people were predict iing -- a greater sense of reality. >> tony blinken. mike rodgers, thank you. >> coming up, is steve bannon the latest persona nongrat ta. he was asked if he had confidence in bannon. he said i like steve but -- to those who know that the essence of integrity is a promise kept. ♪ if you've got the time welcome to the high life. ♪ we've got the beer ♪ miller beer doctors recommend taking claritin every day distracting you? of your allergy season for continuous relief. claritin provides powerful, non-drowsy, 24-hour relief. for fewer interruptions from the amazing things you do every day. live claritin clear. every day. ♪ ♪i'ma wade, i'ma wave through the waters♪ ♪tell the tide, "don't move" ♪freedom! freedom! i can't move ♪freedom, cut me loose! ♪freedom! freedom! where are you?♪ ♪cause i need freedom too! ♪freedom! freedom! freedom! freedom!♪ ♪what you want from me? ♪is it truth you seek? oh father can you hear meee...ooow?♪ if you have moderate to severe ulcerative colitis or crohn's, and your symptoms have left you with the same view,

joining me, bret stephens of the "wall street journal" and tony blinken, former deputy, national security advisor and deputy secretary of state. >> any of us who had any responsibility for our foreign policy during this period will have to live with the fact that we didn't end the syrian civil war, and we'll have to live with the fact that, as you rightly said, hundreds of thousands of syrians are dead. yes, that is on our watch. it's also on the watch of the syrians. it's on the watch of every single neighbor of sir. i can't it's on the watch of iran and russia. there is plenty of blame to go around and, as the leading country in the world, we should take our share of it. but it wasn't for want of trying to do the right thing, making the best judgments we could. maybe they were wrong, history will judge. but where i disagree just to come back to the start of this is question us for our judgments, absolutely, let's have that argument, but talking about menacity, you're looking in the wrong place. >> tina brown, create of "women in the world." >> for years and years, we keep hearing about

joining me now, tony blinken, cnn global affairs analyst, form former deputy secretary of state. tony, it's interesting, we heard the vice president say the area of strategic patience is over, it didn't work. that was yours. that was the obama administration that tried to exercise strategic patience with north korea, you know. in the last few months, we've seen more nuclear tests from north korea, more new missile launches. so, is the vice president right? did strategic patience fail? >> well, you know, successive administrations going back to the 1990s have not managed, unfortunately, to rein in north korea's nuclear ambitions. but in fact, the strategic patience era really ended more than a year ago, when under the obama administration, we began a sustained, comprehensive effort to put pressure across the board on north korea. first trying to get china to leverage its own influence. that's the most important factor, because virtually all of north korea's trade is with china, but also to get countries around the world to sever their economic, diplomatic, and political relations w

could see its efforts hurt a little bit by this. >> tony blinken what do you think? >> i very much agree. and i think both juliette and cedric are right. as juliette said we're actually in a pretty good position there. we're on the verge of helping iraqi forces take back mosul. we were getting to rocka and the mission there is important. that caliphate is gone, and there won't be a -- so keeping the fog s on that is vitally important. and tonight's action does cochicate that mission. and that's why the administration has to be very careful that it doesn't get pulled into some kind of escalation, some kind of mission that really takes our eyes and resources away from the fight against the iloss umic state. whether it's russia compicating the airspace we're fighting against. so tonight's action was the right thing to do, but what we really need to see now is how does it fit into a larger strategy. >> and to avoid what has plagued the u.s. military on many occasions. let's go back to don for more. >> thank you. very interesting panel here. we have a new image on the tar

want to bring in cnn global affairs analyst tony blinken. served as deputy national security adviser under president obama. and tony, you were supportive of this type of limited military action, air strike, as far back as 2013. you are supportive, i take it, of this action by president trump overnight, yes? >> yes, i think the president, john, did the right thing. not only was this chemical attack just heinous in terms of what it did to the victims, but it also violated an international norm that's been in place since the end of world war i, which bans the use of chemical weapons or biological weapons in armed conflict. so, the president did the right thing in standing up and enforcing that norm, demonstrating there would be consequences for violating it. >> was 2013, you know, the final days of august in 2013, after that chemical weapons attack in gunpoint , was that the time for this strike? >> i think in 2013 we accomplished by not firing a shot far more than we could have accomplished with an attack. back then, we couldn't have targeted

we did not come up with this one, tony blinken, we did not!at did you make of, of course the attorney general will be careful in speaking publicly about any plan of bringing charges against julian assange to secure his arrest, but what do you make of this reporting that the justice department is preparing -- has found a way, if you will, to try to -- they want to bring charges against assange, which i want to know what's changed? >> well, you know, they're walking a very, very fine line. it's very challenging. look, i have no -- there's no love lost for julian assange. >> right. you would have loved to have done it as well, i mean -- >> absolutely. but we want to make sure that first we're not having a chilling effect on the media and on the press. and there's a real issue there. if he is simply publishing information that happened to come his way, albeit classified, that doesn't make him a whole heck of a lot different, perhaps, than "the new york times" and the pentagon papers or cnn. but if, on the other hand, he is actually instructing peo

joining me, tony blinken and fareed zakaria. >> it seems highly implausible to me.surprising something like this hasn't happened earlier. you have the thinnest staffing of an administration that i can recall, it might even be in history. you have hundreds and hundreds of positions that have not been filled in the state department and defense department. you have a skeleton crew. a president that does not pay an enormous amount of regard to the accuracy of statements and therefore perhaps there was an urge to send a signal without making sure they had all their ducks in a row. >> it's possible this was planned. it just would seem like a very weird plan, frankly. >> is it possible this whole good cop/bad cop theory is real? >> it's possible but not very probable. what i heard is that the state department's statement had to be elicited from the department. in otherwards, didn't put it out affirmatively. you'd think you'd want to get your bad cop statement out there and have the president follow up. i don't know. in a sense it doesn't matter. ultimately what people are

joining me is tony blinken, the former deputy national security adviser for president obama.oining me here is bret stephens, a columnist for "the wall street journal." i want to begin with a column that got a lot of attention. "the price of obama's mendacity." there's always this debate about the wisdom of barack obama's decision to forgo a similar strike in 2013. that's the beginning. mr. obama and his advisers will never run out of self justifications for their policy in syria. they can't out run responsibility for the consequences of their lies." after president obama, kerryent putin, and john went through the agreement for syria to ban the stockpile of chemical weapons, information began to emerge that the syrians were cheating on the agreement. it started filtering out in 2014. the wall street journal had a front-page story on the fact in 2015. even16, jim clapper acknowledged it to a congressional committee. throughout the entire period, however, leading figures of the obama administration, including the president, secretary of state, and susan rice kept insisting that

. >>> more now from cnn military analyst general mark hertling and tony blinken. general, russian flying planes close to alaska four times in four days doesn't happen by accident. what's the message that they're trying to send? is it an actual threat? >> it is extremely unusual, anderson. i'm not sure it's a threat because they haven't come within the national space of the united states. they are staying in international airspace. it's attempting to send a message. what's been good is military planes have intercepted each one. they are looking for us do that. the question is, what else is available for us to do to stop this kind of action? these are the same kind of things they have been doing in europe over the baltics and over several european countries as well. >> tony, why do you think it's happening now? russia hasn't conducted flights like this since 2015. >> a couple of things. in 2015, they stood down because they were having safety problems with the aircraft. it may be they are standing this up. they need to do training. they are sending a message. it's o

we bring in former deputy secretary of state and former deputy national security adviser tony blinken cnn terrorism analyst paul cruickshank. we know it here and abroad these are places for targeting. >> a lot of awareness in russia. they know they're under threat, isis and al qaeda have made clear russia is basically their number one enemy, even higher enemy now than the united states because of the russian air strikes in syria, as vladimir putin himself has said up to 70,000 russian nationals, nationals from former soviet bloc countries have traveled to syria even iraq, joined groups like isis and the concern is they're coming back now into russia to launch attacks, and these fires that have come especially from the russian caucuses i believe are some of the most effective fighters within isis, there's been a string of plots in russia over the last couple of years, notably november 2016 a major ambitious plan to carry out a paris style attack in st. pe petersburg and moscow, which was thwarted by russian authorities. they've been on high alert and known this is coming and as you say

i want to bring in cnn global affairs analyst, tony blinken, deputy national security adviser to president obama, and admiral james woolsey. thanks for coming on. tony, i'm going to start with you. let's go through the 180s. here's what president trump said about nato during the campaign and what he said today. listen to this. >> do you think the united states needs to rethink u.s. involvement in nato? >> yes, it's costing us too much money. number one, nato is obsolete, number two, the countries in nato are not paying their fair share. it's obsolete. we pay too much money. nato is obsolete. in my opinion, nato is obsolete. here's the problem with nato, it was obsolete. it's 67 years old. when i said nato to wolf blitzer is obsolete, i got attacked. three days later people that study nato said trump is right. i said it was obsolete. it's no longer obsolete. >> tony, what do you think changed for the president? >> apparently the president fixed nato in the couple months he's been in office. no, look, in fairness, don, a couple things. one, any president coming in confronts a barrier and tha

today, tony blinken praised this action. hitting assad over the use of chemical weapons. is the goal here to stop assad from using chemical weapons again? president trump wants to do what president obama was unwilgs lino do? rex tillerson says they will push to try to get assad out. it will involve tough diplomacy. the larger strategy here has not been to mess with assad or that six-year civil war or do anything meaningful of the refugees. millions created by targeting of assad. it is to fight isis. now we have to wonder does trump want to go bigger? does he want to fight isis? take over russia over assad? >> we are not saying this. how will assad respond? jim sciutto, this is a guy who just a few days ago thought the u.s. was functionally giving him a pass. this is a guy who watched him do something worse in 2013 and the united states gave him a pass. >> and senator marco rubio said that chemical attack was a result of the secretary of state saying we no longer prioritize getting rid of assad. >> it is possible assad doesn't do much different, right? this was a targeted

tony blinken. rick francona and national security analyst, juliette kayem. rick, the national security adviser to the president, general mcmaster, h.r. mcmaster, he put out a statement, telling reporters, quote, there were measures put in place to avoid hitting what we believe is a storage of sarin gas there at that air base that was targeted. so, that would not be ignited and cause a hazard to civilians or anyone else. how precise are these tomahawk cruise missiles? >> well, precise enough not to hit a warehouse like that. and, you know, these storage areas would be protected and, of course, they wouldn't just be in a regular building, so, they would be under some sort of shelter. you just don't hit them. hopefully. and i don't know what the syrians are using, but hopefully these are binary-stored weapons and they have to be mixed before they create a toxic substance. even if the warehouses were struck, it would not trigger that kind of reaction, hopefully think kind of explosion would burn off the gas, but it's best just not to hit them. i'm surprised that