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War is lousy, for citizens, for women, for children, for progressives, deplete resources and fatten defense budgets. i thank you for inviting me on, but there's a lockdown on much of the media establishment. it's one hand clapping when it comes to arguing about the u.s. national interest to have a relationship with russia. understanding putin is abauthoritarian figure, understanding that some of us don't necessarily give legisl e legitimacy to leaders and also understanding that the -- gorbachev is a part owner, it's where the journalists so many have been killed. russians also seek some relat...

These are the tendencies that donald trump is aligning himself with and telling all kinds of untruths so the idea that there would be a suspicion about his motives when in fact his campaign manager is about to go into court, when in fact his national security advisor is in trouble with the law and so much else, i can't agree that we should have a completely calm head when it comes to donald trump, the president of the united states. this is a very dangerous situation. i want good relations with russia or china, not just our friends but adversaries too, i'm not out of my mind, i want that, we a...

. and we are back with my panel. steve, i want to ask you again, we have got to be brief. where do we go from here? you seem to think the allies freak out as you put it is something that can be smoothed over. a lot of allies i have spoken to seem to think this is more of a water shed moment where they ask to ask themselves do we have to imagine a world without a rock hard alliance with the united states? >> look, the helsinki summit sent a lot of disturbing messages to people all around the world. here's the message i think it sent, a double message to putin. two things, contradictory, one y...

Democratic path. a scholar has shown that by the mid 1990s the liberal tally for all reformers in russia's elections never went above 20%. the extreme opposition forces, communist, hyper nationalist, received about 35% on average and once putin came to power, the move toward ill liberal democracy and out right authoritarianism became unstoppable. an authoritarian russia had even more areas of contention with the united states. moscow panicked over the color revolutions where countries like georgia and ukraine became more democratic. it looked with consternation on democracy in iraq. and perhap...

Doubling of gdp. and cash was flowing into the president's coffers. and putin sitting atop the vertical of power he had created began a serious effort to restore russian influence and under mine the west and it's democratic values. what has followed ever since, the interventions in georgia and ukraine, the alliance with assad in syria, thecyber attacks on western countries--the u.s. might have missed an opportunity to transform russia in the 1990s. which don't know if it would have worked but we do know that there was darker forces taking over in russia almost two decades ago, and since then, ...