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alone welcome to worlds apart over the last decade the russian foreign policy has always been constructed to serve as a mirror sometimes a fun phallus mirror to the united states but that approach if the wall went to america and political reality became stranger than fiction now the most glowing and secure innings you gather the bilateral relationship back to normal what optics should it use to facilitate it well to discuss that i'm now joined by timothy cult a professor of government and russian studies at harvard university professor cold and it's good to talk to your again thank you for agreeing to work with speaking on the sidelines so did paul di forum and the catchphrase of these years of band is the crumbling world the other is that's really desired guys or perhaps more brass wishful thinking on the part of the russians well i would say it's wishful thinking i think the authors of the report that referring to actually saw the crumbly were.

would order as a problem that they weren't very happy with but. so there was quite a lively discussion of the report at the first session and certainly a number of us start that they were exaggerating the degree of the problem. you know that the international order is under a lot of stress nowadays is beyond you know that they've been doing this for takes a lot for them and said that they viewed as a problem i may have my perception is that the russians also see that as more of an opportunity for themselves or at least something that benefits that a geo political vision more than for example denmark and their political no i think i think that's true sure i mean i think what runs through a lot of the reports had done over the years is the notion that the so-called unit polar moment which was dominated by the united states after ninety ninety one has run its course and that we're moving towards a multi polar earth russians often want to say no multi centric world and on that score i think many americans would agree so i don't think this comes as

a great shock to most americans there are to be sure american experts and american public figures especially who don't agree with this but i would say more people agree with that than dispute you wrote a book on the origins of the ukrainian crisis that some analysts share of asserting that everyone lost from this contest for influence in its eurasia and yet i think there's a growing sense here in russia that moscow has been able to convert the loss of ukraine into something meaningful that it may have lost influence in ukraine but it has gained it somewhere else whereas the opposite happened to the united states do you agree with that well i'm not sure these things are necessarily interconnected i mean america's problems would be there were whatever russia was doing. you know well you know itself for years since the four and a half years since the great crisis erupted and you certainly can say that everything's gone wrong. i'm for russian foreign policy around it and you know it's

intervention in syria starts in two thousand and fifteen that probably would have occurred with or without the ukraine crisis and you know i'm not sure how much you want to get into a discussion of russian behavior in syria but it's from a power point of view it's actually been pretty successful so one might say that there's been a period in which there have been certain gains but you know also lots of other things have gone wrong that russians and never shy of that's in their grievances with democrats but i've got a sense that they've had enough of that already and they want that. kind of normalize their relationship at the moment i know that you've long suggested that there should be some sort of a working group or by the actual panel that would take stock of their relationship and focus specifically on how to avoid further damage. or adjudicating who is to blame do you think that sustainable in the current american political environment

well if it's an expert's council i think it would be sustainable this idea actually was one of the few concrete things that there are two leaders agreed on in helsinki this summer but nothing has been done about it as far as i'm aware but i mean it would be a small step in the right direction of saying yes but do you do you think the experts those with fear of experts with reputable institutions can they really afford to reach a conclusion. with no it's russia as the only. party to blame. well why not i mean united states is a free country you know you were free to say whatever we want of what our government so i don't think such a panel would likely conclude that either countries exclusively to blame i don't think you'd ever get agreement on that but but you know the way you put it i think when you asked a question was the right way the suggestion here is to is not to dwell on the past because we can't really reach agreement on that for the moment we might reach

a certain degree of agreement but not on everything it's more about what to do to stop things from getting even worse i think the decision to taint trump with russia was a deliberate tactic on the part of the democrats we know that some that leaked hillary clinton's e-mails is strong still talks that because of russia or is russia now a talk stick because of trump. well i guess it's a bit of both you know this is the going on now for two years. there's been a lot of back and forth and there are so many i would say moving parts right now that it's the you know the causal arrows are very hard to follow the italy the notion whether it's correct or not that you know from one the election. to some degree because of russian assistance has taken hold in many quarters we will now see because mr motors reporters from you know should be with us and within several

months what he concludes and so that i think does tend to stick and and the irony is of course is i'm sure it is apparent to russians as well this that . the very fact that donald trump is associated with this effort means that it very much limits his freedom to improve relationship with russia i mean one of the few consistent. points that he made on the campaign trail was we should have a better relationship with russia he's been able to do quite a bit on the trade front you know you can agree or disagree with his tactics but you know he's been active whereas when it comes to russia's answer to some extent time not completely perhaps but he doesn't have a lot of room to maneuver. russia is not the only toxic topics like the administration at the moment it now has to deal that the growing saudi american crisis and that crisis has much bigger economic states it also goes far beyond the

trumpet ministration because it involves the in and the industry second opinion leaders even that in the democratic circles is there any chance of saudi arabia taking the liberal hit the liberal resentment of russia well i doubt it i think the saudi thing is probably going to come to a head very quickly and something will be done and people have to live with it. whereas as far as russia is concerned if we're talking not so much about standard foreign policy and security issues like ukraine like like libya like syria but if we're talking about these. as of interference then that's going to continue to rise to prominence until the most report is delivered and conclusions are drawn from it and you know we don't know what the reports going to contain he's been mower robert muller the man in charge has been very good to keeping their deliberations secret. the most explosive thing would be. the stablish not in the report you know to the

extent that you can rely on such a document that there was as they say collusion between the campaigns so that whoever the russian hackers were that they were actually cooperating actively with members of the trump campaign that's would be the most serious thing a lot of the rest of that i think we know many russians don't except maybe these facts i think what the russians don't accept is the scale of influence that is achieved it is. those ties that you mentioned whether we're talking about let's say you know thirty in people somewhere in the basement riding a facebook post in poor english or something far more massive i know that you believe that the russian interference to take place what do you personally think was disco pivot. well i do except the evidence that we've seen which has been shared a book you know these thirteen individuals and some others that is for the scale that's a very legitimate question how many how much of this actually occurred you know

it's very cheap to do these things you know you don't have to pay a lot one of the things we're learning from this new era of information warfare is that almost everybody can do it i mean small time almost everybody does it to all of us well it isn't. i think it's contagious a militant group which is going to see more and more of it because there's also if one is talking about scale and scope the question of the magnitude of the effect on the american election and here you know i think it's no one's ever going to prove that i mean true trump lost the popular vote. but he won the election because he won in the so-called battleground states states often by their in their narrow margins so did these leaks in the souther stuff make a difference in wisconsin or pennsylvania i don't think anyone will ever stablish that and i don't very much that the mother report will bill really bother to get to that now let me take you back to the i'm sorry that you asked about motivation and

i think one thing. that is also fairly clear is that to the the russians who are doing these things they're in their national motivation was less to help trump than it was to harm clinton and i think that's that's probably where it started and they're not exactly the same thing but and from what i understand most people in russia even on the political and official level believe that it's not such a big deal that whatever they were doing whether it was even on the orders it's reckless from the kremlin or they were acting in doubt own capacity that usual response to that so what can you authoritatively assert that this is something that the united states would never imagine doing to russia because i began my introduction of it saying that russians do construct their foreign policy in the way that if least in that view mirrors what the americans have been doing to them all along are they wrong. well. it's well known the united states is

a defeat of the internal politics of many countries over the years who can who could deny that we invaded iraq in two thousand and three we actually they did the country and overthrew the president and i think what tends to happen though is that you know these grievances kind of pile up and they're used then to justify new decisions that are not very wise so in this particular case if you ask me that it shouldn't be done because it was likely going to be counterproductive had this boomerang effect and you know if you want to look through the history of american foreign policy behavior during the cold war and after you're going to find a lot of dumb things there's no question about it but it's not necessarily in your interest to do something kind of along these lines just because we made a mess years ago absolutely but also you turn out expect the kremlin to be able to predict the. consequences of its actions if we assume that there were kremlin orders for that kind of interference. can you really believe that the comment could have cultural a bit that it would leave to such profound consequences i mean with the whole due

respect of the kremlin i don't think there is such a depth of foretelling now it's a very good point and also you know we use the term as a shorthand but it's not clear at this point that it actually was the crim of mystery ship itself it could have been some other center of power people involved you know working for private companies mostly so do you know the exact words and so that are sort of hard to figure but yeah lack of foresight and you know welcome to the club because you know many countries have misjudged the consequences of their actions in this case. you know it would be nice to ask president putin in a candid moment without you know accepting responsibility for this if if you could run the movie over again the film over again would russia do the same thing and it could well be that the authors of these of this little program wish they had never done it and you will be out of the tunnel with him tomorrow so i'm sure you can try to ask him but the question i want to ask you is whether you see any signs that the

kremlin. has learned anything from that experience even without admitting it because admitting it's usually a difficulty for the crime is that as well you know admitting medicare is hard especially when it's the same people in charge for a very long period of time you've had the same poor mr for fourteen years the same leader for the country for almost twenty years we mean our democracy works differently and we rotate leaders so often the way you get a change in attitude is when a new leader comes in and says i don't want to do it the same old way but it's it's hard when you have somebody in power for so for such a long time. to admit that you made a mistake is something that leaders seldom absolute and even if it out admitting it publicly do you see any south korea correction on the part of the current russian administration well i think perhaps yeah i mean the press reports that i see from american media sources suggest that there's very little going on in relation

to the mid-term elections of the united states. and so maybe we don't have the full information at hand but it sort of looks that way and also russia has i think starting last year also called for you know just discussion of a code of conduct and there are some something that did the americans dismissed out of hand well i guess in under the circumstances yes but it doesn't mean that it's off the agenda forever i mean it's discussable that's a circle to have to take a short break now but we'll get back in just a few moments stay tuned. welcome

back to walter portsmouth timothy colton professor of government and russian studies at harvard university professor colton trumps national security advisor john bolton is expected in moscow within the next few days and the speculation in this country is that he is going to try to explore how macho russia increasing pivot to china could be adjusted or perhaps reversed. how much do you think the

kremlin could accommodate to trump administration on doubt strong. i'm not aware of any information a book the agenda for this meeting that's a closely held secret i guess they'll talk about that but i doubt very much that the american ministration thinks that russia's going to you know quickly reorient its position vis a vis china i soon though also talk about ukraine you know where you know we have the situation kind of heating up in a rather alarming way i have to go quite a number of questions and done before we go there let me ask you one more question about bolton because he is expected to visit a number of former soviet republics which used to be the arena for geo political. contest and between russia and the west has denmark and policy in the eurasia excluding ukraine changed on the charm i don't think it's changed dramatically but i mean a think that we saw. a certain decline in american eagerness to get involved

in these affairs under the obama administration but that then the trend is a direct of course by the ukraine crisis. no but ukraine of course is a very important session and it's it's an area where there's a lot of political pressure on the administration to do things that they might otherwise prefer not to do the reason i ask you that is because since the mind on events in ukraine the if you are there former soviet republics armenia and was best done changed power in one case through democratic pro-democracy protests and my perception is that both russia and the west dealt with those situations very very carefully how do explain that do you think that's an example of lessons learned from the ukrainian crisis well i don't know about the change of power in his breakfast and i mean it happened when the leader you know at this prime minister replaced him it's more i think the change in policy program on the part of the new leader replacement itself was kind of a nonevent but yes i mean. i think russia's stakes are much higher than american

stakes in the generally russia has been you know. making no one favorable comments about this sort of mini person and that's that sensible i'd say the more interesting case though as you mentioned is our media so you know there's a learning maybe on on several sides the united states seem to have been minimum minimally involved in this whole process process russia observed with some anxiety i suppose but it in the end didn't interfere moreover the army since themselves i think. agreed that the last thing they wanted to do under the circumstances was provoke russia and so i don't know where armenian foreign policy will eventually end up but it's certainly you know they've been careful to to maintain sort of a good tone with with. with moscow and so there's indication here learning that all sides basically are media there is another point which is that the government that was overthrown and actually managed to get russian approval for signing

a significant agreement with the e.u. so it's not an association agreement actually it's not a full scale thing that the georgians and ukrainians are but nonetheless it is significant and it it seems to demonstrate that there are people now in the e.u. as well as in moscow as in russia who see and maybe even welcome the idea that countries can choose to be at home in both of these worlds and don't have to make a black and white choice now. let me ask you about it's ukraine specifically in your book on their regions of that crisis you talk about russia's proclivity to conflate geopolitics and geo ideas and i think during the events in two thousand and fourteen to be it was so russia came up with its own geo idea of the russian walt the concept that it may be force now it's a content with. because there is a real threat all of the russian orthodox church is being taken over either by

nationalists or expropriate or is of a different kind. you mean in eating you crave what do you think russia would loath more at this point to disarm did the russian world in ukraine or not to decide it or person putin made a statement on this last saturday after a meeting of the security council and the wording was somewhat analogous to the wording that was used during the korean crisis twenty fourteen so this isn't precedent i don't think they have a plan or much of a strategy at their root they're reacting to events. you know the ukrainians the government person going his people have said repeatedly that they are opposed to. the physical takeover of moscow peter people they were opposed before and there were incidences there were a look i mentioned there will be but i think they'll be rolled to the low profile and probably mostly in western ukraine. so i think what russia will do at the

outset at least is is you know caution moderation and hope for the best maybe in russia described this efforts to grant ukraine its own independent orthodox church as an exception they see a war that many in the west use in relation to russia's take over crimea do you see that as it geopolitical quid pro quo do you think there is any relation between these two bands. i don't know i hadn't really thought about a parallel of that kind. mean it's it is you know it's a significant blow there are some who say that you know the the wise thing to do probably would have been to concede this way back in the one nine hundred ninety s. when it would not have been such a high conflict situation and then to probably to develop pretty good relations with you know a lot of selfless ukrainian church for the way did very very late and now it's coming you know in a somewhat calamitous and by oh by days you mean the ukrainians of the russians because obviously it's not. the russians who i initiate in this process right now know that i mean there was a you know

a an element in orthodoxy in ukraine which one of the autocephaly from the. beginning and they approached constantinople and consent to noble wouldn't move because of moscow's objection so the idea is if russia had not objected so strongly in the one thousand nine hundred might have happened in a calmer way why do you see that issue has a reason now and not four years ago by dr in the middle of a pretty contentious and still inconclusive presidential campaign. i mean i think it's political no question about it i mean the problem the the the problem or the challenge has been there for you know almost thirty years so why didn't happen though i think persian course or political advantage to himself but then you know he said from their point of view i suppose the normal politician. but it's clearly led to the to the elections next year i don't think there's any doubt about it now six months before the elections ukraine already has five declared and more than a dozen of presumed presidential candidates many of whom have higher approval

ratings than the incumbent president do you think the specter of the so-called russian aggression that person could definitely relies on politically speaking it can't tame the should only vibrant political competition in that country i think you give him an edge and i think he has an edge also from the fact that he's held this office for five years and things are so unstable and so unsettled in ukraine that people will. you know coalesce around a leader who can provide a measure of stability that's essentially what happened in twenty fourteen we know that from survey evidence. something they forty percent of his voters said that a key reason that they voted for him was that they wanted somebody to win in the first round and not go to a second round of the election they wanted things to be settled but it's not to say i'm in ukraine politics is very volatile and ukrainians often you know kind of disrespectful of authority so i don't think it's to be ruled out that you know that he's going to have serious serious trouble and in the second round who would who

would he face he didn't have this problem twenty four. but if you don't give fifty percent which you may not do in the first round you know he who knows the last time we talked you said that there had been the sounds of fatigue and frustration in the west with not only with unocal which obviously but also viktor yushchenko who didn't fully deliver on the reformist agenda how do you think that. is fairing in regard to the west. she tends to get fairly respectful media treatment. but. you know i think that the aside from the relationship with russia. most americans aren't that interested in what happens in ukraine i mean some are of course but it's the story of the church has been on the front pages but the done last for long so it's a kind of. back burner thing i think in american public opinion. and

but to the extent that he has that image i think it's generally positive but hardly you know enthusiastic well i guess the point of my question is that there may be explicitly pro best and candid is there's no pro russian candidate in the campaign right now and there are people like yulia tymoshenko who has connections and there was there there is. mayor who also seems to be pretty liberally minded and it's one thing when you have to kind of choose sympathy it's between path of russia and free loving ukraine but when you have to choose between all nominally pro-west and can do this i think that would be a much more difficult if there is a political crisis in ukraine and other political crisis in two thousand one thousand how do you think the west the united states the europe should should react . well or hurt or think they will react this is a trigger we'll all both reach what i think they should not interfere in the election they should let ukrainians figure it out themselves as to what they will do my guess is that the of the word that will count is stability and i don't think

you're going to see any. lisette acts of favoritism towards the more the more the election is of the contested the greater the chances that somebody else will win and then you'd have to work with the person whom you oppose during the election season so i wouldn't expect very much that is president personally chooses to intensify military tensions on the border in an effort to prop up his electoral chances do you think either the e.u. or the united states may try to dissuade him from doing that. oh i would think so absolutely i think the americans are surely doing that already yeah and you know i can't say what his motive motivation is for doing what he's doing there's an element of frustration i suppose desire to. probe the weakness of the local the two republics that are there which have their own you know internal problems and it's probably related to the delectation season as well but you know it's impossible to

prove that but it is you know there's it's quite volatile i mean it's this is potentially very big trouble your book has been translated into russia and it's been very well received here at least in policy circles. how do you estimate it sounds if you're having to write another book on the on the end of the ukrainian crisis i guess that's the point summarizing of all of my questions. well i certainly hope it's not necessary i think though that. you know we are at a time when when things in eurasia are are changing and where new alignments are coming into view that we don't on the inside understand all that terribly well so i think to continue to write about that would be would be a very interesting challenge and i'm thinking about things like the role of china the evolution of russia's attitude towards autonomy in the part of some of these countries. religious factors you know it's things are things are changing well professor colten thank you very much for being with us today that i hope the of old

grant us and other interview when you have something you'd say anchors our view. just to keep this conversation going on our social media pages and hope to see you again same place same time here and all to part. with more make this manufactured consent to stupidity of public wealth. when the ruling classes protect themselves. when the crime larry go around to be the one person.

we can all middle of the room signals. i mean real news is real. you'll still persist shouldn't be d.h. chooses the border to. fill in the stool shooting if you can do it you just have supporters displaced you speak to survivors of the tragic attack in the crimean city of courage those who've lost loved ones but says three days of mourning begin for those killed and injured in the shooting and bomb attack at a college a warning you may find the following for tips disturbing. the city grieves chilling similarities are drawn to the columbine massacre in the u.s. almost two decades ago which took fifteen lives. and.