woodruff: richard haass, do you agree it puts the nation at risk?well, it's certainly a major loss. he was experienced, hwas sober. he represented, essentially, traditional foreign policy. i'll admit my bias, i think it served this country extraordinarily well for three-quarters of a century, so witht him there, it can't be good. but i also tell you, judy, i wasn't surprised th lt heeft. clearly he calculated quite a while ago that he and t president were not on the same page, they weren't in the same book soetimes. i thought it was a question of when, not if, he decided his being there wasn't making enugh of a difference to justify the price you pay int thand of a position. i think what we saw in the last couple of days was simp inevitable. >> woodruff: given that, leon panetta, was hi better fo to go, given that he could not support the president's policies, or do you think he should have stayed and continued to make the arguments that he was making? >> well, i've had conversations th jim mattis, and i think he knew thaeh would -- he felt his resp

and, richard haass was the director of policy planning at the statdepartment during the george w.h administration. he also served on the national security council staff othe george h.w. bush administration. he is now the president of the council on foreign relations. gentlemen, welcome to you both. it is good to see you. leon panetta, to you first, your etaction when you learned sey mattis resigned. >> i thought it was a sad day for the nation to lose an outstanding defense secretary who is well experienced with regards to national security policy and alo believed ithe basic principles of leadership, of strength, of our alliances, of understanding who our adversaries are, principles that i think have served this cuntry well since world war ii. to lose that experience, to lose somebody wh those principles, i think, increases the danger in this country of not having the ability to deal with a lot of tairng points in the world today, and that concerns me because i think it puts our nati at risk. >> woodruff: richard haass, do you agree it puts the nation at risk? i >> wels certainly

richard haass was on george h.w. bush's national security council as senior director for near eastern affairs, and then director of policy planning at the state department under the younger president bush. he's now the president of the council on foreign relations. ian bremmer is president of the eurasia group. anne-marie slaughter was a director of policy planning but her tenure was under president obama. richard, let me ask you about your former boss. you wrote a wonderful appreciation of him, and you touched on something that i think was the hallmark of bush as a strategist, as a policymaker. which was a certain restraint. he was always able to be restrained, so when everyone was telling him, as he put it, to go and dance on the soviet union's grave, when the soviet union essentially surrendered at the end of the cold war, he was very restrained. he didn't want to rub gorbachev's nose in it. he didn't want to humiliate the russian people. when iraq happens, everybody told him go to baghdad, and he was very restrai

as richard haass frames it, a bad day in politics for what we used to call the west. welcome to "morning joe" on this tuesday, december 11th. joe is off today, but with willie and me, we have mike barnacle, noah rothman, susan dellpercio, richard haass, eugene robinson, as well. richard, let's go right there. are all these crises, if you could speak to them, are they one offs or are are they worldwide populism still burning? >> i wish they were one offs, but at the risk of starting people's day on a downer, this is now part of the new normal. you've got populism of the left, real concerns about inequality, making ends meet. you've got politics to the right against immigration over cultural anxiety and then against a back drop, as i said, what we used to call the west, no consensus and not a lot of will on how to organize the world. so you add this all up, a lack of international cooperation, i never thought when i wrote a book with the word disarray in the title i would be an optimist. guess what, things have turned out worse than i thought. >> is there a way out for

so, you see, our investments across the globe, our stationing of troops -- i'm going to go to richard haass because this is a key point. richard, our investments have been minimal compared to what we as a country have gotten back in terms of strategic importance, in terms of economic benefits, in terms of geopolitical influence which, of course, has driven economic events our direction. these rich countries he's talking about, our gdp dwarfs their economies. so i'm not exactly sure what he is talking about, but whatever it is, it is a theory that is based completely in ignorance. >> joe, the president has a world in which he sees everything in terms of guns versus butter and assumes everything we spend on guns on our role in the world somehow comes out of our own hide and we at home are worst off which as you suggest we're better off because the world is stable, because of the trade relationships, because of the peace, the u.s. economy has grown at a pace over more decades than has ever been the case before. and what's so interesting, even now, if you add up everything the united states is

not with the least of all the media putting workers and those close or it seems from all sides richard haass cloris and richard how did you get to be honest on just another one in western java thank you . now to some of the other stories making news around the world japan says it's withdrawing from the international whaling commission and will resume commercial holds beginning next july says flailing will be limited to its own territorial waters than economics though in japan has long conducted so-called scientific whaling. of the syrian state media says the country's air defenses last night intercepted missiles fired by israeli warplanes images of surface to air missiles near the capital damascus several soldiers were reportedly injures independent observers say israel was targeting an arms death by hezbollah and iranian forces. in mexico a vigil has been house for the governor of state's martha erica alonzo who died in a helicopter crash on christmas day for a husband a prominent senator was also an investigation into the incident is being carried interest. u.s. immigration authorities say

to help make sense of all of this i want to bring in richard haass.aas was director of policy planning in the state department under george w. bush, he is the president on the council of foreign relations and the author of "a world in disarray." richard, let's first talk about the process here because my suspicion is that james mattis has always known that he and trump had disagreements but that he felt like on the issue of syria and maybe afghanistan he had gone to the president a year ago, he had gotten authorization for a new policy, 2,000 troops, more use of bombs, remember trump used to boast about how they were using bigger bombs in syria, and that they had informed the rest of the world, allies, et cetera, and it's the way in which this policy was just upended with no process, no strategy, no informing allies. my gut is that some part of it was just the chaos of policy making that has gotten to james mattis. >> i think so and i think he made the calculation all along that he was never going to agree with everything. he was traditional and mr. t

as richard haass frames it, a bad day in politics for what we used to call the west. is off today, but with willie and me, we have mike barnacle, noah rothman, susan dellpercio, richard haass, eugene robinson, as well. richard, let's go right there. are all these crises, if you could speak to them, are they one offs or are are they worldwide populism still burning? >> i wish they were one offs, but at the risk of starting

let's talk about all of this with richard haass, he is the president of the council on foreign relationsef middle east and south asia adviser of the white house national security council under president george h.w. bush. good morning, richard. >> good morning, alisyn. >> what is the upshot of g20? what came out of it from where you watched? >> the actual g20 accomplishes almost nothing. it's a meeting. there is no real follow-up, it's not an organization or an institution, the communiquÉ was a piece of swiss cheese, with big holes in it. what's really important about the g20 it's an occasion for people to have one-on-one meetings, in this case the most important meeting was between the president of the united states and the president of china and the absence of meetings between the president of the united states and either mr. putin or the crown prince of saudi arabia. >> et cetera will talk about this because here is your tweet, you said this is a pattern to the foreign policy of trump. we have seen it with north korea, nafta and now china. he creates a sense of crisis, compromises, and

president of the council on foreign relations and the author of the book "a world in disarray", richard haass, jon meachum is with us, he is an nbc news and msnbc contributor, nbc news chief foreign affairs correspondent and host of "andrea mitchell reports," andrea mitchell is here, and columnist and associate editor for the "washington post" david ignatius as well. joe, wow, what a stark contrast between h.w.'s legacy and the news we have today. >> well, it is, and it did, it did seem to become starker every time you saw stories about george w. bush -- george h.w. bush and the life that he lived. i will say that it's almost as if bush 41 inspired this president to even move beyond his own boundaries that he showed the first two years by delivering to this country and the world a statement upon george h.w. bush's passing that was graceful and was presidential and quite frankly what's been lacking a bit in the past. i want to talk to jon meachum who on wednesday will be eulogizing george h.w. bush and who spoke about him yesterday at the national cathedral. you know, jon, we to talk about wha

richard haass, president of the council on foreign relationsjoins us from new york. he doesn't feel thishould be america's fight. he doesn't feel it has been appreciated. it is time for others to take over and stop being the policeman of the middle east. maybe what he means is whether it is going to work against his own narrow interest. we a re going to work against his own narrow interest. we are not particularly doing anything costly. it is hardly responsible for the american deficit. if things go bad there, if isis regroups, which it will, any defeat has been temporarily. they will be constitute themselves. despite possible that us interest will suffer. that is not good for rebuilding american society, poor quality of life, for prosperity and security of americans. even by the president's own metrics, this is not a smart move. we had vladimir putin there. he wasn't quite licking his lips, but he may as well have been doing so. whatever the president says, it does seem to play for russia. this is a win for them. they have already been winning in syria and this is another chapter of it.

richard haass, columnist and associate editor for "the washington post" david ignatius and former u.s. attorney for the northern district of alabama and an msnbc contributor joyce vance. >> so when we've been talking about how the institutions will hold up the institutions will be just fine. we've talked about the justice department, we've talked about congress, we've talked about a lot of other things. the federal judges, our judicial system, and, willie, yesterday you had a federal judge whose job was to follow the law. so, you know, i really don't care what the president of the united states is saying. i don't care what the pundits are saying. i don't care what the world is saying. we're going to look at this case. we're going to look at what he did and he's going to face justice. and, boy, this reagan appointee, later elevated by george h.w. bush showed what judicial independence means from the threats of a president and the threats from, you know, commentators on tv of and radio. >> much to the frustration of president trump, these people continue to do their jobs. judges, prosec

as richard h haass. a bad day as far as politics for what we used to call the west.ullivan, new york magazine. because he has an accent, we've decided you're an expert on western civilization. i tease. you've spent a lot of time about u.k. politics in general. what is -- brexit was sort of the first shot, right, of this populus war. trump was the second shot. macron, in some ways, the rise of his election was the third shot, and yet it all seems more unstable today than it was before the brexit vote. >> yeah, i think what's really lying behind this, there are many things lying behind it, one is the global capitalism isn't working for most people in the west. that's as simple as that. people have stopped -- their living standards have failed to rise. the wealthy under global near liberal economics has grown incredibly wealthy. at some point something is going to snap. regular middle class people don't want to live their lives this way and secondly, i think, globalization kind of over reached. i mean, simple statistic. in 2015 more people immigrated to the united kingd

john highlyman, republican strategist susan delpercio, author of the book "a world in disarray" richard haass, editor of commentary magazine and columnist new york post john pedoritz, now chief international and security diplomacyist james stevritis and former u.s. ambassador to nato, former state department spokesman nicholas burns joins us this morning. he's professor of security and international relations at the harvard school of government. >> it has been quite a week. yesterday was quite a day. you have the markets obviously becoming more unstable. you have mueller closing in. you have senate republicans in open revolt more and more by the day. you have vladimir putin gaining a wider control of the middle east, kept out of the middle east since 1973. now donald trump is turning it over to vladimir putin. and you have america, mika, in retreat across the globe and the most extraordinary resignation in modern american historiel, certainly in the past 40 years. what an incredible week it's been. >> so we're going to get to that resignation and specifically the resignation letter from defen

. >> i want for you to take a look at what richard haass said yesterday. it's been a bargain.e spent just over 3% of our gdp on defense, maybe half the cold war average, a period in which the economy has grown at a record pace. the reason? global stability is a prerequisite for economic growth. and, you know, brett, it's important that we learn from our mistakes and you've made mistakes, i've made mistakes, we've all made misjudgments at times. i wanted us to get out of afghanistan. we were spending $2 billion a month. it didn't make a lot of sense to me. then i saw what happened when we got out of iran. and unfortunately, we are in a position in a post 9/11 world where there are a couple of countries where we're going to have to keep troops, much like we have in germany and much like we have in korea because, as general mattis said, we want to prevent world war three. we should learn from the mistakes of our recent past that donald trump himself even criticized. >> that's exactly right. what we learned withdrawing from iraq is that when you create a power vacuum, those vacuum

i was watching the show yesterday, watching you guys talk to richard haass. >> you mean world in disarrayhas a recipe for every season. >> can i correct you? until richard's segment yesterday, nobody used to think about that around the holidays. now everybody does. but, anyway, you look at your discussion about the chaos worldwide, theresa may had a vote of no confidence today, she couldn't get her car door open yesterday to meet angela merkel. you look at what is happening in france, facing riots in the streets of paris. our allies are going through terrible times and they have donald trump in the white house. the timing could not have been worse with the problems our democratic allies are having across europe. >> when you go across from germany and italy and you go up to france which is literally on fire, and then today, a huge no confidence vote for the prime minister, theresa may, she could be out of office, she could be out of a job. so you put all that together with what is happening here and i think richard is right when he says the world is in disarace, mika. >> yes, it is. >>> co