welcome to amanpour on pbs. tonight, from maximum chaos, is a trump doctrine emerging? i speak to the editor in chief of the atlantic, jeffrey goldberg who took that very question to the white house. why cyber is the new weapon of mass disruption. my conversation with "new york times" national security correspondent david sanger about his new book "the perfect weapon." ♪ good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program.

i'mamanpour. hundreds of migrants on board the aquarius ship celebrated finally finding a port in the storm. that was in spain. in germany, a problem. the harsh spectacle of children being separated from their parents at the mexican border is receiving criticism from both sides of the aisle and from two very powerful women. the first lady, melania trump made a rare political intervention saying the united states should govern with heart. the former first lady laura bush, a republican, has penned a ska scathing column. this zero tolerance approach of the trump administration is just one part of the trump doctrine that we're going to delve into

with my guest jeffrey goldberg. he is the edit in chief of the atlantic. he has been speaking to people close to the president to ask them to define what exactly that doctrine is. jeffrey goldberg is joining me now from washington. welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> so, jeffrey, your title of your art hicle has a bold headline. senior white house official defines the trump doctrine, we're america and i'm going to say it rhymed with rich. were you shocked by that. >> i'm not shocked by anything anymore. that was one of the slogans that people came up with for me when i was asking them this question, if you could put into a slogan or a saying, something other than america first, which we know obviously. this is one of the them that

came up. this was a very high ranking official. the attitude behind it is what's interesting. the attitude behind it, which is the kind of anti-obama sort of, we're america, take it or leave it. we're the superpower. you follow our rules or you get off the highway. the second piece that was interesting to me was this is their self-perception. right? this is not necessarily how everyone around the world views them. but this is their self-perception. that's certainly not the attitude when donald trump is dealing with, say, russia or with the north korean leader about whom he is very kind and deafer enshall. this is an interesting moment. they have different approaches to different kinds of people. >> that's what i was going to say. is it a doctrine? does the very fact that you say they're very different approaches, for instance, the allies in this equation get,

it's our way or the highway, and the adversaries, the authoritarians get the kid gloves treatment. again, knowing that, viewing that, observing that, what do you think the doctrine is if there is one? >> well, i mean, we do know -- to go back to one point for one second. the adversaries get kid glove treatment until they don't. one of the things about trump's approach to foreign policy and national security issues is true about everything. there's tno consistency on poliy level. this goes to the doctrine question. there is a level of consistency, going back decades, actually, if you look at it, donald trump -- there are a number of things about donald trump we know to be true. he does have a soft spot for the authoritarian personality. he has always expressed that softness toward authoritarians. he has always believed the united states is robbed, is ripped off in trade negotiations.

he has been very, for decades -- he has been dubious about alliances. he always feels that we should have bilateral relationships, not multilateral alliances. it's not precisely america alone or isolationism. but he believes we're too entangled in alliances. because we're the richest player, we're always robbed. he does have a kind an isolationist approach. >> the french ambassador to the united states told me they assess it as a jacksonian plus or minus new policy. it's uni-isolationism. a combination of unilateralism or isolationism. i wonder whether that rings true in terms of slapping tariffs on steel and other metals on allies and slapping tariffs on china

and where that brings the whole sense of center to. >> right. i don't know if i would frame it -- refract it in the prism of isolationism so much as a broad mistrust. not necessarily based in fact, as they are observable to most of us, but a broad mistrust of our -- of america's friends and a widespread belief that no one really can be trusted with, again, a soft spot in a way for authoritarians. the way he speaks about authoritarian leaders is one of the most remarkable aspects of this presidency. you saw the way he spoke about kim, tough guy, he has to be a tough guy to be in a tough country. we do bad things, too. who are we to judge? it's this language -- you know this better than anyone. you have covered foreign policy as i have for a while. this is revolutionary. >> yeah. >> we are not used to this.

one of the problems -- >> go alehead. sorry. a degre i agree. >> one of the problems here is that people like you and me, or everyone who watches foreign policy, we don't have a frame of reference for this kind of rhetoric and this kind of behavior. so we don't -- we tend to -- just as the french ambassador understandably did, we are trying to impose pre-existing doctrines and ideas on did tto y he approaches the world. but none of them is particularly adequate right now. >> right. i think that really does beg the question of, is that sort of ad hoc or the chaos theory? it's what his people call it, disruption, chaos, maximum disruption out of which will come something new potentially. the problem is -- i'm going to read you a tweet he sent out

against one of america's main allies, that's angela merkel. the issue here are the facts. i would like to just read this. he tweeted today, the people of germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous berlin coalition. crime in germany is way up. big mistake made over europe in allowing millions of people who have so strongly and violently changed their culture. there's so much to unpick there. i think, don't you, that voters and people should understand that there is -- it's just full of misstatements. new figures show a drop in crime of 5.1% in germany over the previous year. the number of crimes committed is the lowest since 1992. from the very guy, the interior minister, challenging angela merkel. this idea about violently changing their culture, it has kind of a tinge of that -- we don't want to let foreigners in.

i guess what i'm trying to say is how does a doctrine emerge if the thoughts are based on a misrepresentation of the facts? >> well, i mean, maybe that is a fantasy doctrine. look, it's a fantasy doctrine based on a willful misreading of observable reality or reality that you and i can observe. i mean, there's always some element of -- there is his base in particular is upset by demographic change in america. he is projecting that out on to germany. he is warning his own supporters, hey, there's this terrle thing going on in germany that you better watch out for. it's not necessarily true. doesn't matter to him. remember, his administration is uniquely untethered to empirical fact. i don't think this is a surprise doesn't matter.s point. when he is corrected, he doubles

down on the incorrect information. again, i go to this point that we're in a new -- we're in new territory here because we have a president who doesn't even pay lip service to what most of the rest of us would call observable fact. >> do you think we should have known better? for instance, thomas write of the brookings institution described trump, this is back in early 2016, before the campaign really had started in ernest, about a year before the campaign, quote, trump loathes the liberal international order and would work against it as president. trump also dislikes america's military alliances and would work against them. trump believes in his bones that the global economy is unfair to the united states and finally, trump has an innate sympathy for authoritarian strongmen. all of these other things that mr. wright said in early 2016 have proven to be exactly true. this is what president trump is demonstrating.

>> right. you know, that's the interesting thing here is that what we're so busy watching the chaos and the improvisation and the spontaneous making of policy and the whole reality show quality of this, but meanwhile, under those waves, under those whitecap waves, there's a remarkably steady understanding, you could call it understanding or misunderstanding, but an understanding about the way the world is organized and the way in which he does not like the role of america in the world and wants to change that. so he is going to just keep driving and driving and driving at these same points for the duration of his presidency either for the next two years or six years. there's nothing surprising. he's not going to suddenly like nato. he's not going to wake up and say, you know what, my natural allies are in the eu. this is not going to happen. >> you mentioned nato. that's the next big summit on the agenda next month. he will take this notion of why

don't you all pay up, you are due the 2%. that's something that the obama administration posited in the most serious way in 2014. many american presidents have said that. i guess, you know, the question is, what do you think is going to happen at the next gathering of allies? again, in the unprecedented column. no matter what trump thinks, the words and the language he has used to address allies like justin trudeau and others, i mean, i don't want to repeat that language myself, frankly. >> here is something -- you talk about the next nato summit. here is something that will be popular with many americans and not just those who voted for donald trump. unlike barack obama -- you are right, he thought nato should pony up more money, its fair share. he said so in his very polite barack obama way, the way that we are used to hearing

presidents and leaders talk to each other, of course. what donald trump will do is say it rudely. he will say it in their faces. he will say it repeatedly. he won't give anybody any out. at the end of the day, maybe he is going to get nato allies to pay their fair share. he can come back to america and say, look, you know, politeness is overrated. being kind to your allies in public is overrated. if i don't like these guys, i'm going to say so. i'm not advocating or non-advocating for a position. this is what might happen. he might actually get something. if you are a nato ally, you are like, all right, just to get this guy to shut up or just to get him to leave me alone, maybe we will pay our fair share. remember, it's a very, very popular cause in america to get nato allies to pay what americans think of as their fair share. >> yeah. the next thing is -- we have talked about obama and we have seen many of president trump's tweets against president obama. it strikes me that ever since

the early 2000s, american foreign policy and perhaps domestic, but we're focusing on foreign, has been a series of massive pendulum swings. if you take the maximum interventionism of president bush, the wars in iraq, which turned into a disaster, if you take the opposite of president obama, whose pendulum swaung al the way over to make up for the way america was isolated and dislike and disrespected after the w. bush years and now you take the pendulum swing away from obama as president trump says we need to be restricted rather than taken advantage of, hence we need to do everything against the -- that obama stood for. that's part of what they were telling you in the white house. it's the f-obama doctrine right now. >> right. right. the trump doctrine is whatever obama didn't do or didn't believe. sometimes it's not as more complicated than that.

you are exactly right. america has had a bipolar foreign policy where either -- look, the tragedy of the bush administration, you could argue, was that they overreacted to events in the middle east. the tragedy of the obama administration, some people would argue,that obama underreacted to events in the middle east. we were facing a choice between hillary clinton and donald trump. hillary clinton probably was somewhere in between george w. bush and barack obama, was going to bring that pendulum back toward the center. now in a surprise, we got something completely different. the big question as you know is, are these swings becoming more dramatic or will we eventually kind of come to some stability? i don't have any particular hope that these swings are going to become less dramatic. there's not much evidence to suggest that. we're in a unique situation in which the world's superpower

cannot decide for itself what role it wants to play in the world. >> i think that leaves a huge number of questions for america and the rest of the world to try to figure it out. jeffrey goldberg, editor in chief of the atlantic, thank you for joining us. let's put these questions to david sanger. he was at the singapore summit with north korea and he says, donald trump's unconventional diplomacy, in fact, extracted less from north korea than previous u.s. presidents have. in his new book sanger asks whether we are ignoring the real threat to western democracy, which is not nuclear, but cyber warfare. a decade ago, there were three or four nations with effective cyber forces. now there are more than 30. the perfect weapon, his new book, explores this new era of digital sabotage, disinformation and fear spreading. he joins me now live from new york. david sanger, welcome to the program.

>> great to be back with you. >> yeah. the last time we were together was in singapore as we were reporting and observing and trying to analyze what was going on. there's no doubt that many had a lot of hope and still do that this may have shifted the calculus and shifted at least the psychology for now. i want to ask you first, you say the president extracted less and came away with less than previous presidents. >> certainly on paper he did. the president's argument has been that he changed the dynamic here by doing the meeting top down. basically, bringing the two leaders together for the first time since the korean war ended. you know, i give him credit for that. we tried one method for the past three or four decades. which is to have incremental negotiations with the north koreans, agree to give them a little aid, get them to pull back on their weapons program. it usually lasts for something between a month and three or four years. then it collapses.

the president's theory was, actually get a situation of trust between kim jong-un and the president of the united states and then work from there. if it had been at that, and the president had then come back home and said, this is a good start. we have a relationship under way. and now it all depends on whether or not he actually turns his commitment to denuclearize into something far more concrete than north korea has done before, then i think i would be optimistic. instead, the president showed up and in his usual salesmanship way, he said, there is no longer a nuclear threat from north korea. north korea has the same number of weapons, whatever number that is and we're not certain, it's got the same production facilities. it's got theuldn intercontinental weapons, same chemical weapons. the threat has not changed at all.

>> to follow up on the conversation with jeffrey goldberg, president trump did today tweet about north korea. again in the concontext of the obama administration experience. if president obama, who got nowhere with north korea and would have had to go to war with many millions of people being killed, had gotten along with north korea and made the initial steps toward the deal that i have, the fake news would have named him a national hero. again, it's all put into the context of this obsession with doing everything and obama did. >> it is. there's a legitimate complaint, i think, a krcriticism i make o the obama administration that they didn't do enough diplomatically with north korea. they did not impose the sanctions as fully as they could.

they made one diplomatic effort briefly. and it fell apart. they didn't do anything particularly bold. they focused on iran. i think the other thing that's maybe going on in president trump's mind is that everybody keeps saying -- many people write -- i have written that part of the test here is he is going to have to get far more out of the north koreans than president obama got out of the iranians. it would be a pretty remarkable thing to get north korea to give up 97% of all of its nuclear fuel. of course, the north koreans are much further down the line. they have an actual array of weapons that the iranians didn't. inspection regime in iran has been pretty good. we have no idea what it would look like so far in north korea. >> i'm still scratching my head to figure out how the world is safer having pulled out of a nuclear arms control deal with the iranians on this issue. i agree with you. the south koreans have told me, if president obama had spent a

fifth of the time on north korea that he did on iran, they may have got further down the line in lines of trying to tame north korea. >> that's a very legitimate criticism. jeff said before the mistakes of the obama administration were usually of caution and omission. certainly, that is a big theme of the perfect weapon, because you see it in a very big way in cyber. >> that's what i wanted to get to. the perfect weapon is about what you say is a more real and present danger than perhaps even the threat of nuclear warfare. what do you expect as the next frontier in this warfare? do you expect, for instance, north korea to be using and continuing its cyber warfare against the u.s., even in this condition? do you expect iran to launch a cyberattack on the u.s. in retaliation for pulling out of the deal? >> not just the u.s. but arndt world.

cyber is not as powerful in the initial instance as a nuclear weapon. thank goodness. you are not going to see in one swoop hundreds of thousands of people killed. but it is a very useful weapon that in some ways is the opposite of nuclear. it's stealthy. it's hard to figure out wre it came from. you can dial it up and dial it down. i think what most americans and europeans, others miss as we think about cyber is that it's on a continuum. exactly the way every other weapon that you can think of is on a continuum. you have handguns and you have automatic weapons and you've got missiles and you've got bombs and so forth. in cyber, what we have are some weapons that are for surveillance, some that can go in and manipulate data, some that are useful for information warfare. at the far end, the u.s./israeli

attack on israel, you have -- >> on iran. >> i'm sorry. the u.s./israeli attack on iran. you have cyber weapons that can actually have a real world affect. in that case, they sped up or slowed down iranian sentry fui until they blew up. you have seen the north korean attack on sony pictures was like that. in the information area, we have seen thanks to the russians an entirely new array and frankly one of the messages of the book is we are nowhere near prepared for the next run of that either in the midterm election or the next presidential election, because we haven't stopped to learn the very big lessons that came out of that attack. >> which is so troubling to think this has been warned about for so many years now and people like yourself who study it say constantly that we're not up to the challenge. let me ask you, is there a

generation of cyber warfare to be had against the north korean nuclear infrastructure? >> it's already happened. it's described at length in the book. president obama, one of the few things he did do very -- in a very active way against north korea was authorize a series of both cyber and electronic warfare attacks on their missile program back in the days when they were shooting off mid-range missiles. they had a failure rate of 88%. they would launch these things, you remember. you would see the headline. they would go into the sea. the big question, as i dug back through that program and tried to talk to people who were familiar with it, what i learned was the united states never quite figured out how many of those failures were because of the u.s. program and how many were for other causes, as the

north koreans were bad engineers or bad parts or messed something up. one of the oddities of cyber, again, unlike nuclear, is sometimes it's very difficult to measure the effects. this was one of those. then kim jong-un moved to a new generation of missiles, including the ones you saw last year, some of which were intere intercontinental. whatever we were doing failed. it's hard to figure out if that's because the north koreans figured it out or we decided -- the united states decided we have been too obvious and pulled back some. >> we have 30 seconds left. i want you to weigh in on a proposal that you made in your book that there needs to be a geneva convention-style containment of the weapons. how likely do you think it is that any of the countries would sign off to that? >> when the geneva conventions happened, they were organized by the red cross. i think that this is an idea that brad smith of microsoft

sort of put out. while it's got flaws to it, one of the things i like about it is that it does not involve a lengthy treaty negotiation. it simply wouldn't work in cyber. because no one has the time to go negotiate the treaty, get them ratified. the technology moves too quickly. you need something fluid that can get updated every year or two. >> it's fascinating. david sanger, thank you very much. your new book "the perfect weapon." trying to keep up with the cyber threat and also trying to figure out the trajectory of a trump doctrine. that it is for our program tonight. thanks for watching amanpour on pbs. join us again tomorrow night.

>> you're watching beyond 100 days on pbs. scenes from the u.s. border of children separated from their parents are shocking america. >> the precinct says he is just enforcing the law. the post suggests republicans agree with him. katty: melania trump put out a rare statement saying shea hates to see children taken from their families. her husband, though, is standing firm. president trump: the united states will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility. katty: these are the images that prompted former first lady laura bush to make an unprecedented intervention, calling the policy cruel. mr. trump is focused on