hello and welcome to. you consider time peter lavelle how bad can it get how low can russian u.s. relations go at this point it's anyone's guess but one thing is for sure donald trump's call for better relations is now dead in the water. across talking russian u.s. relations i'm joined by my guest here in moscow mark sloboda he's an international affairs and security analyst we also have petro he is a professor of political science at university of rhode island and we have to me he

is a political analyst we spoke to international all right john crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it professor let me go to you first here. where are we in this relationship right now we talked about this in an earlier edition of bullhorns. what does each country want to achieve in this spiraling downward effect it wants to embarrass the other side yeah that's tit for tat and it's like to bullies in a schoolyard i guess they they have to keep sniping at each other so it's a pristine issue right now more than anything else particularly on the issue of the expulsion of diplomats the closing of these diplomatic missions the interesting question that we were talking about before before cameras came on was the issue of rules and are there still rules that apply and i think

what we're seeing now is the erosion of rules which is neither the absence of rules nor clear rules and the erosion creates a great sense of insecurity among everyone both participating and observing because we're seeing holes appear in predictable behavior so anything is possible now and that's a very frightening situation because it's a very frightening situation here because we it once you've been in the rules and i think our viewers have to understand is that there's a certain kind of etiquette that is expected in diplomatic circles and even the worst rivals respect those things you respect the immunity of diplomats you respect property rights here all of this is been blown out of the water and it is not mentioned in western media that this is happening right it hasn't been blown out of the water just recently or only with russia even look at julian a song in the ecuadorian embassy precedented i don't undersea charade for years.

this it's all since one nine hundred ninety two with the uni polar moment the us political establishment became addicted to not being here into the rules and the american exceptionalism. so if the u.s. is not bound by the rules of international law or the etiquettes of international diplomacy and this is this is only the latest round of this and also there's other factors of the game now i prefer to think it is a great games and i call going back to the nineteenth century and nineteenth century that weren't ever established and rules cyber warfare i mean this is suddenly a siren klaxon coming out of the us media over russia several tactics the u.s. has been cyber attack in russia in other countries for years that's never been reported on there are no rules established for that president putin has asked repeatedly for the u.s. to sit down and negotiate rules for cyber warfare for economic warfare for these

other things that they're not only you know we're talking roge and they're talking new aspects of the game that rules were never created for. the latest tit for tat. is washington trying to push the kremlin into doing something irrational. to make them over react because with this this environment of no rules you can expect you could expect the unexpected i don't i sense that's not going to happen that there will be a reaction but asymmetrical probably well i mean right now we have some liberal commentators here in russia are a great thing but the fact that we didn't didn't respond in the way immediately. and obviously these people are just interested in the deterioration of relations if not over the group i say yes i regret it i don't agree with the process that basically there are no rules but i will just tell very quickly what are the rules

that i represent knowledge that bird in place during the cold war during the cold war we had an arms control regime which is basically dead now you know a.b.m. treaty of was destroyed two thousand to. see if he can version of forces in europe doesn't. all the media range nuclear fear as you know russia now is going to have joint exercises with belarus there to see as an excuse for dogs and so that to say this right on russia's borders. in romania in georgia everywhere so basically and there is another very sinister development the u.s. is now targeting the russian elite a look at their sanctions for what it says that president trump and the u.s. government in general should produce every year every port mourn them on the big business in russia on the connection of russian businessmen to the ground in on the incomes of their spouses their children their parents their property abroad so now the lead to study it so these game is not only very dangerous and unpredictable it

is also very undemocratic what is the end game what would what do the this this american onslaught you know starting in in the end of december when i used to onslaught correctly when there was no evidence there was no you know they didn't catch a spy they didn't have any microfilm they didn't have a hard drive that they can i mean there was no evidence for this here it was capricious ok and that evidence has never been shown publicly year so i think it is very rational what is what to the us what is the us want in this kind of behavior except for to embarrass and into force in overreaction which historically is not something that comes from the kremlin go ahead the lack of predictability leads to an inability and inability to explain these actions rationally but i would flip the question a little bit and perhaps we can discuss it from this perspective who benefits and

who loses which side gains more and which side loses more from a continued deterioration because the trajectory we see at the trajectory is downward so who stands to gain who stands to lose more rushed. or america. i think my immediate assessment is that russia does not loose as much as the united states overall from a deterioration in relations the relations are already so bad right it doesn't affect our commercial ties doesn't affect our diplomatic ties because all of those and intelligence ties those are all pretty much been suspended but a continued deterioration of relations between these two superpowers frightens the europeans and it leads to a rift between the united states and europe and there are already there has already been pushback on that front against

a further what the germans call let's not have another ice age so the german foreign minister you know. one of the things i've been noticing in this goes all the way about the. ukraine situation two thousand and fourteen with the rhetoric that we hear from western politicians don't care what political party in from congress and of course from the media how do you walk back any of this to improve relations when it's necessary or are we looking at in and now maybe i'm exaggerating here or this for the next generation it's going to be very low level it's going to be a diplomatic cold war you know there has to be an intention to walk back and sort of getting there is what i'm getting is no such intention and when nicol i asks who benefits and who doesn't use exactly right but we can't look at this outside of the prism any more of us domestic politics agree that president trump campaigned and won the election that perhaps the only foreign policy platform that was relatively coherent and continually expressed to his own political that

treatment in the united states is he wanted he wanted improvement in relations with russia and he wanted to end the pursuit of many regime change nation building democracy promotion all these euphemisms around the world. so he is now effectively hostage in the in the white house him and it's very small the willing circle of loyalists who were with him at the at the beginning during the campaign were when you would see who benefits it's not the trump administration who benefits they're continually victimized and demonized throughout all of this and associated with russia and that's both are demonized it is about the deep state it is about this on the elected continuing. rule by bureaucrats technocrats that continue no matter who reigns office there is just a piece in foreign policy asking can the deep state and the media survive trump and they tried to cast these are people as paternalistic patriots who are protecting

the country and in the rather than assaulting democracy with leaders like the holy ghost yeah there they were trying to recast their treason as patriotism and they said they would follow and obey a reasonable president they get to decide what is reasonable what isn't and anything that the search from the us. doesn't trust me i don't know i don't i don't like that phrase or. let's turn it again around why should the russians care if you want don't want to parlay then you can say ok fine well i think the professor is the very important issue who is going to lose from this well i would ask the question who's going to gain i think breaks and china in particular they know so more much more reliable than the united states and the main would say is the credibility of the united states i mean when president trump now says i decided to suspend the trade with countries that trade with north korea what does it mean if

you're going to suspend trade ties with china which is six hundred fifty billion dollars per year or maybe india is a little so that is a blow to the u.s. reputation to that of the u.s. foreign policy if russia had. be in such a bad country you know it would rejoice but i don't think so because russia does not want to defeat what damage the united states or russia wants to defeat the i do all the job change and that ideology is the same in the united states in western europe in central europe i mean with our songs after all this is the new key that is basically keeping him cost each with you know the situation you are always absolute right that's right there's really no cost so there's no charges one of them is there any more lions all the e.u. in the former soviet union ukraine is now going to introduce legislation that would make it a criminal offense for the ukrainian officials to visit russia which is like make

it a criminal offense for canadians still visit the united states you know or even worse so you have this i do all of g. which is the real enemy not the country this is your favorite card to play so we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on russia u.s. really. let

me again but maybe it. would. be maybe naive then a. lot of them i talk to and they. want us to riyadh out on them as well as for us to loudly. jihadist body of get his body at what point the love up on this new idea but this sort of feel pokey what are you going to do but being the full equal. sort of pork but it's easy to see and if we what do you. see seymour hoffman on the bus one of. the your yes your repeated in the above is

a bit about mean. everybody could. just feel so sad much kids. still some muscle features a means to do so little on the same issue into the last combine yes the. film music scene to scene call this honesty such a. welcome back to cross talk were all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing russia u.s. relations. ok let me go back to nicholas one of the things that i you know i ended the first

segment here is why should russia really care if the u.s. doesn't want to parlay into part bilateral relationship then they have a certain amount of a certain point you just say ok that's the way it's going to be but we live in a real world with very real problems and let's let's consider north korea. i think the russia has been played a very constructive role in the united nations lot of people didn't agree with russia's position and voting on. the when they did do that in china did do that they had a roadmap to move forward in a very reasonable one i would say in that which has been completely ignored which has been it's been said. nor is an understatement ok i mean most people don't even know what happened ok so but this is a time when the united states and russia really truly need to work together and to resolve this crisis that i think that has been generated from the west that can be a different conversation but these are two key for goodness sake of north korea and

russia border each other ok russia has a vested interest in resolving this situation here and with the with this tit for tat the deterioration of relations is the worst possible time for something like this to happen. in the west there seems to be an assumption that if russia is somehow marginalized from the international equation more decisions can be taken the problem now is that russia needs to be a part of the international order america needs to be part and crucially the relationship between the united states and russia needs to be funded is a has been and continues to be a fundamental cornerstone of the international order now when you take that out the international order collapses it becomes a free for all right. and. again it is it would be interesting to consider who benefits. who benefits from

a free for all because obviously somebody must be thinking that they benefit more from the collapse of all rules and international anarky than from any somebody might be thinking i don't see a whole lot of thinking. they're more of. another derivative of that if the. countries of nato and the united states say even japan ignore russia take russia out of the equation on the international stage that doesn't stop from russia in china resolving this issue themselves who becomes marginalized then it cuts both ways that's why i talk about it as a great game with multiple players now not just although if the us is doing its best to push it that way the problem when we're talking about international order is that we hear and western commentators and there is talk about two different international orders we talk about the post world war two one nine hundred forty

five un. un security council un charter world of international order solver and noninterference in domestic affairs well they are talking a liberal world order as they refer to it started under britain woods the creation of the beauty oh and the global free trade regime and then it came to power with the collapse of the soviet union the dissolution of the soviet dissolution of the soviet union in one thousand nine hundred two and the emergence of the us as a hyper power striking the world. so what we're left with in north korea and specifically is that russia and china but neither one of them are proponents real proponents of the regime in north korea their people and it's not a real communist not that russia and china are communist anymore no matter how much americans like to believe that they are they certainly don't want a nuclear arms race in their backyards east asia but japan south korea looking develop nuclear weapons they don't want to but they don't want north korea to

collapse. unilaterally with u.s. military bases running up north korean peninsula and you know they're you know faster because they want to be organic dissolution of north korea and the united korea the u.s. will never allow that to happen on terms that would allow south korea to emerge with its own sense of geopolitics that might draw even a little bit closer to china and towards more historical tag unism with japan. but i see this is a real possibility that russia and china could be successful in dealing with this situation who loses ok the reputation of the united states loses and there's a demonstration effect here i mean the the the proposals that the chinese and the russians have made i think they're almost identical from what i understood from the united nations security council there is a possibility of that happening and if we see that happening you could see the deep state that mark has already mentioned here they would want to spoil that they would

want to make sure that. couldn't happen which brings us back to the same crisis that we started from going the problem is the deep state never stopped short of anything except complete victory and the destruction of being basically what does north korea want in the first place talk to us take us seriously a permanent peace treaty you used to do it you know the south korean president's mad north korean president just a few years ago president june you know the former dissident mad on the hill and the sky didn't fall upon the earth so you know the situation indeed improved but this is the problem the united states simply doesn't notice an organization that it does not like for example the eurasian economic union you know the uniting the former soviet republics not the baltics not ukraine but those which have normal relations with russia the eurasian economic union exists we already have a free trade zone with vietnam but the united states doesn't notice it c s two or

kinetic security treaty organization of the former soviet republics the united states and nato don't notice it we don't acknowledge they don't acknowledge it and they don't even notice it in the sense that they never comment on any actions of c.s. deal even bricks they barely notice you know and this is all i think they notice it when they does the they don't want to respect it because it violates their sense of the ground zero one two images are they well in genesis other times i have an impression that the way the states for the first time in many years is ruled by hope cience you know hopes warned us that if you don't have a rule if you don't have order which maybe sometimes you have a war of everyone against everybody and this is exactly what we're having no what you said up we're born or who profits but we have situations in history when wrong they do or we're just just created this international disorder and it was a lose lose situation for everyone it destroyed millions of people we destroyed

billions of dollars in property. and you know it was not anyone's to anyone's benefit except ideologist. but there is a profit motive i recall one of the popular ideologist of early capitalism is yosef. whose great contribution was creative destruction out of this total leveling of the field new groups new births come about if you want to look at a contribution right. and here's the danger they're not creating a fire wall our intellectual community in the west seems is not creating a reasonable fire wall between economics and politics because where as in economics at least you could argue some potential benefit coming out of the rearrangement of assets and capital in the case of politics you're talking about debts real to talk about human lives being lost in general future generations being lost forever i'm

sure the professor. should bet that he is a never just because the role of involvement is books about the collapse of the roman empire the reason why it collapsed was he didn't recognise any opponents they might all be that terrorists you know. the impious has no opponents only terrorists you know that it has no foreign opponents or only crazy regimes but abetted regimes recognizes only itself yes clients that are going to do this only itself so when you don't have legitimate opponents then you'll collapse simply because nothing can exist without all of that and before you columbus you become increasingly irrelevant to the political order that's the danger that question repeatedly why does russia keep trying why does russia keep trying to parlay an improvement with russia and simple russians that weaker power russia is not the soviet union its geopolitical horizons are muchly reduced its ability to project power its economic its relative military strength are all much reduced. but where there is still the

possibility of hope for russia is in alliance or at least partnership with other countries like jordan where you were destroyed to the russian federation is far more adroit in the soviet union was because it was driven by ideology and not driven fact to a fault it's not driven by ideology pragmatism and cynicism rule the kremlin now this is where the us is doing us a favor in the long run they are pushing russia china iran and other countries it but particularly those three together and in this attempt to isolate russia which is only isolating it from the west which is no longer the whole world and here in russia those of us who don't want to eventually be vassals of us western hegemony we see that's a positive development we want to decouple in from one penny on. china and the other the north korean crisis could it if it's resolved it could be resolved in

a way that a lot of people don't expect i think i'm not sure that ground is run over by a pregnant is. because that marks bread which is the main cynicism so the reason i get all of their legal aid although it's their ideology they're such different countries as egypt and china can accept look at what happened during the last brink summit in selman china invited gypped russia promised to invite iran egypt and iran formally animists absolutely their formally supporting different sides in yemen but despite all of the differences. that global dissolved it and breaks despite all the all its people say all this is an organization dominated by china seventy percent of trade is via china well yes but they still come up with political statements every time and would do redo their statements it's always against regime change again. intervention into the internal affairs of

other states that's what i do always tell you not even all of the international law those i know i didn't. american soft power used to be considered the source of its strength that soft power was based in large part on the its ability to act as a peacemaker around the globe both a peace maker and a peace and force are now writing to you that you are mad at the. people and now it is losing that crucial element proving to be ineffective both in maintaining international peace or in being a facilitator of international peace and that is creating space for alternative solutions very good point thank you gentlemen we're going out of time many thanks to my guests here in moscow and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember.

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