sit down at the same table end the korean war that's right folks it has never been ended they want legitimacy and they want economic aid and they want to be part of the international community is they see fit i think those are interesting talking points ok it's all or better than war go ahead charles yeah i think we need to look at this from the perspective of north koreans or rather because this is what's relevant in this case the north korean leadership. north korea like other countries around the world has seen a decade and a half getting on for two decades now where countries were persuaded to give up their weapons of mass destruction and countries such as iraq countries such as libya on the promise that they wouldn't then be interfered with that they didn't need to defend themselves against countries such as united states and those countries were then destabilized on their leaderships deposed by force of arms of course talk about iraq and libya and arguably of course that may well be an issue with syria as well there's also of course given up that day and we may see results

of that in the future but nonetheless this is a message around the world to smaller countries in particular particularly those countries of course i've been on the list of the axis of evil united states promulgated of its plans widely known to topple what it sees as any me or unhelpful regimes around the world i say use of the word regimes we would say governments and of course north korea is and has long been on that list and so the only way that it can prevent an attack from the united states from its perception or from its perspective is of course to go the opposite way of these other unsuccessful countries and actually not just maintain it's to be indie but actually acquire and refine them and with the previous speaker who says that actually now north korea has arrived at that situation it has arrived at a point at which it now almost certainly is too late for the united states to take military action or not. going to our generals charles or i think really interesting

if you look at the history of the ups and downs in the goshi ations here i mean it's or it's kind of a golden bluff nobody really wants to test it at this point right now ok and i think that's really quite interesting i mean i am not a technical expert in these things here when they tell me this is an i.c.b.m. or maybe it's just an intermediate missile with extra fuel i mean i i remain agnostic about these things i don't believe the intelligence services and i don't believe north korea ok but i do believe in bluff so what do you think ok good sort of in washington before the break. i completely agree with you on that point. he has his deterrent is not completely in place but he seems to be sufficiently adequately confident and comfortable in this regard and there is some element of bluffing because we do need to know that he does need some additional testing to to refine that if the parent but that he hasn't played sufficient for him to book

deter the u.s. for him and him for him to feel confident to reengage in a diplomatic process i think he has actually been waiting to see where the trumpet ministration was going when trump was president elect he saw trump to be going more in a hawkish and oppression maximum pressure direction he felt he needed to have the deterrent he's got that deterrent he's now willing to open conversations and so i think there's something fairly pragmatic not just for teachers were fairly pragmatic about his approach you know michael right before we go to the break hasn't his back and for the great korean leader interim just highlighted the significance of north korea a way out of proportion because i think it has go ahead michael well it showed that the small guy can stay there the david can still beat the guy. happened here is that he's outsmarted the u.s. and and the u.s. is left hanging dangling and he holds he retains his nuclear weapons and. the same

time he makes nice with with the south which is fine and brings a little more calm to the situation the problem that i see in emerging within the trumpet ministration is that some neo cons want to bloody do a bloody nose approach yet and hit a. target just to show him that they mean business that could just absolutely ok i'm going to jump in here and that no gentleman might jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after a short break we'll continue our discussion on the korean peninsula stay with r.t. . altie we have a great team we need to strengthen before the free float and you're better than a legend to keep it so it's at the back.

in one thousand nine hundred two that must qualify for the european championships at the very last moment no one believed in us but we won and i'm hoping to bring some of that waving spirit to the r.c.t. . recently i've had a lot of practice so i can guarantee you that peter schmeichel will be on the best full since my last will call on that. thousand zero zero zero zero zero. left left left more or less ok stuff that's really good. everybody i'm steven both . hollywood guy suspects every proud american first of all i'm just george bush and honored to do so this is my buddy max famous financial guru just a little bit different. with all the drama happening in our country

i'm rude have fun every day americans. and we start to bridge that gap this is the great american. welcome back to cross talk we're all things considered on people about to mind to discussing the korean peninsula. ok we left the first part of the program with michael talking about the possibility of a mistake and i think that's the that's one area here that is the what is the known unknowns if i could quote a famous former secretary of defense i think you work for him hi michael but. yeah

yeah yeah. charles. you know there's not a lot of discussion in the mainstream or hardly use of a zero is the the russian chinese plan of a freeze for freeze freezing the program for freezing of the exercises and if we go back i think it was the penultimate round of sanctions against north korea it was televised i watched the whole thing i saw the western nations you know again the sanctimonious nonsense. but then the chinese and the russians put out a plan and it was actually quite lengthy it was quite detailed and and it's still on the table and that is the way forward and that that table the u.s. can still sit if it so wishes go ahead charles. he has very interesting you mention this is the if you like the geo political backdrop to it because that is also on the show we say the micro level of the tactical level exactly what has caused this breakthrough if indeed it turns out to be that to take place the only reason why

these talks have been able to take place in the first place is simply because south korea agreed to pressure the u.s. to postpone the big military exercises that were planned until after the olympics take place on the basis of those exercises being postponed and the north has made it quite clear about this those talks then take place so it's of course that's ironic in a way because of course the u.s. has constantly stated the aim of those exercises isn't to threaten the north korea and elsewhere but it is to reassure the south and yet it's the south that has gone to america and said listen let's actually stop these excise or at least put a hold on them and perhaps we can make some progress here and i made this comment earlier this week that you've got a situation where as in korea now it would appear as so many other places around the world you can comes to mind to some degree syria and so on that when you've got

the u.s. and its policies being placed to one side in these different theaters of potential conflict then that allows local players to actually exactly either talk nor in what sense is this interest in its policies and actually solving problems or only starting on the road to solving problems themselves it's sort of i think kind of follow up with what charles was saying there is that the dilemma that the u.s. faces is it's very entangled in alliances or because i think all of us on this program would agree that this overture is worth exploring the u.s. should sit down at the table and talk about real security issues where everyone needs to feel safe but then you know that the japanese are good reason. are you going to walk away from your commitments that you're changing your mind see this is the nightmare that the u.s. has with all of its alliances because it makes one false step then the entire region is going to take a lesson from that and maybe it will be

a lesson that the u.s. wants them to because the u.s. obviously does not want to look weak in the pacific go ahead and washington. you know you you've you've you've spoken on on on a really important subject you know this issue of either being in entrapment or abandonment issues where allies feel either being entrapped or the they're being abandoned and then it creates various there limits but let me out here throughout a proposal which is a little bit off the charts ok to deal with this situation on the korean peninsula you know i think one of the important things that needs to be done is a little bit of this tangle ing off the korea u.s. alliance within the context of the united nations command south korea is capable of carrying fighting and defeating of course not korea by conventional means of course if south korea just was able to take care of that responsibility it would also find that it has a greater spirit autonomy in its political and diplomatic decision making with

regard to north korea what it does depend on with regard to the u.s. is the extended to turn the strategic deterrent that has to remain in place and that needs to be credible but if we can't have a little bit more separation between within the war fighting in the aspect between south korea and the united states and south korea takes the lead on that perhaps they might also become a little bit more brave on the diplomatic front and drag america a little bit more towards more diplomatic means of tackling these situations then just purely military means another emphasis seems to be michael particularly since american public opinion research major poll that came out is that the the america. and public is reduced by a very sizable majority frowning on all these foreign adventures an interest in trapping alliances here but i mean the one of the interesting things is that in the west they don't think about or talk about is that there's always been on the agenda

of unification of the peninsula of course the issue is under whose terms ok because the chinese well they certainly don't want to see it under seoul's auspices and of course the united states as i want to see it under the north korea what they call quote unquote the regime here again i think the region has to give more agency to the koreans to find out what they want to accomplish where they want to go because the south koreans have been brigaded that responsibility for free defense but i would say having all those american troops there makes the place far more dangerous and the u.s. is way long overstayed its need to be there in south korea go ahead michael. well i think that's part of the dilemma for the united states now and on the one hand a green welly i love this let's proceed with talks but on the other hand how does this in the long term affect our relationship because you have to take into account the united states need to take into account then what is strategic relationship

will be toward japan as you pointed out earlier and toward the south because we do have existing alliances with south korea i think that the the reality is the united states is unless it takes some preemptive effort which is going to knock everything out it needs to allow the koreans to figure out their own destiny on the one hand we have to accept the fact that north korea now has nuclear weapons it's like except in whether india or pakistan has nuclear weapons or israel our influence over that was zero or even israel you know israel is you know we they they deny that they haven't but they've got a lot of four hundred units of them and it's really well you know michael. my my my for well let me let me go ahead my my proposal is it's always been my proposals always been the united states needs need needs diplomatically to go and challenge north korea by offering an ultimate only diplomatic relations lesson the

lesson the sanctions accept their existence and and accept the reality and that they're there and let the two koreas figure out their own destiny ok michael one more thing i'll go to charles here they're going to have to accept that north korea's a nuclear power because just as you said a country that is determined to get those weapons does it ok and there's not much you can do beyond obliterating it we have india we have pakistan we have israel south africa decided to give up you know ukraine gave away their weapons through negotiations but you know north korea as charles you started out with the program they've learned the lessons of regime change so part of the list that into numerate what michael said is to recognize them as a nuclear power state nuclear weapons state ok that's going to be very tough for a lot of people to swallow but i think it's almost an inevitability and then when you have the unification of maybe south of the korean peninsula maybe those weapons go away too it's a long long process charles go ahead. that's right and this is all tied into didn't

our ancient concepts of course of deterrence. destruction and all that now the as things currently stand in for the forseeable future the fact is that north korea does not pose a threat to the united states even if it develops a capability to have a couple of nuclear weapons on board quite unsophisticated i.c.b.m. systems that doesn't pose an existential threat to the us whereas of course the use of those weapons would very much pose an existential threat to north korea the problem is is that of course america has got other interests in south korea that are beyond simply ensuring peace on the peninsula that for example it's we talked about its military facilities earlier there is also a dispute of sorts going on between the south korean government and we're talking about diplomatic wedgies. over their deployment of anti-ballistic missile systems there and especially the radars that the americans are deploying which of course

are important perhaps not so much for the south korean security but for spying on china that certainly china's fears and so there's quite it's quite a complex situation in respect of the strategic picture. other countries such as japan it's understandable that they from their perspective see korea a threat with these weapons and therefore that threat needs to be mitigated but the question is how and what is the best way of doing that and it would seem to be the case that with the progress we've made so far in terms of these talks starting in only the beginning there are many talking about sport but it may go to other issues and hopefully it will that actually when you take the pressure off and the rhetoric and deescalate then progress can be made in the canceling or the postponement of these exercises which north korea sees as a threat to its existence is a start for that process ok i'm going to go back to michael gives you a real expert one of my experts on donald trump and i'm going to get a silly idea i was like put. up to five going to put up the flag and i want to see

if you want to salute this is a golden opportunity for for trump to prove his critics wrong you know think out of the box be decisive you know put up or shut up you know i mean this it's in the cards he could pull this off if he wanted to ok but does he have the guts or does he have the strength or is he just him day and i'm this is a real serious question go ahead michael. well i think he's being hammered in by the neo cons who want to to two who are who are committed to regime change to to nation building and i think trump needs to go back to his original promise to you during the campaign that he wouldn't do either one of those things and yet he's doing them today or attempting to or he's under pressure from a lot of the near constant in order for that that they can remain relevant in this town i think that he needs to if he's going to look inward into the u.s. to rebuild infrastructure yes foreign policy in effect should become his domestic

policy and i think that that that is where he needs to go and he needs to let the koreas work things out he's got to recognize that that if he takes. military action anywhere it's going to cost tremendous amounts and he's he's always thinking in dollar in terms of dollars so i think that that's going to be a major well you know out of the race i get it also means influence influence throughout the region it what do it what is the a little bit going to me what i want and what i want him to think about his legacy a peaceful legacy that's all the time we have gentlemen many things of i guess in washington and in london and thanks to our viewers for watching us here or to see you next time and remember crosstalk schools.

about your second passing i phone we just learned you were yourself taking your last turn. here at the time to you as we all knew it would i tell you i'm sorry. so i write these last words in hopes to put to rest these things that i never got off my chest. i remember when we first met my life turned on each. but then my feelings started to change you talked about war like it was again still some are fond of you those that didn't like to question our arc and i secretly promised to never be like it said one does not leave a funeral the same as one enters the mind gets consumed with death this one difference i speak to now because there are no other takers. to blame that mainstream media has met its maker.

trump holds all three imposing sanctions on iran but threatens to quit then you can earth dream and if it's not revised also coming up this hour. it does kind of surfing the place we what everyone is intending to violence continues in palestinians protest against donald trump's recognition of jerusalem as the israeli capital. america's fault invasion the us army is on the lookout for software that can interact with potentially help to influence social media users in.

just a few moments into a brand new day here in moscow saturday january the third time you know me on this is r.t. international our top story the trumpet ministration has opted to extend sanctions relief for a run for another one hundred twenty days of the session that will prevent the landmark twenty fifteen nuclear deal from falling through in two thousand and fifteen the obama administration foolishly traded away strong multilateral sanctions to get his weak nuclear deal despite my strong inclination i have not yet withdrawn the united states from the iran nuclear deal instead i have outlined two possible paths forward either fix the deal was disastrous flaws or the united states will withdraw. for the detail

somewhat of a mixed bag this is not from donald trump smear a talk us through the developments if you will. yes definitely and even though trump has repeatedly vowed to tear up the iran deal he has decided to keep the deal intact extending sanctions relief but also warning that this will be the last time until the deal is strengthened a bit sanctions will be added on iranian entities for their alleged support of terrorist groups now this comes after his national security advisers and other signatories have all urged him to comply with the agreement and the e.u. has been urging washington to stick to it for months and just yesterday top you diplomats met with the iranian foreign minister in brussels to reaffirm their support for the deal. breaking five years of the true c.p.o. way the new deal the room the deal is working we want to. protect just a few a way to avoid should pay for this deal is crucial for the security of the region

but also for the security of the. well the agreement was signed in two thousand and fifty and it was hailed as a breakthrough in u.s. iran relations as it ended international concern over iran's nuclear program and it's often described as obama's signature foreign policy achievement but trump has always accused the country of violating the quote spirit of the deal which actually means iran hasn't actually violated the deal and this is deliberately deceptive washington is fully aware that the i.a.e.a. other signatories and even own officials said that iran is in full compliance with the deal now at the last deadline trump to waive sanctions but decertified iran's compliance with the deal which is completely unrelated to all of this a it's not part of the deal and b. iran's ballistic missiles already been capable of carrying nuclear weapon warheads

but the official press statement released today started off with the typical useless anti iran said to me and baseless accusations that iran is funding terror but among several demands to both congress and the international community trump called on u.s. allies to designate hezbollah as a terrorist organization and he specifically called for a separate agreement to subject iran's ballistic missile program to severe sanctions which doesn't really make any sense as many countries have ballistic missiles and test them routinely but regardless the trump has always hated the deal he's previously there and you know lateral action to end the deal and has even attacked diplomats who negotiated it let's take a quick look. at the worst ever seen good disasters deal with a rare one of the dumbest deals or one of the weakest ground direct to the people that negotiated that deal mainly kerry and his friends are incompetent one of the worst deals ever negotiated. well perhaps trump

realized that ending the deal wouldn't have been wise considering it would have led to massive backlash from the international community and now we'll just have to wait and see if congress and u.s. allies will agree to trump's demands as ridiculous as they seem to recount thank you for the update. well the iranian foreign minister jeff odds are if the really reacted to the from statement he said revising the nuclear deal is art of the question trumps policy and today's announcement amounts a desperate attempts to undermine a solid multilateral agreement j c p a is not renegotiate rather than repeating tired rhetoric the us must bring itself into full compliance just like iran or for some insight on the story we cannot bring in dr my good bathrooms political scientist at held one university in cairo you very welcome to the program donald trump has repeatedly threatened to pull all of the really a nuclear deal so far though that's not happening he has in fact just extended

sanctions relief for the country as we heard for four months how would you explain his approach here. you know they only way to explain his approach is very simple now most political observers complain that they don't expect they don't anticipate they don't understand what trump is going to do simply an audit i don't agree with them simply because i believe he doesn't. act upon the political analysis or any political approach the only way to. give it a should not for what he does is he has a businessman mentality he had on the foreign policy of the us according to businessmen mentality so. if you try to and the law is according to conventional political analysis you would fain in order to understand

unconventional way approach you have to have. unconventional ways of analyzing him now look at his administration most of his members of the administration are businessmen so his approach is so simple as a businessman is this. gain in a zero sum game you push to the. edge of the cliff. and push hard to get the maximum benefit from your pressure. that's what he does he keep saying that this is my last time but actually you wouldn't expect for a second that you can pull out from this multilaterally welcome with all his partners just bearing not in mani's just just burning out and because president

trump delivered an ultimatum to european allies saying quote fix the deal is disastrous flaws or the united states will withdraw do you think then just after what you've said e.u. powers will agree to review and rework the deal. he set for conditions and when i read those four conditions there is no way anybody could prove those four conditions because he's like putting them at. the backs to the wall they cannot the iranians or his allies don't approve to us he said. yeah i don't think so the u.s. government. it's got plenty on its hands already doesn't it we can rhyme them off i'm just the top of my head the north korean nuclear crisis military action in the middle east and so on and so forth can washington actually afford an all out confrontation with iran in these circumstances taking into consideration that so

many of its allies want the deal to stay in place. well to answer this i would put the straightforward. the washington foreign policy is losing its good ability it is like bleeding every day. in front of its allies and i don't think it cannot. excuse me it can continue on this way it will not be able to continue on this way and as i said it loses its good with ability day after day so just say that donald trump is true to his word could the deal potentially survive without u.s. involvement if nothing changed with the deal washington exits the agreement the us isn't there what happens after that well it's over what what i believe

is that they will ignore him like what north korea is doing north korea is following a very successful approach in confronting trump and it is very successful to mao so what happens is the. other parties involved in the multilateral agreement will cut the deal would continue on with the new deal cut the deal cut the new deal with iran and continue on with it and just ignore the u.s. the u.s. will start bluffing all the way yeah there's a lot of indications to this isn't there and listen thank you very much for coming on the program it's been great and very interesting get your thoughts dr mckay backcross political scientist at helwan university in cairo thank you. well it's not just iran's nuclear ambitions that the u.s. is unhappy with washington also wants to counter terror runs influence in syria it's one of the reasons american tennis.