Decision and ultimately decided not to take it not because he thought there was a problem with the pinpoint strikes but because he didnt know where we were going to go from there. Trump i dont think looked further than the striefntle he got the advice on what can i do to respond to the abomination of Chemical Attacks against these children. Then what do we do . Rose we conclude with dr. Rolla hallan and dr. Annie sparrow. We know the Data Collected by human rights that this has been an intentional destruction of healthcare rather than as a Collateral Damage of war. So that Childrens Hospital that was run by the independent Doctors Association had actually been bombed a staggering six times beforehand and, really, that was what galvanized this Global Movement to rebuild the Childrens Hospital in aleppo and it was our way of saying if war criminals are going to commit these murders and governments are going to stand by and let them act with absolute impunity we humanitarians and doctors will not be deterred from doing life saving work, well galvanize Global Action and rebuild and thats what we did with the convoy. Rose syria and the the airstrikes next. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose we begin with syria this evening. Last night President Trump announced the United States carried out a missile strike in syria following Bashar Alassads chemical weapons attack on tuesday which targeted civilians. Tonight, i ordered a targeted immigrant attack on the air feld in syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this Vital National security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and ignored the urging of the u. N. Security council. Rose it is the first direct American Assault against the assad regime. The move is a reversal from trumps earlier antiinterventionist position. President Vladimir Putin of russia called ate significant blow to the russianamerican relationship. Tom friedman wrote about the challenges trump faces in syria in his New York Times column earlier this week. He joins me and is the author of thank you for being late, a New York Times best seller and been there for 16 weeks. So this president in the midst of a lot of Foreign Policy this week, meeting with a lot of people including a crucial meeting on thursday night, orders an airstrike against an air force base. What do you see as the repercussions of this . Well, i sort of think about this, charlie, in three buckets. The first is that i think it was important for the United States to use its power to ascend to send a signal that people use poison gas, as we were talking of the anniversary of world war i, that that is just not on. It doesnt mean we can right every wrong, that we can reverse every atrocity, but when we have a chance to do this at a cost thats tolerable and a message thats loud, i think its really important, because you dont want a world where people are thinking thats okay. Secondly, i think it is useful for the United States at a time when were being tested by north korea and in probably a much more dangerous situation with Nuclear Weapons that could be possibly delivered to the United States to at least interject, charlie, some uncertainty about American Power that dont count on us just to sit back and let you do this. I think thats a healthy byproduct of this. The big question is a third bucket which is the weakness that president obama faced in dealing with syria is you had john kerry always trying to negotiate a solution, god bless him for that, but we really had no leverage. Rose right. The question is by doing this does it give us marginally more leverage . Does it say to putin and others, you know, were not just going to sit back entirely. Were not diving in, thats clear, there is no desire on the American Public to do that, but does it get their attention more . Because it relates for me, charlie, to a fourth bucket which is that i believe all important politics in the middle east always happens the morning after the morning after. So the morning after putin denounces us, u. S. Relations will suffer with us, were standing with syrian brothers, but i bet putin was on the phone the morning after with Bashar Alassad saying what exactly were you thinking . Poison gas a day taf the american secretary of state and the american u. N. Ambassador basically say syria is for the syrians to decide . They were basically in the process of turning it over to you and you now do this . What are you thinking . The reason that becomes important is that some point down the road the morning after the morning after the morning after, does putin just say this guy is too much trouble and im ready to ease him aside, can we broker a deal with the great powers, a powersharing agreement, i dont know, that would be the bestcase scenario. Rose doesnt seem like hes doing that. But as you say, its not the day after the day after the day after. Exactly. Rose couple of questions. Number one, some are suggesting some that perhaps this attack was a consequence of what the secretary of state said were going to let them do what theyre going to do, were not going after assad then he goes and makes a very dramatic step knowing there are pictures. Knowing in the age of twitter and cell phones it will get out. Rose not knowing what this president s response would be. Because this is a president that watches tv, that was the main sums, and he saw the pictures from television. I dont know what the policy was the day before yesterday, what tillerson and the u. N. Ambassador nikki haley were talking about in the sense its up to the syrians to decide. I dont think the policys radically changed. On syria, charlie, i have nothing but humility, i think its the problem from hell, its one of many problems and if somebody says, charlie, i want you to be secretary of state, tell them you had your heart set on agriculture because its the worst job in the world now. Every problem is obamacare, big, complicated, more difficult to solve than you think, your own constituency isnt happy and costs more than the American Public wants to pay. Rose it seems one more time that the president has to link his action with a failure to act by the predecessor. Well, you know, there is a lot of controversy around obamas decision, charlie, to draw a red line and not bomb syria when it crossed the red line by using poison gas the first time. But i would say this for president obama, he didnt bomb syria but he used the leverage of the threat of bombing syria to get a deal for syria to surrender supposedly all its poison gas under the supervision of the russians. We know two things, one is that they didnt surrender all their poison gas and that should be an embarrassment to the russians who guaranteed this deal, but i will say one thing, had we not done that deal, the poison gas syria had, some of it would not be in thehands of i. S. I. S. Because it was being stored in places that i. S. I. S. Controls. So that was ant total zero what obama did. I think it was important to remember that we did get a lot of this junk out of the country. But, again, i just think the problem here is, when a country breaks apart, a country thats been held together basically from the topdown by an iron fist and it breaks apart, putting it back together again is well nigh impossible. For an outside power or an inside power. Everything youre looking at is how do we limit the damage. One thing i would urge people to consider because i think there are two issues here from an american Strategic Point of view. Theres the humanitarian question and its horrific whats been going on. We are huge donors of humanitarian aid to syria, people dont know how much is pouring in from the United States. Rose we donate more aid than take in refugees. Exactly. But there is spill over from jordan and lebanon which is destabilizing those states which we have a strategic interest in not happening. And the rise of populism in western europe. Putin weaponized the refugees and by flooding them into europe as he did he triggered a nationalist populist backlash in the European Union which is now straining and stressing the e. U. I know most americans dont really like to think about the European Union. It seems like a big boring thing. I once wrote about the e. U. And called it trumps European Union just to fool the search engine. laughter the fact is the e. U. Is the other United States of the world. Its the other great center of liberal ideas, of democracy and free markets and free people. Its the other United States. Rose and as a whole, its big. Its big. Its the worlds biggest market. And two United States, charlie are better than one. Theyre kind of our wing man in the world. You go anywhere in africa, you will see a e. U. Mission there, go to the west bank, e. U. The e. U. Fragments under the stress of refugees not just from syria, but also Subsaharan Africa that is a huge strategic loss for the United States. So there are a lot of dimensions. Rose suppose i said, some argue the following that this kind of proportionate attack will never change the behavior of Bashar Alassad. Yes. Rose because he can lose an air base tomorrow. Yes. Rose the only thing that will change him is the fear of survival, the loss of power. Yes. Rose so unless you do something that threatens that, youre not going to get anybodys attention. Its true, and i think, you know, my friend michael said the other day, the only thing standing in the way of an American Intervention in syria is american democracy because the American People dont want to do it. And that is a fact. Now, i dont think anyone in their right mind, you know, says, you know, we should want to we want to invade syria and a take it over the way we did iraq. No ones talking about that. I think the question, is could you partner with the arab league, with n. A. T. O. , where they put troops on the ground where we contribute to it to create a safe zone, just a small beachhead that would create the pressure to topple assad. Thats not going to happen. But to get the russians and iranians to negotiate seriously. Because what we actually dont want to do is we dont want to topple assad, we dont want to collapse the state because you end up with iraq where the whole system falls apart. You want the russians and iranians to move assad aside, because hes killed so many people. Put in some leader whos not got all this blood on their hands, and then see can you negotiate some kind of power sharing arrangement, devo luges of power, like the sunnis have their area rose thats exactly what john kerry was trying to do for years. The problem is he had no leverage. Rose he said that. He had 51 diplomats in the state Department Said that. They complained to obama about it. Rose right. Obama took the view it was all or nothing, that once you started with something, you would end up with a big footprint on the ground. Again, i want to be totally humble about it. Its the problem from hell. I sympathize with anyone who has to deal wit, but i do think that what we are going to have to think about and what trump will have to think about is is there a way to build an international coalition. We are not going to do this on our own. That creates some kind of leverage there. Its a no fly zone or safe zone where the russias finally say, you know what, this is more trouble than its worth. The problem for us for putin, excuse me putin is like a guy playing at the casino in syria, a big pile of chips but never can go to the cashier. Rose and they said you cant even win. Exactly, he cant go to the cashiers booth because the minute he leaves it all falls apart on him. So hes got a problem, too, at some point. Is he going to stay there forever propping up the guy . Rose so why has he been so resistant to finding a transition government is this. I think partly because there hasnt been a lot of pressure, up to now, basically. Rose and there was nothing threatening assad on the ground that would have made him exactly, they would have beaten back the sane opposition rose and all the cities like aleppo that they had and it gets to the mystery of why assad did this. In a sense, they had what they wanted and what assad has done by doing this is really reopening the whole case and the whole question. But there is no military solution to syria, theres only a powersharing solution thats going to have to bring the United States, saudi arabia and iran and russia to the table. Rose and iran. Cant do it without iran. They have the main fighters. Between iranian fighters and hezbollah and iranian mercenaries they recruited from central asia and pakistan, the iranians are key players. Rose coming back to sir. I cant mean time, i. S. I. S. , the battle goes on in mosul. They have a plan using kurds as a part of the plan, base fighting force, boots on the ground in syria. You know, there is no question the i. S. I. S. Problem still remains there, but its not happening in a vacuum. Its derivative of this other issue. Rose its a recruiting tool. Exactly. I. S. I. S. Is really a byproduct of the proiranian militias in iraq and the my lackey government trying to crush the sonyys of iraq and then i have islamist trends in the gulf feeding these guys money. Its a bloody mess because these states were basically propped up by the cold war. Rose what does it do to the attention on russian meddling in the russian elections . Kicks it off the front page for sure. Yeah. Rose the Investigation Continues by the f. B. I. It will continue and i think it will come back. I dont think that story is over, i dont think that story should be over. We need to know what russia did and how they did it to prevent it next time around. Rose and we feed to know if there was any coordination or collusion. Right, was there any collusion. Im never going to sleep easily on this issue until i see Donald Trumps tax returns. There is two issues. There is the issue of actual collusion between trump people and the russians to tilt the election his way. From what ive seen so far, dont really see any hard evidence of that in any significant way. But then there is the question of is he compromised . And until we see his tax returns we wont know the answer to that. I assume there is a reason hes hiding them from us. Rose clearly. Basically, the people around him says hell never show you his tax returns. I assume there is a reason. Thats what they care about more than the f. B. I. Investigation. Rose there is also the summit going on in palm beach. Yeah. Rose i forgot the column you wrote the title i said trump is a russian agent. Rose by taking the policy positions it plays into the hands of the chinese because alternative sources of energy, can provide jobs. Rst, he says, i want to be tough with china on trade. How would i get tough with china on trade is this i would organize an 11nation trading block in asia, in the asianpacific based on our values, our interests. Rose call it t. P. P. Great name for it, charlie thats what i would do. What does trump do the first day in office . Rips up t. P. P. Do you know what the real story of t. P. P. Is . Dont tell your listeners this we fleeced all these guys in asia, we got so much of what we wanted, why is it . Because they want to be with us. The vietnamese want to be in a trading bloc with us. Rose theyre scared of china. They want to organize, exactly. We had this great deal. He rips first day. Day, two gets rid of the Climate Research and commitment to mitigate climate change. Heres what i would say to him, mr. President , you dont believe in climate change, i do. Lets put that aside. Thats between you and your beach house. I believe in it, you dont. Well set that here. Do you believe in math . We are at now 7. 2 billion people, according to the u. N. Population statistics, by 2030, 8. 1. So basically another billion people will be here by 2030, charlie hopefully you and i will still be here then. Another billion people who will want to eat like us, drive like us and live in homes like us. That will put so much pressure on the plant that clean airstrikes water, power and Energy Efficiency have to be or else well be a bad biological experiment. Please raise your hand in you phi america can be the greatest power in the world and not lead the global industry. I dont think so. Were ceding it to china. China cant breathe, so they have no choice but to invest in solar, batteries and efficiency, and theyre doing it in holistic ways, buying American Companies here to do it. So for both those reasons, trump must be a chinese agent, forget the russian agent, because hes ceding these two issues to china. Rose that brings us to north korea, topping one or two to trade, probably one because they have mo