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hello and welcome to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle the imperial presidency barack obama ran for president in two thousand and eight as an alternative today his record is clear obama has expanded and institutionalized some of the more appalling aspects of the insecure and upset state that he inherited today the president claims unprecedented executive privilege in the name of security is obama casting aside the rule of law and other constitutional rights .

to cross-talk america's imperial presidency i'm joined by my guest michael kugel man in washington he is a south asia associate at the woodrow wilson international center for scholars and in new york we cross to george said muley he is a fellow of the global policy institute of london metropolitan university and author of the upcoming book bombs for peace nato is humanitarian war on yugoslavia . gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it you know michael thank go to you first we're calling this program the imperial presidency and and i'm thinking back to richard nixon and that's what he was accused of but do you think when we compare like nixon to bush or obama there's really not much of a comparison we do have something like an imperial presidency now well i don't know if i'd go that far i would say obama you know he was swept into power in two thousand and eight as a change on hope he was very idealistic so originally he had foreign policies that were very different from what what what had happened in the past and he was saying

we shouldn't gauge with so-called rogue states he was saying that we should make this huge effort to engage the muslim world and he gave a very famous speech in cairo even went into the very same crow saying the u.s. policy on israel by really pushing the israelis to do more and on and on settlements and he wanted a big strategic deep relationship with pakistan but all of that basically didn't work out why and argue that you ok well i want to tell us why. why did all change because a lot of people would say he looks like bush today. well he in some ways he does i mean in a country like pakistan a country i look at a lot he's launched many more drones than bush ever did so and that i'd say that you can make a comparison but i really think that he's not a a so-called neo conservative he may have come across to some as one you know or but he's not he's a he's a realist more than anything else i think he's trying to. he's aware of the fact

that there's no desire in the united states among public opinion for wars you know he came in he came to office wanting to get out of iraq and finish things up in afghanistan which is doing not too well in afghanistan and i think you see right now in syria a really big example of many people whether in syria elsewhere in the world who want a more robust u.s. role even some sort of military role in syria but obama is not willing to do that ok because maybe because the u.s. doesn't do it very well george imperial presidency your thoughts please yes i do i . absolutely can consider that it was it's been an imperial presidency under obama i think without question the obama came into power with enormous. uplifting rhetoric and is maintained the uplifting rhetoric throughout these years but the reality of his policies have been very much in continued see with the bush years and you know when you think of the regime change which i think is certainly.

very much part of the bush foreign policy regime change in afghanistan regime change in iraq obama has subscribed to that he pursued a regime change in libya. did all of that really go with men and minimal interference with congress minimal input from the united nations and he has been clearly pursuing a policy of regime change in syria now he hasn't got it. directly. you know he's been cautious about to get a direct u.s. intervention but he has unquestionably been pushing towards an intervention and it is by no means clear to me at least that america won't get involved in syria sometime in the very near future i mean for instance i mean despite all the talk about the upcoming conference in geneva. it's. the americans already pushing for

the lifting of an arms embargo against. the syrian rebels now this is clearly a violation of international law i mean there's no question about it you cannot sell arms to non-state actors that we did this goes against united nations charter yours or any number of united nations declarations and this has been obama's policy so you know this is very much. obviously there's some some differences with bush but it is a continuation of the bush foreign policy you know michael what's the difference between a neo con and a realist in this context because i think what you said was quite interesting well i mean i think and neo con if we hearken back to the bush administration is really a mentality thinking that really emphasizes unilateralism going forward thing isn't growing the use of drones use of drones is unilateral isn't it. yes

absolutely i would say if there is one comparison you could make between obama and bush and the so-called issue of neoconservatives and it would be the drone policy but you know going back to syria i don't know if i would agree with the assessment . that we just heard because yes it's true that obama the obama administration wants regime change in syria but i think just about everyone else does as well the folks in syria people in other other governments in the west and elsewhere in the middle east as well and i think that a neoconservative at least what i think of a neo conservative i think about folks that say you know to hack with what other people think we're going to go ahead and do what we want but i think in this case obama reflects public opinion in the united states and elsewhere around the world as well drones though absolutely is a very different story and i definitely concur on that point george you want to jump in a regime change in syria a lot of people want to but for a lot of different reasons and not good reasons are honorable reasons go ahead yeah

. though there were without question and. you know many people may want to regime change i don't think the considerations of london and paris really matter very much i think the issue. should be up to the syrians to decide whether they want regime change or not and it's by no means clear that the syrians are really so desperate to get rid of the present regime and replace it with some form of. islam is dictatorship so that's that those of use of the syrians now the what the views of the former imperial powers britain and france who ruled over those lands for many years i think that they should play take second place. so it is clearly that this is part of the imperial presidency it's an imperial mentality that assumes that somehow it is up to the obama administration to

decide who rules syria i mean to say that our son must go is somehow it's as if it's up to obama up to cameron or orms to decide whether assad goes on or that's that's essentially presence and now you know they may they may be differences on this or that policy but the mentality where it somehow it's the. leading western powers that get to decide who rules where. you know what weapons anybody can have that's that that's the imperial mentality and that will leads inevitably to war we had. a war in libya. i think that there's a pretty good chance that the geneva meeting will end in failure i mean the americans are doing everything they can to sabotage it and the conflict going to go on and you know some point the obama administration will decide well we really feel

he managed to in reasons we really have to intervene if you know michael cera bipartisan foreign policy in the united states now because it does seems like there's so much continuity from bush. well i mean that's that's hard to say i know there's really think tanks don't like to think that way i know think tanks don't like that ok because it endangers a lot of jobs but you know policy wise seriously well i mean you know i think washington is you know it's an extremely polarized town and there's very little bipartisan accord on anything including foreign policy and you heard you know last week president obama made a speech about about drones and other things and and you know there was a lot of predictable responses there was opposition from republicans and there was support from democrats you know honestly if it's hard to identify one or two foreign policies that both republicans and democrats would agree with you know you could argue maybe u.s.

policy toward israel would be one one example where there's bipartisan support but i think you're right and it's another one thing drones sure iran's another one. maybe i think democrats maybe well that's that's true i give you i give you that but there aren't too many of them ok george i mean from the outside outside of the beltway it doesn't look that different between parties does it. oh absolutely. there's a lot of hot air a lot of daily bickering and food fights but that somehow belies the underlying agreement let's look at syria regime change both sides are committed to regime change. again both sides were committed to that. back in the in the last in the sense our starting from the ninety's expansion of nato both parties agreed on that the ballistic missile defense eliminating any possibility of any

russian involvement in that both. both parties agreed with that. with israel obviously we talked about that so you know when you think about it iran again as we've already mentioned both parties are in agreement on that i always thought that the very fact that it's so easy to get a war going in america really. simply the president says we're just going to send the bombers and send the marines in and that's pretty much no debate about it that's a reflection of the fact that there is amazing unanimity among the parties. what do you michael how do you react to that because i remember doing the libya thing and i woke up one morning and while we're at war with libya call it a war though. no i agree with george on that but i would just say that there's certainly a rally around the flag mentality in this country in the sense that when when the when the leaders say it's time to go to war then you know you're going to get pretty pretty clear overwhelming support of what i want you to expand upon this

point but we have to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the imperial presidency stay with r.t. . sigrid laboratory was able to build the world's most sophisticated. fortunately dorna found anything tim's mission to teach me. to care about humans and. this is why you should care only. see a story. you think you understand it and then something else. and

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please. welcome back to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing obama's imperial presidency. ok michael before we went to the break you talked about rallying around the flag who is america's enemy in the world obama talked about that last week well i mean it's always a somewhat of. an abstract thing to put a thing for the obama administration the enemy is above all else global terror. which you know for the most part consists of radical islamist terror but you know in terms of specific enemies of the united states has you know who really knows

clearly north korea is thought of as a quote quote unquote enemy i'm sure iran is i don't think the united states fears that there's any country but michael is exactly very. very convenient you know to say oh this is the enemy today this is the enemy next year it's very convenient for the pentagon and for other people if it's so vague. certainly you know that that gives that gives the government you know more free rein to exploit certain things but i think that's really true does anyone really think that for example the north koreans are going to. launch some sort of attack on the united states it can't happen. i mean it really is i think the main concern is non-state actors the main enemy is non-state terrorism i think the main threat is that there would be some sort of terrorist attack on the united states i'm not saying that's going to happen but i don't think we live in an era where countries are or were the united states is going to go to war with the country in the united states or that

the united states will be victim of an attack coming from some from the from sed state actor i just don't i can't imagine that happening ok george i find the definition so vague that it's very helpful to the pentagon and people that like to go to war for a lot of different reasons george yeah absolutely the enemy changes you know every few years and then that enemy changes back again so so we had a some point that saddam hussein was a friend then he became an enemy. and then we kind of forgot about him then became enemy number one again and then back in the ninety's the enemy was suddenly you know you couldn't pick up a newspaper without vehement denunciations of the serbian government and how america has the bomb. there anybody with any was iraq again then afghanistan at various times you know others of their heads you know. ran there that was also rans

i always like your little ranzo you know exactly exactly iran is a pig of a permanent you know sometimes it disappears and then reappears again so there's always somebody any anybody at all who seems to be in opposition to u.s. policy then becomes an enemy and that's when the. non-state actors i mean it's hard to think of a government that does more to enable non-state actors than the united states government i mean it's like the non-state actors in libya were enabled by the united states and later now the non-state actors are being enabled by the united states and its allies in syria and we you know we can be pretty sure that in ten years time the president then will be waging a new war on terror against these terrible non-state actors who are enabled by you know obama just like you know we spent twenty thirty years fighting it's al qaeda who were enabled in the 1980's michael basically america's enemy is blowback isn't

it. well absolutely i mean you have to go back a long ways to find an example of a war or some sort of military intervention the united states was involved in where there was not where there was actually a happy ending some people would argue that iraq sort of winding down well but that's clearly not true we see all of that on the daily bombings that are happening there afghanistan is a disaster in the sense that we have been there for more it's the longest war the united states has ever been involved with and you know as a south asia unless i really worry what's going to happen in afghanistan in the next few years so you have blowback is definitely a concern but i think that the very concern is why obama has not wanted to go into syria right i mean think about what could happen the middle east is really a place where any time or any sort of intervention you know there's going to be a spillover effect if there were to be some sort of u.s. military presence or action in syria there'd be implications for lebanon for iran

for everyone and i think that the fear of that potential blowback is what is one reason why the obama government does not want to succumb to the pressure release not going from not overtly ok virtually right i mean there's they're helping people on the ground there yes yes ok so the blowback could happen as well george george you want to jump in. yeah absolutely and as you said it's clearly this covert assistance taking place i mean clearly this is being reported in the in the media the cia is clearly helping these. various forces these in the newsroom and others. training them and arming them in. in jordan so there's already. covert assistance and now. the americans are really pushing for overt as they really want the europeans to be explicit or just simply

sending the arms to non-state actors so it's getting their goods gradually getting the. yeah i mean it's not going to be overnight like oh well we're just going to get involved but the americans have been pushing for this now for some time i mean remember obama did press for three u.n. security council resolutions that would've essentially enabled america to pull a libya in syria all three were vetoed by russia and china so now the americans have a pretty much of getting around that a u.n. resolution again unilateralism and doing it to be covertly and now pretty much just overtly well you know the hell with the fact that the u.n. isn't doing what we wanted to do which is going to send them arms anyway and that is the obama administration as i saw it again going back to the original point it seems you know not too dissimilar from the the bush administration policy michael would you like to respond to that continuity. well i mean there's certainly

something to be said for covert for cia operations though certainly have a tremendous blowback potential and actual that it actually happens but it's a lot different from an outright military intervention which would cause even more problems blowback and of course it depends on the case we're talking about syria but you can be talking about different types of world different parts of the world i just hesitate to compare obama to to george w. bush in terms of you know so-called neo conservatives you know better microsoft i would say is that obama is one less accountable obama is less accountable than bush drones for example. that's a big difference yeah well the drones is the one exception yeah that is the big difference but really that's it i mean let's face it obama never launched a military operation against the wishes of just about everyone whether it's the u.n. or among our allies or anybody else if you kill american citizens or really kill

american citizens now with iraq you need to with impunity and he's admitted that yes important isn't it right exactly. sure certainly it is and i think it's unbelievable that it took so long for obama to even admit that the drone program was occurring you know it was occurring for a number of years before there was ever any acknowledgment but if i mean if there's any silver lining and again i'm really not a supporter of the use of drones for various reasons but we've been hearing in recent days from from the obama administration about trying to at least acknowledge the fact that there's a conflict between you know trying to fill national security obligations and acknowledging constitutional rights of americans and really just humanitarian law etc i think that's that's encouraging but certainly drones is the one area where you could describe him as an imperial president but i don't i wouldn't i don't know i just don't like to make the comparisons to his predecessor. george obama just

says trust me does any one that's kind of scary and that there's a that's exactly right. because he's being basically this is the the kind of liberal imperial mentality well we have a really good intentions and we really only want to help the people you know where you know we don't want to go to war we basically just want to do good things for you and there is a liberal way of going to war which certainly this is the case. you know with obama and before that with clinton which is you don't send in troops directly you know you use. planes you know to send bombs or you launch cruise missiles and you know that the other that has a nice a sound to it because essentially americans are getting killed but i don't really see that a coward's war which basically. you know we can hurt them but they can hurt us that

is in any way desirable the people who are at the other end of of the bombs are. extremely in a bad way and he clearly you know tens of thousands. were killed through the bombing campaign in libya even if no americans were killed. the same of course it was this is the case in the the bombing campaigns of clinton so i don't really see that what you just simply say ok well because of the kind of the liberal imperialists the likes. of you know bomb for fifteen thousand feet that that somehow morally better than sending in ground troops you know michel is a bomber the president the united states held accountable for foreign policy decisions now because it's a secret i can't tell you well the only he it's a national security i can't tell you i mean that's kind of scary position to be in isn't it oh yeah this is definitely a big part of the problem and obama has valid for a long time to be more transparent about some of these covert means that are used but i don't think he's doing a very good job he's a peace prize winner and he got what he was prize my goodness come on yeah well.

certainly one of the more ignominy of peace prize winners and i think we need to be fair though i really agree with what george was saying earlier but at the same time think about what's been happening in the world really over just the last year or two there have been military interventions launched by western powers other than the united states what's been happening in mali not too long ago the french were involved in an operation there the united states had been pressured to get involved but it did not and i think that you could find some other examples like that in the middle east as well so i think we want to talk about imperial presidency we need to we don't just want to single out the united states ok i guess what i think you know i can say the worry or imperial western you know colonial west you are gentlemen thank you very much for an interesting program many thanks indeed in my guests in washington and in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember crosstalk.

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with. which the missile. tests mounted and. come out.

mapping out the road to pace in syria russia's foreign minister and the u.s. secretary of state are meeting to push for an international conference on the conflict. and it comes amid growing fears the violence could spread across the region after a rocket was fired from lebanon into israel following two shells which landed in beirut. also tried paste german chancellor angela merkel the chinese pm is the e.u. threatens by arabs unfairly selling products below their real value.