the british have to deal with the same thing. we have a whole bunch of people who consistently say i am willing to step up. i am willing to put myself in harm's way. think this mission is important in terms of advancing our interest around the globe. -- dishonorr them them when we turn this into a political circus. what happened was tragic. it was carried out by extremists inside of libya. we are out there trying to hunt down the folks that carried this out of me want to make sure we fix the system so it does not happen again. of opposition in syria, we have not made the decision to arm opposition groups. we have amended the eu arms embargo and that we can get technical advice and assistance. that is what we are doing. we are continuing to look at the embargo and seeing if we need to make further change in order to facilitate our work. i do believe there is more we can do in order to shake them, in order to work with them. to those who doubt that, if we do not help the syrian who wetion he what recognize as being legitimate, if we do not work with that part of the opposition which not be surprised if the extremist elements grow. i think being engaged is the right approach. >> bbc. today abouting here a new eu/u.s. trade deal. members are talking about leaving the european union. what is your message to those pushing for an early referendum? if there were a referendum tomorrow, how would you vote? >> you told david cameron that you wanted a strong u.k. and a strong e you. how concerned are you that members are contemplating withdrawal? syria, what gives you any confidence that the russians are going to help you on this? >> on the issue of the referendum, there's not going to be a referendum tomorrow. public give the british and entirely false choice between the status quo which i do not think is acceptable. britain'ssee relationship in prove. this is thenk choice the british public wants or deserve. everything i do is guided by a very simple principle. what is in the national interest of britain's tax is it appeared that will make our country's more prosperous that will help our businesses? we will push for this transatlantic trade deal. is it in our interest to reform the union to make it more open or competitive and to improve the place within the european union tax it is achievable. year passed to change. the currency is driving change for that single currency. i believe britain is quite entitled t for and get changes. is it in britain's national interest want to have achieved those changes to consult the british public in a fall on referendum. i believe it is. this is absolutely right. it has strong support around the country. of this is what i am going to do. you ask a question what are the science of russian engagement. i have very good talks on friday. we had a very frank conversation. we have approached this and some extent do approach it in a different way. i have been vocal in supporting the syrian opposition in saying assad has to go. he is not legitimate. i continue to say that. president putin has taken a different view. it is in our interest at the end of this there is a democratic syria, that there is a stable neighborhood and that we do not encourage the growth of violent extremism. i think the russian president and myself can see that the current trajectory of how things going is not in anybody's interest. there is is a major diplomatic effort which we are all together leaving. the parties to the table to bring a transition at the top so we can make the change the country needs. theith respect to relationship between the u.k. eu, we have a special relationship with the united kingdom. capacitye that our with the united kingdom that is robust, out are looking and engage with the world is hugely important to our own interests as well as the world. the u.k.'s participation is an six itits role in the world. ultimately the people of the u.k. have to make decisions for themselves. that you probably want to see if you can fix what is broken in a very important relationship before you break off. it makes some sense to me. i know david has been very active in seeking some reforms internal to the eu. those are tough negotiations. you had a lot of company -- you have a lot involved. yetong as we have not evaluated how successful those reforms will be. i would be interested in seeing a whether or not those are successful before rendering a final judgment. emphasize these are issues for people of the united kingdom to make a decision about. not ours. i think david said it very well. theou look objectively entire world community has an interest in seeing a syria that is not engaged in sectarian war in which the syrian people are not being slaughtered, that is an island of peace as opposed to an outpost for extremists. that is not just true for the united states or great britain or countries like jordan and turkey that border syrian. it is true for russia. am pleased to hear that david had a very constructive conversation with president shortly after. i have spoken to him several times on this topic. that as aargument is leader on the world stage, russia has an interest as well as an obligation to try to resolve this issue and a way that can lead to the outcome we would all like to see over the long term. secrett think it is any there remained lingering suspicions between russia and other members of the g-8 or west. decadeseen several since russia transformed itself. some of those suspicions still exists. ist of what my goal has been try to break down some of those suspicions and objectively at the situation. broker a peaceful political transition that lead assad's departure but a state in syria that is still in tact that accommodate the interests of all the ethnic groups inside of syria and that end the bloodshed, that will not just be good for us. that will be good for everybody. we will be very persistent in trying to make that happen. i am not promising that it will be successful. the furies had been unleashed in a situation it is very hard to cook things back together. there are going to be enormous a crediblein getting process going even if russia is involved. we have so many other countries like iran and hezbollah that have been involved. we have organizations that are essentially affiliated to al qaeda add that have another agenda beyond just getting rid of assad. all of that may combustible mix. it is worth the effort. we are always more successful in any global upper room we have a strong friend and partner like great britain by our side and strong leadership by prime minister david cameron. thank you very much, everybody. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> and reminder that while prime minister david cameron continues his tour leading up to the g-8 summit he will not be back in the british parliament for his weekly session. clegg will take his place this week. the prime minister's time at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span2. myanmar state television has announced that the president will make a state visit to the u.s. in the near future. it is the first head of state in 47 years. the date of the visit has not been announced. we are planning on bringing you live coverage of the presence at guantanamo bay. we're having technical issues and the heritage foundation. we are taping the event and clinton had it for you later. it is live -- and plan to have it for you later. it is life on our website c- span.org. legislative business will continue on. members are expected to consider legislation calling for the full repeal of the 2010 health care law and a bill requiring the sec to require a cost benefit analysis before new regulations. the senate is back at 2:00 p.m. for morning business. tomorrow they will continue to work on the water infrastructure bill. week a vote on president obama's bid for coverage. you can see the senate on c- span2. militaryw at capabilities with in syria and weather means for both sides. >> we continue our conversation with international studies. but bl was 2010. it is a rough estimate in terms of capabilities. they are very secretive. you had in the thought military focused against missouri for 30 years. the law affects the civil war and insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare, an erosion of air capabilities, an erosion of armor. in 2011 and 2012, and erosion of manpower. what you have now is an effort by the assad forces to reverse some of those. they have continued focus on armored mobility in major like damascus and areas that defend the city. they still have an active pool of attack helicopters. they still have a fairly dense air defense network despite some talk of its aging status. you have a military that, even after two years of losses, have some capability, on paper anyway. host: their military includes an army, and navy, air and air defense forces, service agents, 18 years old. compulsory for men, but you mentioned of the affections. what are we seeing terms of men and even women serving? guest: you have had a trend in the dynamics. in 2011 and 2012, there was a number of defections that never went above a certain level, never 300 men or 500 men defect. you have the military service age. so you have a syrian relation, even those who are not in the military, many have seen training with assault weapons. you have predominately sunni's who look at syria and the gi, and we see the sunni, and they would say i think the assad regime is done and i will side with opposition factions. that was the trend through about 2012. talking about defections that never exceeded 20% or 25% of the overall fighting strength of the syrian military. the syrian army is about 200,000 strong, not counting the reserves before the crisis. so you have had a significant loss, but there is an effort on both sides to compensate. one way the assad forces have done that is to focus on the un, look at militias, and this new national defense force. all this does address the manpower problems they face. host: defense spending for the syrian government, 3.6% of gdp. how significant is that number right now? where is president assad getting his money, and do we have a sense of how it is coming in and how it is being spent? is it even coming in anymore? guest: syrian defense spending has been trending negative for decades. the loss of the union as a key sponsor and financial backer and the loss of oil and resources has made it difficult for the syrians to recapitalize their military under the best of circumstances, let alone a civil war. if you ask me now what kind of transparency do we have a budget spending, what are the in terms of that position in syria, it is at best estimate. it is a civil war. other countries that have experienced this in the region like iraq, lebanon, and others. you look at about a decade where you have a best estimate. what you have now is, ironically not so much to fund the syrian regime, but for patrons like the russians and the iranians expedite assistance that had in the pipeline to begin with. all this talk about the of russian land-based major air defense systems. something has been in the pipeline for a better part of a decade if not more. those sorts of trends are accelerating. in terms of cash to support the military itself, you still do not have a major influx. you have support from china, support from iran, support from russia, but you also have reserves, dwindling but still capable in terms of allowing the assad forces to pay our salaries and pensions, even officers who defected to the opposition. host: as we look at the power and strength of rebel forces, what do we know about their military capabilities, how unified they are, what sort of money and weapons they have? guest: the order of battle, if we can call it that, has significantly. you have at best a haphazard band of different unions that were mainly local. that has ballooned. the low estimate in terms of the number of different factions among many use terms like regiments and brigades, but ey are local militia. they have organized themselves and they have their own version of an order and battle. the number something like 100. the higher estimate is somewhere near 1000, and depending how you interpret how some of these factions have analyzed each other. in terms of the capability, there is the militia in the middle east and they have access to assault rifles and machine guns, and they have mortors. there are things like tandem warhead devices that can take out a tank. it depends on whether you have skilled team to operate. there is some air capability, very limited, and it is mainly as a backdrop on getting access to caches from syrian military bases that they had access to as a result of forces. you have also seen some external aid, things like rifles they can take out armor and infrastructure. you have seen transfers of chinese air defense man portable systems. it is difficult in terms of who has them, how many they have, the level of readiness. you have only seen sporadic use of some of the air defense systems by the opposition. host: aram nerguizian is our guest, a senior fellow at the center for strategic and international studies. he is at csis. here are the numbers. democrats, 202-585-3880. republicans, 202-585-3881. independent callers, 202-585- 3882. if you are outside united states, 202-585-3883. rachel is next, forney, texas, independent line. our first caller for aram nerguizian. caller: before we went into iraq because of the weapons, my friend, she got a newsletter years before that talking about hussein had some of those weapons in syria and he no longer has those. a while back they were talking about the gases that could be used on the people in syria and they said that was not as strong as it used to be. the cousin they were older. why did that never come up, the fact that hussein had gotten rid of those weapons and they went to syria? guest: it is a very good question, and it is a bit more complicated than that. iraqave, on the one hand, that had a long history of alleged chemical weapons. there has been a great deal of talk that some of those were transferred over to syria. but you also have to put that in the backdrop of a syrian weapons program that dates back at least to the early 1980's. when the syrians realized that they could no longer compete in terms of strategic parity with the israelis, in terms of aircraft, armor, training for their personnel,, they shifted over the strategic deterrence. that means netting up their air defense capabilities near damascus. it meant missiles. in making an attack exceedingly problematic. chemical weapons developed is part of that, part of a strategy to deter countries from engaging a syrian military that in terms of one-to-one combat or in terms of armor mobility or manpower cannot match and military like the israelis, in terms of training, readiness, and overall maneuverability. i see your point, but it is important to bear in mind that you do have a syrian component of this that has been in the works for at least 30 years. host: jeff on our public and line, texas. caller: is the problem in syria right now because thdiesident os waited so long to do anything about the situation? and why did we not get in when we knew that there were the two that factions, the assad faction and the rebel faction? we could have given them a hand so that hezbollah and the others did not take over? guest: first, there has never been a pattern in syria where there is just two factions. there has been this pattern of atomization within the opposition. this is not something new. the assad regime under bashar has been to keep the opposition week. you had a backdrop of division in terms of the opposition. the other side of this, from the u.s. perspective, is an understanding, regardless of whether you have democrats or republicans in the white house, what you have in syria as a result of the uprising is the complete collapse and disintegration of this weak social contract in syria. so the collapse of the post- automation experience within syria is much bigger than just supporting good versus evil, the good guys against the bad guys. you have corporate interests. you have the military, like in egypt, that has interests to defend and is willing to defend them aggressively. one of the reasons the egyptian military did not shift in a way that elicited more violence is because it was very clear to them that their opponents would accommodate many of their interests. you had that in syria. you also have the sectarian dynamic. for all the talk of syria being an arab country, a form of arabism, you have the reality that that arabism has played a critical role in mitigating and subsuming a lot of the sectarian pressures from alawites, sunnis, and others. it became clear to many of the observers that the sectarian dynamic could take on the kind of proportions that would make it very difficult. you could intervene. but you achieve one narrow objective. there is no such thing as a cure all. there was not a cure all two years ago or a year ago. because the stakes are so high. you can do something now to stop gap a lot of this, but you're not able to do all the things. can the civil war put back syria on a stable track, deal with chemical weapons, and deal with the problems with one set of narrow solutions? it was probably not going to be much easier in 2011. one other thing to remember, a lot of folks remember the iraq experience. we forget that the u.s. also had the lebanon experience. the experience in the early 1980's of inserting u.s. manpower and resources into another sectarian civil war. that did not end well. so they know what it means to get embroiled in these civil wars. host: aram nerguizian, here is what monte asks on twitter -- guest: it is one of the big critical questions that i think historians will face as they look back, the trajectory and tragedy of syria. when people ask me, what do you think about serious and the response and 2011, on the one hand you had the reality that the u.s. and its allies were finding new ways to deal with a new pattern as they saw it, and it was largely post-9/11. not so much a cold war lens, which would have been more helpful. a lot of the underlying pressure that led us to where we are now in syria were always present. they were present in egypt, tunisia, and in syria. in syria am a there are lessons from post-world war ii reconstruction and how costly it is. and other side of this that is more critical is across ideological lines, it has been amateur hour on syria. amateur hour in terms of the policy debate in the united states. more could a glee, it has been somewhat of a naïve assumption -- more critically, it has been somewhat of a naïve ascension that you can change any of this quickly. you have similar assumptions about rapid gains in the arab world, especially the gulf states. this is in 2011 here the problem is that this is not an spring. it is probably not even an arab decade. it is probably an arab quarter century were you have instability. the best countries can do is to find ways to mitigate the effects of instability. looking at that as revolutions in europe, those lasted in the case of france as little as 60 years but as much as 100 and terms of the long-term economic effects. so there was never going to be a good response. we will leave it to the historians to analyze it down the road. host: chris in columbus, ohio, republicans line. caller: good morning. my question is, my understanding from various reporting is that the majority of the syrian military is essentially now restricted to garrison defense and to no longer actively participate in operations. they can hold their positions. the syrians are relying more and more on -- the assad regime onrelying more and more militias, both paramilitaries that there finding inside syria, alawite m