those are from will be back in let's say thirty minutes and thirty seconds. hello and welcome to cross for all things considered i'm peter lavelle donald trump's second state of the union address was conspicuously light when it came to foreign policy why is this was his aim to avoid disappointing his base while at the same time wishing not to spar with the deep state but are these mixed signals all about is an elaborate strategy or an indication of indecisive.

in u.s. foreign policy i'm joined by my guest brian becker in washington he's the director of the answer coalition is well as host of loud and clear daily new show on radio scruton and also in washington we have john city leaders he is a political strategist and trilogy advisors and in auburn we cross the lou rockwell he is a political analyst at lou rockwell dot com all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate brian let me go to you first this kind of throw my introduction again trump wasn't really heavy. on the foreign policy though i had to give him kudos i thought it was a very conciliatory. address considering it came from donald trump but let's stay with foreign policy he didn't talk much about it is it because he didn't want to disappoint his base and he didn't want to spar with the deep state which he's had a lot of problems with even individuals very close to him in his own administration and i'm talking specifically one instance like. taking troops out of syria and

afghanistan what was your take go ahead brian. well the foreign policy part of this speech came after. i think an hour in ten minutes that was a long speech was like an hour and twenty three hour and twenty four minutes so yeah it was stocked at the end with foreign policy issues that had to do with syria had to do with afghanistan had to do with korea iran russia important big issues but again as you said peter they came very towards the end of the speech and not too long on it i think that i think the sotto speech the state of the union address was basically the kickoff of donald trump's two thousand and twenty action campaign this election will not be decided on foreign policy issues and as a consequence he focused on two things he focused on immigration because that's the play to his political base and also he's trying to present the democratic party as socialist which is kind of silly but may work as a political electoral device because it's the bernie sanders wing of the democratic

party that could actually defeat donald trump competing with him for some of the same voters so he's trying to ostracize socialism he resolved that america will never become a socialist country which i don't think any president in recent history has has said to the american people we reject the road of socialism it wasn't really on the table but nonetheless i think parts of the foreign policy speech were significant he said the u.s. is leading in syria he wrongly claimed credit for the defeat of isis that wasn't the american presence he said the u.s. was going to negotiate with the tele band he said he spoke positively about the televisions desire for peace that shows a desire on the white house on the part of the drug white house to actually end the war in the case of venezuela he's like i'm naming the new president of venezuela. of course the u.s. government does not have that right oh i can tell how it works in the case of all i can say is bad habits. indeed i mean that's the part of the

continuity of the tribe administration american. residents have been overthrowing other sovereign governments were a larry long time that's not something new ok john let me go to you let me quote president trump a few lines from his address here foolish wars politics and ridiculous partisan investigations are the only obstacles to the miracle of american economic growth and he went on to say if there's going to be peace and legislation there must not be war and investigation it doesn't just doesn't work that way i find that even of kind of us. a mix salad of a lot of different things simultaneously at the same time go ahead john. well i think one of the reasons why the president kept the foreign policy and national security aspects of the speech towards the latter part is because the astonishing success of his economic policies have largely gone on mentioned in u.s. media that's been focused on

a whole host of so-called scandalous activity none of which has come to fruition and which really doesn't exist and so he's taken the time to remind or to inform most americans that in fact the economy is red hot as he described it we have a record low unemployment not only on a national level but for important constituencies that have suffered from high unemployment or from high from high unemployment in prior years and also the fact that this is really a middle class and working class issue for the american people and i think you really want to emphasize that more than anything else so this is where i think the priority is in most american voters as most of voters in most countries around the world care primarily about their standard of living about their quality of life yes they want to know that their country is safe from enemies abroad and close to home and that's why i think it was prioritize the way that it was but the bulk of this is going to be on what the president is trying to do and what he has accomplished

and will try to continue to accomplish and to minimize a lot of these distractions that the media here. has largely focused on but have kept many voters uninformed about the tremendous economic progress of the last two years well john i absolutely agree with you on that i mean the reporting it's almost nonexistent ok but let me go to auburn lou i still i still want to stay with the foreign policy thing here because i think it was intentional because trump has got found himself in a lot of hot water with people very very close with him contradicting him interpretating his words shifting policy this syria is the perfect example at the end of december or getting out of syria and then you have a pump a zero in bolton going on middle east who are saying well it's not really exactly what he means he kind of means this or that i mean basically putting words in the president's mouth and the reason why mention this because there is a part of his base that want these foreign morse that come to an end and he's trying to honor that while at the same time meddling in the affairs of venezuela in

the most obtrusive in well an amazingly transparent way it's a he and i mean this is a coup that is being just advertised. in broad daylight go ahead lou and we don't want to when it comes to syria he said he's going to get the troops out but when he was at the apac meeting in washington he said i'm not going to get the troops out they need to be there to protect israel from iran a course of the next and whatever they might whatever that means you know i even a statement of the great nations don't fight endless wars as you can salmon a role more britain or for that matter american history but i wonder very interesting thing when they when the cameras panned to the generals after he made that comment they were looking at him with pure hate so i thought if he had any brains he would get rid of these generals and promote more pro peace or at least non war mongering guys from lower in the ranks because these generals with their

gigantic number of decorations i guess cell phone. decorations hate his guts they hate the idea of peace they hate the idea of any kind of good talk with anybody and as long as they're there seems to be that's a huge problem for him not only bolton not only the civilian people in the white house but the military people too ok you know the interesting thing is when we mention bolton and pompei oh ok i think it's quite clear that they are. interventionist to the core. have a very deep and abiding respect for american exceptionalism but donald trump is america first can they co-exist can they can they work together because the more you think about it the more they're very contradictory go ahead. yeah well you see in the case of korea let's turn to korea for instance i mean donald trump is personally committed i believe to coming up with a peace deal with the d.p. r. k.

and he said the second summit if it wasn't for trump himself and i'm not a fan of trump but if it wasn't for trump himself this process would not be going forward because it's not just bolton it's the entire political establishment here in washington democrat and republican and the military that's actually against a peace deal in korea there they prefer the status quo it provides a pretext for endless spending it's not just endless war but endless spending of american tax dollars on military things and of and of course it projects american power into south korea in a very direct way with thirty thousand u.s. troops that continue to occupy the country trump wants this deal though now bolton has tried to sabotage it he said in the beginning remember he said well libya should be the model for the day. that ended up with the execution of the head of state so so then the d.p. r. k. canceled the next meeting and i think then trump intervene and said look we're

going to actually go along with the d.p. r. k. posture on negotiations which means de. nuclearization comes as a as a process as a step by step negotiating pattern and that while the north korea offers concessions the u.s. must do the same there must be a process leading to a first the normalization of relations the end of the korean war and then the talk about real denuclearization you can't ask north korea did this arm and at the same time refuse to end the war from one thousand fifty to fifty three nobody disarms when a war is still happening the only way you start to reduce weapons is if you say peace is coming and trump appears to have accepted this notion which i think is key to having a changed relationship on the korean peninsula between the two koreas and between the u.s. and north korea just reflect upon that there because this is foreign policy team and will use the example of the korean peninsula they want their own president to

succeed. first of all let me just offer a different premise for this larger discussion if i might peter go ahead the reason that countries such as china and russia and iran countries that are opposed to u.s. national interests on a global scale have been able to prosper over the last twenty five to thirty years is that the u.s. taxpayer expense for a navy that's provided open shipping lanes for commerce for trade for relations under a rules based order that seems to be appended by a number of powers around the world and so young heroes understood something that was so little caesar has to be how you want to be. the leader of the decision to be that's that's rules space that's really i think the destruction of libya where you a little things like your. brain is a well presence in syria that's the correct international norms i'm sorry that doesn't make any sense we can devote hours to each of these issues all i want to

present is a different premise jim but your other panelists have that's all for the way the international order has been able to prosper including for countries that remain adamantly opposed to u.s. national interest to have put it out there for the right of the us our north korea really i think which you know where it's going to be one way or another a guy how do i have to go to a hard break here after a short break we'll continue our discussion on u.s. foreign policy stay with. me just manufacture consent to stick to the public will. when the ruling classes protect themselves. with the flames there we go

round this. be the one percent. we can all middle of the room six. million. this is a sticker from a water bottle found in the stomach of a fish the brand is part of the coca-cola company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the idea was that let's tell consumers they're the bad ones they're the litterbugs they're throwing this away industry should be blamed for all of this waste the company has long promised to reuse the plastic. there's. a special projects funded. on the. team but for now the mountains of waste only grow higher.

welcome back across like we're all things are considered i'm discussing u.s. foreign policy. ok let's go back to john in washington i want to reiterate that i do agree with the what you said you know we get out very long discussions on the nature of the international order but i would like to focus trumps foreign policy and the obstacles he faces because i think there is no doubt you know you have both houses of congress passing a non-binding resolutions but very public but they do. i want the president to have

his own foreign policy and hemming him in all the way around now i don't like all of those ideas but there are certain parag the president has traditionally anyway and there's a good part or some part of his political base that supports that that's why they voted for him so it seems to me there's an unprecedented move to box in a president not to move towards peace go ahead john. that's a very important point that you raise peter and look there's a healthy debate inside the republican party about how activist the foreign policy of the united states should be and there are many people unfortunately for them today in washington d.c. republicans who are known as never trumper so about one hundred fifty or so who signed the famous letter in march of two thousand and sixteen denouncing then candidate donald trump as a potential president of the united states and they're all outside the box now with really no role to play directly in the formulation of u.s.

foreign policy but the debate is taking place between the white house and the senate and house leadership but i think more importantly among the american people many of whom are tired as the president stated of endless wars the president's a businessman he's not a typical politician and his mind you start a project and you finish it you don't just have it going on continuously if there's no end in sight however he is very clear that he is going to be maintaining a presence in the middle east not so much for israel alone but really because the u.s. considers iran to be a major national security threat so even with this a healthy debate about syria and afghanistan there's very little debate about the trump administration's policies against iran ok so lou what is the national security risk that the united states faces from iran because i hear it all the time but no one has ever given me anything and they did give me evidence go ahead it's just it's justifying imperialism is just is just baloney or iran is a is a small poor country it's got

a lot of people but economically they're small they're militarily small but israel wants to destroy them this is what this is why trump is keeping his troops in syria so you so he said a pact so i think. you know iran is no threat to anybody. poor iran i mean they just they're they haven't they invaded anybody recently i mean this is unlike the u.s. they're not an aggressive power the u.s. of course invades all over the were. world of how many millions of people by the way has the us killed over all the centuries and its all its wars occupations its invasions it's horrific and we're supposed to believe that the u.s. of course is maintaining an international rules based order just out of the goodness of its heart not because it and of course that's why it's and should be in control of the south china sea and every other place in the world every other water piece of water in the world so this is this is just propaganda some of us thought that president trump would be

a different kind of president. i'd love to see it i hope he actually takes the troops out of syria hope he makes peace in afghanistan and gets the heck out of there and stop killing people there i hope he gets out of iraq although course israel doesn't want him getting out of iraq and they want to also not want to get out of syria because they want to keep intro all of the golan heights without without any problem so. i am afraid that his the fact that he owes so much to sheldon adelson and other huge donors of his means maybe he's not going to do this as to the never trump or as he told us he would never have. any of these sorts of people in his administration there they are there or they're all over the place so is he weak. does he is he actually a phony i don't know i'd love to see him do do something he is the president he could actually tell the middle harry to get out of syria you can tell them to get out of afghanistan and of the only negotiation it needs is to ask the taliban don't

harry our troops as we move out which they would be happy to agree to same in syria so. and also of course south korea would like us out of south korea yet they don't the many south korean prime ministers have not wanted the us in south korea the present one doesn't want to hear us works very hard to keep that from happening wants to occupy south korea and it's very expensive terrible it's a terrible thing the u.s. should get out of south korea let's south korea north career you know shape their own get out themselves and they're actually doing that they act you know brian what was your reaction to elliott abrams being made a point man for preventives whalen i mean i'm glad i wasn't sitting on a. barstool because i probably would have hurt myself because it was i was astounded stunned what was your reaction. well elliott abrams appointment

was a clear signal from the trumpet ministration in. from bolton and they all go back a long time i mean elliott abrams is a convicted felon he lied to congress he violated u.s. laws to maintain the iran contra arms sales to counter revolutionary somoza national guardsmen who functioned as the as the security forces for the somoza dictatorship before the revolution in seventy nine elliott abrams has been carrying out and exercising regime change options in latin america he's a main primary hawk to overthrow the the cuban government you had john bolton at the same time talking about the church the troika of tyranny reminding us of ronald reagan's axis. the evil empire and george w. bush's axis of evil in two thousand before the invasion of iraq elliott abrams is a clear signal that the us is probably going to go to war against venezuela especially if they're cool plans don't work out i believe that's what's on the

agenda. elliott abrams is there for one purpose and one purpose alone and that's to initiate a confrontation with venezuela that's very dangerous even though the venezuelan government is mired in a profound economic crisis and facing enormous economic sanctions the people of venezuela including many people in the opposition don't fancy a war they don't fancy the united states dictating who their government's going to be they don't look kindly at the right wing colombian government with its paramilitaries beginning to carry carrying out skirmishing activities which will be a pretext at the border that's very very serious this could blow up in the united states mexico bolivia of course cuba our standing with venezuela de lima group is basically functioning as a proxy or as an extension of american power again the u.s. has no legal right to carry out the overthrow of a sovereign government you know when when venezuela has elections in the in the

opposition wins the government recognize. is that when the when the government wins which is more frequently the opposition always says it's fraud and becomes a pretext for us and to avoid they just don't participate john i mean if we if there is a impending intervention into been is way lower would it be wise to ponder the interventions of afghanistan of iraq of syria of libya throwing the overthrowing the legal government in ukraine it didn't work out too well for half of the country at least here i mean is there any ever any introspection or is it it's do they think that you know this time it will be different how many times can you say that and think it might happen go ahead john i don't envision any type of military intervention in the crisis in venezuela so matter of fact your other panelist mentioned earlier group it's unfortunate that he denigrated the good diplomatic efforts of many latin american countries to try to achieve a peaceful resolution of the crisis in venezuela and the united states is working

with most of its latin american allies and now with key european union countries to try to see if there's a peaceful transition away from unfortunately for the panelists a fraudulent government and while sangria them how is that going if pretty democratic but i want to say how does that move the peace process is dead maybe you had sanctions and you threaten even more saying let's go ahead may i may i finish what i'm just reading the reaction to. this letter just all options are on the table john finish go ahead john. when a democratic process is approved by cuba i think we have to question whether or not that process is truly democratic so let's just put things in proper diplomatic and political context here i think the us is very much concerned about a tremendous spillover into countries in latin america with potentially three million or so of venezuelan refugees on top of the refugees that have already fled the utter destitution of the country that has been so poorly done and why they left

the united. center that make that poor except when she said even worse in the more sanctions the worse it is ok i'm not going to i'm not going to be an apologist for the government's economic planning i think they've made a lot of mistakes ok and corruption is also there well but i mean when you when you're sanctioning country you're intentionally hurting the average person because you know as well as everyone else watching this program sanctions don't really hurt the elites it hurts the average person and how many times in recent memory at least i can think of one where the people rose up ok because of that no they usually hunker down and that's when it gets dangerous and that's where everything is on the table still so can you explain to me how this cried over and over again strategy ever works because it doesn't go ahead jump on a case by case basis there's always a healthy debate to be had as to whether or not sanctions are going to be effective based on the conditions in that particular country and venezuela my own sense is

the reason that the trumpet ministration and in many ways from a bipartisan consensus is taking these sanctions approach is to ensure that the people of venezuela know that the united states is not enabling the regime of nicolas maduro to continue to govern that country fortunately and corruptly ok i just are buying them i'm sure ok but i don't i know you know i don't understand any their own government is starving them their own government is starving them ok honestly you know they make sure you know i say you will be created to early age there's no. if they lose their you know medicine just the way ok i'm going to go do a little jumping out of forty five seconds i want to lou to have the last word please let me let lou have the last word lou. and be that it is wayland government . the yellow face of the yellow vests to become president of france i think you know given the precedent the united states is said to venezuela why not well i myself would like to see the old vets take over for x.

but that's that's the a separate topic but of course the u.s. ever since president rose asserted control over latin america it controls it and this is only the beginning by the way there are a lot of other countries in the latin america the u.s. would like to overthrow their governments u.s. is always overthrowing governments and one of the tools is of course allegedly sanctions but the sanctions again yes you're exactly right they hurt regular people i think that these these people like elliott abrams enjoy hurting people they enjoy starving people just like the generals enjoy killing people ok these are under these on the area on that you know general ham we have run out of time here many thanks to my guests in washington and in auburn and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.t.c. next time and remember crosstalk.

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