do. because of all the reasons tom laid out, the economic and political connections have grown so strong over the years. it gives us enormous leverage and to give putin the some leverage. >> last time i was in moscow, about a year ago, i don't remember. i was in a traffic jam from the airport and i believe it took me two hours to get from the

airport into moscow. maybe more. that is because the russian middle class has exploded. everyone has a car now. it is largely on the back of oil and gas prices but not entirely. it's partially on the back of russia's integration with the world, much more foreign investment. let's see how all of those investments are affected over time. that has been a source of opposition to putin. i would not make any predictions. >> this'll be my last question to both of you. are we looking at a time where sanctions have proven themselves in getting the attention of the government and understanding what they have at stake? they aren't much more powerful weapon than they have been. >> the model here is iran. barack obama did not invent the concept of sanctions.

he did not even invent the concept of sanctions on iran. what he did invent was convincing a world that it only works if everyone is all in. the only reason they worked is because there was european union, a fair bit of asian unity, even the chinese over time came to start taking more of their oil from suppliers other than the iranians because the u.s. made the case to them that it was not in their own national interest to depend on iran and an unstable regime, the possibility of conflict in the persian gulf. making this work with russia will be vastly more difficult. i'm not as persuaded that the

sanctions will be as efftive do here. we've learned it's not a quick draw says. >> i agree with david. with sanctions and iran, you had to give up persian carpets and you had to give up oil if you are a customer of the iranian oil industry. you could find alternatives. in other words, it was not very painful for the countries imposing the sanctions. this will be different. this guy can turn off your heat. >> for europe. before i go, tell me one more time with the announcer said in minnesota? >> when you win say a little. when you lose, say less. good night and good sports. ♪

>> "a doll's house" is henrik ibsen's landmark play of 1879. it is at the brooklyn academy of music through march 23. writing, by the end, my nerves

were ground meat. we were heading back to manhattan in a taxi. i don't think either of us expected to get much sleep. when theater is this exciting, here's a look at the production. >> torvald? >> my husband. >> you must love me very much, which is exactly how it should be. >> sometimes, i have terrible urges. >> urges? >> you are hiding something from me.

>> what do you mean? you have no idea what i'm going to ask? >> why? it contaminates things. >> i was saving his life. >> the law is not interested in motives. >> you must tell torvald everything. >> do you have any idea what it is that you've done? >> read your lessons. >> you were looking away. [laughter] different than the theater, watching it on the screen like that. >> we recorded that two years ago.

>> what happens after march 23? >> we finish at bam on march 23 but then i have no idea. we've had several opportunities to play it. >> is the gift that keeps giving. >> tell me about your two characters. >> nora is sort of a puzzle, a huge thrill in trying to unpick. she's a character -- ibsen gives us lots of clues in the play about her history and up bringing. she's a product of a very distorted upbringing.

she sees her place in the world, through our eyes, that is quite amusing. when the play opens, you meet this bourgeois couple, but they play lots of games with one another. it's a very odd relationship and it appears to be skewed in terms of their role-play. the clues emerge through the action of the text and we discover that she has reason. >> he has been working as a lawyer and find their lives are about to change. he's been made to manager of a savings bank and they are taking

a step up the ladder. it's incredibly poor and for them and their three children. a baby, a daughter, and two boys. it's the start of a great new chapter in their lives when we meet them. >> this is 1879. >> just before christmas and it looks like it's set to be a wonderful time for them. in torvald's past he has an illness which we put as a kind of breakdown. a man in that time would not necessarily be able to admit to, a liberal of weakness. we spent some time in italy recovering. i understand that it was nora's father. thus the money to go there which was necessary for my health but he overcompensate as presenting himself as the best father, a strong man because he is afraid

in batches of falling short of those ideals. >> why do you think it is called "a doll's house?" >> nora comes to the realization of the end of the play that she describes the way both her father treated her as a young girl and also how her husband treats her, like a doll. it's an inanimate object that you can project on but someone who does not have their own inner life. it takes place in an apartment as opposed to the house. they did some research, but it is a home and it's a play about a domestic environment. she comes to realize that it is trapping her. >> she has a great secret. >> yes, she took out an illegal loan nine years previously and has been paying off the money somehow.

she has been paying quarterly installments through wheedling pocket money, treats, and gifts. her entire mode of living has been getting financial treats. her attitude toward money is pretty extreme. the play has a lot to say about money, i think. >> what does it say about money? >> the economy is stupid. [laughter] the character who has to become a money lender. it is something illegal.

we were contemporaries and use trying to work his way back up because he has children, he has to provide for his kids. there is a friend, kristine linde, who had to work because her mother got married and got sick to provide for her brothers. she has to keep going. that's what we have been doing. we have been trying to keep going and provide. now with this great job -- >> he chose to set the play at christmas at that very cold time of year very specifically. the character sees the difference between those who have money and those who don't. it is a play about in many respects, the effect that financial desperation has on

your moral framework and the actions we all might be pushed to when we find ourselves in a very desperate situation. >> there are things that they are doomed by. torvald thinks he and nora are doomed. >> his public persona which he works so hard and is very anxious about because of what happens, they would be pariahs. they would be finished. >> you have always been so kind to me that our home has been nothing but a play room. i have been your doll wife. i was papa's doll child. you thought it was great fun when you played with me. that is what our marriage has been, torvald. i would be horrified if she said that to me.

>> it gets worse as well. [laughter] >> what so interesting, i think, is this is why ibsen's writing is endlessly rewording to explore and remains so pertinent and relevant to us now. it's not easy to put people in a box that it was his fault, her fault, villain or hero. it is very messy and murky. what he writes and what we see in the way the relationship is played out is she is being just as complacent, the dance that they play. in many respects, who can blame

him for failing to see her real self? she has been performing a version of herself for him in the same way she does for someone else because it's the only power she has. >> she performs the dance called the tarantella. >> that's a very climactic moment in the play where she is using whatever means she has. >> let's talk about acting. this is considered one of the great roles for women because there are so many facets of her own being. >> i think so. i've never come across a part where we literally have to see the woman turn on a six pense and transform. it's a fascinating journey to

inhabit because she remains in stage and comes in one after the other man we see her transform before our eyes. who is this woman? why is she so manipulative with this person? why is she suddenly acting like this? the next moment she is putting her down in public. she's sort of a cocktail of psychological -- i don't know how to describe it. because she has no conventional power or legitimate power, the only means she has to control her life is through playing other people. >> did you once say if i meet her, i think i would like to slap her because she behaved so badly? [laughter] >> i might have. in social situations, during the research you start to understand why she behaved like that. she desperately needs in that

moment to win approval so that she can get the money to pay off the debt or whatever the means. either way she is dreadfully insecure. if you could meet her one moment and think she is great fun, what a giggle. the game she plays with men, i would find in the 21st century, pretty unpalatable. [laughter] >> when she's talking to my supposedly best friend, it is going on great. >> i admire her resourcefulness. >> is the same reaction you find from people who know you who

come to the theater and leave this? >> i bumped into a young lady early on in our stay at at&t. i went to top off my phone and i did not understand the system. this woman came over to help us and assumed we were a couple. we had to go through the social embarrassment and then she was looking at me. then she said, sorry if i'm staring at you. are you in "a doll's house?" i said yes. i did not know the play at all. it shook me up a bit. i just got engaged. [laughter] you do get couples sort of looking at each other maybe a bit differently.

because it does expose how couples operating on the games they play. that is an agreement of doing that for each other, versions of each other. when that falls apart, what is left. we have had quite extreme reactions. i got booed at the young vic. >> was at the character? >> i hope. booed and hissed which was really quite strange. he says some really choice things having behaved rather badly. he forgives nora. >> this can be a star making performance for a woman. [laughter] had you two worked together before? >> yes. >> how many times? >> twice.

we did a play reading up at stratford but we did iphigenia and a euripides play at the national. i have gone from being her uncle to husband. >> everyone wants to read into this as a feminist tract, the and that. it's all about women's emancipation and all kinds of theories about the play. ibsen says it was not about women's rights but was a description of humanity and a modern tragedy. >> i feel both interpretations are valid. i can hear where ibsen is coming from and where the play has universal resonance in money,

how be honest to long-term partners, the big questions. how are you true to yourself but also kind? those sort of difficult things about how to be a good person but i don't think one can ignore the context in which the play was first put on and the power of the gesture. >> how was it received in 1879? >> scandalously, as far as i can make out. it created a furor around the marriage question. >> it was in a front room so the middle-class audience left their house and they are presented with their own living room and these actions unfold in a conventional marriage and it's quite shocking behaviors. when they went to germany, the

actress playing nora refused to play the ending. she said she would never leave her children. ibsen, to his personal shame, open the nursery door and showed the children. they later put the original ending back. it was shocking. >> i think it remains to be. marriage breakups are no longer subject to be, but a woman leaving her children, people have very strong feelings about it. >> it was an unnatural act. talk about acting for a second. who are what has had the most influence in terms of your

understanding of what it means to be an actor? what experience, what person, school, a director, a lover? >> for me, personally, i never went to drama school. i went to university and straight from there. to me, the first time we mentioned the british director who was very formative because it was the first time i worked with any kind of structured system and i just lapped it up. >> you thrived. >> i really loved it. it was incredibly enjoyable and rewarding experience. >> it was working with hattie over five productions that coalesced certain things that i could find a structure and a way of acting. >> and this is like an

architecture so you could approach -- a methodology. >> you could communicate who they were. >> a series of exercises to help you investigate the truth of what was happening on stage and integrity to not get distracted by the opportunities left. >> for me, i'm the honest of four by seven years. just watching how my sibling and my older family negotiated things in their life and how that happened in bad times and

good, because i was the younget i could see that. >> you had an observational interest. >> they probably hate to hear that. personal identity is not fixed because it is a performative quality with each other. they take a lot more classes here and it is continuous. i have learned it now. >> i agree. i think it's great and really healthy. >> what sparked your interest first? >> i'm very fortunate in that my family are in the business so i grew up with it. my father was a director and my mother was an actress. >> did they want you to or not? >> they kept a respectful

difference. they wanted to be as prepared as i could but they wanted me to be aware. >> were you ever adjusted in anything but acting? >> not seriously. >> i cannot imagine what it's like to know exactly what you need to do in life. >> it's the family business. >> i wanted to be a vet, a fireman, a fighter pilot. i was watching a tv program, probably "top gun." i wanted to play that rather than do it. i was doing 12 tonight playing viola, we both did, and the

director at the time said, do you want to be an actor? i said i did not know. aren't they all unemployed? at the moment there was plenty of unemployed everything. i wrote a letter to michael pennington who played king lear. this is what i want to do. how do i go about it? and he returned the post giving advice which i still have. >> what did he say? >> you could go to university to have that as a back up plan. he was on tour and he did not have to do that. >> it's different but it's about writing. how you learn to be an actor. congratulations. as i've said, it is at bam through march 23. the time is coming to an end. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

>> live from pier three in san francisco, welcome to bloomberg west. i'm emily chang. seattle deals a load to ridesharing apps like uber and lyft, the city council voting to severely limit the number of company cars on the road. also, a hit show -- we will talk to the woman behind abc family's "pretty little liars" ahead of tonight's finale. first, check out the top headlines.