host of america. the russian foreign minister compares the leaders of the u.s. and north korea to kindergarten children and. russian submarine. terrorist positions in western syria. to try to. shun. the. german chancellor angela merkel hits back at. her at a campaign rally ahead of the country's election. that's it from a cold and grey will be live from studio in around an hour's time with the latest news on that federal election stay with us.

hello and welcome to all things considered i'm peter lavelle at the united nations u.s. president donald trump described his vision of foreign policy as principled realism he also tried to convince the gathering of the general assembly that his idea of america first is compatible with his vision nonetheless there is every reason to believe he sees the world differently than his predecessor. talking trumps u.n. address i'm joined by my guess and. he is

a professor at georgetown university in qatar is well as author of several books including america right or wrong an anatomy of american nationalism in paris we have here is a theoretical physicist political commentator and author of humanitarian imperialism using human rights to sell war and in washington we cross to michael maloof is a former senior security policy analyst in the office of the secretary of defense right gentlemen cross-like rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate and i tell if i go to you first in doha we heard the term principled real ism i have to say quite bluntly i didn't see hear many principles and i didn't see much real ism at all what was your reaction to the the president's speech to the united nations general assembly go ahead. well no i mean this seems to be a policy which has largely or an approach i wouldn't speak of a policy which has largely divorced itself both from reality in the sense of

a real assessment of of interests and dangers. and as for principle one can't really talk about it to talk you know in circumstances where the usa is treating saudi arabia more and more as you know of vital ally in the middle east. now i mean it must be said i mean trump has made things worse from this point of view in part of course by his especially and from a tree and threatening rhetoric but i have to say that both. you know when it comes to. blustering threats against north korea without actually any. realistic program to change north korea's behavior. the by no i mean almost pathological obsession you know with the old feud with iran which simply you know we should've been abandoned the day ah. after nine eleven

which has no relationship to the actual threats to the united states either in the middle east or to the american homeland or to europe. i mean here one sees trump however as making worse i mean potentially of course catastrophic lee worse a situation which i have to say much of the bipartisan establishment in washington exactly you know has been setting up this past generation and more bomber of course tried to change it to some extent he made the nuclear deal with iran but then of course hillary clinton was rather terfel to distance herself from that and you know portrayed her so it was one of her own we'll talk about the nuclear deal if they can really meet let me go to michael in washington in you know washington well you know washington politics i have to admit michael into our viewers when i was watching the speech i was reminded of the nixon madman kind of scenario i will make them so terrified of me that the everybody will cave ok and nixon had the you

know the gravitas to pull that off because he knew a lot about foreign policy a whole lot he had a whole career in it. but i thought the mad men scenario but i thought there's this guy really know what he's talking about because factually doing a fact check it's a it was a university paper would get an f. go ahead michael. you know i would i would agree with you that he has. lacks any experience in foreign policy. and that's why he has surrounded himself with people who are with neo con. notions and who basically taken over that that portfolio he has some generals there that look at the through the prism of military solutions but there are no strategic thinkers around him in that speech where he talked about principled realism and looking at the world through that that. that approach he also said we should be looking out through ideology but in fact one of

the senate to the u.n. general assembly was just the opposite it was very it was very ideological it really reflected the neo con approach and and you cannot do that in this day and age you got to look at things now through the prism of ideology but through the prism of reality in that speech really when you go before a world body like that and you threaten the annihilation of a country a body that's supposed to be coming up with diplomatic solutions example he didn't offer one it's really extraordinary i mean it was i mean going to get everybody in here john let me go to you in paris here one of the things i found just jolting is that i don't know how many times the president said sovereignty solver and sovereignty over and over again but what this is what you draw the conclusion that some people some countries have more sovereignty or have the right to sovereignty and others don't have any at all i mean that for me just from a rhetorical point of view it was like

a short circuit that is really my blog boggling go ahead sean in paris. yes i think that the points to be made about the speech the first one is that even if you if he means what he says we never know if he means what he says i remember he said clinton would be put in jail and now clinton is free as of the goal of all the place in the county whining that he she lost is the fault of everybody except ourselves so you know i mean you never know when you should take some seriously should should you believe is anti interventionist during the campaign i mean we never know that but if you take him seriously it means that the voters have been cheated because many of the voters voted for the noninterventionist policy and now he supposedly won over to an interventionist one that's the first point about the so called you are as they see the second point is that i think the we speaks is expresses healy the american liberal imperious viewpoint but with a few hans worlds that make him unpopular in the circle both in the us and in

europe but his view of the world is always the us is the good guys and it will be that he's the bad guys and now everybody else is you posed to forget what the us has done to them the opinion they're supposed to have a call to forget about the oval twelve months are they the warring hike with these people is to forget about israel and all its wars the chinese are supposed to forget about the intervention of the us in their civil war have to who are loyal to the koreans are supposed to forget about the divestiture and of their county the latin americans are supposed to forget about the over tool of arbenz of id in the of even the i mean you know it's just fantastic the way they see the world they are the bad guys that pop up out of nowhere and if you consider for example that he actually united states nine eleven all to the harsh again the harsher hysteria now which as far as i know a little bit is in fact. you know you see that i mean nine eleven it's hundreds of thousands of people killed to count three she really did and then they expect

everybody is to hear a coolie to what the us is doing to them and this is in sin and you know as you said your. i mean how would you expect to have a deal with the u.s. if now the u.s. is saying that's great just how to deal with it exactly let me let me go to let me go back to you and i think i'm going to work but we've got to get everybody in here and to let me go to you and i mean in a lot watching the american networks their reaction to the speech they they were taken aback by the style it was you know rocket man you shouldn't say that but there was no interest beck should really on the policy i mean i looked at you know from fox or c.n.n. to m s n b c and i didn't see people say well you know the fact checker might be all we say they do there is none of that there's a broad broad consensus that you know he hit all the right things maybe he shouldn't have said it the way that i think this is what's interesting let me go to and i told go ahead and go ugh that's what i found again equally shocking. well absolutely and you know if one remembers that you know supposedly serious

analysts and not only republicans for obvious political reasons but a good many democrats as well where accusing obama of weakness you know of being weak in foreign policy precisely because he didn't go in for empty bluster he didn't threaten interventions which he knew in fact america could not or would not perform but there is this culture which has grown up over the decades in washington you know which does well first of course it's absolutely committed to american global hegemony but it is also addicted to this grandstanding right blustering style which of course trump has taken. he's taken further but he's only taken it to all three stages yeah but i'm not it was you know ready it's already that way but on steroids ok if you know michael i know other

thing in looking at the coverage of it and when i read this when i watch and then read the speech you know i had in my mind international law and but again the coverage it never mentioned well that might be a violation of international actually maybe a bio lation international law for calling for the genocide of p. a whole country a whole population on the floor of the general assembly nobody said that in the mainstream media but i always have first thing that popped into my mind because of a consciousness of international law go ahead michael you know it's actually against one of the articles of the u.n. charter yeah. and frankly this is this this is what i think is just what is knowledge of concerning what that bluster if you go ahead given that we're talking about bluster. even though we're talking about bluster on the part of. trump you've got to keep in mind that when obama went before. the u.n. a few years ago and talked about gaddafi and what happened in libya afterwards and

and i think the un un security council now is leery of of any approaches like that and certainly they they have expressed concerns other members of the u.n. security council expressed concerns about any approach that resembles what happened then libya a few years ago so you've got to you've got to take seriously some of these blusterous comments being made before this international forum because invariably something bad can potentially happen that's why i think he should have offered more of a negotiating approach should we have not contrary to what nikki haley says we have not we have not exhausted all diplomatic approaches and. you know i'd like to talk about what i call the hamburger diplomacy that's where trump just last year and again this year offered to sit down with kim jong on over a hamburger right talk we had ping pong diplomacy with the chinese why not have

hamburger and no but you know what we have to go to a break here but michel that would be called giving in that would be called appeasement here ok gentlemen good old short short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on donald trump's u.n. speech. one hundred years ago the first computers were actually. people who were hired to do you know additions or multiplications that's gone that is now done entirely by computers. fortunately i think translation is not yet there but it is one of the easier things to do by computers that will be gone in the next in the next twenty years most translators will probably be out of a job i mean i'm sorry for them. but this will just happen this is inevitable.

right now we're in with a good scene all over thanks to. these various fish you please. he asked me to let my moments it's almost funny yes. i could introduce you eat it is home to the most powerful drug syndicates. why you grow marijuana tomatoes let's see yes there's a big get over the public don't give up the market. for your money watch the people . there. is enough. to keep. a. close eye on must times the government knows what they do and they do nothing.

here's what people have been saying about redacted the night with the sixty just full on awesome the only show i go out of my way to launch you know a lot of the really packs a punch at least yampa is the john oliver of hearty americans do the same we are apparently better than food as. i see people you never heard of love right back to the night my president of the world bank paid money to the many seriously he sent us an e-mail. welcome back to crossfire all things considered i'm. remind you we're discussing donald trump's u.n. speech.

john let me go back to you in paris you know being outside of the washington bubble i mean for me obviously in some ways if you will sort of saw how trump started his speech he would look like an election rally i mean he's used to it you know what he's achieved g.d.p. very big the usual mantra of things kind of odd for a speech like that and he was speaking to his base but you know i have to we know it looking at video footage of his speech of the audience people were gasping i mean the credibility of the united states is it's quite precarious for a lot of people the world already now it really plummets because you know like i said with this man man an analogy you know i mean what can you trust the united states to keep agreements can you trust the united states to go into negotiations fairly i think that it was a question before now it is

a huge question mark all over the place go ahead and paris. but you see. i mean my problem is fairly we deal with establishment as a whole and that we turn in a sense you could see if you are cynical enough that times makes things better by making the u.s. look worse because then other people are distancing themselves for example i was amazed to see that blue moon which is small is the part of the of the establishment here in france west praising me for being there would never ever have said that if there had been a or hundred obama i mean never do they are lying on the united states do to then that and then lying the term makes it impossible for them to endorse it that's a positive point about time as long as he doesn't blow up the world of course then the other thing is the book easy of the never thunk out the democrats the liberals etc because they have a pool in the senate you know including senator wellstone for exam. the budget which is bigger he's boosting that this is bigger than ever and said i don't know

if that's true but you know it's a huge increase in the military budget in fact people have got created that this he education that sandusky was proposing would be covered of simply by doing keyes in the military budget so i mean this is just amazing and the democrats are going along with that and what does the double punditry says about that i don't know if no one knows everything but i don't think they denounce it and so you know look after charlottesville it was almost a year nancy and now you're giving him the biggest media to give me a break and this is hold a jew is a position to time is a jew that's what i'm trying to say and the other point which i wanted to add and then i'll shut up is about the business you see we discuss the hand we doubt mentioning which nobody they have to mention the elephant in the home which is israel. is is has obsession and it's not a threat to united states in fact it's not even a threat to israel in the in that he had eighty that is going to fantasize that it might be one. of the places i love making sure that.

can be done other ways it would have been done long ago and nobody would worry about the poll ok anatoly weekly something which we have to have a conversation about right you're going to continue with anatol on that i mean i i was reading perry's piece and consorting news dot com a. falls in line with interventionism and there is a section here called on. i mean in many ways you know anyone that looks at the the region where you're living in right now i mean it looks like you know bibi netanyahu springer parents are all over par on parts of that speech at least and again watching the video footage i mean while most of the delegates there were aghast netanyahu was beaming from ear to ear i mean one has that impression there's a connection between the two go ahead and. well yes and i've been in the. assembly it was the only people who are really happy with the. israelis and the

saudis and their allies of course here in qatar you know we feel this because israel is now very much lined up with saudi arabia because of this obsession with iran and i think it's pretty clear that the saudis you know in their present pressure on qatar over relations with iran are also relying on you know the israeli lobby in washington so yes this is a huge theme there's just one thing to be said though about that and about the huge new military budget remember that this is going to the u.s. military the military establishment and in the past and we on occasions and we hope in future it has actually been the uniformed military who have reined in some potentially very dangerous actions in two thousand and eight if you remember right the pentagon played a key part in rejecting moves to send u.s. troops to the caucasus during the georgia russia war and in that same year top

figures in the u.s. military basically blocked george bush's plans for an attack on iran. now of course on the other hand the u.s. military does have its own well you know it is absolutely committed to us or germany in the world but it isn't you know necessarily nearly as reckless as the civilian anatole i mean i guess we're going to be as what it could be is going to what you're saying is that the pentagon and the military industrial complex they need threats they don't necessarily want wars is that what you're saying is threats exact right ok all right decisively that ok michael let me go to you because one of the things that you know in looking at the campaign we know that the you know the whole litany of neo cons were adamantly against donald trump. and you know with the illegal bombing of syria and then we have this speech we have the

bellicose language with north korea they're coming around to him but i'm still convinced you know they want him to echo their words but they still want to in pain peach him and this is the irony of ironies ok and this kind of bellicose language particularly with north korea what you need is to lower lower the volume to start something not to keep elevating it here they're painting him him and he has painted himself into a corner and i think that's what they want go ahead michael. oh yeah they're actually there they're actually regaining control of him on this is why they're working through mcmaster in particular. effect this met us tends to be a little more reserved is actually pushing more diplomacy toward north korea than then rattling the sabers and although he you know talks about being in the forces ready and all that that's his job but he's pushing the the diplomatic agenda but

you have you have. certain types of influences that are coming on in from the outside where particularly through mixmaster where. the neo cons are still to and the deep state i might add and the and the mainstream media are really pushing more of a hard edge for for trump particularly toward the russians and toward toward certainly toward iran and are pushing israel's agenda when i was at the pentagon it seemed to me like we were everything we did at the pentagon was an extension of israeli foreign policy because it was bizarre. even going into even going into iraq the iran iraq war all these things where we sided with iraq at that time it's that the new cars are definitely taken over and especially going after the russians and it never works out well and they keep doing it this is one of the most interesting things you know let me go to paris i mean we mentioned already iran on this program

and there's every indication what we know that trump has decided that the u.s. will stay with the nuclear agreement that was negotiated under obama and because he's decided most likely he's going to pull the u.s. out of it what i find really interesting is that the political class the deep state the intelligence and military communities they always look to isolate countries isolate cuba isolate israel isolate russia isolate iran but if trump does pull out of that agreement which i support by the way that will isolate the u.s. even more for. it's in europe because we know the europeans want to stay and if the russians want to stay in it the iranians want to stay in it and it's the i eight e.t.a. that determines who is in violation here trouble again boy it's. the behest of others and some outside influences and you know who i'm talking about isolate the us not the rest of the world go ahead. of the because the other counties will continue doing business with you hand and i don't think there is anything that the hanan's want to buy that can be sold to them by the russians the french the germans

etc so the us is in no position to impose its will on this is she said the policy was what do you think of this great democracy which is an example to the world which is tied to a foreign power a small foreign and the whole of and proud that doesn't help it which is israel because the police had no b. and b. because the meter in this field complex as to to me to the military more and more money into the military hooping that into haining the you know the more crazy of the neocons and not true of the world and other ways but you know if they don't use the military power then their military power is just waste so we have these hundreds of billions of the last empty which is just the only thing we can the whole of about is that they are just wasted you just put them in the sea that's the best thing you can hope for i mean this is not my idea of a democracy i don't think anybody's ideas of a democracy and it's a bit crazy to see that but of course you know i've read the piece and did the memoirs of mr poole who was an advisor of kennedy during the cuban missile crisis

and he described vividly how the military and some of the military i mean you know the famous figure from the right on the moon standing kubrick movie but you know. or. you know the full go full movie which is that we're known that which is also interesting i mean mr describes how thankless they were and i'm not sure the military over that weighs i mean that's you know i don't know them they will. ok that's very true and it's a let me go back to you i mean why star. without asking about principled real ism again i didn't see it was principled and it was unrealistic but what would how would you describe what's evolving in trump's foreign policy you're good with words you're a good wordsmith can can you describe it because i'm still kind of flabbergasted by what i heard go ahead at all well i mean one thing you know what one should always keep in mind is never ever underestimate the sheer ignorance and stupidity

of some politicians you know there is a theory here in the middle east that bush. you know launched the iraq war deliberately in order to create conflict between shia and sunni. i have to tell people there is good evidence that bush and a number of other leading figures did not actually understand the difference or even know there was a difference notion oh there's a there there is there is evidence of it out there was there when he was out he was talking about this and he his response was what i thought they were all muslims that's a fact ok that is recorded by exactly go ahead real quick because there. yeah well i mean i think that you know trump is operating you know on on the basis of his own you know character and emotion but clearly he's also doing things in an effort to please the establishment to try to crawl back.

fortunately gentlemen crying for a better we have run out of time we need more time for this program many thanks to my guests in washington in paris and in doha and thanks to our viewers for watching us here on r.t. see you next time and remember crosstalk. they're bad actors over there but maybe. you know what japan is launching a competitor in the big space. competitively john mcafee is going to get the money so there's going to be a lot more competitive in the mining business so the. play. is

under attack as the world's competitor. the reason why north korea is trying to. prevent. and united states from assisting south korea in case of contingencies because. the missile capability is capable and the united states can say the americans and if. we. are left.