the syrian army and its allies liberate the last stronghold in syria bringing the terror groups. in the country to an end. pro independence protesters clashed with police at a railway station in barcelona it is part of a general strike that hasn't seen the demonstrators block the roads in protest over the jailing of top politicians. and cia chief mike comes under fire for meeting a former intelligence official who says last year's of the democratic party was an inside job rather than a russian directed cyber attack. program with in about an hour's time but right now. the impact of donald trump's.

oh and welcome to cross talk where all things considered i'm peter lavelle in terms of foreign policy donald trump has already earned himself the title the low expectations president this title is now being put to the test during his tour of asia if the u.s. a status quo power in the asia pacific region or merely a foil challenging china. cross

talking trumps a visit to asia i'm joined by my guest michael maloof in washington he is a former senior security policy analyst in the office of the secretary of defense in lake jackson we have daniel mcadams he is the executive director of the ron paul institute for peace and prosperity and in brussels we have our o. he is the european coordinator of the american committee for east west accord all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it daniel let me go let me go to you as president trump was going to asia with his national security advisor. h.r. mcmaster said that there is the objective is to rally our ice to achieve quote complete verifiable and permanent meaning of the korean peninsula i mean is that hyperbole i mean are they really serious i mean we have a lot of bluster coming out then we have some contradictions in tweets i'd like to

meet the man i mean what is the focus here i mean it seems as usual i'm sorry all over the place daniel i mean if that is the benchmark for success then he's just said his boss for. failure because president trump will not come home with a deal like that in his pocket and i think that's one of the reasons we've seen we saw early on this week when the president started talking about korea he seems to have softened the rhetoric no more fire and fury you know sounds like let's make a deal as you pointed out i wouldn't mind sitting down with the man so i think that might be an attempt to lower expectations but as you as you also say he is all over the place who it could be something very different tomorrow you know michael you know weigh in on that because a guy get the feeling you're saying to us all this is the strategy go ahead yeah i think it is i think trump came off with all this bluster and and i think when you look at as i said before that chapter two of art of the

deal is the elements of the deal leverage is what he's keen in on this is what he experienced in his real estate days that is his base from which all else springs eternal in terms of his work and experience bluster and then leveraging and to try and come up with the best options that's why you hear him talk one day where you know fire and fury and on the next day let's sit down and have hamburger diplomacy in effect because last jerry he said he could sit down and have a hamburger with can jump on and he did it again earlier this year now i think and what i think is happening here is that there's a lot more going on behind the scenes for discussions now did it to address the one point that was made i don't expect i don't expect an agreement as such right now but i do expect is a land of a foundation for discussions for future discussions because the ultimate goal

is to denuclearize it's not going to happen at the get go but it can happen as as. we move along and i think what they need to be doing is and have trump make a another bombastic offer challenge him to open diplomacy by maybe offering a full diplomatic always sort of that there is a diplomatic ploy out there we'll get into later in the program it's called the russian chinese deal i want to get into that and to that in a second and kilburn you know hamburger diplomacy you know if it's dealing about building the wall or taxes or you know all these other esoteric things that are going on inside the united so i get it i get it ok but i don't think the chinese and the japanese and the south koreans and the russians get it ok you have a very strong military power in the pacific and it's unclear what that powers

position is i think that is a very dangerous pick area situation for the entire region to address gilbert in brussels please. i'm not a specialist on asia but i'm sitting in brussels and i do confer with local politicians and people who are considering how to change belgian and possibly european foreign policy and i can tell you right now that they are very very perturbed they are confused by by donald trump by his actions and if the same time as i observe i would like to answer the question that you've held out for the very end which is is it performing above or below expectations from my perspective there's a performing above expectations but my expectations changed i had no idea that he could be so successful and destroy or pursue in making progress on destruction of

american global hegemony by just being donald i didn't foresee that that's of wow that i don't that is such an interesting point and that's a topic for another program i think that's a fascinating point to make here ok but let me let me eat or ok that's the point of the program michel and watch then jump in. look look all a trump is trying to out of all of this chaos there is a there is a order that's emerging here what trump is trying to do on life the obama administration ministration for eight years is a is a stablish control control the situation and everyone else will follow we used to be reactive now he wants to take control and you'll notice how everybody as a result of his bombast today toward north korea has begun to come in and focus in on what he well says michael it might not but it is going well michael you can you can turn it completely upside down i think ok i think you know if the in the

mainstream media they're saying you know but it's china china has to do you know what if china has to do something and china has to be the key to this china will decide what the outcome is and trump is is like a kid by his though yes by speech havior and his words and his advisors are again all over the place the chinese know let me go to go to daniel here i think the chinese now at the end of the day they will get the deal they want because they don't like the situation in the north as well go ahead daniel that's true. well this is a ultimately a problem for china and for russia much more than the us a slightly of the scare tactics of warning us that there are nuclear missiles that are headed for us or w m d's in baghdad cetera et cetera this is a chinese and russian problem and it has a lot more to do with with trade and with regional security then went with global security but let's not forget one thing why are the north koreans pursuing

a nuclear weapon why do they have one some say they may have one some say they don't despise what we may think of the north korean government it is a very rational rational response to a to an unstable part of the world why is it unstable because the u.s. still believes that it has the right to have gemini in east asia that the south china sea somehow is actually the the south american china sea or something of that nature so it is a rational response you can't force them to act irrationally against their own self interest you have to change the situation to enable a rational action to be something that's more in line with what washington may want ok i agree with you completely but the problem is hilbert jump in brussels the problem is peter you know the commonality of donald trump's behavior or wherever he is and that is that is a problem for his achieving any of the the objectives that his system set out that i have in mind here the bullying the insulting behavior directly history there's

been i think it has to be said there's been remarkably little press coverage of donald trump's visit to asia yet i'm not i'm sure there's a lot of press coverage in japan but here in europe and the united states which i follow and online additions i see almost nothing the trip has been taken over the space on the front pages been taken over by the shootings and in texas. by the latest possibilities for mueller to move on flynn. by a law. a fake and phony news and if you find a little paragraph on page one the trouble is here over there that's a lot. that is very unusual for the city for a visit of this importance and this derision by americans now of ariel there is what i think i think it's very telling gilbert i think you're absolutely right because they they would don't want to see any success on that trip at all it's built in for them i mean i can you know americans self interested in people are so

selfish in the united states in the political class we're talking about global security ok and i would like to see donald trump succeed i'm just i just don't see the elements i don't i don't see the elements being put together in the right way for that to happen here you know michael let me go back to you know the chinese and the russians have a diplomatic. gambit out there if you go with the last time when there was sanctions voted in the security council if you listen to the russians you listen to the chinese they gave a road map i know nobody in the new york times and c.n.n. has that they don't have the attention span to listen entire speech from a foreigner ok but it's all laid out right there why can't the united states embrace that freeze for preside make our audience knows what i'm talking about go ahead michael. well i think it's coming around to that at first that it wasn't and i would agree that the russians and the chinese have tremendous. tremendous

stakes involved in the end all of this and only because of their proximity of one and and also because of the leverage that they can exert so i but at this at the same time the united states is a world power it is there it's not going to go anywhere and it is it has a defense treaty with south korea it's not going to go anywhere and that's why china still needs north korea and i think china is walking a very very tight rope because they cannot do so much what the united states wants without. throwing that in that country into total chaos and thereby creating the very chaos that it is trying to avoid and that's what's going to put that one that is what would back kim jong un's to into the corner and cause him to lash out but then i think that's what they're trying to avoid that's the that's the north koreans ace up their sleeve because they know that the united states conducts its

policy you know in the region with only american interests in mind they do not think seriously about the interests of other i mean look look you know trump saying he's going to destroy north korea and then south korean say hey maybe you should ask us about that first ok i mean it's this extraordinary gentlemen i'm going to go to a short break here after that short break we'll continue our discussion on trump's visit to asia stay with r.t. . but want to sell you on the idea that dropping bombs brings police to the chicken hawks forcing you to fight the battles that go. to sox credit tell you that so be gossiped a template file for those who put. off the bad guys and tell me you are not cool enough to buy their product. all the hawks that we

along with our audience will watch. here's what people have been saying about rejecting the night would still be exactly just full on awesome the only show i go out of my way to lunch you know a lot of the really packed a punch oh yeah mr john oliver of r t america is doing the same we are apparently better than the blues nothing is bad and the c. people you've never heard of love went back to the night my president of the world bank so paid good money to write me seriously send us an e-mail. welcome back across the uk where all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing trump's trip to asia. ok let me go back to daniel and jackson you're right one of the best things best

things that trump did when he became president is the pullout of the trans-pacific partnership absolutely it was necessary but what is trump proposing in place of it because he want he doesn't like multilateral things ok and if it and if it is multilateral the u.s. has to control it ok it's a fig leaf ok but in this case it's by lateral right now does the u.s. has really the the the stamina and the strength to me making new deals because i mean the united states is the biggest debtor country in the world i mean what kind of leverage to the chinese the south koreans the japanese the meanies even have with the united states right now the u.s. only has its military go ahead. well you can't make new deals with old ideas and while i agree with you the pulling out of the t p p was a very good idea certainly from a free trade perspective because these large trade deals really are sweetheart deals for crony capitalists and well connected companies they don't benefit across the board but what is he replacing it with we've seen already twice on this trip to

asia president trump saying the japanese are going to buy a lot more of our weapons over the south koreans are going to buy a lot more of our weapon weapons so it's i'm wondering is this the leader of the free world or the global sales rep for the military industrial complex you know that's that's what i wonder when i see him overseas he told the japanese this trip is about making jobs back in the u.s. i don't think he understands what it takes to make jobs back in the u.s. certainly strongarming the chinese to buy more of our things will not achieve the goals the problems for u.s. trade are located back here in the u.s. it's not over in asia. daniel how can you how can you have industrial jobs if you don't have a plant i mean they're gone they're empty their shells all across the country ok again i can't fathom this here gilbert lee change gears here one of the things that's really quite interesting i saw an interview with the japanese prime minister and our viewers may or may not know but there's a very heated debate going on in japan about its pacifist constitution and

listening to when he was speaking with fox news i got a bit of a sense that you know the japanese are basically saying to the united states is that we can defend ourselves is necessary and we really don't need your arms ok i mean there needs to be a legal change and that seems to have traction in japan and then the then the japanese again what seventy five years after the after the fact become a military power in asia of course not a lot of people in asia would like that but it might suit japan's interests quite well because if you see indecision in the white house why wait around when you can do it yourself go ahead. we have a similar we have a similar issue here in europe so i have been prepared in handling this i don't believe we're going to see a new institutions i don't believe we're going to see a sea change in terms of how these countries defend themselves. but the question

that arises will there be a greater willingness on the part of the japanese behind closed doors as there can be europeans behind closed doors to push back generally speaking the relationship between united states and its allies has been one of. susan and vassals and the vassals who have among themselves agreed always to do and say whatever the united states tells them to say how long this will go on is under question no because of the the unpredictability of trump and the american foreign policy i think there are many of our allies who are smiling to the television cameras and smiling to the reporters and saying all of my sounds but our thinking and among themselves how to reassure themselves not by breaking up institutions or overturning the world order but by pushing back within the existing institutions to

defend their interest more you know michel i i was very disappointed when president . during a public appearance and i'm sorry he i think he chimed in when the japanese prime minister was talking he said we're going to tell you more weapons i found that to be disappointing because the future of that region is the future of the world you look at the countries i mean their middle classes are expanding amazingly so i mean people a generation ago people that were in poverty now have an i phone it's extraordinary what's going on there and the country that has the sway in the region is china people look to china china is more interested in trade. making money and that is very attractive i may be wrong but i don't see china trying to export its values in its institutions they're saying we want to make money you want to make money with us i would like to see the president of the united states make this

a make the same message and take that to the do is asian interlocutors i don't see it happening go ahead michael. well i think that you've covered a lot of area there in just in your comments that china china does indeed spread its own gospel if you will when it goes into asia goes into africa goes into latin america it's trying to assert its own influence in those regions what's in that what the united states is attempting to do and it's been doing for since the end of world war two is to keep. japan from rearming number one and south korea and japan from developing nuclear weapons when i was at the pentagon we worked very hard to keep south korea from developing its own nuclear weapons program as well as japan they threatened to do that on numerous occasions if something wasn't done about north korea so for that pledge for the united states

to maintain its security umbrella over those countries they agreed that they would not pursuit now with trump band there he has agreed. to to extend to allow for the extension of their ballistic missiles in south korea that that never would have happened five to ten years ago and frankly japan and south korea rely very heavily on military hardware for their defense you have agent they have our ages that they have our military planes pay a lot of money they play enormous amount of money for yeah i mean you just said the conditions let me go to daniel why don't the japanese the south well you know one other thing one other thing their defense interests are instead of washington doing it that's the problem here you want to finish it michael go ahead yeah yeah one other thing i think one of the one of the can considerations is that we don't want japan to arm itself because of the concerns that china might have as

a result of their experiences of world south korea. and south korea and south. korea ok daniel let me let me tell you and so it's better for the united states to give them the arms rather than have them develop their own and not to run industries so i mean just keep pumping in the arms what could possibly go wrong ok daniel let me go to you i want to let me go to you dan so we had with nato keep the germans down the americans in the russians out so now in asia it's keep the americans in the japanese and south koreans down in the chinese out if you like that doesn't work. i mean i think it's sort of one of these is not like the other you know the u.s. is the odd man out in the region and i think we're seeing some interesting developments in places like south korea look at mungy in who was recently elected on a platform of returning to agree to the sunshine policy of better relations with with north korea i think if the u.s. were to just leave the two koreas alone agree stepped out and pulled back you would

see a natural progression the media didn't report very much but there was a fairly large demonstration in south korea this week where people were saying our anxiety is very high we don't like the rhetoric coming out of washington or north korea this needs to ratchet down the south korean people have spoken and they would look to repost mall with north korea if the u.s. would step back and let it happen we would find some of these problems going away very easily i think you know you can joke about. it when i go ok michael you want to jump in real quick ahead. yeah so why why does south korea still continue to allow for military exercises for the united states which aggravates and antagonize this north korea if that is their intention they're not doing it that needs to stop because if we're really going to have a reproach you know we are a moment you know ok that's just that's just i'm sorry my computer had said but it's been the same enormous pressure and that's and that's

a moral hazard is well that's moral hazard it is aids it puts you to position where you don't have to take care yourself that it's irresponsible go ahead gilbert and brussels go it or like to deal with one other issue around china because china has been on the. paper coverage in financial times and elsewhere in the last couple of days with remarks that she is seeking a. moment of equality with the united states as a world power now this takes us back a bit i can see this coming from within the state department promoting that notion because in the ocean which promoted under obama people spoke about a g. two well never was a g. two there isn't one today and so i think it will be with this if this issue of she pushing back i think that's a figment of imagination of the american foreign policy community and not a reality that in china at the time china is buying time china is waiting for the time when it will perceive the states as the world's largest economy and possibly also was the world's largest military and then they'll turn around and talk

seriously i can't imagine she trying to engage in and hand rustling with trump over a quality and becoming the equal partner i can't imagine the united states even of trump or to agree that he would come home to congress he would be burned on that one as well no you begin to know that you're making foreign policy exactly what i mean but actually rationally speaking that wouldn't be a bad idea daniel but this i'm glad we're going to end on this point here because it's just a world view for the united states that the you know polar moment will never end but the reality on. the ground tells his completely different that the unit polar moment is crumbling it's like sand going through your hands and it's a traumatic feeling for the foreign policy establishment and you know it's not the we don't have to worry about a rising china but it's a declining us with its military go ahead forty seconds daniel last word one of my favorite modern thinkers is nicholas in the scene to eleven he talks about

fragility in anti fragility u.s. foreign policy is extremely fragile any change in the world system because it is not flexible and it disintegrates the us has military in fifty three out of fifty four countries in africa the chinese are also there but they're not there with their military they're doing business and making deals that's an anti fragile approach to the world the us the fragile approach to foreign policy is doomed to fail unless there's some new thinking ok you perfectly into the second here many thanks and i guess in washington brussels and in lake jackson and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t. see you next time and remember i'll stop girls. they all.

follow. you almost all the. medication is widespread on the us market frequent cause of death. like everything was ashes my family was literally coming unglued i had actually

planned. to commit suicide watch all who has a presence so commonly used we were doing what the doctors told us to do we were being responsible and what the real side effects. is. what i did was. illegal. just because. it's. part of the international crises has created

a situation in which humanitarian commitments increasingly look more like you told me and ideals. they need more and more people it's easier to just look the other way or force the problem to a neighbor what does it take. to discuss that i'm now joined by francesca elected president of the international federation of the red cross and red crescent societies well mr o'keefe thank you very much for your time and congratulations on the election thank you thank you very much it's probably the worst time to be in charge of the. given both. the grueling scope of humanitarian needs and the man's challenge of securing the funding to meet them why would you even want these kind of job but let me clarify for us all that this is not a job. and i am a volunteer i'm not paid for my position i've been volunteering in my national

schools i do for many this is a is a passion for fashion for humanity try to improve. the way in which we need to get there and for me this is my you know it was my priority and i having the owner in there is for somebody to do it in the most important most relevant or going to you money into or it's really an honor well mr rocca because it's a volunteering effort how do you keep your faith in what you're doing alive seeing the misery day violence the suffering proliferated to an extent they have been. so yeah. this is a it's a like a mission i'm not the only one seventeen million people that i've decided to dedicate your life tool to set of humanity their legacy over to you in on our legacy oh of course. to sacrifice part of our work time and i mean really the first .