it was actually much more of a go it alone administration the second george w. bush administration set as a priority building and strengthening relations with europe and so i would argue that when these kinds of mistakes happen the natural thing among friends is to figure out why the mistake happened and then to ensure that they have procedures in place to make sure that those mistakes don't lead to policy mistakes in the future while a person professor jones i would totally agree with you on that even though i think it's worth mentioning that britain also played a very active role in the run up to the war in iraq we just heard bill garia saying that it may reconsider its policy. based on how the situation develops there are reports coming from germany of politicians hiring people efficiency and the anglo-american government expressing some degree of dismay at how little factual information has been let out by by britain don't you think that they have these latest developments run the risk of validating the so-called kremlin camp in

europe countries like hungary austria even certain groups in germany and italy. i'm not sure what you mean by validating there have been divisions within countries on russian policy european russian policy all along and we can trace these divisions back even to the end of the cold war so so the idea that there are politicians within countries who are expressing disapproval or disaffection with the policy of the european union or of nato as a whole is unsurprising to me at all that they would use opportunities like the kind of news reporting that you're citing to express disapproval also unsurprising but does that mean that that's going to lead to an official change in policy i think that's a very different issue in the policies so far have been very consistent despite the fact that the same voices of division within countries have been making themselves heard well if the policy has been consistent and yet in a number of countries we have. change of governments that. more pro kremlin

or kremlin neutral i think that's where the be a more accurate term done before italy would be one example austria would be another and i think there are quite a number of politicians and europe who would claim that this policy of phobia using russia as a scarecrow. in international relations is actually working against those very countries sanctions to maybe montagne to add the you know urging of the united states sometimes the united kingdom but at the end of the day they come hurting local population so if narrative that you can ever defend this case was disproven don't you think that that would give a political boost to those political forces that already seem to be on the roll in europe well i mean the premise of the question again is a little bit challenging right because the policy is not real phobia no one has a policy to be afraid of russia the policy is to avoid having countries deploy

weapons of mass destruction in the inside the boundaries of another country that's the policy i'm sorry first of all of russia also believes that you should not use chemical weapons especially bad chemical weapons on the territory of another country but i think of this point of time it is pretty clear that nobody has established where where the chemical agent has come from the british government is claiming that to be the case but as you said before you are now the next day they are suppose boris johnson is not a chemist he's not an expert in chemical weapons so how would he know so when you say that is not the policy i simply disagree with you there because over the last couple of weeks what we've heard coming from london is purest for being its political arguments one political argument after another without any substantial factual details about the actual crime so we have to leave aside your claim about there not being any substantial factual details because because i'm not in a position to judge that what i can. judge is that the british government believes

that there are substantial factual details that allow it to make claims that assign blame on the government of russia right now once we accept that premise that they have factual details in their possession that allow them to assign blame in this way and they're able to share those details with other governments and other governments agree that the assignment of blame is accurate then the idea that this is a policy to make russia the scarecrow in international relations falls away and it becomes as i said a policy to avoid having governments to play weapons of mass destruction as an instrument of foreign policy within the boundaries of another country i think that's a fair policy and as you say and i think it's important that we all admit that we agree on this i think that's a fair policy with which everyone should be in agreement in so to the extent to which the policy works and in forcing that norm i think we're all better off and i would add that the policy in the context of the conflict in ukraine has a similar a similar normative basis right nobody wants to see another government interfere in

the domestic politics of a country in a violent way and so to the extent to which that we can convince governments not to do that that we can reinforce the international norm then that's a good thing and that's what the sanctions policy is directed at it's not directed at making russia into a bug bear it's a record enforcing an international norm well professor jones let me stop you right there and we have to take a very short break now but we will be back in just a few moments states and. it's to create a list yes. there's a there are. those does just feel. the city of climatic dystrophy. alligators on the loose. and crying

to use by the at least twelve members of my friends close most. of street racing in the peace of the night this is new orleans itself it was the best place in the word. fracking gave americans a lot of job opportunities i needed to come up here to make some money i could make twenty five thousand dollars as a teacher or i could make fifty thousand dollars a year truck so i chose to drive truck people rush to a small town in north dakota was an unemployment rate of zero percent like gold rush is very very similar to a gold rush but this beautiful story ended with pollution and devastation a lot of people have left here i don't know too many people here and just slow down

for much they lost their jobs got laid off the american dream is changing that's not what it used to be. and it's a tough reality to. hit . exists is harder than kentucky. overall in this move the employees people were going straight fanny's. a co money city it was almost no coal mines left. the jobs are gone all the coal miners the said. that it was a laugh to see these people the survivors of disappearing before their eyes. i remember thinking when i was younger that if anything ever happened to the coal mines here that it would become a ghost town but i never thought in a million years i would see that and it's happened it's happened.

join me every thursday on the alex simon show and i'll be speaking to guest in the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see that. welcome back to will the part that eric jones director of the european and eurasian studies at johns hopkins university mr jones i don't want to get into these old argument but the only way to enforce international norm is to comply with it yourself you know there is a very extensive record on the part of western countries of interfering militarily or by other means into the internal affairs of other countries of russia including so the best way i think from moscow to encourage russia to do something would be to

sat an example why do you think it's so difficult for western capitals to just show russia and other countries the way the right way so it's really interesting that you say that i mean you know as a political scientist and as a political scientist there's a guy robert axelrod who's who's done studies of this type of thing in the in the studies what axelrod has been able to show is that the most effective way to enforce a norm is not to allow other countries to break the norm and to give them a pass right but rather it's to recognize the mistakes that you make yourself and i think that there has been an incredible amount of mistake recognition on the part of the west in terms of the types of issues that you've raised if in the past western countries have intervened domestically in the politics of other countries they've learned that that is a mistake and they've accepted that that is a mistake and they've begun increasingly to atone for that in so that the goal then is to look at russia and say look now it's your turn to accept that this is

probably a mistake to intervene probably it's certainly a mistake to intervene in ukraine and it's definitely would be a mistake to do to deploy weapons of mass destruction on british soil i'm saluted me and i think. we would perhaps agree that the united states is the. major international player in the ukrainian politics these days these countries actually run almost run as a as a yet another american state so when you talk about interfering into the affairs of various countries especially a country that is on the border with russia again you have to begin with yourself but i want to come back to the the point of your earlier mentioned about the united states recognizing in atoning for its mistakes and we all know what the role john bolton the. national security the designated national security adviser played the in the run up to the iraqi war and yet he has just been designated as.

one of the major opposed to in the trumpet ministration is that the form of a tony is not a form of recognizing the mistakes that you made that you've been talking about the moment ago ok so. you know the argument you're making is predicated on the whole time machine theory of governance right where we take somebody who made a decision in the early two thousand and then we look at the position that they're in today and we don't connect them with anything that happened in between right in the problem with that is that in the united states we had an election in two thousand and eight that was all predicated on the idea that the intervention that took place in the middle east was a giant foreign policy mistake in everything that the obama administration tried to do for the eight years after that was to change american foreign policy and to change america's footprint in the middle east in order to correct for that mistake and to improve the situation right so so that's like eight years that we've all lied and out of your question no no no no no we'll have mr you right there because

president obama didn't stop the united states from interfering in libya in turning that country into a complete cares it didn't stop the united states from interfering in syria and turning that country into what it is right now so you know it's i find it very troubling but wait you know because the. libya thing barack obama admitted at the end of his eight years in office that the libya thing was a terrible mistake and if you were to go back and look at the interview that he gave to the atlantic magazine you would see he highlights that's good enough for ruining the country i think you misunderstand the the way these foreign policies work he has a very clear understanding of how the decision was made and why the decision was made it was a close run decision he's not happy with the way it turned out and in fact the lesson that he learned from libya shaped very much his policy towards syria which was the point of the argument that he was making in the atlantic interview and to argue in that context that american intervention in syria explains the turmoil in

syria is a complete mistake right because it was american non intervention in syria that allowed the syrian conflict to evolve in the way it did now we could argue that if america had intervened that would have been disastrous in its own right and i think that there are many voices who would believe that to be the case but but the fact of the matter is that the obama administration did exactly the opposite thing in syria for what it did in libya and the consequences end up being much the same now as a foreign policy expert my analysis of this would be that maybe our lesson is that there are no good easy solutions in these times of conflict situation well president beg to differ with you i've spent quite a lot of time in syria especially in the beginning of that conflict and i totally don't buy this american argument of i'm erica nonintervention they the united states allowed its closest ally at that time turkey and saudi arabia and qatar and also israel to intervene as much as they want to and plus you know i merican

agencies to have funded trained certain rebel groups that it described as mother in that position don't nobody has ever really vetted them properly and on the top of that as we know president obama is no longer in office there is another president in the white house who bomb. syria just last year for no apparent reason i don't know if you heard but the american defense secretary just came out last month saying that the united states has no proof not evidence that sarin gas was every used in syria when in fact that was the main premise of threatening that country with but the strikes so these whole idea that you guys can regret later on after doing so much damage i just do not understand how you get to that. i think you're right to argue that there are certain consistencies in american foreign policy but in the premise of the question you're wrong because you know look at the way you framed american intervention in syria at the start you said

look america obviously intervene in intervene by allowing other countries to intervene without stopping them so american non action is a form of intervention in american action is a form of intervention and the reason that american non action american action or both forms of intervention is because of the general presumption that the united states has a responsibility to be involved in every conflict everywhere in the world in the basic reality is the united states has relations with governments in every part of the world and having relations with governments in every part of the world the united states is involved in every conflict in every part of the world in either through its actions or its in actions the united states is going to be blamed for the outcome so the question is ok what is the best policy for the united states to follow is it a policy of action in action or some combination of the two and.