the only way to get to you is by train. hello there thanks for being with r.t. tonight our top stories the un general assembly condemns the security council's inaction on the violence in syria by huge majority russia votes against what it called an imbalance document that says the battle for syria's second city aleppo gets increasingly bloody. gas and stun grenades in bahrain the government leads a fresh crackdown against the long running protests as activists try and cut off a key highway demos against the ruling regime began nearly eighteen months ago but of a little attention the world community. and the anti putin punk band who pulled a political stunt in russia's blank i think rose up his defense today the three women are charged with pollution isn't motivated by religious hatred in the face up

to seven years in jail convicted of programs continue next cross-talk debates how long nato will continue rallying support for what it calls humanitarian interventions and whether it's promoting a new cold war. if you. still. want to. follow in welcome to cross talk about nato and its critical crossroads and its summit in chicago this military alliance decided many things in principle like ending the occupation of afghanistan but reality is very different fundamental

aspects of the war will continue for years to come what has nato accomplished over the past decade and what is the future of this alliance. to. say. to cross that whether nato will walk the talk i'm joined by jeremy corbyn in london he is a british labor party politician and member of parliament in washington we have john glaser he is assistant editor at antiwar dot com and in warsaw we go to small our he is a senior fellow at the polish institute of international affairs and a visiting senior fellow at the center for european studies right gentlemen cross-talk rules and i mean you can jump in anytime on john if i can go to you first hear mr barack obama said in chicago nato has been the bedrock of common security freedom and prosperity for nearly sixty five years it hasn't just endured it has thrived because our nations are stronger when we stand together eleven years after the occupation of afghanistan to those words ring true to you well we should

ask if they ring true to an afghan or to a libyan or to a lot of people in the balkans the issue is that obama sees nato as securing western influence and western power and western security. he's. enough to know that nato is not about. progressing democracy or or transporting freedom to the war world and so forth afghanistan is a perfect example nato has laid waste to that country for a decade every aspect of the stated mission has failed. for virtually every six month period since obama began his surge. in violence and bloodshed has increased so so in terms of stability and security and freedom i don't think that that applies to the people that have been living under the boot of nato for so long ok again you're showing it to you and more so what do you think

about what john just said there because you know there was a lot of pomp and circumstance in chicago but really the alliance can't really claim any success whatsoever particularly in when you look at afghanistan i was very patient first of all i must mention that this is not a military alliance it is a political and military alliance and this is a very clear distinction twenty eight members willingly got together and keep peace in europe and your atlantic area that's for one and the. joan in washington why surprise you say that nato did not have successes just look at us look at the peace in europe balkans they don't kill each other for pete's sake how can you say that there are problems in kosovo or those instability there's instability in the area but there is peace in europe and nato out and wants to keep it that way there is no one else who will do that when afghanistan is going this is incredibly challenging situation ethnically religiously or whatever but the girls go to schools you know

and people die they died as a result of the civil war which took place remember the name taliban we do remember we lost our boys fighting them i can't say it is a success maybe it will be. losing battle with the taliban i don't know but we have to remember that gun is done is not about our gun he studies about budgets done with a nuclear weapon it's about india and china challenging each other in the area this is a key to this success of stability in the whole region and of course i don't know what you mean i'm going to go to jeremy in london i guess that's cold comfort for the afghans so we just heard from warsaw where it's very cold comfort the afghans i get afghan refugees arriving in my constituency desperate to get out of afghanistan and try and survive this is a defeat for nato they've spent billions of pounds lost thousands of nato troops lives and above all that large numbers of afghan people have died the country is

unstable corrupt and riddled with drug corruption and drug production and this is a disaster for nato and i think the sooner the troops come out the better the afghan people are going to have to decide their own future in some way whatever happens next in afghanistan it's not going to be good for the legacy of this drone aircraft instability in pakistan instability across the region and large numbers of us bases all across the southern borders of russia it's not a good outcome to this whole operation you know john if i can go back to you in washington i was in kabul two weeks ago and it is an absolute catastrophe there i mean my goodness the all the only thing your moment be your only concern with security and nothing else happens there except everyone wants to be safe i mean what kind of legacy is that going to be because we will withdraw our ok and i'd like to point out to my viewers the taliban will be part of that process they will be apparently ruling the country of not wholly ruling that country after a levin years and after everything we've just heard on this program about this

expenditure of treasury and of lives and loss of lives on the ground for afghans. yeah i mean it was only a few months ago that the intelligence community released a report that said afghanistan was still a stalemate and that the taliban was robust a robust insurgency. even the obama administration has been able to admit at certain times that the taliban will be a part of any sort of political situation going forward and the sort of deteriorating situation with pakistan which the obama administration has absolutely ruined any sort of chance for a diplomatic you know way forward pakistan has always preferred especially elements of the i.s.i. has always preferred taliban influence in afghanistan as opposed to the u.s. puppet cause i especially because their primary enemy india. is

more likely to be able to wield some influence in afghanistan with with karzai than with the taliban so they're willing to perfectly willing to bolster the taliban going forward in order to get get rid of indian influence but i just want to point out pete because it's funny that in two thousand and twelve here we can we can talk about nato without referencing what it's all about why it why we still have this organization i mean the stated purpose is after the first second world war was to protect against encroaching soviet communism but it's clear that that was not the case and it's not the case now i mean the soviet communism is dead and every u.s. administer u.s. every u.s. administration since the fall of the soviet union has expanded nato so of course it couldn't be the case there was a document in one thousand nine hundred two that excuse me just let me finish this

document nine hundred ninety two that circulated around the defense department became known as the the wolfowitz. doctrine and it described what had been american policy going back to the truman. administration which was that america's military and political mission in the post cold war era was to ensure that no military rival or superpower could emerge in western europe in asia or in the territories of the former soviet union and when you see it that way you understand why this organization is still around and why washington why it's so important to washington's military had gemini across the globe. why is nato still around here and you mentioned earlier that it's a political organization again that's cold comfort for people that are the or are bombed in afghanistan in the pakistani border the people that were killed in libya i mean it's cold comfort to say it's the but it's a political alliance i mean you know that's when you're at the other end of the big

it's pretty violent organization i must tell you and then nato is shown itself to be an amazingly violent military alliance with the end of the cold war. come on i mean this is ridiculous really. from what it said this is out of the textbook and i really am surprised to hear that you know that nato is a source of instability cetera look at us you know it reminds me of a joke from do old times you know in a war so you can in washington you can criticize president of the united states and he was who can do the same you know this is not the way to approach the problem it's not a question of aggression is question sometimes of security do you remember what happened nine eleven in america when he did it come from you know i am not saying that you know there was i can tell you what i mean undermanned it came from it came from a global military presence for the u.s. which propped up military this is your home and stay there you know you can vote you can you can vote we are not very happy in have to fight towards iran but we

understand that now days the security is not being threatened here in the middle of you know let's say western or central europe but is being threatened where you know you don't want to do something about you can vote and change. and here gentlemen i mean let me go to jeremy because that's a very interesting point let's talk about democracy here how democratic is it when seven out of ten of americans are tired of this war in afghanistan and want to get out now but no we hear from the reason that the united states we hear from the president united states is that well we will leave soon but then you know on the other side he says but we're never going to leave because we'll be making sure american interests are protected in afghanistan you can't have it both ways in the american people are again not about at least i mean i'm sorry men generally now in london go ahead you know when when obama made his mile high stadium speech to accept the democratic nomination four years ago he said he'd pull u.s. troops out of iraq in order to fight the real war in afghanistan and he's stayed in afghanistan he's now being forced to withdraw from afghanistan afghanistan has cost

a lot and he's a big defeat for nato but on the back of nine eleven and where ever was the logic of invading afghanistan. because of the horrors of nine eleven there's been this massive increase in u.s. arms expenditure huge increase and expansion of nato and from the lisbon treaty a huge requirement on all nato member states to spend a great deal on nato supplied arms yet at the same time the majority of nato countries there are involved in afghanistan have small numbers and always drawing it's going to be britain and the usa that's left there till the end i'm sorry during buys not through the military expenditure in europe since one thousand nine hundred or nine it went down dramatically after twenty five percent your british. got about eight percent you know this is not unlikely her expenditure. go ahead i'm going to go to the great state john before we go to the regular united the united states accounts for about seventy five percent of nato is

a military budget and they do united states for me and my taxpayers are the ones that are subsidizing european defense so again this is this is why european defense has been able to go down but the american empire the american national security state which is not good for us or anybody else has been going so. this is this i don't know what i'm not going to do is do know what nato budget do about it all together these three gentlemen i'm going to be here we're going to do it was a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on nato as a question of all future states. and.

if they shoot something inappropriate for the public they can easily be. cast to say ok. i wish she would have never happened but it has. you know for a t.v. camera becomes unnecessary what this is their own safety all foreign nationals including journalists and inspectors should leave. and the spear what happens with such witnesses i got it on my site. first. on our.

and you can see. the from. illinois. welcome back around so i'm going to go to remind you we're talking about public sentiment sportsnet. of. the surplus. again you should go back to you in warsaw one of the lessons learned from afghanistan for nato because it was passed before we went to the break what is the purpose of the alliance now because we all know the history of it ok and we know what the cold war element but what is its purpose now i mean it was for european north atlantic defense ok it's has really gone way beyond that right now and if we look at afghanistan even if the taliban come back to power

which they probably will that is not a threat to the united states of america maybe poland is worried about it but it's not a threat to the u.s. . no we are not worried about the taliban so we don't have any strategic or other interest you know gonna stop pakistan etc but we share the responsibility for the security of the world and the united kingdom and other allies have been doing this since the second world war the problem is that the europeans are not doing their best they cut the military spending and this is a result of what demi has told us that the us is putting more into nato that they did at the beginning from fifty percent of the budget it's now seventy five percent of the american money so we have to do something about it secondly it's a question it is a question of what nato is about and this question was put several years ago about tony blair who who said in the challenging circumstances we didn't decide yet how far nato should go and do the right things and this is

a problem for politicians to decide for the military because he does i gain if i do the right or i'm sorry what better to do the right thing what does that mean to do the right thing american american political interests are is automatically a right thing i mean that's just that's just no it's that's what actually does sound you're defined it you define it in those terms i didn't define in those terms is a problem of security of basically that it's also a problem of nation building it's a problem of not africa at the moment is a problem of border security is a problem of control of civilians over the militaries in those countries and this is a many problems we need. x. y. is unique to us why one of the nice giants is nato has to fix all of these things why it was going to stay home and wait for the bomb to land in your backyard our history. bomb you back a go ahead john you know you can you can help them in and you know you concentrate on afghanistan but this is not a typical thing for nation that is doing militias and going on so it's easy. to go

ahead jump and meet me maybe a health concern or. libya more typical of nato what nato did the u.s. sort of britain and france did was get permission from the u.n. security council to protect civilians with a no fly zone mission which they almost immediately abandoned in favor of acting as an air force for the terrible rebel army and regime change against gadhafi this is what's more typical of nato pushing their way or to able to use were forces things got for that for good reason because i can learn the jeremy german mind agree with jeremy in london jump in. i have to agree on that with john on this point nato is giving for itself the role of intervention afghanistan intervention in nato intervention west however it pleases that was the

whole blair i agenda surrounding nato now nine hundred ninety the warsaw pact gave itself up and collapsed nato should have done the same at that time instead we have this massive global force has it made the world safer has it made the world more secure has improved the civil liberties all over europe and north america you all know the answer to that question we need to think very seriously about what this military alliance is actually for and why it is costing particularly us taxpayers but others as well such a vast amount of money and so many lives of young soldiers lost as a result of it you know i just want to point out one. response to something he said is that you know he says europe should pick up more of the military slack for nato so you know a lot of europe is in economic shambles right now and that's a part of the problem of a welfare warfare state when all of this money goes to the state to do with it what it wants a lot of it's for war and

a lot of it's for you know social control social constructions. this is process the . i mean he wants more of it europe is you know teetering on an economic ledge and america is going that way as well and he seems to want more of that so i don't understand you what do you think the future of the alliance is for go back to warsaw the future of the secured. political alliances strong there are things which nato needs to rethink as a result of a gun he's done and maybe it will be the lesson that if people decide somewhere to kill each other so dearie me and john will sit in the backyard and wait for the things to happen i'm not sure the dollars will go for that there is a problem of money there's a problem of resources this border of political will there's an economic crisis at the moment but those things will pass those gentleman somehow what just do not remember what is there. is

a trading area of eight hundred million people who account for this half of the world g.d.p. and it took two trillion of investment in both ways people sometimes when they talk about china forget that the u.s. investment to burgeon last year was twice as big as into china we have a stronger alliance and we want to make its way along ok again i mean this. is the problem isn't chicago most of the european partners of nato walk away from their response quote unquote responsibility to afghanistan so i don't see the unity there jeremy go ahead jump in you what you want you want to ask the question what is nato achieved. what are precisely what is nato achieve in afghanistan and also since libya keeps getting quoted as an example of nato humanitarian intervention as you john quite rightly said they acted as an air force for the opposition never mind the western countries and also gadhafi weapons up till six weeks before that bombing campaign began and that was then provoked

a further civil war in libya the most appalling abuse of human rights of african people who happened to be living in libya and a lot of companies coming in to clean up the oil there what was nato really doing there was it about human rights and protecting lives always it really about oil and influence and i just ask that question i think an awful lot of other people are asking that question and was around the subject of expenditure at the point that was being made in the western countries particularly western europe or all of all of europe for that matter going through problems of maintaining social welfare and health service systems the public don't know and not in a mood to spend more on defense when they see hospitals being closed again usually one of those interesting things is i only want to i was just going to say i mean when you know for ten years of eleven years now most politicians in the west support of the occupation of afghanistan in the name of democracy but if you look in the streets of chicago and you look all across europe and united states people are against this kind of spending on the military where is the democracy in that.

well first of all wary of all the elect there's more i don't understand this approach you elect your government you have a congress you have parliament and they make the decisions on behalf of the people who vote the basis of democracy i know that in some countries decisions being made by him one man or a clique of people who can decide about everything but this is not the case of european democracies and united states i am not idealistic we didn't go to libya for some reasons and i if there would be more time i could explain that we didn't go but it was not in a nato operation it was a european operation supported by the united states as obama said from from behind and nato became a hub organizational help it was not in nato operation it was if you wish it kind of coalition of the willing and united kingdom and france were in the forefront if i can remind jeremy i understand that he would be against that maybe he will be against also defending falcon island soon it is the most fascinating debate because you cannot talk about nato and its role also in europe from the point of the

afghanistan to which you are coming back because this is a very painful lesson and i'm sure the lessons will be learned now we have to do many things which are in. securing the the many parts of the war when you have conflict and people who kill each other you know if nato would not intervene there is a problem of piracy out of the horn of africa this is against a nato operation we have plenty of missions helping people to organize themselves you come back to afghanistan ok it's painful but it will pass and i am looking for strong nato or in a strong democratic environment ok guardian washington ok jeremy want to jump in there i just don't see the political will require requires of its members a particular level of defense expenditure because it's of cooperation under chapter seven and one that attacks any or is perceived to attack and a nato member could therefore we invite everybody. to defend them so syria could

spread over into turkey ipso facto nato is involved in the whole thing i just think we need to think very carefully about the dangers of the whole nato treaty the levels of expenditure and its willingness it seeming to intervene where there are large quantities of oil or other vital minerals at stake they seem more interested in the economic interests of the very powerful than they are in the humanitarian interest of the poorest people on this planet john if i can go to you do you think that nato is on its last leg in light of afghanistan i i know you know one member of our panel here want to say it's an exception but it's a really important example of what nato does right or does wrong and i would say wrong. yeah i mean it's hard to say because you know there's a lot of talk about some geo political shuffling going on in the next five ten twenty years and you know america might lose certain amounts of influence in this and that that would in turn mean

a loss of influence of nato but it's hard to actually tell i mean i mean powers do terrible things and you know have ten year blunders and they go on much longer i mean america is still spends approximately as much on its military as the rest of the world combined and it still has a global military empire thousand military bases in one hundred thirty or forty countries so the actual power differential is still very much there. scores ok jump in warsaw go ahead no it and as he quotes as he it would be a gaze it will of the countries concerned you know if nato is not invited does it invited invade the country to prove its its military bases what's rubbish is that ok jeremy give you the last word of the program last thought. it's time to think again about this vast level of military expenditure the disaster and defeat of iraq

afghanistan and the problems that remain in libya maned these military alliances don't bring about peace justice to human rights they bring about an awful lot of profits for a lot of arms money ok i'm going to press a no gentlemen we're running out of time many thanks today to my guests in london washington and in warsaw and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember crosstalk. if you. want to. play. well with. technology innovations all the latest developments from around russia we've got the future covered.

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