the lebanese resistance and the iranians have very largely crushed the force the trump is they are supposedly to defeat isis and al-qaeda and the jaish al islam have been defeated and have been rejected overwhelmingly by the vast majority of the syrian people so maintaining a pretext for being there will not be easy especially when the barracks and as i promise you they will when the barracks holding the foreign soldiers begin to blow up with dismal and bloody regularity. you know watching often international more news coming your way and often i.

told you guys are going to die that. they will either find it up. or you can get it will turn out to be not you know it's really kewl twenty i'm not going no no no targets i'm sure the told. in july twenty second team. a freelance journalist working with a. militant shelling in syria. to one of his sacrifice quality has established a while ago such as memorial day will recognize war reporters who often risk their lives with the sake of the truth and through that peace you can submit your published works in either a video or written form to a war note on t.v.

dot com into the now. below and welcome to crossfire for all things considered i'm peter lavelle chromes foreign policy could be described as double speak the president doesn't have a defined policy approach even when goals are difficult to discern is this what the art of the. we'll means is trumps foreign policy making america great again and the world safer. cross talking terms foreign policy i'm joined by my guest michael block who is in washington he's a professor of strategy at the johns hopkins university also in washington we have

then you for achi he is the director of grassroots political consulting and in new york we cross to george samuel he is a fellow at the global policy institute in london and author of the book bombs for peace are gentlemen cross-talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want i always appreciated michael let me go to you first in washington you are after all a professor of strategy so given what we've seen of this administration well so they'd say does this president have a foreign policies strategy go ahead mr strategists. strategy can be the thing itself or it can be a representation of the formulas and nostrums that float among the the privilege the ruling elites and thus i think you see trump speaking to the people who most enthusiastically support him right his base so-called and he is speaking for them as in their voice and in that sense much

of the rhetoric and delivery of his foreign policy. is really shaped to fit his constituency and part of that is sloughing off this elaborate theater and highly choreographed ballet that mark elitist foreign policy since one thousand nine hundred five and so a lot of that's for show and it's very effective now when it comes to the substance of his foreign policy it also reflects his constituents and they. are they like the idea of america first and of course he uses that phrase and so i call his world view foreign policy a kind of america for version of world leadership which may sound contradictory but i don't think it is why what it means essentially is detached i think it is

it's attaching the are going to finish your thought go ahead finish i don't know finish your thought no the point is there's a whole level of spin and representation that is not necessarily mord to the actual relationships he's pursuing so a lot of this is very self-conscious grandstanding for the domestic audience and he's toning down the leadership and and saying we will be a world leader if it's really helps the u.s. ok all right i guess that's why it's so confusing under president drum george because if we if we just a quick michael said there i mean if trump is you know representing his base then he's portraying everything he said he would do for the base ok looks like good nation building in syria tearing up probably that one of the most important nonproliferation agreements with iran ok i'll say it i didn't like obama's foreign

policy but i thought the iran deal was a good deal and it was shown to be a good deal why is he doing that is again grandstanding just because obama did it is that a strategy go ahead george. well i think the his antagonism towards obama trying to differentiate himself from obama plays a part in it but i think that trump really has no strong views on anything i mean he's been on pretty much on every side of every issue throughout his long life i mean he's been for abortion against abortion for immigration against immigration for gun control against gun control so what he ran on in two thousand and sixteen wasn't really his final view on anything but he found that that kind of america first. and a kind of quasi isolationists policy worked for him and it swept into power it probably rather surprised them that it was as successful as it was once he got into

office he quine of abandon all of that and occasionally he still comes out with his rhetoric about the or we've wasted seventeen trillion dollars in the middle east we could have spent all this money on building roads and bridges it were you know but he's still pursuing the same policy in the middle east he still comes out with the stuff that he was doing in two thousand and six the end of a well wouldn't it be great if we got along with russia yeah but he hasn't done anything about it and you know he's had every opportunity since winning the election of seizing this issue and saying hey i ran on this platform and this is this is what's going to happen you know that we are going to abandon these ridiculous projects in the middle east we are going to try to improve relations with russia this is what i won the election but he hasn't done it and he has quite happily just gone along with the the washington swamp that he had so eloquently denounced in two thousand and sixteen yet again you know in this the same foreign

policy swamp denounced him as candidate ok and what it will and i think it's pretty clear that you know because his appointees are slow in coming because congressman a point zero. vote on them you still have these old deep state actors still there and then he on top of it. surrounded him with people like john bolton and pompei you know i mean they have nothing to do with the vision that he presented during the campaign now i'll agree with that with george he's flip flopped all through his life go ahead daniel in washington few ways to simplify things his main foreign policy is wherever he is a personal financial interest and branding opportunity and that's really first and foremost where his heart and soul is being and as george articulated this is a lifelong democrat who turned himself into a tea party evangelical conservative for that thirty six percent base to win the

election which was a thirty year record low turnout and he did a brilliant job at it the irony the grand irony is now that he holds office he has given capitulated everything there is no white house policy toward the intelligence community the pentagon or state whatsoever they are autonomous to create their own and the one thing he stayed true on throughout that whole thing is he's like a donald w. obama he is a hawkish neo con we were going to get that whether you had hillary clinton or donald trump and if you really look as to what he spoke at on the campaign trail and throughout his life that's his ideology so that reflects very well as to why we are where we are in syria why a bolton is hired you know in case they go she says don't go well in north korea the iran deal and i'm not a president obama apologist either but that is the one other kevvy peter that you

pointed out the iran deal t p p paris climate accord in the on the go she ation for him is he pledged on the campaign trail that he was an obama he has distain for him on behalf of his personal. loyalty with the clintons ironically over many years and that guy him going the opposite way of obama on a lot of those key issues you know michel one of the issues that during the campaign and after he became president is there his critics would say that he would be injurious to american allies let's think in terms of the middle east and and nato ok but you know he's surrounded by people. supporting policies that in fact do do that when we look at the a randy we had mccrone in washington merkel is going to show up i mean they're advocating that they keep the treaty alive and you know in this this is really interest to the alliance i mean i would like to see

nato completely dissolved and have a completely new security arrangement in europe i think that's what donald trump actually was thinking about during the campaign so i mean what the outside world must be look at i know they are looking at him in bewilderment because where is he going to go next i mean the the attack on syria recently that was against international law the whole world looks at it that way not the foreign policy blob in washington they probably never heard of international law go ahead michael. i think that. the u.s. presidency for some time maybe thirty forty years has been captured by. the sort of set relationships that have spent have and in many ways the dependent countries of nato even the great powers like france germany and britain are centrally pulling the strings and i think part of trump's approach was to put them in a situation where they felt less secure about the relationship and the us would be

more pliant and more willing to come to mr trump and that seems to have worked yes just as his blustering yeah and it seems to have created the movement in north korea. neither germany certainly not britain and france either are willing to step up and take over the defense of their realm and they are not merely dependent on the u.s. but they've grown yes. needy and so the u.s. doesn't want to be in a position where it has to jump every time nato gets a twitch and so what he's doing is redefining the strength of the u.s. in the alliance without overcommitting and also this kind of representation speaks well with his base and they are excited because the u.s.

is acting like the great power of it might go that it might lead to me ask you let me ask you but do you know would this this paradigm here does it actually make america more solid in the alliance and does it make the alliance more solid because it what we have here is a moral hazard ok they're not the europeans are you know they say they're going to spend money and all that but they're just going to look to washington for their defense and you have a president is actually quite skeptical about all of these things i mean that's kind. a very dangerous thing to be in ok because you think the i mean the european nato allies are like drug addicts they keep going to washington to get their next fix i'll give you the last twenty now give you the last twenty seconds in this part go ahead and michael go ahead. the u.s. is in a stronger position and the the word injurious that you brought up is only relevant i think if there actually is a threat to nato and with the angle on the horn with mr putin all the

time i don't really see the great crisis especially now that the u.s. has backed off a little from ukraine that was the great danger and well my dear let me problem there i'm sure i see more of let me jump in here we're going to go to a break we're going to talk a lot about ukraine in may mark my words there after a short break we'll continue our discussion on trump's foreign policy stay with our team. wash your bible as i go. through the biggies but today you know no one lives in a fiancee house to house is blown away by the huffing and puffing of the big bad feel wolf and then taking a number two you've got countries like india that are like one step it one step back their household sector has all the gold their government does exactly and then

the big benefit will often fall to the people the prosecution but the government has blown away and you've got the countries like china and russia that have said wow so twenty four karat gold bullion and the big bad wolf. and it didn't blow their house away. and is getting international recognition with the help of israel at least in the world of zoos and. this is to do with you like you know. this is my complicity is going to suck you know maybe. that's. the only palestinians who gets the most help from it's to restore the count of those things. and the vision to look at it this way. and that's there's a lot that you have to study the mythology you have i don't know if you competed in the dozens you know do more medals last time put this off.

welcome back across like we're all things are considered i'm peter we're discussing trumps foreign policy. let me go back to george in new york in interesting thing whether it's mccrone visit and when we have to resume and her. domestic crisis is at home we i'm thinking of the salisbury alleged chemical weapons attack then we had the attack on syria and it really into is interesting to me how they talk about syria now we had mccrone he said france and the u. u.s. and allies to quote build syria of tomorrow oh by the way the united states is making it illegal for other companies countries and companies to actually help

syria rebuild it can't be in the part of syria where they do mass to government house control so george it's about exactly one hundred years ago we had sykes pekoe it rejoin the middle east it seems like imperial habits die really hard and on top of that don't you think france the united states and its allies have helped the syrian people nuff go ahead george. yeah there that's exactly right it was hilarious listening to macro on discussing syria and this role that the end of the france was going to play in syria that there's even realize that a few days earlier. the syrians were celebrating a day of independence independence when france evacuated syria that's that's that's what the syrians are celebrating the departure of the french the idea that they can

now going to be welcoming their former colonial masters with open arms is a lot of bull but i do think that the american french british policy in syria is actually rather dangerous because while this is a they have no real prospect of winning because they don't have any likely candidates who can form any sort of a government in syria what they can do is to prevent any kind of a settlement in syria and i think that's really what they're going to try and do which is to prevent any kind of consolidation of syrian government control because all the various candidates i mean the americans proposal for the s.d.f. we're which is a largely kurdish that's. not no go because the turks don't want them and the syrians are not going to accept kurdish rule and so there that's that.

so what they're going to try and do is i think keep the the the war going blodgett by feeding again the various jihadi is and therefore just like your previous prevent what they see as russian consolidation in syria and i think that's the danger and i do think that ukraine is also dangerous think there's a you two there is there are still very powerful forces within the washington notably the john bolton's. the bears who want to start up ukraine relaunch some kind of a war that it will i and they're going to daniel there's a scene western mainstream media doesn't take any interest in these things but i'm a lot closer to this situation and things are getting to a boiling point in ukraine that's why may is going to be a very hot hot month oh right before see for the world cup in moscow i'm sure there is no connection there ok daniel i mean you know we're looking at syria we can talk

a little bit maybe about ukraine some more later but you know you have this flip flopping going back and forth and i'm going to agree with michael i think that trump is really expressing the views of his base that they don't like these foreign entanglements these interventions and the terrible waste of money when he wants to get an investment bill passed in the united states which desperately needs an improvement in infrastructure here so i mean he seems to want to have both ways when he can't have both go ahead daniel. yes tweets and rhetoric aside from policy is always something to decipher with this president but i disagree with both of you a little bit on a few points one on nato there is not this grand reese where france and germany and everyone are in love with us over nato and are going to reach their commitments and fact our commitment of two percent is bogus because we don't even count iraq or afghanistan intervention in our nato estimates and if we really included things

properly there would be a little more of a balance but none of that has worked out and also backing off of ukraine i guess i'm agreeing with you peter and disagreeing with michael a bit we did not back off of ukraine whatsoever and i have spoken on this program many times on the proxy war with ukraine and with syria and sanctions that are meant as part of a geo political bipolar scheme of ours with china and south korea to counter russia on natural resources in the arctic and we're trying to bankrupt russia from being able to develop up there and in fact over the last two weeks i mean i get new news on that all the time where we're demanding that the waterway be open for international development and traffic as well as what we're doing in syria to continue to back allow the turks to do what they're doing in the north

working with europe and now encouraging the gulf to come in and develop and basically take over northern syria trump spoke with mccrone and basically talked about how it was allers an orange territory. that spanning in the mediterranean and that's why i mentioned sykes pico because that was a partition and this is what they want to do is another point is you know this michel you know one of the things that's happened in the last week or so can i jump one you want to finish your point go ahead go ahead go ahead daniel finish ship yeah i was going to say one one final point non in. venture is not trump space trump space that tea party thirty six percent are all neo cons and hawks as well of the baby boomer generation so well that rhetoric sometimes works because that might be what trump is thinking for the minute or not they are that john bolton's and might bump am i that oh no other venue knows what you have always and you know it's very there it was there was a really interesting post-mortem of the two thousand and sixteen election and there

is evidence very strong evidence that a number of counties were flipped because of the anti-war sentiment that they were democrats but they were they they actually supported trump's nonintervention his views so i would differ with that michael i have a much bigger question to ask you over the last week or so we've heard these murmurings that. france and the united states. and the great britain want to start going around the security council of the united nations so they can pursue their syria policy i find this really very troublesome and dangerous here because we have to remember what the security council was a stablish for in the first place it was to make sure that we'd never be another third war third world war and now that we're these major powers and we're talking in like nineteenth century terms again these great powers they don't want to use international institutions they have poor international law or they're just above it that is very dangerous because it's dysfunctional is the u.n.

is it the you want united nations security council actually works the way it's supposed to where you don't have a coalition of great powers that brush aside the concerns of others here i find it truly disturbing and if the same powers one hundred exactly one hundred years later they carved up the middle east and they want to do it again go ahead michael. the u.s. is in a difficult position i think of. trying to restrain developments that could really up and world i don't know stability peace whatever you want to call a non ideal situation that still better than the worst and this kind of pushing locally is what israel and saudi arabia are doing viz of iran you see that in qatar and then also what you mentioned the meddling of britain and france which have been doing it in syria well for two hundred fifty years and of course when i

talked about the u.s. aggressive in this in ukraine i was referring to secretary of state clinton and i think the u.s. needs to pull back in the off with the positive effect of seeing to meet the needs of the base reigning in the neo cons who are not yet completely in control and not pursuing policies that will inevitably lead to war while at the same time looking strong so this i think brings us to the nub of current the current vector of mr trump which is to make a deal with korea which is outside of the realms that we've been talking about and that would give of his administration the sufficient authority then to more effectively rein in israel britain france saudi arabia's that are causing all sorts of pesky problems and might create

a basis for coming to some kind of agreement with mr putin in the future and that the vehicle for that the framework for that has not been established but that doesn't mean it cannot be established so it's a it's a very fine line i think the president is trying to to follow well there's so many opportunities that are being squandered left and right that's what makes this such as. dangerous and tragic time you know you know george you know let's look at the reputational issue here i've said it many times in this program here trump wants to tear up the randy a well he wants to make a deal with the koreans i mean i mean if that's kind of odd to you know i mean because because then the next minute administration comes in and they're going to run negative well i mean the united states put itself in such an awkward hypocritical position by doing that particularly again i don't like giving credit to barack obama i really don't but this was a good deal ok and i'd like to correct the president of the united states all that

money that they got it was their mind he it was their assets it wasn't a gift to everybody because it was also an arms deal they didn't completely go through in the one nine hundred seventy s. and four hundred million dollars and they had to pay interest on it so no there was no gift to iran go ahead george reputation issue. of course yes if absolutely correct and that's all point i mean that it's very hard to see how any kind of agreement is possible in north korea because the north korean leaders would be absolutely insane to give up their nuclear capability in return for want in return for an empty american promise that we won't attack you why would anyone want to believe that we're you know one strong goes the next president whether it's pens or nikki haley will immediately go back on had agreements and would indeed attack north korea so it would be it would be an absolutely insane policy to go for

i just going back to what it was a bit about this. going to the united nations general assembly i mean it's so hilarious because the only power that has actually be acted in accordance with international law syria has been russia russia is in syria in the caribbeans with international dangers at the rejoice let me jump in here legitimate government may jump in here gentlemen we've run out of time i hope i never will ever say president nikki haley that's all the time we have gentlemen many thanks to my guests in washington and in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember across the uk. in the heart of the swiss alps this is a place probably more secretive than the pentagon more mysterious than the cia and

better guarded than for knox a little swiss customs are here permanently on the site is controlled by them and they impose the opening time story of the drop was it it was a duty songs or plus the procedures in place of the strictest of the europe most to pieces by artists like pecans and modigliani i can't. boards and sold inside this warehouse that's where the report comes in it covers a naturally discreet commercially discreet strip but also discreet cigars they concern fraud of some of those paintings a link to dark secrets nobody knows how many of these secrets a kept inside the geneva freeport social position that you'll never obtain an inventory of all the works in the freeport who knows how many there are three hundred three thousand three hundred thousand is it a matter of confidentiality only is it the world like the our business.

no collusion says the u.s. house intelligence committee is it delivers its final report into alleged russian meddling in the twenty sixteen presidential election. three protesters are reported dead and almost nine hundred injured during clashes in gaza or on friday in the latest great much of return as palestinians protest against israeli occupation. the key witness in the russian typing scandal going to be rushing call fails to confirm a number of his allegations during testimony at the court of arbitration for sport .