ap she ste besl ofeep r youlife. pisleechq tegynoty anyoway nt. alyeea slmbp nutoer sre. charlie: jeffrey goldberg's here and he is a national correspondent for the atlantic and a winner of the national magazine award for reporting. his new cover article is called the obama doctrine and ross in a series of conversations with the president and others about his foreign-policy decisions and the thinking behind them. james bennett calls it a portrait of a presidential mind at work. i am pleased to have jeffrey goldberg back at this table.

first of all, congratulations. you can see how man has grown as he experienced more of the whole world of foreign-policy. did you find him different russian mark -- different? >> i have been interacting with him from time to time for the last eight to 10 years even in the senate and i would say at the end of his presidency he has a more tragic view of certain issues than he did at the beginning. the arab world most particularly. trolley what the limitations of american power? >> he is always sensitive to the limitations of american power. bushs following president who one could argue over extended so president obama was always in the category of people thinking about limitations but i would say when it comes to certain issues he is not hope and change, he's moved to a more

fatalistic post which is interesting and ironic because only in the last couple of years has he really begun to accumulate foreign-policy achievements. the fatalism has gone hand in hand with the actual building of foreign-policy. the iran nuclear deal, i'm a change, the tpp, opening cuba and burma -- there is a lot of things there. that was a core observation that the fatalism is there but the willingness to go to places where you think you can do something and do it. >> you could also argue that he expressed his mind because he is not running for reelection. >> he's on the glide path and things that frustrated him for years, for instance the u.s. relationship with saudi arabia which he questions to some degree, he is slightly more free to argue against certain assumptions that we make an

foreign-policy. charlie: as you summed it up earlier, syria poses the most direct challenge to the president's worldview. george w. bush was also a gambler and not a bluffer. he will be removed at harshly for the things he did in the middle east. barack obama is gambling but suggests he did well for the things he did not do. >> syria is a dark cloud that hangs over this administration. the difference between the interventionist obama and the non-interventionist obama's middle east is profound. he really believes and has reason to believe that one of his primary tasks is to keep america from intervening him off from following its impulses and intervening in a middle eastern civil war that cannot be won. 20 yearses that 10 to

from now we will look back and say god, barack obama was there to stand and thwart history and say we are not going. there are two true other quick observations about that. the first is that he does not believe the middle east is as important as it used to be for the united states. one obvious reason is energy independence and secondly even if it were, he is fatalistic enough. he would say realistic that even if it were important we do not have the ability to shape history. trolley boy that's the limits of power. >> that is learning lessons from iraq and libya and saying, just because we want an arab country to be organized a certain way .oesn't mean it will be charlie: you would say it is his analysis and understanding of that world, not america? >> a think it is also his understanding of america.

an think he believes that bush lied us into war out of some malevolent impulse, i think he believes america is not capable and doesn't have the staying power to reshape middle eastern society so the best thing to do is to have multitiered, crazy civil war that you have in syria that you had an iraqi which is to say let me stay away from it and that is what the gamble is. that the decision will not come back to bite us. charlie: he also understands and believes that american leadership is essential. he doesn't hear is one of the many contradictions of the barack obama presidency. there is it caricature of him that he doesn't believe america is the indispensable nation. he's learned a dozen times from ebola -- you name it. what he does and is is a person

who is careful about parceling out american intervention, in the form of troops and certainly money in the form of leadership in areas where he thinks he cannot win. he looks at a situation and says not a lot of upside so i will try to contain it and put it in a box and do these other things. he is very cognitive of bandwidth that the president only has a certain amount of time and focus that he can use and you can get consumed by the middle east if you are not careful. withinthere is in fact iraq a real american military effort to overtake and provide more than he probably ever dreamed of in order to do something about iso -- isil. the he is involved in middle east, his argument is that you miss things that you isht to be doing, whether it young people in africa, latin

america, and china. were profound to meet parts of our conversations and this goes to the bandwidth idea -- i traveled on his last trip to asia and he points out, in vietnam, america has an 80% approval rating. he talks about liking the parts of the world where they don't want to kill us. he believes that you could spend all of your time trying to fix the middle east which is not fixable within the limits of his term or you could focus on asia which is our economic future. half of the world people are over there. latin america, africa and all of these parts that really want intervention. they want american help and know how and leadership so he gets very frustrated i think, logically that, i can do this or that and if i get sucked into the syrian civil war that is all he would've done for a second

term. >> there is also this in terms of american power, but in the face of military power, king abdullah of jordan, someone who i think he respects he says i want to use american power, more than he does. >> this is a very common feeling. this is one of the destabilizing aspects. the fact that this president has questioned some of the underlying assumptions of american relations and in the middle east he has been under pressure for years from our allies to do more in syria, yemen, libya. it's been a constant demand and he has resisted that demand to have frustrated arab monarchs complaining about the way he deploys and does not deploy power.

from his perspective it's i can go pay attention to the things that openly matter or the things that i judged to be of less consequence. you cannot do everything. >> the critical question is the redlined early on in syria. he still defends that non-decision. >> he doesn't defend it it's that he's proud of it. hinge moment.a i think he sees it as a hinge moment in his presidency. trotted what it is also a hinge moment and appraisal of him. >> he knows that, too. that as a kindat of moment when he flinched and he argues that it is a proud moment because he did not follow what he calls the washington playbook. country x does something and

america has a response. charlie: he was advised not to use the phrase "redline." >> the problem is not that we did not do the thing but the 2012 when he issued that statement. he issued that statement because he was upset about the use of chemical weapons and wanted to throw a brushback pitch. once you make that speech, the die was cast. trotted what and it gave him the opportunity to say, what happened? we got the chemical weapons out but if the question had been they did not get about come a would he still have been hesitant? my impression from your piece is, yes. >> we going down the rabbit hole of counterfactual's. but what he argues and the people around him argue ed this has a lot of merit and has been endorsed by benjamin not in -- benjamin netanyahu and said, without going to war got the chemical weapons out.

my predecessor -- he would not frame it this way but way his supporters do, my predecessor went to war in iraq and the were not even chemical weapons anymore. all of this criticism of my redline debacle i ended up reading a situation in which chemical weapons are out, so what are people complaining about? complaining that him drawing a redline and then failing. >> it is a readability issue. he has this line he has used in private encounters which i learned of which a thing is interesting that he says bombing someone to prove you're willing to bomb someone is not a great reason to go bomb someone. .hat has salience to me fan.tanyahu >> not a charlie: more than that. he says i'm the african-american son of a single mother who has

been elected twice. this is my home and i live in the white house. is what happens not just with that yahoo! but with other middle eastern and arab leaders they come to him for years and say you don't understand the middle east. he comes back and says he's a very self-confident person and says i do understand and i understand american interests better than you do and netanyahu frustrates him more than almost anyone else in the world it was, listen, stop treating the in a condescending way. trotted what is it confidence or arrogance? >> you cannot be president without a certain level of confidence. lot,inks about decisions a but once he goes he is gone. he makes it. trotted by there is another powers in theich

room making an argument against for intervention and he said, i've read your book. >> a fascinating relationship. you could write a book about the fascinating relationship between the realist president and the interventionist samantha power. it is incredible the way she keeps him around because she never stops arguing for more action on human rights issues on what to do in syria, but every look i'm goings, down this path way i'm the president and you are not and to their credit, john kerry in particular always going in there and making the arguments. i think it's a good thing to have a president who is prone to pull back a little bit and wants to go forward maybe something good will come of it. charlie: didn't he finally have

to say i don't want to see any proposals for action except those coming from the pentagon? making, that is a way of sure everybody stays in their lanes but what john kerry has been doing is saying it would be easier for me to get and negotiate a deal in syria if we work messing around with assad more. and if it looked like i had the president's ear. >> i don't want to get into that i think it's true that obama , butciates carry appreciates him more as an action officer more than a foreign policy theory or organization of the world theory. john kerry will tackle any problem and that is his strength. i think thatpoint, people in the administration came to understand that obama at all costs wants to keep america out of the syria conflagration.

charlie: one thing that he regrets his libya? >> he does. impacty open that has an on the way we understand hillary clinton and what she was arguing for. he was always doubtful, he went anyway. charlie: why did he go? >> he went because there were good arguments to go. they had intelligence, and he was going to kill large numbers of people and he wanted to stop that. and in retrospect, libya looked simpler in syria. the french, the british, and the europeans demanding that he do something, and he extracted from them a promise that they would lead -- the whole leading from behind him up a complicated idea that has been turned into a bumper .ticker against him

trouble you lead and we will follow with more power? yes, and this is your neighborhood and your problem and the refugees are going to you and not to me, but we are in a superpower. the truth is, during the kinetic part of this, during the kinetic phase, it is america doing the heavy lifting. he says that to me in a frank way and the french president at -- he saidlked a lot we shotgun the air defenses so they can do what they want. >> you can drop the bombs and say that you solved the libya problem but it is our capacity to lift either that got you there. charlie: what about david cameron? >> that was an interesting moment because we were talking about why did libya not work and he has reasons, tribalism,

fundamentalism, the general disintegration of the arab world but he says, look, my allies got distracted and he named david cameron and sarkozy. that was interpreted as blaming them for the failure of libya. i don't think you meant to blame them but i think he got upset at a certain point. charlie: he is not a euro romantic? >> oh no. he was born in the middle pacific. he never really came to the mainland until -- he has no relationship that and romance, if there is romance it is about the asia future. there is a certain amount of regret. charlie: he believes it is inevitable. >> to come to grips with it and leave. the middle east has problems. asia has challenges, north korea

and the rise of china but it also has huge opportunities. he came to fix the economy so where do we sell stuff? it is there. he doesn't feel like, i am the inheritor of the post-world war ii alliance that harry truman built. he knows that europe is an important and stable platform for america but there is no romance. charlie: and then there is a vladimir putin. >> you play this game where it is like rank the challenges and he always resisted but it became clear in talking to him that he sees china as the most important bilateral relationship going forward, the biggest challenge and the biggest possible upside and russia he sees as a declining power. he is not want to generally take potshots but he has referred to russia as a regional power which gets under putin extra skin.

charlie: at the same time he describes him not as a caricature but a person that i have serious conversations with. not some bully demanding and threatening me and he shows up on time. of thate was a touch with putin whom i spent five to six hours talking to that he wanted to have a serious conversation -- i assume that what he is referring to even though he thinks that putin is making a dramatic mistake. >> and he is not having it with charlie: or person? a bully trying to threaten him. >> to be fair to the president, i think he believes it is bullying behavior. >> no foreign leader would like to hear the american president tell him what is in his best interests and president obama does that.

charlie: at g-20, russian influence is not heavily present. >> this is an important observation. how he learned that america is indispensable is that nobody looks to china and russia to organize multinational gatherings weather in asia or the g-20. it's always america that literally writes the agenda so he understand putin's place in the world. x from the point in the end you called him a hobbesian optimist russian >> because he has the straits. that evil realism exists and i cannot change the world and eradicate evil that he associates with neoconservative idealism. quality is a hobbesian which is that absent central strong government, people revert to tribe and fear.

he also believes the moral arc of the universe is long but bending. it, the moralis arc is bending toward freedom. charlie: the other interesting thing for me is that he believed -- for all of this cool, intellectual confidence, to use your word, that the president knows that he may have been use a certain emotional sense of connection with the american people. >> yes, particularly on terrorism. that has beent made over and over that he is not good at acting a part he does not believe in and he does not believe terrorism is an existential threat to the united states and the believes that we

need more resilience and less panic and the problem -- this came up after paris and san bernardino, the problem is that before you confront the fear mongering, you have to take knowledge the fear and deal with it. i think he learned from that experience that people are really scared so i have to speak to them about that fear, but he worries about terrorism and its ability to distort the political process. charlie: the ongoing problem is that he thinks terrorism is put out of context. says more people are killed in car accidents than are killed by terrorists that we have to have that context and says nobody remembers bin laden anymore. >> that is a political frustration that he feels. that nobody gives him credit for being -- i called him this frankly, the greatest terrorist hunter in the history. a lot of forms of

power available to him to kill a lot of terrorists. the left understands that because they are critical of it but the republican certainly don't. they think of him as a pacifist. he is doing the work but he is not bragging about it in an emotionally satisfying way. >> there are a couple of references that are cultural including batman. >> i thought this was funny. and batman returns, gotham is divided among the different tangs and their thuggish and terrible people but there is a certain kind of order and the way that he explains the rise of isis in the middle east is that isis is the joker. they do seen in the movie where the joker comes in and disrupts the whole set up and that is why you have to deal with the joker first. i thought, it is always a dangerous thing for presidents to use pop-culture references

but he does like movies and tv shows and he goes to them and i think it is a very apt kind of example. it actually makes sense here. it goes to his very disillusioned view of the middle east. there are bad people, worth people and not so great people. itre is the kind of order to enough that i can ignore it. >> does have the fear of iran and our allies in that region have? >> i don't think so. caricature that he thinks the persian spring is about to happen and that he will go there and have flowers thrown at him. he doesn't believe that. he has a proper understanding of the supreme leader and how anti-americanism is the pillar of iranian ideology. he also understands that things will change over time and that

the nuclear deal has bought us a lot of time and maybe at the end, iran will be a different kind of place but i do not think he is romantic about it. here is what you said, history some of the allies have situated themselves on the wrong line, a place where tribalism, or sectarianism still flourishes. with it or understand is that history is bending his direction. >> that is my interpretation of how he views the world. he looks at a bunch of world leaders and says they do not understand where things are going. i am leading in the right direction. the problem of course is -- charlie: they don't understand, i understand. they're not asis involved as he is. charlie: only they are as smart as i am?

>> it's not that though i'm sure he does view them as -- some of them as intellectually inferior but is the tribalism is not doing anything for your people. he is not wrong, he is very american in that kind of view. but there are certain leaders in the world who do not buy his argument. charlie: whether you buy his argument or not, you come away from these words and this is a remarkable way that a man has come to see the challenge of being president in 2016. it is a look inside the mind of someone who has to in a dramatic and fundamental way deal with these problems. it is not just to talk about them, he has to deal with them in a consequential way and you need to make a bet that you are right. i he is cool enough to say will make this bet and we will see what happens down the road.

but given the tenor of the way we talk about foreign policy in this current election climate, it is remarkable. it was remarkable for me to sit there talking to a person trying to reason his way through impossible dilemmas. he might come to the wrong conclusion but it is really there. the work is going into it and the maturity and the thinking is going into it and it is remarkable as a counterpoint. charlie: but why you? why do you have this opportunity -- someone respected enough to spend these hours with to explain himself? he wanted to explain himself to you? >> i asked if that helps, but the truth is i have interviewed him periodically over the years thei think, they think that atlantic in particular -- they know that we will devote the

time, energy, resources and thought to not just do the bumper -- this is a guy allergic to bumper stickers. you cannot say that a 20,000 word story is a bumper sticker. he knows he will get a fair shake and we will quote him in paragraphs. charlie: and you understand him? >> we try. charlie: thank you very much it is an incredible piece. back in a moment. ♪

charlie: we begin this evening with syria. vladimir putin announced today he would begin withdrawing troops from the country. he said they had largely met their objectives as peace talks resumed in geneva. the u.s. special envoy has called the latest round of negotiations a "moment of that." joining me now is previous deputy national advisor to vice president joe biden. also, steven lee myers of the new york times, the author of "the new czar: the rise and rayna vladimir putin. what do we make of this? us sawn't think any of

this coming timing wise spread it is potentially important because it says that russia will not back assad for and will not let him take over the country. it gives some hope that these talks that started in geneva today can proceed because you've taken away the notion that russia would just be there bombing for assad and let him take back the whole country. charlie: putin said to me that we are simple going there to prop up because i do not believe in failed states. syria could see cut -- could be a failed state. he got thatnot sure but he did prop up us -- assad. >> he did prop up a regime that looked less summer like it was falling. with the russian strikes you have seen them take some

territory back. more over. is this from the beginning this was one of his stated goals. charlie: fighting the islamic state? >> exactly. you think thato putin in terms of how far he will go? >> i think we will see a withdrawal. we will see some of the 30 combat aircraft slowly going back to russia, but russia is not leaving syria militarily or diplomatically. it will be engaged and on the sidelines ready to pounce and save the day if it feels that he needs to do that. they will have their naval presence and their base that was part of the objective going in.

>> what putin started with, he

said we come was we went in for. if you except they went in to prevent the regime from falling, they have achieved that goal. charlie: and russia is a player? >> russia is a player. there were three reasons they went in. they did not want regime change to happen. that if youe notion get rid of that dictator, nato comes in and gets rid of it. think the ukraine and georgia, putin is saying, it's not going to happen. they also wanted to prevent chaos and extremism in assad's wake. there are those tell us, what follows assad? they would say we have no love lost for assad, we are not particular fan of his, but what is going to follow assad? if the answer is afghanistan and somalia-like chaos, no thank

you. charlie: that should be a concern for everybody. but that is why i think, in a way, this is what they said. they were going to prevent those things from happening and i think it is a good thing that they are willing to take yes for an answer. now we have to see what happens in geneva. charlie: did you see the program in geneva? he talked about his impression of putin. >> obama? >> yes. he said he could reason with him and there was the shouting or bullying. sometimes easy to exaggerate the tensions between the two because they are this role.

they have both always said they can work together. putin is very much about making deals. being a player. we have seen this before in syria with the chemical weapon in 2013. i think that i very much at negotiating to as an equal. as portrayed in russia. -- that is certainly how it is portrayed in russia. charlie: he called assad to tell him? >> i think washington is probably surprise that did not get a heads up on this. a lot of officials said this is the first sunday heard about it, but what putin tries to do is to cooperate where he can and in other cases work against u.s. or western interests and that

serves him in multiple ways. it creates a lot of uncertainty among our european allies who had a lot of mixed views on putin being involved in syria in particular. they are sometimes hopeful that by getting engaged militarily that putin will be more engaged in this cease-fire process. i think that putin would like to keep us guessing sometimes showing he can cooperate on the cw issue. sometimes countering by going against u.s. interest in syria. messaged --also an a message to assad. he had a strong message to us going in. it is not a coincidence. i said, we saved your bacon and

we are not good to let you fall, not because we love you but we , butour own interests don't think that we are now your air force and we are going to help you take back all parts of the country. there is a cease-fire because our core interests have been preserved and that is what we came in for and you need to go perpetuate that cease-fire. charlie: so it has a better chance because of this action by putin? >> i think that it does. there are ways it could come apart but one of them is if russia decided to reinitiate bombing against modern opposition, that it all falls apart. it still difficult in the long shot with lots of ways to fall apart but i think he says, we will not help you take the whole country you have to find some way to keep this piece.

>> it is important to member that he asked very tactically. people compare him to judo, that he sees an opportunity and will seize it and i think that is right. saw in the moment he peace and everything but julianne is also correct that there is not yet a withdrawal and while some troops will come out he will still be involved and i think that his ultimate goal was to stabilize the situation to the point where peace talks could happen and assad still remains at the table. charlie: he said he would intensify russia's role in the peace process? >> if he does withdraw he can say, look where russia was it the start. you can say, i became a player and this did not happen without me. i prevented the americans from getting rid of this regime and

extremist from taking power in damascus and now things will stabilize on our terms. avoided this quagmire that is costing me a fortune and leading to sanctions and russia's reputation. charlie: don't you think washington was really surprised by this? >> i think this was a bit of a surprise that we did not see this particular timing. but in washington some folks are guilty of making putin to be 10 feet tall. i think people were trying to translate his operations in syria to this take grand middle east strategy or he would suddenly be elevating relationships across the region. it might not be that ambitious. i think that his results are tactical it in this case he knew it was time to drop the act and it allows him to portray himself as "saving the day."

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when it comes to the fithings you love,. you want more. love romance? get lost in every embrace. into sports? follow every pitch, every play and every win. change the way you experience tv with x1 from xfinity. charlie: on this program also is jeffrey goldberg who wrote a cover story of 20,000 words in the atlantic. ofdlined as inside the mind barack obama on foreign policy. what is the conversation in washington about this?

>> i think that people are intrigued to hear his thoughts, in particular about the red line, the decision not to carry out airstrikes after the use of chemical weapons inside syria. i think there are a lot of folks who feel uncomfortable with that decision and they have made assumptions about regret on the part of the white house and the president and what this article did was to push back on people making that assertion. clearly he does not have any regrets about that specific decision. confident about the way he took it. others who served in the administration have since come out and do express some discomfort with that decision and we have heard people as high up as cabinet level officials, panetta in particular talking about how he felt it was the wrong call at the time. it is creating a moment in washington where we are all

revisiting this particular decision which has an many ways come to symbolize his foreign policy. charlie: you have been in meetings with them in the security council and the state department, how confident he is that he is right? >> he has always been confident. that is partly how he got to be president. he is particularly confident on these issues and it is more striking because so many people think he is wrong. he has had this pent up frustration. a lot of us can share that. when you sit in the situation room and decide what to do, it is a very different world. i write an op-ed and i can go on your show and say whatever i want. it is a lot easier to say, we should do this and what you discover in a situation room as the president is that there are consequences with everything.

consequent is of things you do and don't do come up especially when it comes to these middle questions, the consequences are always bad. we would bring the president choices on syria and there would all be bad. he would often ask for more choices to go back to the drawing board i am not satisfied -- a lot of smart dedicated, professional people would keep bringing them, but in situations like this there is not an easy answer. i think some of the frustration he is showing we have tried as a country in iraq dealing with these problems by intervening in occupying the country and it did not work out at all in the country turned it against him. thelie: somewhat argue steps he took in were because america was not there. he saw an opportunity and that no one would come in in the interest of the state. >> there is an old military

saying i just heard referred to the other day of leading with a bayonet and if you hit steel stop and if you hit a soft target go forward. i sort of feel like putin has done that and i do think that can be exaggerated because russia is not projecting power all over the middle east, it is projecting power where it feels it has a core interest. >> i was struck by what he said about the ukraine. very clearly for the president to say that the ukraine was not in our core of national security and it was in russia -- that is a huge difference. >> the president has always been pretty clear in the face of all of this washington consensus, arm the ukrainians, he has always asked, what happens when i do? presumably they will

always care more than we do and we will never win that escalation battle, but where he was really forceful was on this credibility point where he just questioned the notion that somehow putin went into the ukraine are crimea because america was weaker and on that piece i do have to say that i agree with him. stephen knows this better than any of us. given the strategy and the context in which russia gave crimea to the ukraine, and aggression would go to crimea regardless of who the president was or whether we bombed syria or not and i think the president was frustrated at this notion that somehow we are a tribute in russian aggression in crimea to weakness on americans part in the middle east and has he pointed out they went into ,eorgia during the bush

cheney-rumsfeld administration and not because of anything barack obama did. >> i think that is right. i think what russia tries to do is to test the ability of the west that responds and they will do that to any administration. it doesn't matter which administration it is. it is probing now over the baltic states, over and in to georgia. it does this repeatedly throughout its neighborhood and we attribute too much of it to our own policies. washingtonthe conversation revolves around this question of whether or not u.s. so-called weakness is driving this. he raced an important point. we have seen these tactics for years from this regime and it doesn't seem to be attached to any particular u.s. policy or administration. charlie: a couple of interesting

things. one is that he seemed to have an interesting skepticism about conventional wisdom. >> the president? that is something that can across more than anything in the interview. you have to understand or remember how much pressure the president is under from public opinion to act. that came across in libya, too. in libya, he came and convinced that u.s. military force was not the solution to the problems in the middle east. the iraq war and the bush legacy, people turned against it and he was convinced that was not the approach. but in the middle east when something goes wrong people look to the united states, what are you going to do? libya was a great example of that. it went against all of his instincts. that a u.s. intervention is not the solution.

then you're stuck and how long -- he let himself be persuaded to do libya. in the europeans and the arabs were pushing charlie: he would not have done it unless the secretary of state and the u.s. ambassador had bought in on it? >> i don't think he would've done it over their objections but on that and chemical weapons in syria and everything in the middle east, it comes to the president and it's true, people are dying and there is an awful situation. recalls thet also pressure to act is there but the support for that action dissipates very quickly when costs start to rise and things start to go badly which was the context of this whole interview, the feeling that it's easy for

everyone to call for these things and it takes for enormous discipline to avoid getting pulled along. >> i think that the challenge for the president -- i understand what phil is saying and he is 100% correct, why should the united states feel compelled to act in all cases and be involved and responsible for every crisis around the world. in syria, i remember the discussions we would have, is this a u.s. responsibility to fix problem and our judgment early on is that it would not be in our interest to be engaged militarily inside syria. the problem is that the way the conflict has unfolded, the u.s. is still left owning it years later. we are trying to build the coalition to go after isis and we are building these cease-fire negotiations. as much as we try to shed responsibilities it does not

work at the end of the day. i think it was right not to engage militarily in syria early on but this assumption that we can somehow shed some of this has been proven wrong as we have seen in the case with syria. the u.s. is still turned to on the diplomatic side or in terms of military strikes to put together the coalition, to lead the coalition, to lead the peace process. what it has done here in washington and syria is raised all of these questions about u.s. leadership and the utility of force. what is america's purpose in the world and this is what we are grappling with in washington but also across the country. charlie: you get from this the impression that the secretary of state is pro-action and has a bias for action, but the vice president has a bias for, be

careful, 20 be very careful about the employment of force. >> the senior leaders do not all agree. they have different thresholds for action and that is what has been complicated for this administration. the president came in with the idea that he would bring the u.s. out of military conflict but it has not played out that way. you have other members of the administration who feel that while we are simultaneously dealing with those situations, we do have to get engaged in other quarters of the world and this played out on libya where it has been well documented that there were serious disagreements among officials at the highest levels but is playing out in real time on syria and a host of other conflicts brewing across the middle east.

charlie: we started with putin let's end with putin, what is on his agenda? he announced his decision and would like to be part of shaping the future of syria. >> i just noted that it is interesting and probably important to note that putin does not have to deal with squabbling underlings giving him conflicted advice. he doesn't have to worry much about public opinion and in fact the reaction on state television tonight was quite striking. they were surprised by the announcement and the war in syria has been championed every day on state television showing it is a great success for russia and suddenly it stops. i think that goes to putin's tactical sense of timing and surprise. i think in the longer term he will continue to insist both on

the sovereignty of the syrian state and in other areas where we might come into conflict with him. charlie: thank you, great to have you on. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

angie: gold digs in over a killer's iphone, saying the order exceeds the limits of government power. policy meetings wrapup. step along the road. the polls are starting to close as five more states hold primaries. to first up.