imminent level. the washington institute s managing director michael sing is here with me and a former senior director of middle eastern affairs at the national security council. thank you for joining us. north korea calling it unprecedented critical level, imminent. these are very strong words. are they terrified by this? is that what you get from that? sometimes it seems like we americans are alone in our alarm over what s going on. i think you see a tremendous level of concern as the secretary general s remarks show. i m not sure the u.s. has ever forgotten about the nuclear threat we face from china and russia also. you see countries in asia but also others boris johnson the u.k. foreign secretary for example just said we need to keep the military option on the table with respect to north korea. there is no doubt this has the world s attention in a serious way. melissa: at the same time
our next guest wrote an op-ed in the washington post newspaper and in it, our guest claims america has made the crisis worse by not planning for it. michael sing is a former senior director for middle east affairs for the national security counsel and i will in addition, he s currently the managing director for the washington institute. michael, explain to our viewers what it is you were saying. well, shep, when i talk about it in the op-ed is the fact we attend to the united states to have a hard time looking more than one move ahead. to look two, three moves ahead. to take sort of early action, bold action, that can help to prevent conflicts. instead we often find ourselves in a position of trying to manage or defuse conflicts. as you know very well by time this kind of conflict erupted, it is much harder to address it. it is much harder to get russian troops out of crimea than it would have been to perhaps prevent this crisis in the first
got to find ways to counter russia. russia cares so much more about this than anybody else does, and that automatically puts other powers at a disadvantage. absolutely. michael, i want to ask from the point of view of an american watching this thing, what is the best interest of the u.s. in this situation? what should americans be looking for in the best case scenario for american politics around the world. joy, it is very hard for the united states to exercise any influence when the action is in the streets. what the u.s. wants to see here is they want to see the action now return to politicians, want to see street protesters yield to the opposition politicians because ukraine has tremendous challenges. we were talking on break about the economic challenges ukraine faces, especially if russia backs off and withdraws aid it offered to ukraine in november. they need to have some technocratic government in place that can avert default.
the army has said it will not react violently and put itself in the middle of this crisis. nbc news chief foreign correspondent, richard engel, live in kiev. the situation leaves much for world leaders to sort through. friday, president obama got on the phone with vladimir putin, spoke with him about an hour regarding the peace deal. for more on the role the u.s. and the allies will play in the unfolding situation, i am joined by the research director at the enough project that works to end crimes against humanity. and president of the your asia group, a consult firm. michael sing, managing director of washington institute. and also adrian car et anytime ski, the program on transatlantic relations. these developments are happening minute by minute. can you unpack for us the who
between the forces loyal to assad and extremist islamist movement. the situation in iraq is not better as a result of this. just the or day, while we were sending hellfire missiles to help prime minister maliki to fight al qaeda, his forces attacked camp liberty which resulted in scores of deaths. this is the camp that is housing iranian dissidents supposed to be protected by the united states. this morning a bomb attack in beirut where a respected leader was assassinated, and many people point to hezbollah, which is the organization that is supporting president assad s forces in syria. as a matter of fact that man was a former ambassador to the united states from lebanon. he will certainly be missed. michael, with regard to iran, promising not to bring new centrifuges into operation under the six-month temporary deal