Skip to main content

tv   Cross Talk  RT  February 19, 2020 11:00pm-11:31pm EST

11:00 pm
manhunt is underway in germany off their 8 people are killed and several injured in to drive by shootings. turkey's president says it's a matter of time before his country launches a military operation in the syrian province of his live something moscow has described as he was the case the no. instant amount. to so-called islamic separatism in some french 15th ahead of next month's election . latest on these stories had to come stay with us now to.
11:01 pm
a low and welcome to crossfire for all things considered i'm peter lavelle the atlantic alliance the bedrock of the post world war 2 global security order is slowly but surely unraveling more and more often washington and brussels diverged on important foreign policy issues today europe has a choice to defend its interests or fade into oblivion. crosstalk in the atlantic alliance i'm joined by my guest mark allman in oxford he's the director of the crisis research institute in london we have jonathan steele he's an international affairs commentator also in london we have. he is founder of a consulting and foreign affairs analyst all right gentlemen cross-like rules. in
11:02 pm
fact that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate mark let me go to you 1st here let me just read you 2 quotes here of number one foreign minister lavrov played in munich saying quote change course speak for it's too late and we have the new head of the european union's foreign policy arm he he also says europe must develop quote appetite for power in the trump era they're both hinting at the same thing in different directions here what does that tell you better change course before it's too late what's that mean to you. i think certainly the tensions between russia and the west in general are really probably tensions in russia in the united states and we can see that actually inside the european union and the european members of nato there are quite sharp divisions between the east european states who live with historical enmity and resentments against both russia imperial russia and the soviet union and then the west european
11:03 pm
states including germany france and so on for whom a russian threat doesn't really exist anymore but who are paying a price through sanctions and economic losses for the grand a strategy of the united states to keep russia in its box and so there is a tension about where you're going to go because if this situation of a new cold war between russia and america continues is your really benefiting from that you know if it isn't which europeans are going to make and yeah i mean just to decide to move in a slightly different direction marc makes a very good point i mean that the tensions are primary between the united states and russia and europe as usual finds itself in the middle with a mixture as marx pointed out here but that is not a proper way forward that is that that is paralysis and as i said in my interrupted introduction they have to start defending their interests or they're really going to become irrelevant because we have the rise of china the closer relationship between moscow and beijing where is europe in all of this go ahead jonathan. well i
11:04 pm
think i'm glad you mentioned china because i think one of the main factors is the munich security conference i mean they're trying to develop a new people in washington trying to develop a new cold war this time with china as the enemy as well as russia and it was important to the chinese foreign minister came and responded in reacted quite severely against most united states had been sorry i mean europe does not want to get involved in a russian incident american crusade against china europe must stand free from the bottom that's why it's important britain has agreed to take away technology for its 5 g. networks isn't going to be intimidated to a blow to the united states to give up on that. we've already seen when we look at the iran policy that the trumpet ministration with substantially and i'll use the word blackmailing european car automotive producers to put a tax tariff on their cars if they don't toe the line i mean jonathan says you know they're there they're bucking that trend but i mean it gets kind of leads into
11:05 pm
where i want to go in the rest of the program is that you know the u.s. still has that so many levers and coercive levers against europe but they don't toe the line go ahead in london. thank you thank you for mentioning this and thank you for all the previous partners that you mentioned china because as we know it was not about russia it was about the china we know that. there are realistic foreign policy thinkers in the united states including john mearsheimer who was present in 2015 and my very own university in poland you know you don't university told us about this very moment that we have the right where the unit european countries and china. in one bed when it comes to trade and investment so it will cause of friction as we know that as we look at the democrats both on both sides democrats and republicans the prime goal for the united states to contain china and
11:06 pm
china is the number one. objective will start to dig somehow. problem for the united states and as. told to the audience in my alma mater the university is russia will become part of balancing coalition so i don't understand why the united states is somehow. both china and russia but in my opinion it might cause slightly different effect same as with sanctions on russia for the ukrainian crisis which was according to john. very famous a realistic thinker course on the side of the. on the west not on. i mean you could also throw in these a antagonizing russia and china but mark antagonizing europe is well ok that that's
11:07 pm
my point right here out there and this is in this is why i'm doing this program because i think the transatlantic experience is being seriously 10. here because i would make the argument at least 100 trump they're more interested in trade there are interested in europe i energy policy and oh ok you have to buy all these arms because you know they're there they're important to american politics but they don't see it as a security threat this is this is a gambit for resources and denying trade to others this is what this is about and europe is being tested here go ahead mark you know i think if we can historically really from the marshall plan and post war more war policy towards western europe the united states had to deal with the european allies that in many ways who are now as we do well economically the political line and so there was a cost benefit to both sides now trump and pompei are basically saying to the europeans you got to pay out perfectly and there's no more free rides but want to
11:08 pm
say that no more free rides people don't have to assemble is one of the costs of having normally when we get more able what do we get for that exactly what's that return for them. if i can i jump in and so go ahead to the point if you're going to jump in like tell you i'm sure that all the panelists have noticed that europe is divided between all europe and new europe and when i write an article $42017.00 addressing this issue it is to calls down to the baltic pipeline and the revenge and the revived a sentiment in the eastern part of europe which was somehow colonized by disorder union and as we can see german french and other western nations are reluctant to previous commentators rightly said to participate in that because they are realistically assessing the cost of this participation of oil and also the moral
11:09 pm
cost of participating in the iraq war but eastern european countries are driven by slightly different parameters and as i said when it comes to the whole stream too we can see that the american government of the american administration is heavily subsidizing the pop pipeline invented by the polish government and in 2017 we know that the 1st transit of ellen g. gas was delivered to show you know we share in more than poland and board by the state owned oil and gas company called p n g n g so we know that trump displaying the. hoax in the united states you know driving a wedge between the old europe and new year old and new europe is willing to spend more money on american natural gas than in russia and that's really logical in these these times of austerity jonathan i mean the crux of the whole thing is that the european union are we can just say europe geographically cannot have
11:10 pm
a coherent trade in foreign policy if they're not united and i can't see how they're going to get united in light of what we just heard about the new europe go ahead jonathan you know i agree. real chance of unifying foreign policy in spite of the fact aspires to be one but i mean i think we have to look to mark ronson inside of us to some extent because micros the only current leader of a major country in europe has the courage to say we need dialogue with russia russia is part of our geography russia is part of our history we have to have good relations with russia and he's trying to find some kind of independent foreign policy initiatives to bring russia into the picture and sanctions on russia because of ukraine etc and defies the united states or macro as the great white hope i think for the european union's efforts to create more independence and more even i would say resistance to the united states well it's interesting market now that we're on the crown it seems to me that he what he weighs emulating the goal
11:11 pm
essentially that's what he wants to do goal is that his return to france but will it work and or this guy go ahead. work out i think to some extent it's opportunistic but then that's the reality of all politics any successful politician moves with the time see which way forces are going and recognizes that his domestic difficulties means that he has to in a sense distance himself from being seen as a classic globalist and a list reorientation of french foreign policy which has economic benefits would also perhaps help him in his reelection bid so there's a rational self interest the really interesting case is going to be britain i think because with britain leaving the is britain going to become completely reorientated towards the anglosphere and become even closer to the united states it's been already or they're all reports obviously that boris johnson had a row with trump over huawei that are further reports that maybe the chinese will be invited to save our ridiculous expensive high speed rail way project because at least they will build it in 5 years or older than 25 years and so we're beginning
11:12 pm
to see even between the british and americans or certain divisions between our natural tendency to be politically aligned and the economic interests which are increasingly diverging and including not least the. you can only benefits of trade with china which we're china is not perceived as a threat to britain in the way that the united states sees around the pacific rim china is a threat to its traditional role in that whole region ok jonathan 30 seconds before we go to the break can they be that compromising middle europe when it comes to china and the united states go ahead. we're going to should certainly try. can be vindication certain to try. to have good relations with russia china. well the interesting question is to be an honest broker i mean on the one hand i think that's what we would all like and that certainly would be in europe's interest but you would have. probably both the united states and china at the same time it seems like a lose lose situation and we'll discuss that more in the 2nd half of the program
11:13 pm
we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the atlantic alliance stayed with. or. intentions of i think a true. christian and maybe even 40 years ago. simply evaporated. it seems to me. thanks.
11:14 pm
please. list
11:15 pm
celebs. looked. very well now continue watching on since last. welcome to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing the atlantic alliance. because i could really in london you know i find it was a few months ago i found it. amusing that the new york times would write an editorial that trump probably should consider improving relations with russia which you know after all we've been through with this ridiculous hoax and the
11:16 pm
demonization of anyone that has you know if you have russian. solid solace you know you're suspect somehow. making light of something that is very serious here but you know you having some you know the new york times saying you know maybe trump should consider doing that because of the embrace with china i mean this has been going on for years now that that horse has left the barn i mean i find it astounding that the political establishment is saying well maybe we should reconsider i mean decisions have already been made and the reason why i'm mentioning that because europe is going to have to make that decision because it's so to divide it internally it's never going to be able to sit down and choose one side of the other and i think it's going to be the net loser in all of this here but going back to some of the things that you know as mark was saying you know with the way history holds europe back when i look at the baltic republics and poland and all that when
11:17 pm
the future is screaming forward at you at high speed and i think europe is going to be left to the to the side because it really is the united states china with the chinese russian lions and it is an alliance now go ahead and rail in london well i totally agree with. this is even from the political point of view the. realists in in europe know the sea powers like britain and united states have slightly different interests when it comes to. the future or the well being of the land powers including hands europe china and russia but we have to bear in mind that european peons were quite reluctant and lazy after the 2nd world war in you know taking their own matters in their own hands they somehow took the back seat and they were silent observers all for what their leader in the western
11:18 pm
hemisphere read united states is doing regardless where the. morally justified or not but somehow now they they see the young generations are quite dispy see with the deadline the leader in the western hemisphere hemisphere is showing to also we have to bear in mind that everyone wants to participate in the great revolution that no logical revolution. historically we know that china never attacked europe so so why we should be afraid of them why the united states is putting so much emphasis on you know blocking who are away from entering the european market market why do offering to subsidize their european competitors read nokia and ericsson it is not a friend or a strictly business no it's not strictly business because you know it's the i'm
11:19 pm
watching wants to determine who has a backdoor into everyone's computer in europe that's what they want big they're afraid of chinese spy no they want to do the spying themselves ok because you know you can trust starts you can transpose the spy on you not those chinese i mean it is so ridiculous and so hypocritical here mark i want you already mentioned something i think is really interesting we. break that how does this the atlantic alliance as we've known it over the decades how does that change because i think you could see you could see europe being alienated by the u.k. if it gets too much into bed with washington and it doesn't matter if trump is president i think people but way too much into that historical trends that are happening it's not that doesn't matter but particularly who is in the white house go ahead mark. no in fact ironically trump in the white house pushes parts of the british government to form still be closer to the european parliament united states
11:20 pm
one could imagine a new american president who follow broad foreign policy consensus with trump has actually as he's always pointed out been tougher on russia tougher on china than his predecessors and so in a sense he set a precedent that will be followed which is indorsed by the foreign policy establishment in the states it's the only area of his policy they support the problem for the british would be that it is awful likely that they're going to be asked to pay an economic price for what in many ways comes culturally and for historical reasons if not for the churchillian romanticism of the transatlantic relationship comes naturally to us and so i think it is likely to be the case that these trends inside continental you countries particularly the west european powers of the to seek to have a more sensitive european centered policy not least because with britain they're going have to pay more for these things the french the germans the dutch and so on will have to pick up the slack so you're going to get a consequence the that in practice will be tensions inside or between the east
11:21 pm
european states that are all very conservative style for historical reasons for russia and also supported by u.s. policy and then these countries we truly are the economic heart and the taxpaying heart the e.u. that will be much more talked about those policies you know i mean big cities. you've already mentioned and i mean i mean people you know i agree i mean part of the cold war settlement you know that europeans would get great trade deals with the united states true and i understand why trump wants to for the perfect sense they're ok but what you get who gets what for what is the question right here and i don't think polities in the powerhouses if you as you put it i don't think they they really have an incentive to spend more why where is the threat who is threatening us i mean of course the you know the phobia. in the u.s. and the u.k. who are well known well known but i don't see in times of austerity what you want to disable or the media keep going yeah the media security threats of course come
11:22 pm
from come from north africa come from the chaos in libya that we helped to cornell's so and so that sense if you will the average french or italian citizen you're more a danger of being killed by weaponry and bombs coming. liberated intervention states where we call scale so that you are from russia or china and that is a big problem in public perception we don't the average person doesn't see what the think tanks see as the sort you know jonathan that jonathan i think one of the interesting things here is that the united states and the atlantic alliance they have gotten so used to having such a heavy damage and having had gemini for the last 7 decades that they don't understand how to reimagine the world that they don't have it and i think it is the lack of imagination and how the world is changing and i think it terrifies them i mean the new cold war with china just look at the rhetoric they go back to the same rhetoric we need to have a cold war we need to have an enemy and the world is evolving so quickly why do you
11:23 pm
necessarily have to have an i mean we have to we could look at the if you're talking about the united states going to europeans and european governments feeling want to come to war with china there's been a very a rift between us and europe on that one wonders me i mean having spoken in the 1st part of the program of our macro during the right thing he's doing the right thing because in the wrong methodology he's still talking about powerful studied using military power he's hinting that knowledge there's only one nuclear power in the european union as a britain sniffed because of bricks and it's very old fashioned 19th century thinking to think about military power being the most important element of the country's foreign policy we need much more soft and i mean speaking up looking for mediation particular in the middle east. i mean moment mark almond mentioned and north africa but what about the central issue of the middle east which is israel palestine i mean trump has just come up with
11:24 pm
a military the most outrageous so-called peace plan and europe has been silent about britain and it has protected us with your and the security council from being criticized we're going to must speak out on the central issue of the middle east which is palestine we must start bringing sanctions to bear against israel responded quote some of the produce of comes near an occupied territories disgruntled should be the year of getting back to the promised time the news from the main issue which infects everything in the middle east you know it's interesting if we go to a drill and i want to on the back of one of jonathan just said there i agree and disagree with jonathan l. quibble and one thing. falling back on these traditional levers of power military but actually i think it's more cynical than that because what you saw at the munich conference is basically the export forcible export of of western values and that forcible export is the military here and i think that that is something that i find the height of hypocrisy is that talking talking about values while maintaining and
11:25 pm
wanting to pursue head gemini and i think that makes those false values you're actually might maintaining a gemini based on things that. are a facade ok you know it's my way or the highway that's what it this is and that's coming to an end they're scared about it go ahead. well. again i agree with you. professor somewhere huntington who has written who wrote a very famous clash of civilizations. said to us the west didn't you know win the war by the superiority of its ideas values or religion it was the superiority of organized violence post on non-western countries that gave the supported superior to the west and as previous commentators rightly said that i
11:26 pm
think we think the united states or the anglo-saxon world is having a slightly heavy mental breakdown from the. perception of the world where the america or the you know some. people aware of the leading force which was you know helping other countries or other nations to somehow stand on the ground and be much more civilized in a brackets as we can see that all civilization caught china is far beyond technologically and that's why we can see people like you know mark zuckerberg participating in. you know when we don't really interesting here is instead of talking about the new cold war it's really the new orientalism at that that's really what it is ok i find it really fascinating because it's inherently racist which of course the west never could claim that it's not races that we shouldn't
11:27 pm
back raises a light the way they look at the entire world is racist how could the chinese run the world oh my goodness you know a nonwhite country having had gemini in the world oh my god you know this is what it's all about nobody wants to admit that we instead what they should do is negotiate in mediate for once and good for. that's all the time we have gentlemen many thanks to my guests in london and in oxford and thanks to our viewers for watching us here see you next time and remember.
11:28 pm
the state television propaganda machine propaganda outlet propaganda tools we are getting information for. you can change the world tomorrow. you tube videos the sleepless night shift today is the longest network. pushing brushes russia russia and russia to say. to the future that they will choose russia to live and i'm really happy to join you see you then on our team. who are so proud and still. are just getting the number.
11:29 pm
why have you not shut down our t.v. on you tube it's a propaganda machine mr walker. i 1st heard about wiki leaks. from the helicopter footsie in iraq. i think that down at people demeaning and i mean u.s. military who have never forgiven him for this guy's a traitor and treasonous and he has broken every law the united states illegally shoots us really historic to have. independent journalist a guy with his computer exposing to see who is what crimes and to a global audience. the idea of developing an anonymous box and
11:30 pm
applying it to a media organization that is what he makes that was the 1st. i didn't the toy anticipate that he would be for a short while world friend and wrote one of the world's most powerful news organizations clearing the standard founder julian a song in the sun over the sun and there was a great deal of jealous in the mainstream towards him particularly why won't he be more like off the bat you seem. sneering feces on the walls. we have giuliani in solitary confinement in the prison for terrorists away team that has a life in pursuit of the person. i don't want to see him die any prison. and i think that's what he's facing.

37 Views

info Stream Only

Uploaded by TV Archive on