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Amanpour
Obama: "It's Not A New Cold War"; Circling the Wagons in Israel; Imagine a World
Aired July 30, 2014 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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HALA GORANI, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight Russia vents its fury as the West imposes its toughest punishment yet over the crisis in Ukraine. My
interview with Washington's top sanctions adviser Daniel Fried.
And later in the program, while deadly strikes rain down on Gaza, Israel's prime minister continues to enjoy widespread support back home. We bring
you the perspective from Jerusalem.
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GORANI (voice-over): Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Hala Gorani in for Christiane Amanpour this evening.
Staring down the West as Russia hits back hard at the countries that have imposed new sanctions it over those pro-Russia rebels. They turned away
investigators yet again from entering the crash site of MH17.
And according to Ukrainian authorities separatists laid land mines on the roads leading to the site where two weeks on wreckage and sadly human
remains still lie. Heavy fighting rages on in the area. One reason why the U.S. and the E.U. tighten those screws on Russia yesterday with some
new potentially biting sanctions.
But if you ask Vladimir Putin and his government it is no big deal. The foreign ministry says the sanctions which target the arms industry, Russian
banks and oil development will cause nothing but harm to the U.S.-Russia relations.
While the head of Russia's foreign affairs committee Alexei Pushkov (ph) took to Twitter to express his view.
"U.S. President Barack Obama will make history not as a peacekeeper," he tweeted. "Everyone forgot about his Nobel prize. But as the statesman who
started a new cold war."
President Obama says Russia is isolating itself and that Vladimir Putin has no one to blame but himself.
Joining me now is the man behind America's sanctions, Daniel Fried. He's the State Department's coordinator for sanctions policy.
Daniel Fried, thanks for being with us. First of all, Russia is brushing this -- the Russia is brushing this off, saying the only harm that will be
done will be done to the relationship between Russia and the United States.
Will this -- will these be harmful sanctions, Daniel Fried?
DANIEL FRIED, U.S. COORDINATOR FOR SANCTIONS POLICY, STATE DEPARTMENT: Well, the Russians would say that, wouldn't they? Of course they're going
to deny that the sanctions will have any impact on them. We're confident the sanctions that Europe and the United States announced yesterday and
have implemented for the past several months, if you look at the euro layer sanctions, will have a strong impact on the Russian economy which is
already in rather weak condition.
GORANI: So there are no sanctions targeting the gas sector. France is still being allowed to after having spent a warship to Russia after it
annexed Crimea, still being allowed to go ahead and sell helicopter carriers to Russia.
How are these biting sanctions?
FRIED: The sanctions that were announced yesterday hit the Russian financial sector, they hit the defense sector and critically they hit the
energy sector. This is the first time that the West has imposed such sanctions on Russia since the end of the Cold War. These are strong steps.
The European Union deserves to be commended for its strong stand and its leadership in this area. They've worked closely with us. We're glad that
we're working together. We're sorry that we have to be doing this at this time, however.
The financial sanctions will hit the big state-owned Russian banks and hit them hard. They were designed not to destabilize the international
financial system but to hit these banks and cause increasing pressure on the Russian economy.
This, we think, we will succeed in doing.
GORANI: Now the financial sanctions, I think, people should be legitimately concerned. I mean, we've heard from banking industry
officials as well.
But as far as the energy sector, these are long-term sanctions designed to hinder modernization of Russia's ability to explore and mine some of its
energy capability.
So these are very long-term sanctions, aren't they?
FRIED: Well, that's exactly the point. We did not want to disrupt current sales of Russian oil and gas. Europe depends on it; we didn't want to
disrupt markets, have prices rise and give the Russians a sanctions premium, so to speak. So we deliberately chose to go after longer term
production. And of course this is a message to the Russians, very clearly that if they keep going down the path of aggression against their neighbors
and the export of arms, fighters and chaos, their future is going to be very cloudy indeed.
The gas production was not hit but oil production will be. And by the way, oil production in Russia will be hit right at the time that North American
and other production outside Russia is ramping up. This is a very powerful sanction and one that hurts Russia far more than it hurts us.
GORANI: Well, the president said yesterday, President Obama, when asked by a reporter, he was acquisitions new cold war. And President Obama said,
no, it's not. But Russia is isolating itself. But with all these sanctions, Daniel Fried, what else can you call it?
FRIED: Well, you can call it as the president did a proper response to Russia's actions in Ukraine. Russia has illegally attempted to annex
Crimea. They've sent fighters, weapons and men to create havoc and violence in the eastern part of Ukraine.
The West ,Europe and the United States and other countries, Canada, Japan, Australia, were determined to push back. We've done so carefully,
methodically and in a coordinated fashion.
GORANI: When now --
FRIED: That's the right thing to do and we hope Russia changes its mind.
GORANI: It -- we'll see about that.
Was it hard to get Europe on board? Because Europe is going to be hurt more economically than of course the United States by these sanctions
imposed on Russia because their economic relationship with Russia is much stronger.
FRIED: And that's why Europe deserves to be commended for its leadership in this area. Europe fought long and hard about imposing these sanctions
and when they decided to move, they just -- they moved with efficiency and determination. And they -- we've moved together in a coordinated fashion.
This is a sign that the strength of the transatlantic relationship and a vindication of President Obama's decision to work with Europe rather than
unilaterally.
It is the right message to send; I'm glad we worked with Europe.
GORANI: Right, but so -- but you did -- you must have had a lot of convincing to do, right? I mean were those conversations easy? Was it
easy to get them on board, especially Germany?
FRIED: Well, we had detailed and long discussions over many weeks with the Europeans. And I'll say this: we listened to each other and we learned
from each other. I will say that our sanctions package was influenced and informed by European input. They might say the same about their own, but
I'll let them say it. The fact is we were glad we listened to each other and we ended up with stronger packages because we work together over a
period of weeks. These discussions were serious but they were the right ones to have. You wouldn't want frivolous discussions or rush discussions
on something this important.
So we took the time and did what we needed.
GORANI: All right. So you listened to their input and I suppose that discussion led to this proposal.
Do you think -- and let me ask you this and it's difficult to look -- to -- we don't -- nobody has a crystal ball, but do you think that in three
months, in six months' time, you and I might be having this conversation about yet another sanctions package?
Or do you think that this round will do it, that this is it, this third round?
FRIED: Well, I hope this round does it. I hope that the Russians will understand that the way forward lies through working the diplomacy. We
want to see a diplomatic solution, a political solution to all of this. We favor contacts among the Europeans, between the Ukrainians on the basis of
President Poroshenko's peace plan. This is the right way to go. And we hope that Russia will become part of the solution instead of part of the
problem.
GORANI: So helpful, yes or no, that this is it, we won't see -- be seeing a fourth round?
FRIED: Well, hopefully, we're done with sanctions. The purpose of sanctions is not themselves; the purpose is to resolve the situation. We
hope that this situation will make it turn in a better direction and that we won't need sanctions. Of course we can impose new ones if we need to.
We'd rather not. We'd rather take these off. And we'd rather have the conditions under which we could take them off.
GORANI: All right, Daniel Fried, diplomatic -- a diplomat at the State Department and the State Department's coordinator for sanctions policy
joining us on CNN International, thanks so much for your time.
Listening to that is Dmitry Babich, a political analyst at the International Russian State Broadcaster Voice of Russia. Dmitry joins me
now live from Moscow.
So, Dmitry, you heard from the State Department the man basically behind the U.S. sanctions package, saying these are really going to hurt. But in
Moscow, where you're in Vladimir Putin and those close to him saying, ah, no big deal . We can get over this.
DMITRY BABICH, POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, that's true. But the main argument why Russians think that these sanctions are pointless is because
it's not immediately clear how these sanctions can bring what we all desire, peace in Ukraine.
I think there is a difference in perception. Russians think that in Ukraine, they have a real civil war. A part of the population in the East
is profoundly unhappy with the new government in Kiev. In the East, from 80-90 percent of the population voted for President Yanukovych. He was
topped in an illegal way. So it's quite understandable why there is resistance and there is a fight.
But from the Western point of view, there is no civil war in Ukraine; there is just a Russian intrusion and by pressuring Mr. Putin, they can make him
pull out his mercenaries or voluntaries, whatever you call, and the war will end.
So I think we are much closer to this area in Russia and we know that what's going on there is a civil war. It's not our intrusion.
GORANI: Right. So but it is -- it -- so but the goal, the aim of these sanctions is still to have Vladimir Putin in the West's estimation stop the
material support that the West continues to say Vladimir Putin provides to these pro-Russia rebels.
Will it work or not?
BABICH: I think it won't because in the recent history, there was not a single case when two countries so deeply connected as Russia and Ukraine
for 350 years we were part of the same country, there was no case when these four bombs or voluntary fighters would be stopped.
For 30 years, Russians and Americans were not able to stop the flow of arms and fighters from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Russian-Ukrainian border is
huge. It's thousands of miles. And there are many people in Russia who want to fight in Ukraine. There are lots of people with fighting
experience from Afghanistan from Chechnya from Moldova. There was also a civil war in Moldova.
GORANI: So Dmitry, you're saying essentially that these rebels --
BABICH: -- sanctions can bring peace.
GORANI: Sure. But let me then ask you this question.
You think these pro-Russia rebels, whether or not there is material support from Russia, that this civil war will continue, that this is internally a
civil war within Ukraine?
BABICH: Yes, because the regions where the war is taking place, there are 11 million people living there. It's a huge area with a huge population by
European standards. And also just watch television. You will see that huge cities, Donetsk and Lugansk are huge cities. They were bombed.
Thousands of people lost their homes. They're going to be angry.
I would remind you that just six months ago, the United States was very angry at the government of Mr. Yanukovych because it was believed that it
could use live bullets against protesters in Kiev. The new government if from Kiev, new government from Kiev is using aviation, tanks, land mines.
Today there was a report in the American press that they might use a ballistic missile in Eastern Ukraine.
And there are no critical wars. There are not only no sanctions, there are no critical wars towards this government , neither in the United States nor
in the European Union.
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BABICH: -- Russians and makes us more resistant to sanctions.
GORANI: Who is controlling these rebels now, because if indeed -- and it appears as though they have -- they are shooting commercial planes out of
the sky with the kind of weaponry that Western countries are saying might have been supplied by Russia.
Who is supporting them? Who is arming them, if not Russia?
BABICH: Well, the problem is that when you have a civil war, this is the worst thing about civil war is that there is very little control on both
sides. On both sides, you have basically militias fighting each other. And here you say that it was the rebels who shot down the airplane. But
there was no proof. I mean, I am very surprised and Russians are very surprised that the United States accuses Russia and the rebels in the east
of Ukraine of being involved in the shooting of this plane. But for three days now, the black boxes are in the hands of British experts and nothing
has been published.
The Ukrainian authorities do not publish the conversations of their air traffic controllers with the pilots in the plane. Russia doesn't have this
information so it doesn't publish it. It publishes what it has. You know, it's radis traken (ph) the Ukrainian fighter jets near the plane.
So if indeed there is evidence, I think it's just about time to produce it. But Mr. Obama accused us of being involved in shooting down the plane
without producing any clear evidence, only social networks, where you can find all sorts of stuff in the social networks.
GORANI: Well, there were -- there was more than social networks. There was actual intelligence imagery. But we haven't seen any official results
of an investigation. That's going to take a lot longer. And we'll all wait for those results. But --
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BABICH: Intelligence officers, intelligence officers saying that we are sure it was done by the rebels, no photos of that missile, no clear proof.
It's a very different situation from what we had in 1962, when indeed the Soviet Union was very wrong and the United States produced the pictures,
the photos of Soviet missiles on Cuba.
Now it looks like the sides are reversed.
GORANI: All right. Well, we will see the results of the investigation and what kind of intelligence comes out of it. This plane was shot down over
rebel-held territory. Of course the results of the official investigation will take quite some time.
Thank you, Dmitry Babich, political analyst at the International Russia State Broadcaster Voice of Russia. Thanks for your time from Moscow.
And if this news business of ours sometimes the stories are hard to come by, then again on one fateful day, July 17th, Flight MH17 fell to Earth
just as Israeli tanks and troops crossed into Gaza.
Today nearly two weeks later, something else came crashing down: the minaret in Gaza City that you see there, one of five mosques hit by Israeli
airstrikes, a shattered relic of what was once a house of worship. It was also suspected by the Israelis, they say, as housing militants and weapons.
But whatever the case, it's one more casualty of a conflict and an operation with no end in sight or is there a glimmer of hope at the end of
those infamous tunnels? We'll explore when we come back.
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GORANI: Welcome back to the program. I'm Hala Gorani sitting in for Christiane.
The images of civilian devastation in Gaza are relentless and they keep coming and coming. This morning 20 deaths reported after an attack on a
school serving as a United Nations shelter. Then 15 more dead in a strike on a Gaza market. The latter strike came 2.5 hours into what Israel said
would be a four-hour humanitarian cease-fire.
CNN's Jon Vas was reporting from Gaza just as the shelling resumed.
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OK. Let's start with that (INAUDIBLE)...
It's over, as you can tell.
GORANI (voice-over): It is over. But in Israel, this is the sort of footage that is shocking the public, a video released by Hamas, purporting
to show fighters infiltrating Israel through a tunnel and attacking a military installation.
So even as international opinion is turning against Israel in its operation in Gaza, in Israel itself support for the war and for the Netanyahu
government is overwhelmingly strong, as much as 95 percent according to a recent poll.
Jodi Rudoren covers Israel for "The New York Times," and she joins me now from Jerusalem.
Jodi, we have been showing our viewers and international networks have been running these images of absolute devastation and the humanitarian disaster
in Gaza.
Are Israelis in their own country seeing these same images?
JODI RUDOREN, "THE NEW YORK TIMES" ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT: Not as much. I mean, certainly some. But in some ways you have to seek it out. I --
someone told me that they were watching Al Jazeera so that they could get the other side as well.
It is starting to see more pictures of tanks and soldiers massing than you do the victims in Gaza. But there are some and some of the Israeli
newspapers are playing that maybe not prominently and maybe not the quite the really gruesome, heartwrenching images that we see in Western media.
GORANI: But if they are able to see some of them and everyone is touched by the images of children dying of parents grieving and the rest of this
just terrible disaster that's happening there. If they're able to see some of them, how do you explain a 90-plus percent support for a continuing
operation in Israel?
RUDOREN: Well, first of all, I've seen numbers that are a little bit lower than that. But anyway, they're in certainly very, very strong support.
And I think that -- it's a few different factors. One is that there's serious palpable fear here, particularly from the threat of the tunnels
that go into Israel from Gaza, through which there have been several attempted attacks during this war and also of course from the ongoing
rocket fire, which they have been dealing with for 13 years now and it's become much, much more intense and also much, much more widespread within
Israel reaching many days. There are rocket sirens above, alert sirens above Tel Aviv and other parts far, far from Gaza. So those are two
things.
I think the other thing is that Israelis do -- they call this the milhemet ein breira war, the war of no choice. They really do see Hamas, the group
that dominates Gaza, as complicit in those deaths because they operate from civilian areas. They really feel like they -- that Hamas initiated this
war by firing rockets on Israel and initiated the ground invasion by coming through that tunnel.
And I think the other thing is that there's just a lot of the international condemnation of Israel during this war has really backfired here and many
people just feel like nobody understands that.
GORANI: Well, that was going to be my next question, because there, apart from the United States officially, there doesn't seem to be a government
around willing to support Israel in this operation. I mean, is this -- you talk about a backlash. In other words, that people are hardening their
positions because of the criticism they feel is being leveled at the Israeli government in this operation.
Is that correct?
RUDOREN: Well, I think it's a word you know too little (ph). A lot of leaders, including the head of the United Nations and some other Western
European leaders have condemned the rocket fire and particularly the tunnels alongside condemning this very high number of civilian deaths. And
I think that probably gives them some sense that you know, it's not wall- to-wall criticism of Israel.
But I do think -- I mean I -- the two years I've been covering here, I've been sort of wondering exactly how it -- as Europe and other kind of
Western countries would rise up against Israel, would boycott Israel over its occupation of the West Bank, et cetera, how that would play and whether
it would make the kind of secular middle class world peace folks here sort of think again about the status quo.
And I think what we see in this war is the opposite. I mean, I think we've really seen that it's just reinforced this notion that nobody outside of
Israel really understands what they're going through, that they're surrounded by enemies and that they have no choice but to defend
themselves. I think they do not -- you can see on social media in particularly just a real polarization, a real hardening of attitudes, a lot
of hate. And there are a lot of examples here, too, of the very, very small remaining antiwar left getting quashed and attacked and (INAUDIBLE) -
-
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GORANI: Right. We have seen that as well in our reporting.
Jodi Rudoren, covering Israel for "The New York Times," thanks so much for joining us this evening on CNN.
And after a break, with so many tears being shed for the victims on both sides of this conflict and for those lost on Flight MH17, you might think
the world could use a reason to smile.
But imagine a government crackdown against laughing in public. In Turkey, it's no laughing matter. We'll explain.
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GORANI: And finally, imagine a world where smiling and laughing in public might one day get you arrested. In Turkey, where Prime Minister Erdogan
and his Justice and Development Party have become increasingly conservative, the deputy prime minister gave a speech earlier this week,
warning that women shouldn't laugh in public.
Well, now the laugh might be on him. Turkish social media has exploded with tweets and Instagrams of Turkish women posting photos of their happy,
smiling faces. Hundreds of women have -- hundreds of thousands of tweets have made fun of a government that takes itself too seriously. It appears
cracking down on smiles while neglecting serious women's issues like rape and domestic violence.
With presidential elections beginning next month and Prime Minister Erdogan on the ballot, he might want to pay attention to some of those happy faces.
Or in the words of a famous humorist, Mark Twain, against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand. With a smile, that's it for our program
tonight.
I'm Hala Gorani. Thanks for watching and goodbye from London.
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