Matthew Barzun, US Ambassador to the UK HARDtalk

from 29 officers to four. They will continue to follow focus lines of

enquiry. Now it is time for HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk. By the time George W Bush left the White House,

perceptions of the United States in the wider world were overwhelmingly

negative. As the Obama presidency enters its final phase, how have

attitudes shifted? A greater focus on soft, rather than hard power. A

yes we can commitment to heal political wounds at home and abroad.

My guest today is the US ambassador to the UK, Matthew Barzun, a close

ally of Obama. Has the promise been fulfilled?

Ambassador Matthew Barzun, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you for having

me. Why bad it is your job to explain the policies adopted by the

US government. -- It is your job. It is part of the job. The other part

of the job is to listen to what the people of the UK are thinking and

feeling. What about the idea that the US government may be doing

things that are difficult for you to feel good about yourself? How does

that make you feel? Most of the time I do things I am proud of. We are

trying to make the world more peaceful, more prosperous and more

just. Those things are hard to do but sometimes I am in the position

of having difficult conversations about difficult subjects but that is

all part of it. What is different in your position compared with the

senior diplomats in other countries, you are a political appointee. You

got your job because you are a friend, an ally of, a help of Barack

Obama. He trusted you and wanted to give you a top appointment. That

makes you a political appointees rather than a career diplomat. When

you hear senior American politicians coming to Europe, saying, I do not

believe that Barack Obama truly loves America, how do you feel when

you hear that? We have lots of Americans coming through London and

exercising their free speech and saying things. In that case, he is

certainly saying something I do not agree with. Of course he loves his

country. He demonstrates that every single day in the most amazing way.

It is an extraordinary thing for a senior politician to say of their

own president. It sort of suggests a poisonous, political atmosphere in

Washington. I wonder whether you feel that atmosphere is damaging to

America abroad. I think it is hard to get excited about political

vitriol in our nation's the door. That is not a healthy thing. It is

important to put it into perspective. Our democratic system

is loud and confrontational. If you look back to 1800 and John Adams,

the first guy we sent here as an Amnesty, it was pretty tough. Back

then it was pretty tough. It works for us but you can go over the line

in questioning someone's patriotism. Crossed a line. You talk about

vitriol there is in the American political system. That are similar

tensions in other systems. Right now it is election season in the United

States and you are watching it very closely. In Europe, we are. I was in

conference the other day and there was a live satellite linkup with

Donald Trump, currently front runner in all the polls for the Republican

nomination. He said to the assembled audience, the problem is, when

Barack Obama sits in a room with, Putin has absolutely no respect for

Barack Obama. Again, as a US ambassador representing the US

government, do you worry about the respect that Obama commands around

the world? I wake up every single day and do this wonderful job,

working for the president, working for the United States. I see and I

hear every single day the respect that people in the UK have for the

job he is doing. That fact is, I do not want to get dragged into

domestic politics back home, a key part of the job is that I do not get

into party politics back home. I am not responding to any particular

comments you may just have mentioned. President Obama from day

one has been clear that America has two lead and he will lead. How he

leads and his style of leadership, which is important in his working,

is different from how others will do it. Let's judge it by its fruits.

You talk about the commitment to leave. Perhaps the signature

commitment at the beginning of the pregnancy -- presidency was to

disentangle America from commitments he felt were counter-productive. I

went back and read his first inaugural. I was with 2 million

others on a cold, January day. He talks about rebuilding alliances and

working with old friends and former foes. He says a great and powerful

line. We will extend our hands if you unclench your fist. So, in all

of those examples he realised the threats we face as a country and the

opportunity to be had in front of us, all of them require American

leadership. America cannot do them on their own, nor can they dumb

about be done -- nor can they be done without American leadership.

When he fulfilled his commitment to pull US forces out of Iraq, in

retrospect it look like something of a mistake. US forces are now back in

Iraq as advisers, thousands of them. That is true. Let's remember how

that happened. The democratically elected government of Iraq asked us

to leave. Now, the democratically elected government asked us to

return. The US government also had the decision to take, whether it was

going to act lead to a request to leave, which could have been

political, or whether the Americans felt, baby in Afghanistan this is

relevant as well, that there needed to be a long-term and military

commitment to the safeguarding of these countries and whether Obama

believed he could disengage and has had to learn through bitter

experience. It is not as simple as that. I I disagree that

disengagement was his approach from the beginning. That's good back to

2009, there was an economic crisis and two major ground operations.

What he said at the time was, being on a perpetual war footing with

major ground troops is not sustainable. It is not sustainable

economically and it is not sustainable for us. It is not a

healthy thing. He talked about specific terrorist networks trying

to help -- hurt us and our allies. It was about having a sustainable

way to keep us safe. It is about having partnerships with people like

the Government in Afghanistan. We can help them train Armed Forces so

they can secure themselves. Then the much less glamorous work of building

rule of law and capacity so they can become safe, secure and stable. What

is the message from Syria? You are sitting in Europe, representing the

United States. The message from a banner in 2012 was that President

Assad must go. If he uses chemical weapons, we will respond militarily.

He actually said, if a side uses chemical weapons, that will change

my calculus. That represents a red line for us. What then does that

mean? Our goal has not changed. We maintain we do not think sad can

play -- President Assad can play a future in Syria. We stand by what we

said those years ago that he cannot remain. I go back to the point I

made about Vladimir Putin and he right now appears to be acting,

rather than reacting, in a host of international arenas we are talking

about. Vladimir Putin sent in bombers big-time. Look at the data.

Since the Russians started their intervention in Syria, serious

intervention, US bombing raids in Syria have fallen in the bar as the

Russian military action in Syria has exponentially risen. It does look

like Putin is calling the shots. Absolutely not. You see Russia

reacting in a way that is quite predictable. They have been trying

to prop up residence Assad for some time. Publicly privately we have

been encouraging them to stop. What you see right now is not leadership.

It is a mistake for any of us to think it is leadership, coming in

and dropping bombs. On the positive side, Russia could be hugely helpful

in two ways. They could be really helpful by helping to bring

together, we have a meeting on Friday, they do, in Vienna, to bring

a political solution. They are saying the right things. There is a

military solution that is raspberry is not a military solution to what

is happening in Syria. There is a political solution. They could be

helpful to joining the coalition of countries and organisations we had

built under the leadership of President Obama to destroy Isil.

Messages are being sent from Washington and now not being heeded

in Moscow. It comes back to the broad theme I put out at the

beginning of this interview, where does America's standing in the world

sit today? How did it compare when Obama took over in the White House?

Would you not acknowledge that many people around the world look at, for

example, a relationship between Obama and Putin today and they do

wonder whether the United States is able to project power and its

interest in the way it used to? Let's talk about the 55 nation

coalition against Isil. That is American leadership. President Obama

drew attention to the problem and that is leadership. Look at Russian

aggression in Ukraine and the United States leadership with the UK and

others in getting together to impose real costs and consequences. Has the

US-led coalition allies in the sanctions programme against Russia,

have they succeeded in rolling back the annexation of Crimea and

removing Russian influence in eastern Ukraine? Yellow magnet let's

look at what has happened in the Russian economy. -- Let's look at

what happened. The economy went down from 2 trillion to 1.2. Everything

you want to see as a country going up is going down and things like

borrowing costs are going down. It is not working. That is not

leadership. It is reaction from a position of weakness. John Kerry

talks to Foreign Minister said gay lover of a lot there will be a

chance for Russia to do it has been doing. -- Sergei Lavrov. We have

seen terrible images of the refugee crisis. There is another arena over

which the United States is trying to project power and that is the South

China Sea. One of the strategic choices of President Obama was to

focus on Asia. Some called it the pivot to Asia. This is what a state

owned newspaper is saying today about the US warships ploughing

their way through a channel very close to these newly created islands

in the South China Sea that China claims as its own. The US cannot

finish the situation in Iraq or Afghanistan it is only to make noise

against Russia. It has failed to achieve anything in Syria and cannot

really take down Pyongyang. China has not provoked this crisis in the

South China Sea but it is obvious that the US truly is only a paper

tiger. Needless to say, I could not disagree more strongly with those

statements. I wonder how alarmed you are that this feeling is spreading.

Were just hosted the Chinese delegation in Washington. -- we have

just hosted. We have areas of real disagreement. What you saw, and it

comes to without getting into military details of how the Navy

works, every single year, as a matter of routine, our Navy goes

around the world in international waters, which that was, to keep open

the free flow of navigation. That is a core principle and one of the

major functions of our Navy and other people's navies to go and do

that. We should not take it for granted. The United States benefits

and the whole world economy benefits from keeping those lines open. Our

position has not changed. We do not weigh in to territorial disputes.

What we do weigh in on is, we cannot do this through coercion. There is

an international law that these things can be resolved peacefully

and not through coercion. We have talked about US strategy with regard

to rivals, let's talk about allies. Use it here in London as one of the

most senior diplomats on top of America's relationships with allies

in Europe. When you look at the European Union today, we have had

disarray over the years then and now we have disarray over the massive

migration challenge that faces the European Union. Do you, as a senior

American diplomat, worry about the ability of Europe to respond to

today's challenges? With specific reference to the migrant crisis kite

you look at those images and you think first of the families in

crisis. Then you think about communities and friends in Europe

receiving them by the thousands and thousands and thousands. My first

reaction is empathy for what the refugees are going through and what

these municipalities are going through. What the leaders of these

organisations are trying to do to make sense of it and deal with the

humanitarian crisis. Do you think the United States needs to do more

as well? President Obama has been clear, as has John Kerry. We have

done a lot historically and we have to do more and are doing more. The

British government is not even from taking refugees inside your about

once to focus on camps in the region. It has committed to 20,000

refugees by 2020. What is the number the United States will commit to

take? We have opted to 10000 and working with Congress to get the

number increased for the following year. That is not many people, is

it? We would like to do more and we are doing more. Absolutely. If you

look back to 1980, the United States through the United Nations refugee

system has taken 4 million refugees, more than any other country in the

world. We will stand up to any country and generously welcomed

refugees. What we are seeing is not the normal, annual flow of refugees.

It is draining the systems of all of these places. We are doing more to

react to that. And we are trying to get to the root cause. Not everyone

is coming from Syria. Look what is happening in Syria! That is the

fault of Assad. Half the country is displaced. If you think at Lebanon,

Turkey, what they are going through, what people" are going through... We

need a political solution to end the conflict. We have heard about

meetings that will happen in Vienna on Friday with stakeholders, who

care about that, differing opinions within that group, to be sure. But

to try to get to a political solution. That is what is going to

bring stability to the people of Syria, so that most of them want to

move home. As Europe and the United States wrestles with Syria, there

are other things you need to be aware of. There is to be, by the end

of 2017, a referendum here in the UK, on whether to walk away from the

European Union. Let me quote to you words of Philip Gordon, former

Assistant Secretary of State. He came to London in 2012 or 2013 and

he said, British membership of the European Union is in the American

interest. Do those words still stand? Yes. Phil Gordon said it back

then. President Obama has said it more recently than that. That

decision is up to you, the British people. You say, you know what,

Britain is staying in the European Union and that is a call American

interest. I wanted to start by saying, it is up to you and we care.

When Phil Gordon gets asked President Obama gets asked or I get

asked, we say the same thing. We feel like we had to say what we

feel. The United Kingdom makes every organisation it is part of better

and stronger. We know that first-hand, the United Nations

Security Council and Nato, to pick two important groups we are all part

of. We happened to sit together because of an accident of alphabet

in those considerations. It is not an accident we see eye to eye with

the British on so many issues. I use the word ambassador at Pfizer delay.

ambassador. -- advisedly. This is a ambassador. -- advisedly. This is a

sensitive political issue in the United Kingdom. What right do you,

as a senior American official, to wade into the debate? I have said it

is up to you all to decide your relationship in Europe. Then you

say, what do you think? From our perspective, Europe is the first

place we turn. We see eye to eye with the UK on the major issues of

the day, of the threats we face and the opportunities we have for things

like trade. We see IT light on these things. We would love a strong UK in

a strong EU. It would be good for us. We are telling you what is good

for America. We are clear and simple about that. It is interesting that

you say, we see IT light of that you would not see eye to eye with

Britain if, as is possible, Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time anti-US foreign

policy protester, if he were to become next Prime Minister of Great

Britain, how worried are you? You pointed out what the role of a

diplomat is to be, it is not about wading into domestic politics. I

will say, without reference to any particular leaders, we have a long

tradition of people who have had this particular job of engaging with

the major political parties, whether they are in power or add of power. I

am intrigued. As you spoken to Jeremy Corbyn? It was at the state

dinner for president Xi. We got a chance to say hello. He is a senior

member of the campaign for nuclear disarmament. He has been on every

anti-US foreign policy protest for 40 years. You may want me to dive

into domestic politics. I am going to disappoint you, I am not going to

do it. You have said in the past, what is important that the UK in the

US, we have the same world-view. this goes through democratic,

Republican, Labour, Conservative, all different configurations over 70

years. Churchill coined the phrase, special relationship. It is not just

Gutmann officials, it is business relationships, student links,

cultural links, that is what makes the relationship so special. Yes, we

do. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, ambassador. Thank you for

having me. If you are watching yesterday you

will know it is a mild outlook. As we head into November many of us

will be heading towards the central heating switch, to turn it