things are considered i'm peter lavelle on this edition of the program we discussed russia's relationship with the west ukraine and a lot of history. not going to be in the gordian knot i'm joined by michael c. or moscow geoffrey roberts he's a historian senior fellow at the helsinki for advanced studies and a member of the royal irish academy and we have nick like petro he is a professor of political science at the university of rhode island all right gentlemen let's talk about cutting the already and not we're we all know the poor state of relations between the west and russia we both know that very well. how do we get out of this cold or we just have to accept the status quo for a very long time to come. i'm afraid it's the latter. i don't see any political figure on the horizon in the west who could

take the lead and show that kind of innovative thinking that would lead to an era of mutual benefit and potential reconciliation between east and west because i do think in the long run it will happen. because there's a lot of general frustration among many knowledgeable politicians and academics and observers but there's no one willing to step up to the plate as it were and assume that responsibility basically of saying you know the the emperor has no clothes we need a different one we needed a nixon to go to china something something like fact yes and to see it through the hope had been that trump would be able to do this but he seems to be bamboozled by his own advisers and on. able to extricate himself from the general

morass that is washington today. what there's this old marxist slogan which i still rub a lot which is pessimism of the intellect optimism of the will so you are right to be pessimistic about the current conjuncture it russia's relations with the west it's very difficult to see in the media forward but never enough that we need to you know optimistic in terms of future prospects look we've been here before there's been very bad periods in russian american thought russian relations before . trying. to situation which french general is ok there was lots of. specific issues of dispute between russia and the west at the moment but there is something more general going on isn't there which is that the west is trying to to isolate a marginalize russia and not succeeding by the way as an international player and that's what's happened in the past we're going to be talking about some some some history in just a moment i hope one lesson is that history is that if you want to solve world

problems problems of peace security stability you have to involve russian i think that fundamental lesson will actually come to the floor when this side of the pond people that i top to here there is. what's the point in trying to talk they don't want to talk isolation the soviet union was sanctioned and isolated to this it's not something that's new keir i mean. i think that the willingness to reach out to him the russian hand go out to the west is quite limited right now what's the point when's the next round of sanctions based on what you've never produced to us or to the public i think there's there's a lot less of a sense of initiative on the russian side now after all this. true and. there is this sense that there is the know the idea that the ball is in the other person's court and we're waiting it to for it to be lobbed back but one of the

things that i think distinguishes this period of hostility from previous periods is the lack of basic respect for the other side. and there's a sense in washington among people who seem to have lost touch with reality and and lost any awareness of history specifically that. respect somehow is due only to people who have power who can hurt you. but. respect actually has to go deeper it has to be a more general respect and awareness for the cultural and cultural tradition of other other people not only for what they how they could potentially harm you and until we regain some broader sense of how russia fits

into the west is part of the western community i'm afraid we won't be able to talk to each other yes if you mentioned history here we have the enter bursary of the new nick agreement the preamble to the start of the second world war in europe what can we learn from that because there's one we were people always remember from that they don't always remember the year they don't always remember the characters of watching on cable t.v. they screw it up all of a piece of it right now but we're in a moment now kind of echoing what nico i had to say is that even venture forward to try to get involved in some kind of dialogue to cut this gordian knot you are committing that is a really bad place to be but. it was always fun to sign the lesson of history is that people don't learn from history now often he was wrong i think the lesson from

histories to people to learn from history but i learned the wrong lesson and the wrong lesson that from the munich crisis is that peace peace because wrong that concessions are wrong completely the wrong question there's nothing wrong with appeasement in the current international conjuncture that's what we need we need appeasement we need concessions we need negotiation we need accommodation they start the lesson at the munich crisis was that you could peace hitler and the nazis but that doesn't mean to say you can't the peace of a dictator is all of the old appeasement calm calm. noble foreign policy which which was before before the i mean across this so let's learn from history let's learn the right lessons of history. if. we're going back. back to what i said about respect respect for resumes that you are trying to listen to what the other side has to say and that's where dialogue comes in. dialogue and presumes

the two voices are speaking not just not just one voice in an echo chamber taking a public stand too much is taking place in the public eye and not enough where it used to be in traditional diplomacy in the in the quietness of rooms where people can actually negotiate agreements with each other and then bring them forth when everything is done in the spotlight we see from. reverie thing in the news that the it brings out the worst in people. and will affect as. much public display diplomacy and to much though it would be like if this is called public diplomacy i mean it's almost intentional they're intentionally sabotaging it i mean it is there is no there's no generally went up to be interested in doing it because unfortunately going back to this term or mis understood in wrongly remember term appeasement is that you're when you if you get involved in

a dialogue you're involved in a dialogue with some of that is no moral stature and that's the problem we have right now i mean i like nixon went to china i mean two very different systems china had just gone through the was going through the great cultural revolution that nixon had the guts and foresight to do we don't have the problem of public diplomacy is it it's a prisoner of domestic politics more often not that's the problem. the question of respect is just fundamentally i also think it's a question of trust. restoration process restoration of respect no. political movement for. your earlier point about well you know how much longer should russia continue to hand up the had the friendship of the friendship and cooperation when we can see what happens i've been really impressed by the persistence of it's to russia russian federation putin love for a continue to. continue to try to find anyone who actually

found points of meaningless in the waning days of the obama administration to different cease fires were set up for syria and when we know what party broke those ceasefires because they didn't want to see russia on the same equal diplomatic playing field and that was intentional and we had it wrong agreement and we had the irani ground we. much of what has happened with north korea is also thanks to the persistent efforts of russia to foster a peaceful resolution. on that principle. so russia has a sensible policy. and i do believe that the rest of the world comparing russia's policy with the united states and and some of its european partners sees that so that even if you have to take public stances.

in favor of policies that are not sensible in the long run your own national interest dictates a more sensible approach and that brings you willy nilly closer to russia you know it's unfortunately we have no assistance zero sum game one side wins one side loses and it's black and white but that i mean you can go through the great power rivalries of the the seventeenth eighteenth nineteenth century and then even in the early of twentieth century we've never had a complete zero so. you know it's some point you know going back to national interests you should be able to find your national interests and be able to co-exist with your adversary always keeping your national interests there there's no reason why it should but. i mean. that's a political choice that's a choice. but political choices and. we need to

go along. a foreign policy that is based on respect mutual respect creates a positive dynamic creates what social scientists call a virtuous circle so you can. by fostering hostility lead to the withdraw all of. the good really of the damaging of relations and of trust or you can reverse that cycle and lead to a positive this is zero sum game concept is really in the middle where you they're on one side of it or another and moving in that direction so i think just as we have been moving in a direction which heightens tension and creates crises by reversing the the policy that we're now doing that will lead us in the opposite direction hold that thought here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on russia's relations with the west state with our.

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welcome back across the uk where all things considered i'm. peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing russia's relations with the west. can we go back to jeffrey one of the things where russia in the united states popped up over the last few days was president truman's address to the general assembly of the united nations you talked about all lot of things we could make an entire week of programs on everything that he mentioned but what caught your eye when it came to russia what the. speech prompted me is that we should actually stop . trump speeches we should stop watching we shut because watching trump speak gets in the way up understand what he's trying to say so i think we should actually

concentrate on that on his tax robin on these performance so if you read the text of these speak to the u.n. what what struck me about it was that how ideologically driven trump is as a political leader and the thing is if you look if you actually deconstruct the ideological perspective he's putting forward in that space and he talks about sovereignty a nation states patrick is critical realism his kind of vision of global politics isn't actually that much different from the vision of russia to be china the division of other countries but of course at the same time he's doing he's saying yeah let's return there's a return to nativism and co-exist happily together he is also trying to boss in the united states to try to boss the whole world like it used to try to interfere friend here deep to deploy its power now what that tells me is this is that trump is very much a transitional figure in this process of a movement away from american globalism ideologically and politically so in

a way that kind of gives me hope for the future is that this is just. going for and the direction of this is in that that is in the direction of a kind of reconstruction of russia relations. and you know the fundamental thing which we need is the integration of russia into the western system that's the father of much of the meat. i agree i think that well i agree with some what you said i think we are seeing a conflict right now. and it could be as you say transitional but we could be there could be a. reaction of what trump calls the globalist forces but one of the reasons that in this speech and in his healthy speech. the text is ignored and the gaffes and. that is is highlighted in the american media is in order to distract

from he is the sensible most of some of his idea of sort of and to portray him as a lunatic and with him by portraying him as a lunatic all of the ideas that anyone associated in any way with being critical of the democratic establishment and so. the i would call the the lobel global liberal internationalist establishment in the united states is shocked at the fact that it is it is no longer seen it's no longer in power and no longer universally reviewed in the united states and and but it is retrenching and it's not keeping up and it will see this fight with to the end it's very interesting after the helsinki summit i noticed it was quite clear to me is that

even his inner circle the people around him did not defend him in public or tried to explain nikki haley after the general assembly she went on the on the cable stations and tried to convince them that the people of world. laughing with trump and not against him ok or not it is an expense and i think that's a together collectively what you're saying is very interesting because you know. it's going to sapphic that you know one of the problems is he's got many problems but away. but one of these problems is that you know he plays into the hands of liberal globalist critics like. sleep by embracing elements of the you know the neo con adventurous militarist kind of a program and second they temper trampling all over the multilateralism yes. multi-lateralism in every and every at every opportunity yes and that's not that's not right you know it's possible to come by a concept of global politics based on nation states by some sovereignty and all of

that kind of thing with no sensible multilateralism united nations includes groups of various kinds. it's a prerequisite if you're going to have a multi serious multilateral agreements you need them to be among nation states that are sovereign you know feel themselves to stand for something that they know what they're standing for well here the whole discussion of sovereignty was quite peculiar in many ways because he was talking about how every country has a right to defend their sovereignty it's their responsibility to do so but then he was threatening the sovereignty of other countries that was rather contradictory you spent some time recently in ukraine elections are coming up western media doesn't talk a lot about ukraine these days what's going on there what's the political situation and what can we expect that the elections and ukraine's relationship with the west and russia that's about ten questions in one go ahead. we started this discussion

with the phrase the gordian knot and at the heart of the gordian knot between russia and the west is ukraine it's probably the central issue of contention between them. that. i fear is only going to be exacerbated next year at the end of this year next year precisely because of the presidential and then parliamentary elections presidential of elections in march and then parliamentary elections in the fall. right now the candidates are running to their respective extreme corners and that leaves the middle position the one where dialogue could take place in a lonely place right now. but who in twenty fourteen. ran as the candidate who would end the war in a matter of hours and he could have gone to the da there was still that opening

where he might have been able to do that yes and and he volunteered he said he would and he would eat but crucially he ran as a candidate for peace. that peace has now been formally sanctioned as a resistance to russian aggression and until russia is defeated in this war that's increasingly the terminology and it is really game right and and this is this is his new campaign platform. but. is running at six or seven percent of the popular vote. i think his strategy now has to be to shore up his base which is very much a regional base that it's they in the west the only chance he has in my opinion of reaching the second round is to dominate and win in the west and gain enough

votes that way and then veer sharply to try to reach out to the east and south where his popularity is nil essentially you know. is this another frozen conflict you just like i can't see really. i mean i mean if you give in the domestic politics in the rest of ukraine or compromises for both you can't compromise on legislation very much hope is frozen conflict seems to be at the moment in the short term better than the austerity prospect. could bring a bit of history back into this. crisis one would think the comparisons off between you know the crimean secession from your crying and the learn german session this actually the wrong historical analogy for correcting historical analogies what happens six months later. when when hitler sponsored the

breakup of the czech is it looks like you have a need to plan the slip the troops march into into prague now you compare that with what russia's role in ukraine current crosses to russia occupy you crying a lot of the country which which which could have done. you know what it is that she tried to find a resolution that the conflict the civil war on the bison even of the separatists terrorists actually becoming part of ukraine again so it seems to me that's the best historical power law russia has acted to leave huge restraint in relation to the process so that gives me some hope for the future. what the. going to i'm concerned about the west and meddling in the conflict but i'm hopeful that russia is going to try and consign and control the whole discussion in russia during all of this in juxtaposition in the west is that putin is doing too little i

mean that's so far apart we aren't looking at this they're going to follow up on this point. the chords are the consensus view of all the signatories including russia the boss must become part of ukraine again. the question arises why has that not yet happened. i think one serious concern is that the ukrainian government is extremely reluctant to see forty five million voters enter the pl the political spectrum in ukraine that are essentially opposite in opposition to their view of ukraine and as long as they can keep that at bay. they can continue their current policies. so essentially that would be. i'm not assuming under any conditions that i can think of that russia would accept the

donbass and to the russian federation that's something that i don't think is going to look at your current situation it's only going to change if you domestic politics changes. for the better but that could be quite a long time in coming we have one minute i heard this phrase once from a friend of mine the ukraine is a nationalism without a nation how do you feel about that. there is a ukrainian nation but it is a pluralistic it is culturally plural nation and it doesn't want to recognize the current government does not want to recognize that culture plurality it is therefore defeating it's going against the grain of its own national history and identity twenty seconds to church. one of the examples of this is the current effort to take the canonical of the status of the ukrainian orthodox church which is the only canonical church in ukraine and destroy it and create

a new national church which will not be in communion with the rest of the orthodox world. an unprecedented even thing even the church can you know have to know that's all the time we have gentlemen many thanks to my guests here in moscow and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t.c. unix time and remember crosstalk. no you don't accept the slow drivers the oldest was ready to leave a little it's. a

little challenging like the whistle. and i don't bust i love me. why doesn't somebody know how to tell no it's a mask you never know what's happening and whether they're shooting whether they're to. mistrust the tibetans are. sad. because they. might be false which would make me a multiple i'll be just thinking of that in the at you but i'm addicted to sit with your middle class and in the most farms of all these clear when the.

that a condition would have made a person whom is safe guarding the life of that instance of indians and to whom by all means we can be no possible think even you know it all and you don't. committing a crime was the state is the national of the second so what is the excuse as to you months and again also a lot of principles and values. the ways of the united states is dangerous for most of the illegal immigrants. crossing the most of us but a lot of simple don't want to because most elantra not want the us to some just about what i think many of them look for refuge in the so-called sentries sides of the draft used to share information about undocumented migrants with federal

authorities the best person asked bank of mom. mostly to morrow i'll tell her that best when i get a man on a quest and i want that. they have that water they all choose to stay in the country with donald trump in the white house all over for the gravels. also be one of the who beat up the deal with the old i said fitz doubleton many couples won't pull saw a deal with the push to put a bull's spawn both of you up with a few hope of the. room. temp.

as washington could be open to. the rejects the possibility of negotiations. with. the taliban doesn't want to negotiate with the americans and has never wanted this and the leadership about never gave permission to any member to negotiate on their behalf. says it has launched missiles against militants in syria. responsible for last month's deadly terror attack on a military parade in the wrong. professes his love for north korean leader kim jong. il remains.