told of the program. feet. a u.n. security mission enters the syrian town of duma a day before chemical weapons experts start their probe into an alleged attack. members of the european parliament voiced their anger over the bombing of syria as french president emmanuel cranky it's a speech. and as dance row over the alleged chemical attack in syria that led to the strikes british media outlets round on academics to question the government's claims. over the latest on these stories head to r.t. dot com stay with us for crosstalk discussing the powerful figures behind the scenes influencing u.s. foreign policy.

hello and welcome to cross talk where all things considered i'm keen to live well as american foreign policy business specific d.n.a. it would seem so it doesn't matter who the president is it doesn't matter which party controls the white house one can easily ask the following question is trump's time in office serving george w. bush's third term or barack obama's third term the neo cons are firmly in the saddle. across talking american foreign policy i'm joined by my guest who we leverage in washington she is currently c.e.o. strictly a political risk consultancy and co-author of the book going to to run also in

washington we have michael flanagan he is president of flanagan consulting and a former congressman and in new york we cross to don de bar he's an anti-war activist and host of a daily radio program all right cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate hillary let me go to you on the back of my introduction i mean there seems like an enormous amount of continuity in american foreign policy particularly in this century i mean i mean if i didn't know better i would i could assume if i didn't know who the president was based on the campaign it would have would be hillary clinton in office right now is much is that terribly disappoints me because that was the only reason why i even took an interest in donald trump because he said something different and now i guess he's gotten in line go ahead hillary in washington. since the end of the cold war there has been bipartisan consensus for an incredibly interventionist u.s. foreign policy to consolidate the sole superpower nature of u.s.

power in the wake of the cold war you know i worked in the clinton white house the national security council and at the time i was asked to help write an article in foreign affairs magazine called the rogue regimes where the united states was going to go after the rogue regimes iran iraq and cuba you know flash forward a few years there i am in the bush national security council bush forty three and there's the axis of evil speech which is almost word for word what the clinton doctrine was for iran iraq and cuba just a few years before and then we have obama in libya and syria and now we have trying to with his attacks in syria so there is an enormous amount of continuity for an interventionist u.s. foreign policy to preserve in their view to preserve american power and american hegemony around and around the world but particularly in the middle east michael let me go to you and watch when i hear bipartisan consensus i get really really worried because that means there's no dissent don't disagree put your head down and

just do what you're told and that's exactly what's happening and i'd like to add to that is that the mainstream media the corporate media there just are not prefers for that same message go ahead michael. you're not you're not entirely wrong but i think this president is is a little different i think if we really have a new kind of office we'd have fifty thousand troops on the ground in syria and we'd be looking at a long occupation i think what you have is a reaction to chemical weapons at least insofar as they believe it to be true and i think that's really all you have there's nobody talking about putting many troops on the ground for an occupation well hopefully guy they also are ready to show it to you later but don't you think it's really a great difference don't you think that's a distinction without a difference i mean really ok not at all not at all the costs the cost and time and energy of spent of the iraq invasion and occupation is not happening in syria the cost and time and expense and reconstruction of the afghan invasion occupation is

not happening in syria well and while hillary is absolutely correct we have a bipartisan agreement for interventionism absolutely this is interventionist there's no question that that is true it is not the same as as the neo cons dream of u.s. world germany i think there's a do let me go to don here because that's really contentious here now but what we can ok michael we have also now pompei o n bolton so maybe you are giving the president a chance to get up to speed with the man that followed they were before him ok you know because it's i'm saying this michael as i'm saying i'm going to ask don here you know donald trump is caved on everything when it comes to foreign policy virtually ok go ahead john you've been listening. first on the point of bipartisanship this is something i always like to use as context the only time you know for certain that american politician is telling the truth is when they call another american politician a crook because they're almost always right regardless of party so when you talk

about bipartisan consensus those of the players that we're talking about that are usually you know reaching this consensus that tells you something about the thing that they were green on what's really behind it which trump and the whole foreign policy. than a program that's been implemented so far or stumbled through war or whatever since he took office there you go have to go back to him pronouncing the heresies that haven't been spoken since world war two really by any major party candidate or even any national you know someone seeking national office in the united states challenging the foundational assumptions nato perhaps is no longer needed because it was supposed to defend against the soviet union which has been gone for twenty five years regime change no good bad idea let's take the money that we're spending on the military and build infrastructure these are areas cities that no one was ever allowed to speak at because trump was trump and was drawing people to

television sets during the campaign because he was running they couldn't turn the cameras off on him like they did on howard dean and others that they had you know for fallen out of favor with the media so now he comes into office the context is he committed a series of major crimes all involving being subservient to a foreign power the evil one the one that's been the evil one going back to nine hundred seventeen so everything that he does that's outside of foreign policy convention is going to be looked at through the prism of is this putin polling his strings and what's happened is that despite some very bad steps to. you know in the opinion of most of the world and by the way violating international law the number of occasions actually stepped the u.s. out of the way in the main in syria to allow russia iran of them to deal with isis and some other things have happened like that on the international stage as well where you know whether you want to jump in there so much has already been said on

this program go ahead yeah there i think that trump in some ways has tried to distinguish himself but in a way like other presidents that he is going to pursue american dominance in a smarter cheaper way each of the other presidents before him have tried to do that he though does seem to constantly constantly be trying to come back to his campaign promises to extricate u.s. forces especially from the middle east and i think he's doing that not necessarily because he's a principled person but because he sees the polls he sees u.s. public opinion polls here and he knows that the twenty eight twenty eighteen november midterm elections are critically important for him if the if the congress here if the house of representatives especially turns and is not controlled by republicans he would be in danger of impeachment so he's got to go back to what worked for him in the twenty six thousand campaign there you have the schizophrenia in a way yes he's trying to appeal to that base to come out in november but on the other

hand he's had to he's had to he's had to staff his cabinet with neo cons from vice president pence to the new secretary of state designate pompei o to his new national security council national security council advisor john bolton so that's where the schizophrenia comes from i think it's this attempt to try to get his domestic base out in november they do not want another war in the middle east they do not want u.s. troops squander troops and treasure squandered abroad he has to then deal with the fact that he is staffed his entire operations of his government with neo cons you know michael you really puts himself into a very tight corner because he's. joining members of his base people that were very very supportive of his foreign policy approach or in the campaign and then you have the foreign policy swamp the blob and the media that says well you're a wimp because he only had three buildings and damascus suburb i mean stuff between the two of them go ahead michael. well yeah i'll tell you the i watch the

republican right the way right the moral equivalent of the progressives on the left a lot closer maybe than a lot of people do and i'll tell you their furor with with bombing syria is not so much that they blew up a couple of buildings in the damascus suburbs but that it's a harbinger of the troops that will cause some of the treasure that will be spent yet the lives that will be spent it will be spilled it's not going to happen there is and as long as it doesn't happen they're going to be fine just like they were well a few months ago when we bought mr in mind michael and i can only answer a number of their upset with the my only reaction to that is like everybody said trump wouldn't be president ok so you don't know never say anything like that ok you know hillary you want to jump in right before ok i said trying to get the president over and i feel like i mean i think i'm going to call this one right to go ahead hillary. and with all due respect you know i think it's important to actually look at the numbers there are declared over two thousand u.s.

troops in syria which of course pales in comparison to what bush did in iraq but still there are over two thousand declared u.s. troops now we have we've had come out just in the past few days the washington post is reporting that there are over five thousand u.s. contractors there in a military role you also have a dramatic increase in u.s. troops in afghanistan so for all that trump says he wants to leave and he he wants to declare victory over isis especially in syria for all of that attempt that he's trying to put forward to extricate the us from places like syria in afghanistan and the reality is that you still have i won't even call the neoconservatives i would call them the traditional foreign policy elite including general mattis at the pentagon who are pushing and pushing constantly for more troops more sanctions more u.s. course of power not just in the middle east but also visit to russia and china ok don let me go to you before we go but i think you have been funny to me and i want to make make sure you equal time no problem. don you know what hillary just

described as mission creep ok because trump caved on nato he caved on afghanistan. he won't do anything on yemen which is really a shame on the entire foreign policy elite in the west very shameful forty seconds down before we go to break mission mission creep go ahead well all of these things are happening in a larger context you have what's been driving american foreign policy for decades is the idea of a gemini and the actual ization of the gemini largely across the world that period has passed perhaps it's an epochal shift even we're seeing a multi-polar world rise we're seeing it actualized and so the foreign policy perspectives of everyone really has to either ignore that and try to undo it which i think is impossible and means world war three essentially or accommodated i believe inside the elites in the west and i think that trump in

a very strong way represents this you know one of the tendencies that there are some that acknowledge the old model doesn't work it's ok to be at the table with other people we come with many i got to know nothings a very jump in here and so that's what i think i have to jump in here we're going to go to a hard break and after that hargreaves will continue our discussion in terms foreign policy stay with us. britain is going alone because it's a world leading country to make trade deals not tonight because i got a dramatic fashion capacity to open a factory every week because we're a great britannia. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then.

welcome back to cross talk where all things considered i'm peter bell to remind you we're discussing american foreign policy. ok let's go back to hillary in washington vigilante foreign policy and the great powers and let's put those two together france britain in the united states reordering the middle east again ok and acting outside of international law enormous you know you know that we had these defense and intelligence postures coming out and you know revisionists powers russia iran you know china you don't know who's the revisionist right now who's destroying the u.n. charter going beyond the united nations security council i mean it's truly

astounding of course they're the political elite and they're pliant stenography media don't can't even see you know two inches from their own face ok the pure hypocrisy of the i'll tell you this is destroying the international order and it being a strain is a professional historian remember the league of nations ok when everyone started ignoring it everyone's peril i don't think there's a question there but i think you know what i mean go ahead. but i think it's a critically important point because you have essentially you have you have britain and france in very weak positions that have apparently seemingly decided to align themselves firmly with the united states and not be independent powers so you really have the u.k. and france aligning with the united states to just reinforce whatever the united states wants to do which leaves the international community without any real balance which was the brilliance of having the p five the permanent five members of

the security council and the security council and the u.n. to have this balance a multilateral balance in international affairs that is slowly but surely being. destroyed and we say with that real devastation strategic devastation across the globe as the united states is unable to accommodate itself to the reality of a multi-polar world where other countries have power and they're going to exercise it the only way for the united states to truly be safe in that environment is to have is to work in a balance of power environment with other countries but instead you have people here in washington especially holding onto this idea that that really blossomed in the wake of the cold war in the one nine hundred ninety s. that the united states not only could be but has to be the sole superpower in order to protect itself that is really what's so dangerous and what i'm concerned is happening right now you know michael i want to stay with britain france and the united states they worked in conjunction and striking illegally i would point out

syria on a pretext that oh i thought we heard this story last year it repeats again a remarkable nobody likes to point that out so if you don't think this intervention is going to expand well i think the past would say differently so what do you think michael how much are the british and french going to contribute to this intervention or are they just go to wave flags on the sidelines ok because actually exactly what they'll do everybody in the middle east wants america to do something in the middle east for their interests when it's not even in america's interest in the first place go ahead michael. i've had fourteen premises there peter and i love you but i'm having trouble keeping my head around all of them said ok right here first i don't think i don't think that we are going to be interventionist and you've asked me to comment on something i don't believe so i just don't think it's going to happen secondly very quickly with hillary in the numbers question before the break the numbers there are aimed at isis not

a toppling the regime in damascus as they would be if we were neo cons really just not having their comment and they're going to really let me finish. ok i don't think it's about toppling aside i think it's about stopping chemical weapons and defeat in the troops are there to defeat isis you know nothing you know but my gut and i trouble proving otherwise you know when you look at america american intervention into you know look at all the bombing that the united states and its allies have done during the entire course of this war what they've done is destroy the infrastructure of the syrian state no they didn't go after isis they didn't go after al nusra no they didn't what they tried to do is you wrote you load the sovereignty of syria and then the russians come in and bided in under international law and then all of a sudden you see the islamic state starting to shrink and of course trump maybe willingly or unwillingly takes credit for it ok there's no reason to believe the good intentions of the united states in syria when its aims are not clear and when

you have someone like nikki haley saying we got to keep our eye on iran for maybe a moment she was transparent i'll let you finish your point michael go ahead. thank you peter i try never to interrupt the host because your vision is insightful but i think in this case a tiny bit misplaced because you you you anticipate you are you are insightful but you anticipated something that i don't think is going to come to pass i don't think we're going to have ten thousand twenty thousand fifty thousand troops on the ground in syria it's just not going to happen whatever the numbers state and i'll go one more and i'll say that if we could get this move our commission over within . united states trump could sit with putin like he sits with the premier of china and others and reach a thoughtful accord i mean mr lever off if i'm not mistaken observed recently that there is a slow slow roll the slow moving slow rolling going on the united states i think it's a little overstated but i think he anticipates the two men sitting down and trump's foreign policy is very personal it's very it's his personal involvement it's not

well staffed if you want to you want to be irked about that but i think if he has a chance to sit with putin and do what he has to do i think you'd see a very different syria and i certainly see a very different world complection. making great strides with the chinese in ways that this nation isn't done before i think the north koreans announced today or yesterday or or some time in the near past that that they were going to actually look at finally ending the korean war that's an incredible stress you know a worthwhile and have salut we had to involve the chinese and americans working together yeah well but that's interesting michael and i'll get past this over to don they might end the hostilities they might actually sign a peace treaty but michel be prepared for that to happen the united states must withdraw from the peninsula see that the other side of this however you all know that that's how the media works ok so we might get peace in korea in spite of trump not because of him we'll see we'll see all right let me go back to don and don here

i mean we had a number of cases during the obama administration where we had a cease fire in syria ok and then we have a false flag attacks we have ash carter destroy a very hot hard worked on cease fire i see the same thing repeating it and i said in the introduction of my program it doesn't matter who is president it doesn't matter what parties in power we have elements within the deep state hillary has already talked about here they're not going to let this happen because that would actually be a recognition that had gemini the moment of the gemini has come to an end and that's like telling these neo-cons there is no god go had done. look we know that first of all there have been battles on the ground in syria behind between pentagon backed your hobbies and. langley backed jihadi s. so you know there are competing american interests on the ground in syria that's

the point and they are merely a manifestation of competing interests in washington or in washington in langley or whatever that you know that were more or less bundled together for the period from one thousand nine hundred five perhaps all the way up until last year and that's started to come on ravel i think trump represents a distinct tendency against the trend that prevailed before and i think what we're seeing in korea for example is you know a manifestation of that and i think a recognition of it on the part of pyongyang and to beijing you know we have to remember what happened japan occupied korea up as far the into the peninsula as it could united states conquer japan the no other word for it unconditional surrender and essentially just occupied the military bases that japan had used to occupy

korea up to that point then the united states gets into a war some say tries to take the rest of the peninsula whatever and then you have essentially no peace since one thousand nine hundred fifty two the united states has refused to withdraw from korea united states has refused to sign a peace treaty with north korea is refused to allow the korean peninsula to reunify now if you look at this moment trump is actually in a position to allow that to happen politically if he came out of korea talks with a peace treaty that allowed the u.s. to pull its troops out of korea he could actually benefit politically and that's probably the first time they'll not do so i don't exactly. and you too for an american that's really interesting but i'm not sure that that would be considered a victory for the deep state because well what about all those contracts and all those musicians all those ships you know oh what a pity that would be pieces the piece would really. be pieces in impoverishing idea

you for the current foreign policy elite i see you nodding your head hillary go ahead yeah i mean it would be devastating i think to the to the foreign policy elite here in washington but strategically it certainly would be wise if it could. have some sort of peace or settlement or reconciliation with north korea that when unified of the peninsula and have korea as korea not north and south korea as a state as a nation to balance along with japan and china that would lead to a much more stable environment in asia and a much more much more effective position for the united states in asia and i would argue throughout the world but that is something that the foreign policy elite here would have because it has to be essentially the united states against somebody if you will both the military industrial complex here but also foreign policy as they see it is not one of balance it can't be one where you have a strong china

a strong korea a strong japan it has to be dominance all of those countries having their power only because the united states less than do so that to me is the strategic problem and you have that in the middle east to where i you know i agree with mike in some ways that trump may not want to have what's happening but it is a slippery slope not one that's accidental one that is purposeful by the foreign policy elite to maintain american dominance you know they they really screwed up in terms of libya syria iraq and the problem for them now is they're facing those countries not being part of the pro-american political and security order in in the middle east and that is something that is unacceptable we're karla's of what the outcome is whether it's isis. and you isis they can't except those countries syria iraq turkey egypt iran they can't except those big important countries independent powers well. that's absolutely true and we didn't even have a chance to talk about the influence of israel and saudi arabia on his thinking in

terms of the middle east here i feel like we just hit the tip of the iceberg there's so much more to talk about michael i really appreciate you coming on the program with always arguing with you always add value ok that's all the time we have many thanks to my guests in washington and in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t. see you next time and remember crosstalk. you never know what's around the corner you never know what's in the pub even to walk into

a nice the excitement is that not knowing that's where the adrenaline in much comes from. and you can use a move by definition and extremes will support. the violence he's a part of and it's almost a schizophrenia. where you can do all these things and behave badly. and point to the public hospital for a little while. more so focused on the last. punishment and infirm. will get done far less than they thought. i would roll or when the fight broke out i really did a poll down down went up with. many reason is that at least if you don't involve these constantly evolve and.

apply for many flips over the years so i know the guy even so i gots. to pull isn't only about what happens on the beach or the final school it's about the passion from the fans it's the age of the superman each of killian a loan to spend spend be true to twenty million one fly. it's an experience like nothing else on it because i want to share what i think what i know about the beautiful guy like great so what will transpire. and thinks it's going to. from. from from. from .

this is boom bust broadcasting around the world from washington d.c. i'm bart chilton coming up today some banks up announce their first quarter profits as markets continue this season told us to c.e.o. of pro mark the report which will weigh in and it's tax day in the united states if you drive a car the tax the street if you try to sit they'll tax your seat if you get to call the tax they eat you take a walk they'll tax your feet george harrison we miss you r.t. correspondent ashley banks report from ground zero on taxes the internal revenue service headquarters right here in washington and she's back lauren fix the car coach talks of global autos and trade and gives us her you on some of the new developments in the auto industry plus there's media and merger news as the federal communications commission decides not to investigate sinclair media but there's

another investigation that some members of congress see as sinclair tries to buy tribune media collins cook host of the big picture here in our city america gives us his learned take on the media all that ahead but first let's get to some headlines. it is tax day and the supreme court is hearing arguments about if states should be allowed to collect taxes from online purchases states cannot currently require online read literature retailers like amazon for example to collect and then return those taxes to states from residents who order them online unless the retailer does have a physical presence in the state in question the case south dakota versus wayfair incorporated is expected to be decided by the supreme in june. according to the wall street journal the demand for lithium what has been referred to as white petroleum since it's so valuable is gaining rekindled traction in europe.