in the study it's a very extensive study done by a well respected scientist. do chemicals that the advertising. really increase the risk of cancer and i chose a means of known to use them in the last test is it a sham skepticism they do not believe that this is is true by independent scientists so did the industry did you for this i received some compensation for my time as well as the others why is that i mean lobby definitely do like what we've been doing and if you want to learn more you'll get a definite on the flood. is it big business against health. as it started.

to. put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president and you. want to. have to go right to be precise with what before three of them or can't be good. i'm interested in the water. pressure. but will these again you know a moment when you say. both sides it's the reality of. the russian economy and the russian the financial system and i know a lot of people who are looking for creative ways to get better resold.

hello and welcome to crossfire where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle we're here in southern russia attending the paul di discussion club and our topic is u.s. russia relations and the state of the world. my guests are anatol lieven he's a professor at georgetown university in qatar as well as author of several books including america right or wrong we also have richard stockwell he's an expert at valdai discussion club as well as author and professor at the university of kent and we have james sherk he is an associate fellow at chad house as well as author of hard to see in soft coersion russia's influence abroad or

a gentleman to start our discussion about the first go to end a toll a lot of people moment the current tragic. situation with us russian relations i mean with good reason but does it matter it is so much as it used to should we lamented so much because things go on but it's certainly highly regrettable and in my view largely unnecessary but exactly we do need to keep in mind that compared to the cold war where you had soviet forces in the middle of germany you had nuclear forces on trigger alert and you had two genuinely clashing radically clashing world ideologies this is a much much smaller dispute but at the same time the if you look at mainstream media the threat level seems to be equal if no worse well you were a journalist i used to be a journalist to do newspapers. television advertising has to be sold right in what

journalists have been made to name by playing down a project of more conflict but in my view i mean the areas of dispute local post imperial problems in the former soviet union of a kind which we've seen in formal western him as well and they are of course disputes but in my view heidi don't extend limited disputes in the middle east given the properly seen our greatest enemies in the middle east sunni islamist terrorism are in fact the same. james speak that is u.s. relations that important with war because i mean if you if you look at all of the numbers you know russian defense spending versus the united states and nato i mean they're not even comparable i mean russia's actually cut down on defense spending people focus in on that looking for a conflict when there really isn't there peter first of all russia u.s.

relations of enormous importance to russia the united states remains russia's significant other and despite that discrepancy let me present you with another discrepancy if you look. at the balances of military power in the areas where actual tensions are taking place and where differences of interest are most acute the statistics are tiley the opposite of what you have presented no will be where you you're looking at russia's border here not looking it broke water is also the border of europe now on the border of nato and in this sense this sense alone the situation is more dangerous than a cold war because then the line of demarcation was not only far from the russian border but from the soviet border it's now on well that's a very good point you know richard but it's. true that went in a blizzard. there is

a continuing discussion about the need to expansion not a big issue which are. matters but not in the way it did before before i think that it's not just the united states or us your. question of the atlantic systems. and the larger global shift it was always the idea of the so-called us led liberal international order being as it were a global system yes it was but the same time there were always exceptions former soviet bloc and china the third world a nonaligned movement and so on but today the context is still. google shifts have taken place in which that relationship of the nato system as you say which includes not just the united states not just nato european union as well the whole system as it were has a specific logic to it and that logic is opposed by china and

a number of others and that logic is expansion enlargement it's enlargement not just physically but also ideologically the view that it's as it were positive values of virtue and so it is that is that the new terrain and terrain anatole of the one i don't like using the word new cold war because as you said earlier it was something very different and it's not the same again but there is an ideological trend to it i mean the neo liberal order believes that it's destiny you know it's messy it's like some kind of messianic message for the world and russia obviously doesn't see it that way but nor of course do as richard said a very large number of people around the world including of course many western allies in the middle east nobody agrees with this aspect of the west from agenda it's not just posed by iran but of course in a different way it's posed by saudi arabia the largest democracy in the world as they constantly remind us india. is now ruled by

a government which strongly wishes a close defense alliance with the united states but absolutely rejects western liberal secularism as an ideology and rejects ferociously and the rights of the us or the west to lecture india on the subject but of course i think you know what we are also saying and i think that perhaps this also does explain some b. hysteria in the western in the us is the very appropriate word well that you know in the era of trump in the era of the latest election results you know in europe it's by no means clear that i mean the ideological divide is in fact so clear cut and if one looks at the ideas that are driving trump if you can talk of it is we get is going to. put it clearly these do not represent the the liberal consensus which has governed western policy for more than half

a century now in. there is a values element in this here because you know. russia is a very very conservative country and in obviously the west isn't here and that's maybe the new clash of ideas let me first agree with richard about something because important i agree with richard about something. seriously going to be degraded this has been about since twenty fourteen in europe and i'm excluding for the moment the issues that on a toll raised outside europe is about the jitter missy and the future of the whole sinking cold war. i don't think it's it's just vocal this is as richard said it is systemic now i have always thought it's not a new thought that if the west principle had been a bit different from the beginning we would have been in a slightly better place namely that russia internal affair. russia's business

but the internal affairs of georgia and ukraine on not russia's business i think there would have been a clarity which is but absent for twenty five years because the west has allowed quite reasonably russia to connect all of these different approaches acts with a presumed aspiration to change the system of governance in russia itself and that is what is made this whole issue so you're talking. you know only we can agree on so many things here but you know i can we can go back up to go back to the breakup of yugoslavia and the recognition of costs of oh and i can remember it very very clearly a foreign minister said you know this is opening up a pandora's box and it did ok james you would completely agree the helsinki. it's a aspiration about the post. world war two order about borders about.

external influences and internal affairs of other countries when the cold war came to an end that started to fray and i think they did that everyone has paid the consequences you have. think is one thing if the context in which the principles of inviolability of botha's human rights and so on is located the big thing as you say to yugoslavia is a symptom ukraine is a symptom of the failure at the end of the cold wall to establish an inclusive and comfortable security and indeed political and value system of all of the site inclusive this is the problem i have here we've had since two thousand. in the under i'm in bed and i think it's spoken at least is that a new atlantic order that would include russia not as a hostile or not as a adversary but a mechanism they could be strife you know and that they would be perfect and wouldn't be. it wouldn't be fast ok i'm being realistic you know it's not quite the

situation yes certainly the atlantic system was not designed or not intending to exclude go so that's certainly the case also it's a mitigation measures took place nato russia council and so on but i would just say one important thing between one thousand nine hundred ninety one when go bitch i was putting forward all sorts of ideas about appearance formation of the international system that the end of the cold war would be a mutual victory for all everything like this we know that precisely at that moment after this fantastic speech as the united nations december nine hundred eighty eight still as common european then george h.w. bush came up with the idea of a europe whole and free now it's a fantastic idea but the idea was put forward to really gain the initiative away from the soviet union which was still a functioning enterprise at that stage and go but you haven't quite explicitly they said look guys go but you of moscow's getting the initiative and getting a lot of support around the world we now need to take the initiative so these ideas

good ideas but they were embedded in the logic of enlargement of an existing atlantic system. lets. us of russia. it was not designed to be at the expense of russia but it was to make sure that russia knew its place and that it was going to its place and thank you for stating that it will say that in the middle east at the moment on the geo political front you have a completely different lineup on one of the most important issues and threats you have britain france russia and china supporting the nuclear deal against the present well not necessarily administration but president of the united states who wants to wreck it this is not a clear stand off there are gentlemen let me jump in here we're going to have to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on u.s. russia relations today authority.

but i'll go with the. give me no must is this something i'm not allowed in the den so get the deficit in betty theo i know there's no sellable by the bios i'm just.

saying yeah use on this will separate the sunday times not for myself indeed i must but i feel a lot of the behind of the out in. on the cd is that our studio in the us militiaman got a deal. killer then i'm all in to get his beef be done of this not so be this not be but i mean. look at your d.d. and. get to live it up with what. he. welcome back to crossfire all things considered to mind you were discussing u.s.

russia relations. ok ed i want to go back to before we went to the break you were talking about. western perceptions global perceptions of president trump's. decertification or the move to the sort of the iran nuclear deal go ahead and not just remember this is easier said well whenever the republican party in congress is not just a trump thing but the point is that here we have a completely different lineup i mean as it would be seen i think in western european capitals as well as in beijing and moscow all of responsible powers working together for a reasonable international agreement and to avoid yet another potentially disastrous conflict in the middle east against

a roll of the wild out. the united states or at least the republican party of the you know it's global perceptions of the united states as well i mean if you look at the syrian issue of course people are all over the place we have you know iran and turkey israel and turkey still quasi allies with their own policies in america with its policy in russia with its policy and then of course we have the europeans as usual sitting on the sidelines wringing their hands but i mean i i think on the ideological front as well. this isn't a case of communists you know the old communists opposing capitalist democracy in europe by far the biggest threat of visibly internal as a catalogue separatism you know new nationalism coming up the impact of the migration crisis on the european public. but all of these are really this this is

what threatens the rebel you just want to clarify here with us it's not russia's fault that can only one set of having different ok nor does it just want to make sure i'm ok normally breaks in russia's fold you know the greatest players to the european union the potentially multiple threats to the european union in time i'm not from russia you know this fascinating the system and it was absolutely right i mean i'm in the media business i mean you want clicks you want eyeballs you know these sins ational headlines. i can understand that but policy that's not a policy for a country to have here and and it's all mentioned you know we have you know ship ships going on for example in india all the problems in europe we see some kind of game happening in syria and then we have iran is back on the table here. you have you have ministration that is being forced to demonize russia for reasons

we don't really need to go into here but then russia is an important player in the iran story that's kind of. a missed opportunity for the united states or europe russia to deal with iran dare i say something i think we will agree upon whatever disappointment. whatever the legitimacy indeed necessity of connecting values and interest in europe once you try as a matter of policy to transpose peace values out. into the wider world stage you would never believe produce have a can chaos and this is what we have see now to put trump into context well before the whole syria business blew up about not twenty eleven throughout all these years there was never a western policy about syria that was just another. there was a moralistic narrative about meanwhile russia in the external world

where it is made mistakes but where it's competence cannot be fault it has. had a very clear. consequentialist utilitarian limited even. limited often by its own means no what happened in twenty fifteen was perhaps even a belated response to two factors first the above of ministration for all sorts of reasons created great don't it's traditional in the middle east they allowed a power vacuum to emote for all sorts of reasons which gave russia an opportunity and secondly assad at the point was in trouble. this is an important ally of russia so in that situation you had both reason and opportunity to do what was dog and it

was exceptionally well done and the only thing surprising is that anybody else was supreme was exceptionally well done richard it was but there's no kudos for that is a matter of fact i see just the opposite ok then the the the media narrative on syria is beyond orwellian in the west in my opinion ok. this was james has mapped it out perfectly that was a perfect opportunity maybe on to make a scale russian the united states would disagree on many things but on one very specific thing they could have agreed very clearly in trump ran on that as a matter of fact to a point to a point on the one side as far as serious concern going to russia was indeed quite consistent whereas us policy was simply in comprehensible that was what you had to say if you are going to say i don't in the defense department on going it is the traditional sense absolutely but that was only a reflection i think that since twenty fourteen in particular. data with a ukrainian crisis is that the old model which i suggested of these two narratives

since the end of the cold war the twenty five years the cold peace it's now fragmented into all sorts of different to shooting off in different ways in the middle east as one set of things in europe another second and so on and what we're witnessing is even began and burma is a certain us to treat it's not moving away from dominance primacy in the world it's actually interpreted the way it's actually leading the world gemini's changing its forms and it's confusing its allies like saudi arabia and. that's a very it's a fascinating point. how can the u.s. as a hedge of one lead differently or maybe it's too early to say well in the middle east you see that things have been become so complicated largely but by no means entirely because of america's own actions but look at the issue of kurdistan you know of an independent kurdistan nobody really knows what to do with the sides are

so complicated you know we have allies in syria who are enemies over kurdistan but then again i mean as jim said we don't even really know who we are in this case because so i think that but on the other hand you also see which is perhaps one of the most dangerous things amidst precisely this. retreat because one should also remember that this is extremely closely militarily involved u.s. strategy in the middle east is relatively new in this case after the cold war to some degree it came even after after nine eleven so one could see in general a retreat to a previous model but of course interests first as we're now sees with iran with consistency back is the military the correct tool it seems to me is too much of a blunt object it's that's a substitute for a much more. more policy you know what they what each major power

wants to do with cheap i would say james put it really well russia's syria policy was theory well defined what goals what assets they would put into it and if they didn't achieve goals at a certain amount of time using those assets it would make a radical reduce in not just double down double down double down like the u.s. and its allies did in syria with a situation for example in seriously and again. probably even this is neither israel nor do you always this idea of east of the euphrates fields and so on so they could actually be direct military conflict we know that a couple of weeks ago ten days ago this left turn and colonel russian was killed and so on it well we don't know the circumstances but highly suspicious but in other words everybody's going to and this sort of type of dominant or victor at the end of what everybody's going to be ending up as a loser could lead to and also the fact that has given the military in syria the

ability to act almost autonomously is exceptionally dangerous but the big picture just to simply to say is that we're seeing almost a type of undertow of the defection of the united states from its own system that established and so a lot of people have just bought in that on the ground here i mean it's alone isn't just. a long term tendency is that the view within the states is this burden really worth it is it in our interest is an important question such as gazing important questions what he is doing it is a different. you know when so you mr trump is confronted with the kurdish issue he'll probably say you know the kurds now ok where are they really. trying to which i'm not trying to diminish donald trump he's a wimp by saying that is the president through a long series i mean if you found yourself in a situation where it is so intractable it's so complicated and you don't know why. victory is that's dangerous or james you were. let me move all my metaphors ok the

olefins in the room obviously is the trump ministration so to open the pandora's box a new metaphor because i think the stock you have to talk about no i think. we have to do what i think has been intelligently done in moscow it's time to draw a distinction between trump and his views and his inclinations and the trumpet ministration particularly the national security coming clearly or this is at least on highly respected people they are they they have a clear and very tough view of what u.s. interests they're not fundamentally ideological by the way they are very means ends calibrated to. what is interesting is you know i think by the way they obviously have less of a restraining influence over trump when it comes unfortunately to wider global

problems like iran and north korea than they do with regard to russia with a domestic reasons trump knows i'd better not touch any of this ok but what i have seen i interpret what has recently happened in syria with the u.s. military strikes in a different way because what i think these people have at least decided is we're not yet in a position to know what our final interest in endgame is but what we do know and we will have made it clear we will not see chemical weapons being used and we will not see syrian forces attacking those who are attacking isis and on each occasion when these red lines have been crossed they are backed and unlike the previous us their predecessors they have not consulted as they have not shown anyone they have just done it without warning now i think that is really interested in russia and i don't think the consequences i was bad as all that. i'm throwing a note. to believe that we were going on more questions than we did have here

gentlemen to this part of the program we've run out of time on and thank my guests here in sochi and i want to thank our guests and viewers for watching us here at r.t. see you next time and remember. but also. do chemicals that. really increase the risk of cancer. known to infuse in the. risk is. by independent scientists.

from my time as was the others why is that. doing if you want to learn more. about. big business against health. it's. the russian economy. and i know a lot of people who are looking for a creative way. to get. that

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better than blue. i see people you've never heard of love down to the night not the president of the world bank so. because you weren't seriously send us an e-mail . all rival protests over the future. as the spanish we left in limbo by madrid's decision to impose direct rule. posse gains exclusive access to the city and town of why a team freed from islamic states by government forces. and a document released under the freedom of information act reveals the pentagon simulated a middle east style war game in facial.