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Amanpour

Update on the Syrian Conflict; G8 Summit Economic Results

Aired June 18, 2013 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

Nearly 100,000 deaths in Syria and still the world powers are divided on how to stop the war. Leaders of the G8 nations have now wrapped up their meetings in Northern Ireland, where Syria, of course, was at the top of the agenda.

But instead of agreement and a clear path forward, we saw this: U.S. President Barack Obama and Russia's President Vladimir Putin tense and visibly uncomfortable together, sharply divided over how to handle the war.

The two admitted not seeing eye-to-eye and they couldn't even agree to jointly declare that Assad must go as part of a political solution.

Putin is angry at the United States and the West's decision to arm the rebels, and he issued this warning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VLADIMIR PUTIN, PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA (through translator): I call on all our partners to think again before taking these steps. This is a very dangerous thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Obama, on the other hand, criticizes Russia for backing Assad, even sending weapons to the regime and in an interview, the president said that Assad feels safe because of Russia's support.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What's been clear is that Assad at this point, and partly because of his support from Iran and from Russia, believes that he does not have to engage in a political transition, believes that he can continue to simply violently suppress over half of the population.

And as long as he's got that mindset, it's going to be very difficult to resolve the situation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So America's stepped-up support now for Syria's opposition is meant to try to even the battlefield in order to bring about the peace conference that Russia, the U.S. and Europe say they want.

And in a moment, I'll get a take on what's possible at the negotiating table from NATO or the former NATO supreme allied commander, to be precise, General Wesley Clark, who took a very similar fight to the Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic 14 years ago and won.

But first, we go straight to the commander of the Syrian Opposition Forces, General Salim Idriss, who joined me on the phone from neighboring Turkey moments ago, and he told me the Assad forces are planning a major offensive on Aleppo.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: General Idriss, thanks for joining me again.

GEN. SALIM IDRISS, SYRIAN OPPOSITIOIN FORCES: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: General, are you expecting an offensive by the Assad forces in Aleppo, and what aid, what military support have you been told that you will get from the United States, from the Obama administration?

IDRISS: We are expecting an offensive near Aleppo and in Homs and in Damascus (ph) (inaudible) parts of Damascus. And we are being told yesterday from our military intelligence service that the regime is focusing now in Homs and in Damascus and pabrats (ph) and we told our commander and the brigade we are to be ready and about military support, which we promised from our friends in the United States.

We had another discussion and now I think they are going to support the FSA with weapons and ammunition but exactly about the kinds and types of the weapons, we didn't discuss exactly what we are going to achieve.

AMANPOUR: So you don't know?

IDRISS: No. But I know that we are going to receive military support from our friends in the United States.

AMANPOUR: Do you think it'll be enough? Will it be enough to turn the tide?

IDRISS: I told them we hope that to be enough. And I told them we -- everything about our needs and what we really need in the battlefield to turn or to maybe to have a good balance on the ground.

AMANPOUR: One of the other things that the Americans and the West and obviously the Russians are concerned about is the so-called extremists who are fighting on the side of the opposition, groups like Al-Nusra. Let me play you a little bit of an interview that President Obama has given on this subject.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: One of the challenges that we have is that some of the most effective fighters within the opposition have been those who, frankly, are not particularly friendly towards the United States of America. And arming them willy-nilly is not a good recipe for meeting American interests over the long term.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So what do you -- what is your answer to the president saying that there are some very bad people fighting on the ground in the opposition camp, Al-Nusra? How do you prevent weapons going to the wrong people?

IDRISS: It is very important now to strengthen, to moderate FSA fighters and when we strengthen (ph) them, when we support them with military support, with weapons and ammunition and especially with the quality weapons, then I think these extremist groups will have a very -- will not have an important role in the fight in Syria.

And what I can tell you now that they are really not fighting everywhere in Syria, they are not fighting in Homs, they didn't fighting in al-Qusayr.

They are going to the eastern region, where they are trying now to control the oil fields and the gas fields and they are now making a lot of trouble and we need really the support from our friends in the United States to be powerful to put an end for the regime and not to allow these groups to have an important role in the future of Syria.

AMANPOUR: Who is arming them? Who is financing them?

IDRISS: Yes, that is a very big question mark. We don't know really who is supporting them because all the countries who are supporting us, they say, who is supporting these extremist groups? We think that there are individual donors in the world who are supporting them with money, with weapons and with many, many things that they need, yes.

AMANPOUR: All right, General Idriss, thank you very much indeed for joining me.

IDRISS: Thank you, thank you, bye-bye.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And now we turn to retired General Wesley Clark. He's the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, and he has first-hand experience using power to force a dictator to negotiate. He did it in Kosovo 14 years ago.

General Clark, welcome to the program.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET.), FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER: Thank you, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: So world leaders seem to be far apart, at least the West and Russia. But the one thing they do want is some kind of negotiated settlement. Is this possible at this stage?

CLARK: Well, I don't think it's possible at this stage, because you have one side which is in power right now. He doesn't want to give up anything. He thinks he's winning.

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: Is he winning?

CLARK: Well, it looks like militarily he's winning; looks like he's getting away with it and he's got his friends blocking the U.N. Security Council resolution that --

AMANPOUR: That's Russia.

CLARK: -- pressure on -- and China. And that will put more pressure on him.

So if you really want to end the bloodshed over there, I guess there's two ways. You could just let him finish the job and he'll create another 2 million or 3 million refugees. The violence will move in. It won't be subtle because he's opened up a major sectarian conflict in the region. And it'll give Iran a bigger (inaudible). So it's not a very -- it's a very short-sighted way to think you can stabilize the situation.

As Vladimir Putin has said --

AMANPOUR: So you're saying --

CLARK: -- other way is put the pressure on Assad.

AMANPOUR: So is pressure what President Obama has announced? Although he won't give details, he keeps saying he won't give details, but people think it's small arms, ammunition, what do you think it is and will it be the pressure that you're talking about?

CLARK: Well, I don't know what it'll be but I think it's smart that he doesn't get pinned down on it, because the essence of this is when he first announces we're going to put the small arms in, he has now put a U.S. stake in the ground.

So the ability to use the U.S. engagement as pressure depends on some ambiguity about it. If you carefully circumscribe what you can do, you're going to nullify its effectiveness because the other side will just say, well, if they'll only give small arms, then we'll just put more artillery in.

So you don't want to circumscribe it so closely that you can't get diplomatic leverage. Assad should want to negotiate while he's winning, right now, before the leverage has any impact on the battlefield. And so for the United States, it's about putting the leverage in now and then keeping the leverage going and torquing it up while the negotiations are on.

AMANPOUR: Walk us back to Kosovo. You led it; I was among the many who covered it. There was Milosevic. He was not coming to the bargaining table in any serious way. There was an air campaign.

How did that happen? Because Russia was opposed then ,too.

CLARK: That's exactly right. And NATO had already laid out a plan of using graduated pressure against Milosevic. It started really in the summer of 1998. And so he adroitly maneuvered around this at one point Milosevic was saying a village a day keeps NATO away. It's a matter of fact.

The Syrian rebels tell me that on the website -- sorry, on the radio nets (ph), they hear the Syrian military saying don't kill more than 500 each day because they know if they can put a cap on it each day, it reduces the chance of international involvement.

Milosevic had the same logic. But he eventually crossed the red line. When he did then we went into the last-ditch negotiations in Rambouillet and he --

AMANPOUR: That was in France; I remember that.

CLARK: He refused to participate. And at that point, then he started an ethnic cleansing campaign and NATO following through on its pledge. We said if you do this, here's what's going to happen, and we did it. But here's what we did that maybe he didn't understand: there were some people who thought, well, maybe NATO will just drop a couple of bombs.

There were some people who thought maybe, you know, NATO will fall apart. Instead, NATO escalated, day after day, more target, more aircraft -- first there were only nighttime raids. Then there were daytime raids.

First there were raids only in Kosovo against military (inaudible). Then it was against economic targets. Then it was in Serbia. Then it was against downtown Belgrade. We torqued it up and we had a ground campaign being planned when he finally tossed in the chips and said, OK, (inaudible).

AMANPOUR: And not a U.S. boot on the ground. But in this case, General, people are very far from that. The United States does not want to go bombing; it doesn't want to put up a no-fly zone. And it's talking about small arms and ammunition.

Is Assad able to prevail if the U.S. gets engaged on this level?

CLARK: Well, I think if it's just down to the military, then you have to ask why did the U.S. do this? I mean, is it just to say, OK, well, we're not so heartless. Go ahead. Here's some small arms, defend yourself as you back out of the country. I don't think that's -- I think there is a strategy behind this. And I think it will gradually unfold.

You know, one of the things that helped us in Kosovo is we were -- we did it as part of NATO. So we had a formal NATO planning process. And our European allies ask all the typical tough questions, and the Pentagon of course said no, no, we don't want to do this. Of course, the Pentagon doesn't want to do it.

AMANPOUR: No, but now the Pentagon is -- wants to be much more proactive in this one. They wanted to arm and train. So did the CIA, so does Hillary Clinton.

CLARK: Because they saw what was going to happen. But what we had there was a road map that led all the way through to the final -- we even had the sectors that various countries were going to occupy on the ground in Kosovo.

AMANPOUR: Afterwards?

CLARK: Afterwards, yes.

AMANPOUR: How did you get around the Russian roadblocks?

CLARK: Well, the Russians simply pulled out. I had a Russian two- star working for me in my headquarters. And he was pulled out. The Russians said, no, we won't cooperate. And then -- and they were actually trying to reinforce and counsel and encourage Milosevic to resist.

AMANPOUR: In Serbia.

CLARK: Yes. And so what actually happened was there were some threats. At one point there was a rumor that the Black Sea fleet was going to come out and intervene. But Strobe Talbot, our deputy secretary went back to Moscow and said, stop that stuff. You know, let's work this.

And so we got a diplomatic initiative between Viktor Chernomyrdin and Martti Ahtisaari, the Finnish president, the Russian vice president and brought them in to see Milosevic while we did the bombing.

AMANPOUR: General Clark, thank you very much indeed.

CLARK: Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: And of course the end of that story was that there was a peace accord and the peace holds to this day.

And while Syria was of course the chief topic at the G8 summit, the economy also dominated discussions of course we'll ask a noted historian and economist, has the West found a way out of the financial mess? Or is it digging itself into a deeper hole?

But before we take a break, one more look at that classic class photo of the G8 leaders. It is beautiful there. And now another amazing shot: this one of the pack of photographers racing to get into position to snap that picture. It tells the other side of the story. We'll be right back.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program. Now Syria may have dominated the G8 meetings, but at its heart, it's an economic summit. As the British Prime Minister David Cameron said, the point of the G8 is to fire up our economies and drive growth around the world.

With punishing unemployment weighing down the world economy and global markets in turmoil, the leaders had their work cut out for them.

Niall Ferguson is professor of history at Harvard University and also a senior research fellow at Oxford University in England. In his new book, "The Great Degeneration," he writes of the symptoms of decline that he sees plaguing the Western powers right now.

Welcome to the program, Niall Ferguson.

NIALL FERGUSON, AUTHOR: Nice to be back.

AMANPOUR: Thank you very much indeed. And with this G8 summit that's just wrapped up, on the economic front, what do you say has been achieved there?

FERGUSON: How about nothing?

AMANPOUR: Come on, Niall.

FERGUSON: Well, they said they would try to nail down their corporate tax regimes so that the big corporations can't pay zero tax. But I doubt very much that anything will come of this.

And the big corporations will continue to dodge whatever taxes we come up with. And that's because we create ever more complex regulations and tax systems, which big corporations, of course, have the expertise to avoid. And it's the little guy who ends up paying, so nothing, I think, is the (inaudible).

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: Is there no way around there? I mean, obviously that's been something that nations have been trying to deal with for a long time.

FERGUSON: Yes, and in the wake of the financial crisis, there's been a concerted effort, which David Cameron's been pushing hard for to try to reduce the amount of tax evasion that goes on. But it's actually quite difficult for the G8 to do what needs to be done. After all, it's a much less dominant group of players than it used to be. The world has changed.

You know, this is an institution that dates back to the 1970s, when it seemed obvious that Europe plus North America plus Japan was the world economy. And that's --

(CROSSTALK)

FERGUSON: Well, it was originally G6. Then it became G7 and then they added the Russians in the 1990s, quite funny because they entered the Russians, but they said you can't come to the finance ministers' meetings. So there's still a G6 for finance ministers.

AMANPOUR: Well, let me ask you about the Russians because, look, the Russians, we've been talking about their obstructionism and their opposition to whatever the West wants to deal with in Syria. But let's talk about their economy and Vladimir Putin for a long time Vladimir Putin was able to do whatever he wanted, certainly at home, because there was a roaring Russian economy.

He's in the G8 now, and the economy doesn't seem to be as roaring in Russia as it used to be.

FERGUSON: Well, it's been doing pretty disappointing. Of course, it's fundamentally a petrol state and its economy is about as healthy as the price of natural gas and the price of oil are high, plus other commodities.

As China has slowed down, as the world economy has slowed down, some of the heat has come out of commodity markets and particularly of course, natural gas. In many ways, the relationship between the Russian government and Gazprom has been so close as to make them inseparable. And Gazprom's a disaster zone. It was --

AMANPOUR: Huge natural gas company.

FERGUSON: -- once was huge, now it looks a lot less huge because they completely failed to anticipate the shale gas revolution in North America.

And so one of the most important parts of the Russian economy, the natural gas industry, looks much less impressive and the leverage that it used to give (inaudible) particularly over the Europeans is fast diminishing. So it's a changed Russia. And it's much less of a BRIC. Remember the BRICS? I mean, the BRICS are no longer quite as impressive. They're dropping BRICS (inaudible) anyway.

AMANPOUR: Let's stick with Russia for a second because some have said that it's not just the gas, it's not just the oil. it's also the politics there and the fact that investment is being hurt and brain drain of some sort because of the very restricted politics. The moves that Putin is making which is, in fact, potentially harming his economy.

FERGUSON: Well, one of the arguments that I've tried to make in "The Great Degeneration" is that the rule of law is pretty important. Having elections is one thing.

But it's really crucial that a democracy is rooted in the rule of law. And that you cannot say about Russia today. Indeed, in many ways, it's one of the most disturbing aspects of the post-Communist Russian system that really you can't regard the courts with any confidence.

And that, I think, is one reason that money is trying to get out of Russia and why really most foreign corporations have been very reluctant to get involved. There are some good news stories. You know, you can see some improvements happening in the financial sector, medium-sized Russian cities are growing. It's not all bad.

I was there recently; I went to January and some things have improved. But fundamentally something is rotten at the heart of the Kremlin and I'm afraid there must be many people who wish they hadn't asked Russia to join the G7 and they could just have stayed at seven and not had to deal with Mr. Putin. It would have made the conversation on Syria a whole lot easier this week.

AMANPOUR: It probably would have done. And what about China? President Obama and President Xi Jinping had that summit in Sunnylands and it seemed to be going really well and China, of course, is also talking about marketing its economy.

What about them? Should they be at the G8, 9, 10?

FERGUSON: Well, yes, although --

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: I know they're at the 20.

FERGUSON: Right. But there's another G which we haven't mentioned though, which is the G2 or Chimerica, as I like to call it, the two biggest economies in the world, China and the United States. Their meetings are becoming more and more important.

And if anything could go wrong in the world, it would probably be in that relationship, which is why it's good that President Xi Jinping had this (inaudible) informal meeting with President Obama. They didn't really have too hard and fast an agenda. It was a getting-to-know-you, getting- to-know-you-better kind of meeting.

And I think that was healthy and important, given just how central that relationship is to the global economy.

AMANPOUR: And of course all of this happens in the ongoing discussion about national security, what in your book -- you talk about sort of the finances and the economy of the moment having a negative impact on national security.

FERGUSON: Well, it was rather awkward, to put it mildly, that the United States was suddenly on the back foot on cyber-security. The U.S. has been pressing China, accusing China quite legitimately of hacking. And yet you suddenly had the scandal over NSA and PRISM and the Chinese were able to say that Mr. Snowden was a heroic whistleblower exposing just the full extent of U.S. electronic espionage.

So I think this was pretty bad timing from an American point of view. And the Chinese media have made much of this crisis. I think when you look at the relations between these two powers, there's already what my friend, Noah Feldman (ph), calls a cool war. It's not a cold war. It's cool. Relations are becoming more hostile and, in some ways, the war is already hot in cyberspace.

And I think that's what we're seeing, more and more clearly, that at least in this new theater of battle, the realm of the social networks, the realm of the Internet, there is now a major superpower conflict underway. Now it's not as nasty or as noisy as a conflict involving battleships, much less nuclear weapons. But it's a conflict all the same.

AMANPOUR: And we'll keep watching. Thank you so much, Niall Ferguson, for your insight.

FERGUSON: My pleasure.

AMANPOUR: And after a break, imagine the Taliban talking peace now after failing to beat them on the battlefield, the Afghan government now says it's ready to meet them halfway, at the peace table, when we come back.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, imagine a world where 12 years of terror and war gives way to talk of peace. Today in an official ceremony, Afghan forces took sole responsibility for their nation's security. And with the U.S.-led coalition leaving in 2014, many question if the Afghans are up to the challenge.

The U.S. and NATO have failed to defeat the Taliban on the battlefield after 12 years of fighting. So the time was ripe for another approach, as President Hamid Karzai announced today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAMID KARZAI, PRESIDENT OF AFGHANISTAN (through translator): Our High Peace Council will travel to Qatar to discuss peace talks with the Taliban. We hope that our brothers, the Taliban, also understand that the talks will move to Afghanistan's soil to ensure peace.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Now of course they've been trying for this for a long time, a Taliban spokesman broke the diplomatic thaw at a press conference today in Qatar, a pledge not to use Afghanistan as a launching pad against other countries, for instance, what happened on 9/11, was followed by a vow to seek a peaceful resolution to the current conflict.

Those were the words the Obama administration had been waiting to hear. And U.S. officials say they'll travel to Qatar this week to begin trying to broker a deal between the Taliban and the Karzai government. Of course, a deal much less a lasting peace is still a long way off and there are many bridges to cross, including a real commitment to women's rights and democracy in Afghanistan.

But as President Obama said today, it is an important first step.

And that's it for tonight's program. Meantime you can always contact us on our website, amanpour.com. So thanks for watching and goodbye from New York.

END