>> rose: welcome to the broadcast. as we continue looking at the president's afghanistan strategy, we talk to the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee, senator john kerry. >> pakistan is really central. i believe it is the key. and more important to the outcome of afghanistan than the troops that are going in, will be what happens in pakistan and particularly in person pakistan over the course of the next year. >> rose: john kerry for the hour. next. >> funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following: captioning sponsored by rose communications >> from our studios in washington, d.c., this is a special edition of charlie rose. >> rose: john kerry is here. he's a senior senator from massachusetts. he a chairman of the senate foreign relations committee. after nearly 25 years in the senate, his influence in washington is growing. he's been a key figure on issues like the war in afghanistan, climate change and health-care reform. "the new york times" wrote that kerry has settled into a influential road as legislative bridge builder, international troubleshooter and party elder statesman. he is close to the president during his own presidential campaign in 2004, he chose then senate candidate barack obama from chicago to deliver the keynote address of the democratic national convention. vice president joe biden recently said that he speaks with senator kerry more than anyone else on capitol hill. earlier this week the senator met with president obama just hours before he announced his new strategy for the war in afghanistan. i'm very pleased to have him back on this program. welcome. >> thank you, sir. good to be here. >> rose: good to have you back. >> thank you. >> rose: tell me what the role of the foreign relations committee is now that the president has announced his strategy. >> you know, i grew up in a period where we all saw the impact of the chairman who focused on war. and i think that it's a good model. it's not the only model and it's not, you know, totally applicable to today. but we need to make sure the committee does its homework, informs, asks america to tune in to a conversation that really discusses the pros and cons. in a nonpart stand -- partisan, america national security centric way. and i think that's the key. >> rose: let's move to the president's decision. you fully support not only what he intends to do but what he said in his speech as to why he made the decision he did? >> i support some additional troops going over there. the key here is that the troops we send over are used in the right way. i mean that is really the critical component of this. and i set out at a speech at the council on foreign relations a number of weeks ago, the parameters that i think should apply to their use. specifically, yes, they should go in and clear and hold but only in the circumstances where we have an ability to come in quickly underneath them with the build and transfer. and there must be afghan partnering in those endeavors. if we become too ambitious and too aggressive, proactive in what our troops begin to do, and to get too far ahead of the local governance capacity and development capacity coming in underneath them, we risk undoing whatever good we're trying to accomplish. and we put our troops i think at greater risk. i also believe and i think the president said this the other day. i think he said that pakistan is really central. i believe it is the key. and more important to the outcome of afghanistan than the troops that are going in, will be what happens in pakistan and particularly in western pakistan over the course of the next year. >> rose: are you encouraged by what the pakistanis seem to be doing now? >> i'm encouraged by the steps that a -- that a government does not have blood-based strength or support has taken a certain risk in committing its troops. the army has taken the risk. the generals, the isi have really moved the ball forward by taking on the taliban in the swat valley and now moving into south waziristan, and obviously that's somewhat now the limits because of the winter season. it's really a seasonal fighting effort there. but i think that it is earn couraging. the key here, however, is strengthening the government in pakistan and refocusing on what they're going to do in the course of next year. if they pull back, if they don't keep the heat on, the various entities in pakistan, moshgari, the ala, the quetashura which has a major impact on what happens in pakistan, the pressure has to be kept on all of those entities. and if we do, that will alleviate significantly the difficulties in afghanistan itself. >> rose: do you believe that pakistan the epicentre of terrorism in the world. >> i do. and i have used that term and i think it is. at long as ala, the top op ratives zawahiri and osama bin laden are presumed to be there, as long as we know there are significant ala plots coming out of that region and there are and we have intercepted several of them over the course of the last few years, as long as that is sort of the, sort of the, i hate to use this term but in a sense the spiritual center, the symbolic center of al qaeda, it strengthens their ability to do things in somalia, yemen, germany, great britain, america, elsewhere. and so i think we have to recognize that if they were to drive us into less than keeping the pressure on posture, then their ability to recruit and create further problems in the middle east, with hezbollah, hamas, others, i think, i really believe would grow. that is the central security interest and challenge facing the united states. >> rose: so what do we do to make sure that they do what they're capable of doing? >> well there are a number of things. and we have to -- we have done some of them over the course of this year. we passed what is known as the kerry-lugar legislation which will put a billion and a half dollars into civilian assistance. what we're trying to do is change the attitude of pakistanis towards the united states. it is not been a healthy relationship. and a lot of that stems from the blanket support given by the prior administration to general mush ar -- musharraf. and there was a sense that we were pore government and person-centric and focused, then people focused. we need to dot things that make a difference to the lives of pakistanis. i mean you have people in pakistan who sit there and say you know, since 1947-48y we've been a country but hows that that affected me. and they don't really see positive ways in which it has affected them. >> rose: and doing that, factor in the significance of afghanistan in terms it of pakistan and the stability of pakistan. >> if pakistan were not what i just described, we wouldn't be in afghanistan. afghanistan is not a freestanding threat to the united states of america. it is a threat. >> rose: even though it was, in fact, a safe haven for al qaeda at the time of 9/11. >> correct. and i've heard a number of people talking in the last days and the talking heads process, saying we are there because that's the place we were attacked from. wrong. we went there because that is the place we where we attacked from. but that is not a reason for staying there. the only reason in my judgement for staying there is that the taliban provides sanctuary and are link to ala. and to the degree that the taliban provide instability on the border and in that region through their alliance with ala and the other bad actors, the others, that is a threat to the stability of pakistan, a threat to the region, fundamentally, where you already have a tinderbox with the relationship between pakistan and india. and so, and with iran on another border, it's really important for us to recognize that you cannot allow al qaeda to have a free hand with the taliban. and that's the reason we're focused on the taliban. not to defeat them ultimately but to marginalize them and to ultimately defeat al qaeda. >> rose: do you believe in mcchrystal's strategy as you understand it, is the best way to marginalize the taliban? >> i believe that general mcchrystal's strategy as now fine-tuned by the president and by the process that he put in place over these last months which i think was an excellent, important, vital deliberative process, i think that has sharpened that strategy. >> rose: the idea, just so that he we are all clear, the idea of having an equity strategy, having a date certain in which you would make an assessment to begin to bring them home. >> correct. and i believe that the date certain is in fact a positive, not a negative here. i disagree with those colleagues who have suggested if you set a date certain you are somehow weakening the effort, wrong. it is no different fundamentally from iraq, though we were further along in iraq, i will acknowledge that. but we wasted a lot of time getting to that further along in iraq because nobody ever felt compelled to make a decision. and if your statements are simply we're going to there as long as it takes, they will take as long as they want. and you are there as long as they want you to be. >> rose: so having a date certain will be a leverage against the karzai government in order to do what they need to do -- >> it is not just -- yes. and it's also a leverage to, i think, actions in pakistan and elsewhere, they realize there is an opportunity here where we are committing additional forces, where we will take the initiative, where we will leverage actions in the area that make people safe and give them the breathing. but ultimately it is up to them. and recognizing that it's ultimately up to them is one of the best things we can do. because it will help them face the existential nature of their threat. if they don't, there's nothing ultimately that we can do about that anyway, charlie. and that's what we have to realize. >> rose: how important is it to send a message to the people of afghanistan and especially that you do not want to occupy the country, are you not there to stay there, are you not going to make the mistake that the soviets did as bob gates -- >> well, it's very, very important. but there are many other distinctions with the soviets. first of all the soviets pursued a scorched earth policy. >> rose: but they had numbers there that created the idea of an occupation. >> well, it was an occupation. it literally didn't establish a legitimate government. they were killing major tribal leaders. they were -- there was a terrible ethnic and sect toreial cleansing that took place. and that's part of what created the chaos that the taliban filled. that doesn't exist today. the tajik, the uzbek, the turkiman and others are relative -- managing their fairs in the north relatively well. and in the south where you have the principal insurgency of the taliban, the estimates are that the taliban are somewhere in the vicinity of 20 to 30,000, who knows. you can't be precise. but of those, only somewhere in the vicinity of 5,000, maybe 6 are the hardest core, you know, irreconcilable taliban. the quetashura mullah omar taliban. the other taliban are many of the thugs, criminals, cham il ons, kids out of work and for hire, and the presumption here, part of the strategy is that many of them can be pulled away if we are careful and thoughtful about what we do. >> rose: well, why have they had the momentum? >> because of the absence, the total absence of adequacy of governance with the karzai government. >> rose: and you know president karzai better than most. in fact, it was you that convinced him to stand for an election in a flawed election, to stay the -- say the least. where is he now? what is he capable of doing. >> well, let me say that i think it's important for us in our country to really step back and look very carefully at what the options are here. no one has shown me somebody other than president karzai at this point in time who could necessarily do what has to be done here. secondly, this is a man who took considerable risks on behalf of this country. road a motorcycle with a couple of other people into taliban territory to take on the taliban, post 9/11, who stayed in pakistan, didn't come to this country, didn't expate ree ate himself. i am convinced he is a nationalist, a patriot, somebody who cares enormously about his country. now are there problems in governance? of course. enormous problems in governance. but do they go --. >> rose: but do they go to the core of who he is or not. the charges of a fraudulent election, the charges of corruption, are they simply thing tas that you -- united states can say yes, we understand that but he is capable of building a government that the united states can partner with? >> i believe -- let's make sure that you know we're sort of clear about what the possibilities are and what the realities are. is there corruption in karzai government? yes. does he know it? yes, has he tolerated it in the past, yes. >> rose: does it include his brother. >> i think his brother has been obviously a facilitate never some regards with certain things that have taken place. the cia and the fbi have not produced any hard evidence on request of some particular transaction in narcotics or something which is often alleged. but there are a lot of stories people hear. and there's clearly a way in which that particular, you know, province has been managed that many of us find unacceptable, and complicated. i think some changes is have to be made. i talk about that with president karzai. others have talked about that with him. i believe that there will be changes forthcoming. and i know the president is deeply committed in a very personal way and through his lieutenants to watch very closely and demand very specifically certain kinds of actions. i think the president has no intention of asking young american men and women to go into harm away and not demand from the government there the kind of transformation necessary to meet the level of sacrifice he's asking us to make. >> rose: do you believe that president karzai is up to being what the united states hopes he will be in the next 18 months? >> i think president karzai has great talents. in many ways. and he is a creative, intelligent, and you know, thoughtful person who has the ability if he gets focused and turns his attention to the task at hand by defining his interests properly. if he thinks his interests don't lie with us, for some reason, and i think that's part of the problem that happened over the last year and a half. that he --. >> rose: he thought what. >> i think he began to have serious doubts about whether the united states was keeping faith with him. i think he had a sense that he was being undermined in the election process by number one, certain countries. and number two, certain individuals. >> rose: american diplomats. >> i don't want to -- it's not important to get into who, how, where, what, it's important to understand that he felt less than certain about his relationship with us. and i think that you know, in the course of that, he made the bedfellows that he felt he had to in order to get re-elected. did we like all of them? no. did that maybe drive us into a tougher position during the course of that election. i think yes. >> rose: but the two questions are one, he is essential to american success. >> yes. >> rose: in afghanistan. >> yes, he is. >> rose: and secondly you believe he understands the choices and probably will make the right choice now that he is assured of american commitment to this effort over the next 18 months. >> i think that is our hope. and i can't sit here and tell you will happenment but that is our best hope. and it is critical to our success. >> rose: and what do we do if in the next 18 months or at the end of 18 months that he has not done that? >> well, i think we're going to know much sooner than that, charlie. i think that you though when i was in kabul a few weeks ago general mcchrystal said to me that he will know whether or not this plan is going to work in about ten months. i think the president is banking on that kind of judgement here. >> rose: so by september 20 -- >> by september to december of next year, we will know, i believe, whether or not this can work or not. >> rose: which is the interesting question. if it works, it means what? if it doesn't work it means what? >> what are the choices there? >> well, as i said to you, remember what i said, also. because i'm not just focused on afghanistan. >> rose: i understand. >> pakistan is more critical in my judgement to what may happen in afghanistan. if we can be successful in pakistan over the next year, a lot of this becomes less relevant in terms of afghanistan. because i think we can deal with taliban and other threats that greatly changes the equation of the region. >> rose: said another way if those in afghanistan who want to topple the government there don't have a safe haven in pakistan, then -- >> if they don't have a safe haven and if many of the troublemakers in those sanctuarys are eliminated, you have a very different dynamic. >> rose: you know the president well. you spoke to him about this. tell me how you think, what decision he had to come to. what was it that took place in this review that helped and informed him as to the decision he made. >> i think the president had to make the toughest kind of decision that a president makes. which is sending young americans into war. putting his nation further into a war. it wasn't a war he started but a war that he now is managing. and i think he had to do that realizing that there were enormous tensionsin the country, that many of the people who helped to election him are bitterly opposed to any involvement. and that no mater what decision he made it was going to be subject to criticism from many sides. so it's the kind of situation where you make a pure presidential decision. you do what is best for the country. and that's what i think he did. >> rose: but was it a dual message yes, i'm going to give the troops to general mcchrystal but at the same time i'm going to change the dynamic by setting a date certain that we will reevaluate this. >> i don't think it was just that. i think the president actually narrowed the mission. i think the president made it clear we are not going to engage in a major nation building exercise. we are going to engage in a transfer to the afghans. we're going to build the afghan capacity in a short span of time, recognizing that the major battle is in pakistan. >> rose: let me just come back to swren mcchrystal who told you that he would know by september to december as to whether he was going to be successful. if it's not successful, what then? >> there are a number of different options then, charlie. i think, again, you know, you have to make the tough decision that you are facing at that point in time. i want to believe in the possibility here not just the possibility. i think if we do things correctly here, for our allies come to the table in the way that they ought to, if the pakistanis do the things that they can do, and should do, then i don't think we're going to be confronting that kind of a choice. if we confront that choice we'll have to confront it at the time. but if a general comes to you and says i'm looking at this and it ain't working, i think it's going to be incumbent on a lot of them to say here is what will work based on what we are seeing. and there are other options. there are different footprint options, different ways to do things. >> rose: footprint options mean what, having a limited sort of footprint at the same time doing what sometimes can be described as a terrorist strategy rather than a counterinsurgency strategy. >> i've always personally been in favor of the most limited footprint possible. and i think there might have been, you know, other possibilities here. that doesn't mean that this isn't going to work. and that we shouldn't go down this road. >> rose: but by saying that, and i mention that vice president biden has said are you the closest person in the congress, that he relies on. what has been characterized as a biden position as you know was a counterterrorist position with not more american troops going in, was that essentially the biden position as far as you know or is that a false choice? >> i don't think it's fair to, and i don't want to put the vice president in an unfair position here. and i know you should be. his role was to ask a lot of tough questions. his role was to push the conversation in places that it might not have gone otherwise or that people didn't want to to go to. and i think he performed that function extraordinarily well. he brought a lot of experience and ability to the table. and i think it's unfair to say that because he asked tough questions and pushed the curve with respect to the analysis, that there was a biden position and a disposition. i think his position what to help the president get the best information he could. test the best options that he had. and then support the president in the decision that he makes. >> rose: in the end the president gave general mcchrystal what he wanted. gave -- accepted his strategy. the number of troops, essentially, that he asked for. if you include someo troop building it up to 30 to 40,000. he basically said to general mcchrystal i've given you what you have asked for. show me what can happen. except that i have narrowed the mission. >> well, that's very significant. i mean you know, i said if a few weeks ago that i thought that the mcchrystal request was too far. >> rose: you did. >> and i believe that what the president has done is to calibrate this differently. he is moving more troops in faster but for a very limited purpose with a very clear guidance as to what that mation mission will be and what the limits are going to be. and i think he and secretary gates and others are going to keep very, very close tabs on that call -- calibration. and he also has focused significantly on pakistan which we haven't done significantly until this point in time. general jones was over there a few weeks ago am he had very important conversations and very direct conversations with the leadership there. i think we are now engaged in a process which, ambassador holbrooke to his credit, you know, really helped envision in the beginning. and sort of began to put together which has brought afghans and pakistanis together here in washington and in strategic thinking in ways that they never have been over the course of the last eight years. so i think a lot has been happening to build up to this moment. and we have to remember whoever it was that observed that we fought at war for eight years. but it's been the same war each year for eight years. not eight years of one war with the strategy. and the result is that we're really only now getting the first comprehensive strategy, the first effort to upgrade our civilian capacity on the ground, our development capacity and our governance. and we're now prepared to go outside of kabul, not rely on a central governance model but deal with the provincial, local, governance capacity which i think promises much greater returns. >> rose: are the indians helping us in the efforts to convince the pakistani to do something different from what what they had been doing which is simply amassing their troops on the border. >> it has improved in the last few months. the tensions over mumbai have been deep. and the suspicions run even deeper. and. >> rose: and should have. >> well, for a long period of time. but i think, i mean it's not just related to mumbai. these are people that have gone to war three times and who have this quiet war on the front in kashmir constantly going on. so i think that it is very, very important for us to help change that equation. i think there are things we can do. it is something we should pay more attention to. that the pakistanis are constantly believing that indian influence in afghanistan is too great. that they are being encircled, in a sense. they are even people who have believed that we have a plot to somehow secure their nuclear weapons. i mean the level of mistrust an even paranoia in the region is extraordinary. it's one of the things we have to work through. >> rose: how do you measure what impact president obama has had in terms of changing the attitude towards the united states. >> it's very significant. but still to be fully proven. >> rose: they hear the words but they haven't seen all the deeds. >> and more. i think they are really waiting to see what we do in the middle east. how we deal with iran. what we're going to do in terms of the economic, you know, global economic choices that we face in terms of the rules of the road as we go forward after the last year and a half. of chaos. there are a lot of questions out there still. but they believe, they like the promise that he has put on the table. they obviously respect the choices he's made with respect to guantanamo and going to cairo, reaching out and showing a different face of america. it has also created problems in some of the places. i mean in israel people are not sure what the president --. >> rose: he has a very low popular iterating there. >> absolutely. >> rose: and "the new york times" has editorialized he has been a failure with respect to the israel israeli-palestinian situation. that george mitchell had come home empty-handed. that a fair characterization. >> it's not completely fair, no. george has advanced some -- he's made some progress in certain areas but he has not achieved what people had hoped. i don't think that's george mitchell's fault. >> rose: whose fault is it. >> i think it a number of things. it the dynamics of the region right now. it's -- it has something to do with timing if you will of the goldstone report, of what happened with abbas, of thea situation. just a number of things that built up. my own personal judgement, charlie, is that this has to be managed, frankly, at a higher level. i don't think that -- you know, when the president finishes health care, and we get down the road here a little bit, i think he will have some freedom, hopefully, to take a personal hand and the secretary of state likewise. and i think that is a very important ingredient. >> rose: was it a mistake then to have the special representatives in -- >> no, i think that it is very important ingredient but it needs backup and it needs larger engagement on a week-to-week basis than i anything anybody's been able to give it right now given afghanistan an other priorities. i mean this is a president who came in with an economy globally that was literally imploding. and many people are not even aware of how close we came to a brink of even greater failure than we faced. >> rose: that's the most important achievement of this administration so far. >> i believe it is underestimated to a great degree. >> rose: but some argue that the administration should have focused more on the economy and not try health care right now and not gone and debated on climate change and cap and trade. that the economy was the ball game. >> well, let me make it crystal clear, if i can. health care is for the economy. if we don't do health-care reform, the burden on businesses and the capacity of the system to survive is really questionable in the current direction. and if we -- there is no option of doing nothing on health care here. people keep forgetting that. i mean some of the republicans have just been screaming go back to the drawing board. well, they've got a year and a half to be at the drawing board. they haven't offered anything correctively. they won't even allow votes at this point in time. so i mean that not a constructive comment. the truth is that some people would choose to do nothing, nothing is not acceptable. secondly, climate change is a jobs bill. it is the single biggest next stimulus package staring us in the face. you want to put america back to work? pass the climate change legislation. because what it will do is fundamentally unleash unbelievable amounts of capital in america and create a whole new direction of investment which creates jobs here at home. the largest singe growth sector in germany right now, it has is up planted the auto industry, 2 -- 280,000 new jobs in germany from alternative renewable energy and energy efficiencies. we've barely scratched the surface in america at this. and we're falling behind places like china where you are about to go off to. they are racing ahead in these technologies. if we don't get our act together, the greatest national security strength we have, which has been our economy, which empowers us to do everything we do, is going to be in much greater risk. >> rose: let's talk about each of those individually. first health care. will harry reid find 60 votes on the floor? >> yes. >> rose: no question. >> i believe he will. i can't tell you no question but i believe will. >> rose: i know, but you believe he will. >> yes. >> rose: and will it include a public option or not. >> i think it will include some kind of option whether it is a back-ended option or a front-ended option depends on the votes. >> rose: a trigger mechanism. >> we have to see where the votes are. this is going to be vote-determined, obviously. but there will be something there to try to hold insurance companies accountable so that we reduce costs for americans and have accountability in the system. >> rose: and there will be able to go to conference with the house bill and come out with something the president can sign. >> i absolutely -- i believe that, yes. >> rose: and what would that mean to your former colleague senator kennedy. >> everything. >> rose: climate change and the stimulus. when you look at climate change and we're talking about cap and trade which has pass. can cap and trade pass in the senate? >> i believe it can. but it's going to take obviously some more work. we're not there yet. and i acknowledge that. but i think a lot of people, first of all, cap and trade is a terrible word concept, phrase. >> rose: which nobody really understands within nobody understands what it is. what we're talking about is a pollution reduction target. and a pollution reduction plan. and we have a private investment incentive. an incentive for private companies to be able to say i am either going to reduce my pollution that i create to meet the standard, or i'm going to buy the right from somebody else to pollute a little longer because they've gone below the standard and they have some give. and that creates an asset. it's capitalism. it's the private marketplace working at its best where we offer companies an ability to be able to take this asset they have of either having already reduced emissions a lot, or the choice they want to make to continue to pollute and use that in the marketplace as a means of achieving your goal of reducing emissions overall. it works. we've done it since 1990 on sulfur dioxide in america in response to the a -- acid rain crisis of the 1980s. and that market has worked without scandal. it's worked evenly. and we've proven we can do it. europe today has trading on carbon. and while they began roughly and had problems in the beginning when they first opened it, they've learned what those problems were. they have adjusted. and now that market is working effectively. this is a very, very powerful incentive for large companies to be able to step up and say we're going to be part of the solution. >> rose: better than a carbon tax sm. >> you can have a long argument about which would be better. but bottom line is this united states congress will not pass a tax. and to make people change their behavior, the tax would have to be large enough that you cretin sen difficults. they're going to say boy, i don't want to pay that. i got to go invest in these new technologies. and we're never going to pass not only will we not pass a tax. we'll never pass one that is large enough to change that kind of behavior. that's the beauty of this mechanism of setting your pollution target and allowing companies to buy and trade among themselves the asset of having cleaned up or not cleaned up because what it does is it makes it affordable for them to be able to make the transition to the new technology. >> rose: there's some people who worry that this is a jobless recovery and that we're looking at an unemployment rate that will be with us from 6 to 7% beyond 2011. >> it may well be, charlie. i mean i've talked to a lot of people smarter than me about the economy that tell me yes, we're going to have some long-term overhang. >> rose: and a slower growth rate. >> but that, i am convinced that depends on some of the choices that we make. imagine what happens if all of a sudden we're not sending 400 billion a year to the middle east or to south america or to africa to buy fuel, oil, to bring over here to burn in a way that goes up there and creates a bigger problem for us. we pay more money, more billions of dollars to clean up. imagine if, instead, those x numbers of billions of dollars in the beginning and a growing amount over a longer period of time are invested right here in america. right here in america to create whether it is hybrid vehicles or new batteries or wind power or solar power, or whatever the next new thing is going to be that will come out of some, you know, potential drop out of standford or harvard as we've seen who creates the next thing that is a fuel that we've never even dreamt of yet. this is going to happen, i believe. i honestly believe it i think someone there are going to be four or five google equivalents created in the energy sector in the next five, 10, 15 years. and countless numbers of people are already beginning to push that curve. if we were to put more money into r & d. if we unleashed the creative energy of our colleges and universities --. >> rose: but isn't that what the stimulus bill offered us the opportunity to do at company 780 plus billion. >> there are 80 billion in that bill that is going into some of those endeavors right now. >> rose: and are we seeing the results from it. >> well some of them, yes. but not enough. and one of the reasons is that we have to fix america's power grid. we can't transmit low, you know, alternative renewable energy created in let's say arizona or in minnesota. we can't take it now to florida or to new england. we need to rebuild america's electricity grid so that it is actually a grid that goes all across the country and you can have a much more effective transfer of electric power. when franklin roosevelt came in we put $5 billion in to make sewer all of americas with hooked to electricity it transformed the country. we need to dot same thing today. and i believe we need to preempt. the federal level needs to preempt that process so that we don't take years and years of haggling between states. we get that grid in process. the minute you get that in, the private sector will say aha, if we invest in minnesota or we invest in arizona and put this solar thermal project out there, we have a larger market to sell to. and we'll have a return on investment that is much greater and repays that and we can be competitive. that's when america is going to begin to take off. you know, i wrote road in china on a 200 mile an hour high-speed rail from beijing to -- i'm sure you will read that. a guy put a thing of water in front of me on the table. and was instinctively thought if i'm on the acela please, i put my hand on it. he said don't, you you don't have to do that we're going 200 miles an hour and the water is not even moving. the stand still traffic we're going by. they are going to build something like 14,000 miles of that in the next few years. >> rose: but are they prepared to take seriously emission standards that are sufficient to the amount of pollution that they are now doing in order to create this economic explosion. >> i think when you go to china you are going to be stunned by what china is doing. and china --. >> rose: in terms of developing technology. >> not only developing technology. in stepping up to deal with the energy transformation. they came out, just the other day. the president came out and said that the united states, that he is going to urge a 17% reduction in our emissions. a day later china came out and said they will do a 45% carbon intensity reduction -- reduction. now that you can translate that into emissions reductions as we go forward. some of us would like to see that be a little higher, stronger still. but it is very, very significant that china moved away from its position of the last 15 years that they are a developing country and they will not go into a mandatory reduction. >> rose: you are going to go with the president to copenhagen. >> no, i'm going a few days later. >> rose: so you will be there. >> i will be there. >> rose: what is the possibility of copenhagen today? >> i believe that copenhagen will come out with a political agreement that will have binding mandatory reductions that people will agree to. i believe it will come up with a prompt start to those reductions, the beginning of next year or so. and i believe it will come up with a financing mechanism that will provide funding to some of the less developed countries to assist them to be part of the solution. so we can transfer technology. >> rose: there no copenhagen agreement. >> no, this will be a copenhagen agreement. what it won't be the final treaty language. but a political agreement to which each of the heads of state sign up to, with a prompt start beginning with transparency and verification that sufficient is something that then is much more easily translated into the treaty language over the course of the next months. and in addition, ifa and india and other developed countries have stepped up with mandatory reduction targets, that is going to help senators and congressmen to be able to say okay, now we're moving down a global path. >> rose: it raises the question of the president's trip to china. many people wrote that he didn't get anything there. did he get something? >> absolutely. oh, absolutely. one of the most significant things the president got that has not been heralded is this cooperation with china in terms of global climate change. if the president had not had the conversations that he had when he was in china, i don't think that he would have come to the point of making a decision to do 17% reduction. and i don't think china would have followed a day later with its decision. you know, you don't always get these results the day you are there. but you can make an agreement to do certain things, the results of which are produced over the course of the next days, weeks, months. i think you are going to see that in this relationship with china and i think it's not insignificant. because also out of the india discussions, has come now a willingness of india to step up. and they have put language on the table that is actually stronger than china's with respect to the accountability and the measuring. so i think we're making progress. you have to keep banging away. it doesn't always happen as fast as you like. >> rose: let me take you back to the middle east. iran anda. i think russia and china are prepared to back sanctions because it looks like the iaea is unsuccessful according to what elbaradei has said. >> i don't think china is there yet. but i think china is increasingly concerned. i think russia is much closer. >> rose: the argument goes if russia jumps on board, china will join. >> we'll see. i hope so. i like the argument. but i think russia is closer to doing that still than china. >> rose: do you think sanctions will work? >> i think sanctions can have a pro found impact. if they are the tough sanctions that are available. we have, i went through a list of maybe some 11 or 12 different sanctions, possibilities. some of them are very, very tough, charlie. some of them would have a profound impact on iran's economy, on the ability of the sort of elite class of iranians to be able to engage in business and move around the world there are some tough sanctions that we could bring. >> rose: what do you think is going on in that regime now. >> ahmadinejad may be, in fact, strong tore some degree. and feeling some level of independence. but of course, you know this is all one of the tragedies of the process with iran is that we are always guessing. we are constantly in a position of conjecture or we get a little bit of information from friends and allies because we have no intersection there. we don't have diplomats on the groundment we have this dance around a lot of these issues. and i think it is very, very important for us to at least engage in the discussion. find out what the possibilities are. >> rose: so no choice but to talk to the ahmadinejad regime? >> i think you have no choice. but you can also talk to others at the same time. but you really, you know, the stakes are too high for people not to engage in some kind of legitimate dialogue about intentions and see. you know, i will give you an example. a number of years ago at the davous world economic forum, i was on a panel that included president hat ami. and he was seated next to me. and we had an interesting discussion. and in the green room afterwards, we continued the discussion for about half an hour. and i came away and i think he came away, probably with a sense that, you know, there are misunderstandings. there are histories. there are differences that get built up which if you want to try to work through them, there are sometimes ways to do that. >> rose: you believe that the possibility to negotiate with iran, to get them to give up their -- >> here's what you never know. until you make the effort, you don't know the answer to that question. and certainly if the option is war or major major confrontation and loss of life and dislocation and other great risks, you owe it to yourself and to your country to at least have those kinds of discussions. it may be impossible. it may be that you get to a point where you have no options but the toughest option. but i have always believed that you ought to try to exhaust the remedies and the possibility. >> rose: the argument goes is while you are exhausting those remedies they are getting closer and closer and closer. >> that's why it's urgent to try to do something while there is time. >> rose: and even threatening to leave the nuclear-nonproliferation treaty. >> sure. >> rose: and talk about building more and more facilities. >> absolutely. all of which raises the risks. and i have said for some period of time that a lot of countries ourselves included, anda, and china and others in the region are going to have to make the decision where do you draw the line. what is the red line with respect to iran? i think a lot of people that stood up and said they can't have this, they haven't necessarily fully defined what their line is beyond which you know, you've arrived at the point where it's the point of no return. >> rose: let me talk about you for a few minutes if i may. you have said after the 2004 election you have come to a different place. characterize that place for me. >> well, you know, if you run for president of the united states and you are the nominee of a party, you --. >> rose: and you thought at one moment on election day you won. >> you carry high hopes for the possibilities of putting in place the agenda that you fought for. and if that doesn't -- if you don't get the chance to do that, then you have to kind of make some fundamental decisions. to me the idea of sort of just walking away or going into a funk or doing something is ridiculous it was just --. >> rose: but it's hard to avoid it, isn't it for a while. >> i think you can feel some sting. >> rose: i think, you know, i think i was angrier than i was. >> rose: at yourself. >> a little bit because i think there are things we could this done that would have made a difference and i kick myself for some of the mistakes that we made. i hate to looking ba. i look back, i should have done a better job of making sure that the lives that were -- the lies that were spread about my service were answered. and we thought they were adequately answered. we did answer them. but we made a miscalculation about the degree. >> rose: the swift boat and all of that. >> correct. and it wasn't adequately answered. and i think in the end that would have cost us. i think there are other things we could have done. i think when you look at a 5,000 vote margin in one state in ohio, we just, you know, i should have done a few other things with respect to ohio and but that's -- you know, you can't go back. you can't sort of spend your time, you really can't. and i've --. >> rose: but it is an interesting -- that it is said that senator kennedy who having run for president decided that he was going to devote the rest of his life to the senate. and you had conversations or he had conversations with you about that. saying that you had a national constituency. that you had an important place in the senate. and that this is a place where you could really have a kind of -- >> i decided where i am going to spend the rest of my life much a sure you. i have made that decision. >> rose: i think that's wise, by the way. >> what i have decided is that i love the job i'm doing now. it is an extraordinary job. and i have spent enough years there that i have some seniority and several major committees from which to be able to do the nation's work. and it's great work. i love it. every day i learn. and that is exciting. and so i am still challenged and stimulated and i intend to keep. >> rose: you have a sense that as you have, quote, i think words that you may have used, ripeened, in a sense as you have come to where you are, the issues you have believed in have come to a place health care, environmental issues, more than foreign policy issues. >> sure, i think there is some of that. 20 years now, i can remember when i took part with al gore in the first hearings on global climate change in 1988. and i chaired the ocean subcommittee for a period of time. i rewrote the nation's fisheries laws several times. we looked at all of these, we had the noah was part of that. the national ocean graphic administration which had the responsibility for climate science and so forth. so it is something i've been from rio in 1992 and kyoto, in the late '90s. and so on. i've been at this. so i think that after a while you hopefully have learned something. >> rose: have you learned any more of a team player. >> obviously. i think there is a little mythology about that, to be honest about that. >> rose: about you. >> yeah, about me and the question of a team player. you know, when you are a junior senator and you don't have a committee, and a major committee, it is much harder, you know, to get something done. it just is. and ask any chairman of any committee. >> rose: sure. >> until recently i was chairman of the small business committee. not a lot of folks, it is a great committee, i love doing things there. and we got a lot done. but it's not a place where people feel that it's every day at the store of -- center of the action in the senate. now i'm a senior member of the finance committee. i'm the chairman of the communications and technology subcommittee on commerce. and i'm chairman on the foreign relations committee. so i think i'm much more automatically in the mix and that helps. >> rose: and you have a picture on your wall of inauguration day signed by the president which said without you i wouldn't be here. >> well, i think he's generously referring to my invitation to him to speak. i think he proved himself to be a hell of a campaigner. >> rose: and that started it all for him, in a sense. why did you choose him at the time. >> because i was impressed by him. i really was impressed with him 678 i campaigned with him out in chicago. i met him out there. i liked what he was --. >> rose: he was a -- >> i thought he was -- he represented a voice that i wanted to be the face of the keynote address at my convention. and i'm very proud that that worked out the way it did. >> rose: did you want to be secretary of state? >> i think you would be a liar if you sat here and played a game and said gee, charlie, no. i think it is a great position. but i'm follow -- i didn't sit around and worry about it. that is a very personal decision. >> rose: i understand. but this is history. we are talking -- >> yeah, but i'm --. >> rose: i'm engaged working very, very closely with hillary and -- i admire her enormous lely. she is very capable. she's doing a terrific job. the president, you know, has paid me the respect of listening and of giving me a chance to weigh in on things. and so i'm feeling, you know, very comfortable and engaged. >> rose: optimistic for the country? >> well, i think we -- we're at a critical juncture. we're to the doing things well in america. a lot of things. our education system. our infrastructure across the country. we're not investing in our future. we're to the dealing with critical issues in a responsible way in the united states senate and house. we are now on health care. but what a struggle. and not the kind of process that i think the senate can say is what the senate ought to be in the sense that we're not having the kind of bipartisan, you know, real legislative give-and-take. we're having to try to push this thing. and you know, get it over the mountaintop, almost in a partisan, you know, single party way. i regret that. i think it would be better otherwise but it is frankly unavoidable wz that's an interesting theme gaus my friend and colleague, tom friedman, is now sort of the focus of his curiosity, most of all now, is about the notion of whether we are in this country getting -- not getting the best options in all the critical issues that face us. you've suggested ina and other places where their initiatives with respect to environmental questions and climate change. >> we're making decisions too slowly, charlie. we are not grappling with the big choices that we face. we have to decide what america is going to make. we have to decide what americans are going to produce and how we're going to create the jobs of the future. and if we approach it the way we've been approaching climate change and these other issues, we are going to be way behind these other countries. >> rose: how do we fix the system, then? >> well, i think the single biggest fix comes back to something that i began my career on which is campaign-finance reform. get the big money out of american politics. if we can liberate congressmen and senators from the money chase, and from this very narrow process by which decisions are influenced in washington, we would be much freer to do the people's business. and i, after all these years here, i come back to believing that too many senators in and congressmen spend too much time raising money, chasing money from two few places and it book becomes problem at anything terms of what the agenda in washington is. >> rose: thank you for coming. >> glad to be here. >> rose: john kerry, chairman of the senate foreign relations committee for the hour. thank you for joining us. see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org