♪ welcome to "amanpour on pbs." tonight every day this week has served up yet another pressing foreign policy challenge. from mexico to syria, russia, to trump's standoff with china. the former british ambassador to the u.s. and former george w. bush national security aide help us navigate the choppy waters. capturing feminism's generational tensions. my conversation with the best-selling novelist meg wolitzer about her new book "the female persuasion." >> "amanpour on pbs" made

possible by the generous support of roslyn p. walter. >> good evening and welcome to the program. i'm christiane amanpour in london. few countries will be untouched or untroubled by the dramatic events of this week. from washington to moscow, london to beijing, a lot has happened in a very short space of time. the ongoing tit for tat between president trump and china over new import tariffs sparked more fears of a trade war and sent global markets into a spin. at the same time as he announced that, he would also -- he also says he would send u.s. troops into the mexican border and pull them out of syria. meanwhile, over here, tensions between britain and russia threaten to boil over. after the poisoning of a former spy. russia has demanded an open session at the united nations today as it frantically tries to distance itself from the skripal ca. other worries coming from

britain too. a report by mps saying north korean ballistic missiles could reach the uk within the next 18 months. now with me to discuss all of this, britain's former ambassador to washington and corey shocker who was in the state department under president george w. bush and joins me from san francisco. welcome to you both. first and foremost, corey, since you're over there in the united states, i would ask you what you made of the president saying that he was going to send in the troops to the mexico border. >> american presidents have authorized the use of national guard troops along the border in extreme circumstances before. so it's not as much of an outlier as it sounds. it also sounds like president trump just requested that border state governors do it, not that he tried to federalize the national guard. so it's a big headline, but probably less than it sounds.

>> just quickly to drill down on extreme, do you see a massive national security threat that would require this rare deployment of national guard to the border? >> no, i do not. i actually think the president is playing very dangerous politics with both of our terrific neighbors, mexico and canada. on trade, on immigration, on a number of issues. president trump is burning through the goodwill that the united states has established with other countries, and it's going to be very costly to reinstate. >> so you mentioned trade. i want to play for both of you a sound bite from president trump about the trade issue, and of course we also have the beijing ambassador to washington reonding. takelet's listen. >> they have a trade deficit of $500 billion a year.

it's not something we can live with. >> we believe this is another step in the wrong direction. this is a unilateralist and protectionist action. we will certainly fight back. >> so ambassador, we will certainly fight back, i mean -- as you see this happening, you were the ambassador to washington, what do you think is going to happen on the global stage in terms of trade tensions? >> it's understandable, i think, that president trump, who is, of course, something of a mercantilist, and feels that there's no such thing as fair trade if america's losing out and you've got to beat the bad guys, that he should retaliate. there is a huge trade deficit, i thought $375 billion, he says $500 billion, it's enormous. we know china does not play bit proper rules so retaliating is kind of instinctive. but ambassador sway, who i knew very well in washington, is saying, calm down, this is a protectionist response. the problem is with a trade war

with china, it tends to be not china that loses most, it tends to be other economies. it's interesting to me as america has said what it's said and china has retaliated, already you're hearing secretary wilbur ross and others saying, calm down. even after shooting wars you end up with negotiations. after a trade war we've got to see whether we can deal with this. because ultimately there will be a lot of losers, not many winners, if this becomes a real trade war. >> exactly. everybody says this will affect the global economy and boomerang back onto the very american workers that president trump says he's trying to help. so can i just puttoou both at this stage beforee drill do into syria and the back and forth on that, president trump not only talks about america first, but corey, he's talked about being a disrupter. at least he did in the run-up to the victory. and his -- steve bannon talked about it. but what do you think in these last more than 12 months -- has there been too much chaos? too much disruption? >> yeah, i think probably so.

i think the president seems to believe that setting all of the boats rocking is invariably to our advantage. and i think that's probably not true. and it's especially not true on problems like north korea where there's a very narrow margin for error before bad things start happening. and i also think the president, by focusing so exclusively on the united states, is insensitive to the costs that these policies bring for allies. as peter was suggesting on trade policy and you were as well. >> you just mentioned north korea. and peter has just been recently to iran. and i bring this up because of course president trump is talking about potentially ripping up or pulling the united states out of the iran nuclear deal. and as i said, the british believe that the north koreans are capable eventually of reaching britain. but that a deal may be had with them to prevent them using their

nuclear capabilities. in your mind, first, are you concerned this deal would get rubished by the president? and what do you think that will mean for any meeting with the north koreans? >> when i've spoken to iranian politicians in tehran, one or two who have visited london, i've got the impression they think or they want us to believe that president trump is in the business of destroying what we call the jcpoa, that he's not going through the motions of trying to find ways of improving it in order to give himself cover for saying, i've made it better, it's a win for me, a loss for them, we can carry on with it. people that i talk to in british and other governments are not so sure. nobody in washington seems to be very clear whether the president really wants to kill the deal or not. the fact that john bolton is taking over as national security adviser in four days' time, he's quite a hawk on iran, suggests it may well be this time the deal is going to be if not destroyed, the united states

government walk away from it. doesn' necly msarin that it dies. the europeans might try and keep it going as it is. because frankly, none of us have an interest in a nuclear arms rate in the middle east. but the iranians i think are deeply nervous about that deal going down the drain. fit does, then it opens up all sorts of difficulties for north korea. if there is a deal to be struck with the north koreans, which may be, the north koreans have begun saying we'd like to talk, and donald trump has said, i'd like to talk too, what price will they set on a deal with the united states of america if america's word is no longer trusted and might be torn up if the president decides one fine day he doesn't like that deal after all? as for the range of the missiles, i would say that probably north korea's had the ability to fire long-range missiles for quite a long time, reaching probably american territory, european territory, they've chosen not to use it. that's what i hear from the real experts. and they've not used it because they may be hard, they may be irrational, they're not suicidal. >> so interesting. to pick up with you, corey, you

were in the administration which was the last to have some kind of deals with north korea. and you were also in an administration where john bolton was the u.n. ambassador. what do you think will be the hardening, or do you think there will be a hardening of american foreign policy coming up? >> yes, think that's likelier than not. the think the president seems to be increasingly confident that he was right in his judgments that he campaigned on, on foreign and national security policy. and he wants to build a team more closely aligned with his own judgments about that. so yeah, i do anticipate a hardening. i also agree with peter's judgment that on north korea, we already have the right deterrent threat, which is any attack by north korea on the united states or its allies will result in a military retaliation that the north korean government will not survive. i think that continues to be the

right threat to manage north korea. even as they cross the nuclear threshold. i don't think that makes it any less persuasive. >> let me just bring you both in to the idea of syria. you talk about the president trying to get all his more like-minded people around him to pursue his foreign policy. but i must say this week the whole syria issue seems to be very muddled. let me play for you a bit of a sound bite after president trump sa we're going to pull troops out of syria, fromrettcgurk, the point man on the fight against isis. >> in terms of our campaign in syriria, we're in syria to figh isis. that is our mission and the mission isn't over. and we're going to complete that mission. >> okay. so our mission isn't over, said brett mcgurk. this is what president trump says about it. >> i want to get out. i want to bring our troops back home. i want to start rebuilding our nation. we will have, as of three months ago, $7 trillion in the middle

east over the last 17 years. we get nothing. nothing out of it. nothing. >> corey, what on earth can we derive as policy from that? is isis defeated or isn't it? will they stay the course or won't they? are they in to see the end of assad or aren't they? what do we take from those opposing views there? >> well, i'm sympathetic to the president wanting to keep the military mission narrow and focused on the defeat of isis. the tragic truth is that bashar al assad's government is winning the civil war in syria with the brutal assistance of russia and iran. and they are willing to run greater risks and commit atrocities to produce an outcome that they're much more committed to than we are. and they have forces fighting

bashar al assad have never colessed into a political coalition of a kind that could govern the country. so i'm sympathetic to the president's reflexes and it does sound to me like he's taking a very different policy approach than we have taken in afghanistan or iraq, where we have partnered with local forces to improve governce and social cohesion to make those societies less vulnerable to terrorism, and also to shoulder a greater share of the burden of fighting it on their part. sounds to me like what the president wants to do is limit our involvement to punitive military action without doing any of the positive things to make those societies more robust. and of course the result of that is that those societies -- that we will very quickly look indistinguishable from what we are fighting against. >> and talk about punitive measures, peter, let me play for you a sound bite from the outgoing national security

adviser h.r. mcmaster about russia and how to try to stop putin's influence. >> russia brazenly and implausibly denies its actions. and we have failed to impose sufficient costs. the kremlin's confidence is growing. as its agents conduct their sustained campaigns to undermine our confidence in ourselves, and in one another. >> so what do you think, in our last remaining minute, is the way to get the kremlin under control, if i can say it like that? the skripal case that the u.n. is discussing today, russia wants to say britain did it. >> i think what is really important about dealing with russia is that the international community must stand up to it, must show putin that the cost of behaving like this, whether it's destroying other democracies or murdering opponents or critics

abroad, or even in the streets of moscow, that the cost isn't worth it. this guy, there's no right or wrong in his mind, it's about what can i get away with in order to make myself rich and in order to make russia great again and feared? we, the rest of us, that's why the international response has been so powerful, must say, that's not worth it. and must surprise him by the strength of international sentiment against him. he's going to play games in the hague, he's going to play games in the security council, and trying to shift the argument, trying to suggest the brits made it up or we did it, yet at the same time the spokesman from the russian foreign ministry saying, anybody who's critical of the boss, your life is in danger if you start being unpleasant to us in other countries. in other words, they've admitted they do it, it's a clear message to dissidents and opponents not to speak out and not to do anything against the regime. but they will then deny it by lyg through their teeth that it's their responsibility. we must not let the regime get away with that. >> let us see how this unfolds. thank you so much for joining us

tonight. so from the world of real politic to the world of larger truth perhaps in an era of instant reactions, hot takes, my next guest is a devotee of the warm take. today marks six months exactly since "the new york times" posted its first bombshell report on then hollywood titan harvey weinstein. best-selling novelist meg wolitzer's timing couldn't be better. her latest book "the female persuasion" tells the story of a budding female activist and her relationship with a mentor, a' skies-era feminist. meg tells me she never set out to write a book for the moment, she sees novels as a side dish to the main course our crazy world keeps serving up. meg wolitzer, welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> so let us start with "the female persuasion." a really interesting title. and landing at the time of six

months into the "me too" movement. you have a protagonist, a main character, greer. one of the main things that happens to her is an assault on campus. tell me why that was your sort of central these sister for this book. >> well, you know, although this book is coming out in the moment of "me too," obviously i was working on it not just for a period of months but a period of years, like three years. these are issues that are not new. these are issues we've been thinking about and talking about for a really long time. female power, miss johnny. what it means to be a woman in the world. how to make things better. how to make meaning in your life. i started my character as a young woman because i think it's a coming of age story. it's about that feeling of being a woman, sort realizing there's some times when you might be objectified, when you might have something happen to you you don't want, how do you process it all? greer is shy, she doesn't understand what is going on, why is this person groping me at a

frat party in college? her face goes really, really hot and she starts to think about her body and her self in the world and it's a coming of age story moving forward as she meets a famous feminist and makes meaning for herself. >> obviously the way you describe greer, that she was frozen, paralyzed, didn't know what to do when that groping happened, that sexual assault. and that is what we hear so often. from the victims of harvey weinstein, for instance, who claimed he did that to them. that's something that's come into the fore. the idea of being frozen and paralyzed in the face of this unbelievable assault. secondly, you now talk about faith, who was greer's friend, and a famous feminist, quite an infamous feminist in your story. i wonder if i could just play you a sound bite of what gloria steinem said to me on this issue when i interviewed her. >> the people who say the fight is over, the same people who

used to say to me, it's impossible, it's against nature. now their current foreign of obstructionism is over. no, no, we've just barely gun. >> part of your book describes also the kind of intergenerational conflict, if you like, between the gloria steinem era of feminism and the much younger generation. where do you come down on that? because it came up in the 2016 elections. hillary clinton and her supporters were sort of described by the younger generation as out of date. >> well, you know, as a novelist, one of the things that i get to do is sort of traffic in nuance. which is something that i really, really like. i am in midlife, i am someone who has been young and has been a hot-faced girl and someone who has been older and has had younger women that i've tried to help. but i've been very, very helped by older women. so i basically feel that as a novelist, i'm sympathetic because i'm looking at what is it like out there for different

people? of course there are conflicts between generations and between different groups of people. women of different generations grow up in a different world. but i think that feminists want equality. and that is something that threads through the book very, very strongly. >> yes, indeed. tell me about nora ephron, the great writer, the script writer, the director. she of course, her first directg jobas based onr book, "this is your life." she called her film "this is my life." it must have been amazing for you. >> it was incredible. nora is a great friend, one of the dedicatees of my novel. i thought about the women who were encouraging and wonderful to me when i was young, she was one of them. she cared very much about helping people, but it wasn't just out of kindness, although she was very kind, it was out of a kind of enthusiasm for everything. she made me laugh a lot, she made me feel -- i guess there's this sense in the novel, and also i think for a lot of younger women, of other people

who give you permission. >> she said something amazing for me to read it back, so long ago in 1996 during a commencement address, she said, particularly to the women, above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim. and i think today those are incredibly profound words. because we're talking right now in the midst of a whole gender pay crisis, we're talking about it in the midst of a whole sexual abuse, the "me too" movement. have women now, do you think, started to be the heroines of their own lives and no long e accepting to be the victims? >> i think so. i think the idea saying something you feel is unfair, saying what's happened to you, speaking up about it, understanding it. talking about things is always the best way to go. talking about things and now what's happening is that other people are listening. so that maybe people can speak up more clearly. they can speak up more freely without feeling, wait a minute, like greer does in my book. did this really happen to me? was it an assault? is this something i should just

accept? no it isn't something you should accept and there are other people out there who would listen. i think that is -- it's scary to speak up, it'scary to speak and up say, i was wronged orsn' the way you're treating me. but i think that the more you talk about things, the more people talk about things, the more they can sort of control their lives. >> i want to pick up also on quite an extraordinary piece of writing that you did. you described it as the second shelf. the phenomenon of the second shelf. where women's literature is sort of consigned to what they think women's literature should be. you talk about how so many men's books are published in really bold typeface, bold colors. and you, a couple of your books have taken on the same practice. you've got these massive, vibrant stripes, big, white lettering. there is nothing shy about this cover. >> what i said in the piece "the

second shelf" is that sometimes books by men had big covers that sort of -- with those letters that you describe that sort of said to the reader, this book is an event. and sometimes there would be books by women that had covers that i jokingly called "little girl in a field of wheat." they seemed to suggest this is a less-important book and maybe it suggested that men wouldn't want to read it. books that literature is for everyone. i should have called my novel "the everyone persuasion," perhaps. but i didn't. the thing is, i went to a book party years ago. i think i opened the piece this way. a man i met there asked me to sort of tell him about my books. i described them as being about family, marriage, sex, different issues. and after i talk about it, he said, "oh, you should meet my wife, she'd be interested." he kind of got out of there as fast as he could. he wanted nothing to do with me. as though those issues were particularly female. it was a study in the "new york times" that said that fiction, reading fiction, teaches empathy. i absolutely think it's true. >> we've seen in history women authors take on men's names.

and just recently i spoke to j.k. rowling ofhe harry potter fame to hear that she was once tempted. let's listen to what she told me about it. >> why the initials? >> oh. because my publisher, who published harry potter, they said, we think this is a book that will appeal to boys and girls. and i said, oh, great. and they said, so could we use your initials? because basically they were trying to disguise my -- >> gender? >> gender. obviously that lasted about three seconds. >> it is extraordinary to hear somebody as famous as her think that she once was tempted to take on a man's persona. let me quickly ask you, are boys in school reading the great female novelists? the brontes and all the others, jane austen? >> probably not, probably not. everyone should read things that show you, what is it like being someone else this but you want people to be able to read about other people's lives, whether

it's other genders, other races. people living in other countries. especially in this moment of what people are calling the hot takes. i'm the master of the warm take because i want to sort of look slowly at what is my character's experience like? what is it like being a young woman today? what was it like for my older character growing up as a second-wave feminist? how do we know what's inside other people? i think fiction teaches us that and i really wish that boys could read those books too. >> obviously your books have been best sellers. and certainly this one is really remarkable for being in the moment, as people say. but there have been some who have suggested that maybe the moment has bypassed the book. let me read what "the new yorker" critic said. the events of the past few months and the fierce discussions about feminism that they've engendered have proved to be far more electrifying and complex than anything wolitzer depicts here. surpassed by the present it aims to depict, the novel feels

amiable and mild by comparison, already quaintly out of date." how does that sit with you? >> i didn't try to write a novel of the moment. this isn't one of those books you have something terrible happen and a book comes out the next day about it. this is a slow, intimate take about things that unspool over a period of time. i think that these issues, because they're so old, they're not going to feel of the moment in that way. you'd have to do kind of a mad lib and put in sort of put in various names that are in t news. harvey weinstein or whatever. that's not at allhat this novel does. i really like what a novel can do, just sort of immerse you in this world that needs to be pleasurable, it needs to be fun, as well as powerful. i mean, how do you accomplish both of those things any think it's through characters trying to make meaning of their lives. saying, this is what i'm in the middle of. read as a novel, i hope that it feels immersive. i hope that it feels like a

world you want to be in. as for me, being in the moment of sort of being on the internet all day, i love to go to fix as a sort of -- not an escape from it, but a side trip, a side dish, if you will, to everything in our world. as another way to kind of understand it. i hope my characters provide that life. >> keep on serving us up those side dishes. meg wolitzer, thank you very much, author of "the female persuasion." good to be reminded of the warm take. that is it for our program. thanks for watching "amanpour on pbs." join us again tomorrow night. >> "ammanpour on pbs" made possible by the generous support of roslyn p. walter.

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