>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: john micklethwait is here. he is the editor in chief of bloomberg. he sat down for a two hour interview with president putin. parts of the interview rp featured in "bloomberg businessweek." congratulations. john: i was largely being a poor's man for charlie rose. i spent the time watching your interview with putin.

the same kind of setup, where you explain yours. he was keen to talk. he wanted to discuss the conference. after that, we could talk about anything. i suspect we had the same reaction. he is more confident with media than when he began. that said, he tends to try and evade questions. charlie: earlier in your capacity -- john: i met him earlier in my capacity. the economist and putin were not always great friends. we met privately. he sometimes looked at me as if i was an mi six agent. hidden, even now. that was the way he put it to me. the way in which he, the way he acted in front of the cameras,

gradually he builds up two things. privately he is more inclined to push things. i had the same reaction as you. you have this surrounding of people who are frightened by the fact that he might eat half an hour late rather than 45 minutes. charlie: you talked for two hours. john: marginally longer. charlie: he is much under discussion during this presidential election. did you speak to that? john: i asked straightforward, did he want to trump or clinton to win question marquee differed -- to win?

and said it was up to the american people. i preferred a variety of quotes which donald trump had said about him. which verge on the homoerotic. i used it without reservation. as a trustee of the british museum, i am the owner of more homoerotic art than anything else. i don't have any problem with that. you read what donald trump has said, how he is strong and manly. his muscles are like finely toned oranges. putin, on the other hand, has accused hillary clinton of trying to destabilize him in 2011 three of trying to proesters.he you have a choice.

these almost love poems to you. any woman you think is trying to get rid of you. and you are really trying to tell us you don't want one to win? i think there is, in his attempt to not answer the question, there is a small amount of genuineness. obviously, trump is good news for putin. even putin is slightly worried by the volatility that comes with trump. if you are putin, i think your ideal thing is a severely weakened hillary clinton. charlie: a sense of anger over what she tried to do. he is accusing the u.s. of meddling in the russian politics, which is exactly what americans are saying about him today. john: it is worth adding one extra edge to that. if you are putin and you think hillary clinton is trying to get rid of you, in russia, that is not the same as retiring. that is not the same thing.

from his point of view, there is an equivalence. if she loses an election, she is not going to face the same kind of eight he might. charlie: doesn't he know american foreign policy is run from the white house and not the state department? john: it is a very odd relationship. putin and america, love, envy. he yearns for the years when the soviet union and america, when they met, that was the big conversation. now, part of him, even though he tried to say i had nothing to do with this, he likes the attention. suddenly russia is back as a factor.

charlie: a factor in syria, other places. john: his whole strategy has been to sit there and magnify russian power. it is a very opportunistic one. he sits and he waits. whenever barack obama is seen to withdraw, putin will drop in. wherever he thinks he can get away with doing something, ukraine and crimea, he will try and to do it. it doesn't mean he is plotting this long-term. my view of him is he has long-term interests but a short-term opportunist. there is a great deal of grievance. the spouse who has been wrong. they were the superpowers and it now they are not wanted any

longer. john: he harbors great resentment in terms of what happened after the fall. john: she talks about it being a tragedy. on the other hand, he says he doesn't want to go back to the old soviet union. it is a tragedy this divorce happened but i don't want to be back with that person. they are stuck in this time work. people have pointed out, the sochi olympics putin put a vast amount of time and effort and money. but nobody, very few international statesman, came. this idea that you can ignore that sense of entitlement, which may be unfair, and people like me have been by bird of things

putin has done, that russia doesn't have the economy to be the superpower any longer. all the same, if you don't give him the respect he thinks he deserves, there are consequences. charlie: you want to give him respect so he can solve problems. john: he has this love-hate relationship with the west. he cannot resist point out the problems in europe, america. the american election is proving a lot of things he has said about the west. democracy when it selects him is good. charlie: he is such a believer in the strong state. did you speak to him about authoritarism, bias against journalists. john: it is a reasonable criticism. i should have pushed him harder. at that point, we were near the two-hour mark. one thing we did look at his cronyism.

putin, one of the most authoritarian and aggressive people in terms of foreign-policy and politics at home. you look at the way he has run the economy. the economy has been much more timid. he has not changed russia the way people are trying to change the chinese and vietnamese economy. you look at, i use gazprom. it used to be in the top 10 in the world. it is now 196 i think. you look at the market capitalization, it has lost 4/5 of its value. charlie: at the same time, he has fired some of his cronies. john: he has fired political cronies. if you have a general that lost 4/5 of his army, you would not keep him in power. there was a rise of a slightly younger guard. people who in some cases were his personal bodyguards before. they have begun to get jobs like

running provinces. charlie: are these former kgb people? john: some of them, yes. these tend to be people who have only known the power of proof. kgb people were the original lot who supported gorbachev. they saw themselves as glamorous foreign agents and tended to look down on putin. they saw him as a nasty secret policeman from dresden, not a glamorous foreign figure. now there was a generation of people who are in their 30's who pretty much have only known putin as a power. charlie: what kind of relationship did he have with obama? john: i didn't ask him directly. they are not friendly. you and i have smiled 29 times more in this one interview that may have every they have no form

of, it brings out the worst in both of them. in vladimir putin, it has to do with what he gets angry and cross about. he doesn't understand the moral, humanistic side of what barack obama is trying to do. on the other side, obama gets fed up with putin quickly. the same criticisms, he is not someone who is going to really work the senate. doing the jobs unpleasant and painful. i think it is a challenge that hillary clinton will be more involved. charlie: my sense of obama, they simply do not respect him. they think his venture into syria was a mistake. biden said, he wanted to get out.

he has made a mistake with his foray into syria and you cannot trust him. john: his view is, here i am, i have been going for 16 years and you are gone. syria, he would say, look at that region. am i more powerful than i was? from his perspective, i think there is also a danger that we measure in sometimes by western standards. things we think are terrible like having destabilized neighbors, from his point of view, that is not sincerely a bad thing.

you would rather have that than a nato member on your border. he says he doesn't want to touch those, but you get the impression if there was some way of gradually extending russian power, they have all got substantial russian minorities -- charlie: that is something he speaks to. john: on the whole, the baltics don't treat their russian minorities with huge amounts of

love. i think you are right. the disconnect, and american administration says, or is a guy with a weak economy. he runs it as a kleptocracy. he has done all of these things. he hasn't done very well. he has made russia a force to be reckoned with. he has survived, he has kept running this country. he has defied them, he has annoyed them. charlie: and he is popular at home. john: all those things, the popularity of putin is genuine. you can knock 10 or 20 points off of it but it is miles higher than anything --

charlie: crimea and ukraine. john: crimea, there is no way that is going back. the way in which the crimea was seized was obviously wrong, not to go through that. the main thing, russians everywhere, even russians who oppose putin, think of crimea as part of russia. they always bring up the example, that it was given away. charlie: you have people here in the u.s. who don't want to accept it. john: when you accept territory can be seized in that way, one of the questions he dodged, i pointed out he had lied, a

bloomberg reporter had said, in crimea, russian troops were occupying buildings. i asked him three different ways, he said no, they are not russian troops. within a year, in another forum, he sat there boasting about the fact that he had directed the whole thing. my point to him was, regardless of how much you trust the west, the basic fact is you have very often said to the west one thing and that it has not been remotely credible. there are a variety of different examples like that. that is part of the disconnect between the west and vladimir putin. charlie: what is the relationship with turkey? john: i think that strangely got better.

an interesting relationship. they seem to be getting fairly friendly. and then russia shot down his aircraft. he complained erdogan had shot him in the back. and then when turks put troops into syria, russia were tested in a tiny bit but by their standards, not at all. he is now talking about turkey as a friend. when you talk to him, it is a little bit like going back to the sort of that the middle ages, a time when kings sat there and they changed their mind on the spot. they are going to marry their daughter to the king of spain, and the next moment -- his relationship with erdogan, he was useful, and then he wasn't, and then he was again. the reason he has accepted him is the turks seem closer to saying any solution in syria will allow assad to be there longer than they have said.

he wouldn't answer the question directly. the turks seem to be more amenable to assad having some sort of role. that is good for vladimir putin because it is separating turkey from america. it is a different framework, a different way of looking at the world. we might say, all that matters is you have a long-term solution. it is difficult to have a long-term solution as long as a man who has slaughtered one million people remains there. putin's point is he has proved russia is a power and he has gotten turkey to shift a little

bit. it doesn't matter that obama doesn't respect him. charlie: the interesting thing about syria, they seem to rebuff everything john kerry tries to do. he will have the 150th meeting with the russian foreign minister. we are talking but nothing is happening. john: that is like the old soviet thing, jimmy carter would send people. nothing would happen. john kerry is working very hard. charlie: the next question is iran. he goes to moscow to see vladimir putin. they talk about, i assume, what iran is doing in iraq and more specifically in syria. john: they sit there. you got the oil price. the moment there is a sort of deal where the saudis want production -- the russians want a production freeze. russia -- putin is prepared to

give the iranians a pass. this should get a more flexible deal because -- charlie: a pass on -- john: not freezing productions. on the other opec members would stop but iran would not. that is putin. he has stuck by that. john: they sit there. you got the oil price. the moment there is a sort of deal where the saudis want production -- the russians want a production freeze. charlie: the iranians are -- john: that ability, which comes back to that world of espionage which he inhabited and i sadly did not. what putin has brilliantly is the ability to look at people and immediately size of their strengths and weaknesses. john: i said to a famous oligarch, does he have a huge amount of money? he said, it doesn't matter, he

is a czar. the idea of putin as czar is the idea many people have. he will do what he wants in the end. john: it was their children who succeeded him. i did ask him. his daughters, one of them is beginning to take a bit of a more public role. i asked if he wants them to succeed. he said, no. he doesn't want them to go to politics. that may represent he knows the realities of the life.

charlie: do you talk to people in the business of trying to understand national security, he remains one of the most interesting and formidable figures. john: i am one of those people who would have imagined he would be finished but he has survived. it is interesting whether there is some great plan behind it. whether there is a technique. in the world of ceos, normally last five hours, five years. charlie: some of my american friends say, he is not a strategic thinker. he is a tactician. john: i think he is strategic that he has a set of interest. he is looking for ways to bring russia, to make russia great again. that is his general -- and to hang onto power. those are his two main things. within that, he will do a degree but will be highly opportunistic. to use the erdogan example, he was a friend and then he wasn't and know he is. that is done shamelessly. he doesn't have trouble breaking promises and grabbing something.

there is not a grand thought the hind it. that will be his tragedy, i think. people will say, here is a man with a lot of power and he didn't change the economy in the same with the chinese did. that is a huge thing. charlie: some would say that was gorbachev's mistake. he focused on politics and not economics. john: i think that could be putin's mistake. russia is still an oil dominated economy. they could look at the time of high energy prices. putin, you ran russia. who gained rather than your friends?

charlie: someone said, there are no such thing as permanent friends and permanent enemies. there are only permanent interests. john: that is one way to look at the world. some of the cleverer american-statesman, it is not so much that they looked at that world but they saw the weight other countries treated the world and that way. that is true. countries do have interests. russia has been one of geographic expansion. charlie: well done, thank you. john micklethwait, editor in chief of bloomberg. back in a moment. fareed zakaria is here talking about his conversation with president obama and the g-20. ♪

charlie: we are joined by fareed zakaria. he is a columnist and host. he sat down with president obama ahead of the the final visit to asia. the trip was intended to highlight u.s. achievements. president obama: what we have said to the chinese, and we have been firm, you have to recognize with increased power comes increasing responsibilities.

you can't pursue mercantilist policies and that just advantage eu now that you are a middle income country. advantages that just you. now that you are a middle income country, you can't just export problems. you have to open up your own markets if you expect other people to open up their markets. charlie: the administration also hopes to advance a series and of initiatives. vladimir putin, the interview you had with him, he said you were a first-class intellectual.

fareed: he had made some comments about trump. i said to him, i was pretty straight. here is what you said. what led you to make that judgment that trump was a brilliant and talented man leading the field? he clearly wanted to walk that comment back. he said, why are you asking me this trivial stuff? this horse race stuff? i said bright. there are competing translations. it is very interesting. he used that opportunity to say, and putin often does this, saying, we respect the united states. we think the u.s. is the only superpower. we will work with whoever the

president is. i just like the fact he talks about better relations with russia. he went from an inflammatory statement to something i was told by people at the state department or white house, they took very seriously. it seemed to suggest putin was signaling to them, i am happy to work with you. charlie: i would assume that, too. my something is, from what i hear from people in russia and here, he has a great antipathy to her because he believes she tried as secretary of state, even though foreign policy comes out of the white house, she tried to undermine him as secretary of state. his anger directed to her rather than strong feelings about trump. fareed: i think that is exactly right. this is a moment where there were elections in russia. she essentially made a few statements that celebrated the

opposition and said, russia should have a real election with real choice. for putin, he saw this as a direct attempt to unseat him. to unsettle his power base. it is also as if she was advocating regime change in russia. it is very personal. he regards it as having in about her, not the obama administration. nobody's entirely sure. as a result, he is very suspicious of her. i gave him another opportunity. he said, when you are asked -- he does a long call in program with russians. usually people get three questions. he goes on for a while. people asked him about hillary clinton. he said, the husband and the wife, they are two versions of satan.

one is satan, one is lucifer. i said, is this like saying two sides of the same coin? he didn't back away, try to explain it away. he said, sometimes you say things in a moment of emotion. he didn't take it back. it was a negative characterization of her and he was sticking with it. charlie: what does obama think of him? fareed: i don't think obama is as wowed by putin as a lot of people are. i think he thinks putin is all tactics and no strategy. if your goal was fundamentally to place russia and its people in a situation where they are going to be secure, stable, and have a better trajectory, you would be focusing on diversifying the russian economy. forging ties with the west. improving trade relations with partners.

instead, it is all these power grabs. crimea. ukraine. georgia. these 19th-century realpolitik moves. it is almost like he thinks russia's path to greatness are these maneuvers. obama thinks, the long-term path for russian greatness is a much broader set of economic reforms. it is interesting, in terms of their personalities. they are very different. obama is much more intellectual and cerebral. putin is very smart but it is a much more, he is an operator. he's a kgb guy. in your interview, you talked about -- i think he acknowledged it. that is where he comes from. that means he's a man of action. short-term horizons.

think of all the intelligence, it is tactical. very important to get the tactics right he could you can die if you get them wrong. charlie: they also read a lot into the impact of person on international affairs. that is why they have all those personal profiles that are part of their profiles. fareed: that is also what they can influence. you value the things you are good at intelligence agencies are about personalities. that is where they can get to somebody. charlie: you said obama is more cerebral. is he, based on his actions, not the way he talks to you, does he have a long view he has executed well? a strategic view rather than a technical implication? fareed: i think there is no question he has a long view and strategic view.

whether he has implemented it well is a question. he was convinced the u.s. was over invested in the middle east, particularly militarily. his fundamental strategic view is the u.s. power lies as a pacific power. for of the five biggest economies will be the pacific in 10 years. if you are not there, you will not be shaping the future. you have to be in there, writing those rules. this is what he thinks does not get rewarded by the media. the media asks, what are you going to do in iraq? he is trying to maintain that long-term trajectory. i would put his success this way. he has been good at being restrained and not doing foolish

things. he means that in a profound sense. were we to jump into the syrian civil war, which is the most complicated civil war i have watched in my career. if we were there, it would consume all the energies of the administration. it would be all we are talking about. by not doing that, he has said, i have kept us out of this so we can focus on the long-term. asia. forging partnerships with india and brazil. charlie: i don't think history is going to be kind to him on syria. they will look at the catastrophe of syria and ask,

was it possible to forge a policy, early on, he had been able to influence events in a different way? fareed: that will be a great question historians will ask. i would argue you have 1000 militias, by intelligence estimates. we are totally opposed to the assad regime and its principal military antagonist, isis. you are trying to establish order when you don't like the regime and you don't like the principal opposition. who are you going to back? it is a harder task than people think. charlie: that is why you have diplomacy. you can't have effective diplomacy if you don't have leverage on the ground. fareed: that was the argument for nine years in vietnam.

every time we ran to the table, we needed to bomb more. if you look at these wars, what is happening in syria basically is the stakes are very high for the people. the assad regime, not just the alawites but all minorities, are gathered under the assad regime. they know if they get overthrown, they will be slaughtered. they will be ethnically cleansed. they only need to look at neighboring iraq to see how that happened. 2.5 million sunnis fled. the other side thinks, the assad regime is trying to massacre them. we say, come to london. let's have a conference. let's have a civilized conversation about power-sharing. assad knows there will be no our sharing.

he is fighting to the end. the opposition is fighting to the end. the idea the u.s. could intervene with a few hundred million dollars, 10,000 troops, and somehow change this battle to the death taking place among 1000 militias. in any event, back to obama. history will determine this. charlie: he was opposed by principal advisers. fareed: history will look at that he has been restrained in his willingness to say no and keep the u.s. focused on the big picture. the long-term. has he handled the crisis of the moment well? i would say no. even in, i would acknowledge that. whatever you may think about. i think it is good we are not more deeply involved militarily. then you don't say, assad must

go and draw redlines you don't follow. there have been tactical failures. i do think the foreign policy gets too defined by those technical failures. eisenhower's a good example. he is regarded as a tactical failure. he faced crises in the taiwan street, vietnam. the staff recommended nuclear weapons against the chinese. intervention in vietnam. he said, i am not going to do it. he mobilized american troops only once in his presidency, to desegregate the schools in arkansas. ♪

charlie: i want to talk about the wider range of foreign policy. there is, as we talk about this, a broad conversation about war and policy. give me your sense of how these two candidates in this year, you had today and endorsement of hillary clinton. "the dallas morning news."

military officers taking different sides. what do you think? how would you assess it? fareed: there is no question hillary clinton is the candidate of continuity. she represents the idea there is a broad continuity in american foreign-policy. we have built an open world economy and liberal institutions, small and rule-based. the u.s. has been the underwriter of this world, the guarantor of this world. there have to be adjustments. hillary clinton represents the truman to reagan consensus on american foreign-policy.

trump represents the most important, significant break in our position to it since the republican isolationists of the 1930's, 1940's. he says, we need to pull out. charlie: in some ways that echoes president obama who wanted nato members to pay more. he has raised that question. obviously on the issues having to do with nuclear perforation, -- proliferation, coming to the defense of other nations, but there seems to be to me that president obama, based on jeff

goldberg's peace, has a certain contempt for the foreign-policy community that represents what you just said. you know him better than most journalists. fareed: i think he had it right. i think obama views the foreign policy community as comprised of superb, talented people. he reads deeply and widely. but he does think they have a bias, a certain set of biases. every time something goes wrong in the world, people say, the job of the president of the united states is to militarily put this right.

to use america's military to do that. he is skeptical. he takes a longer view. i go in and upon, and then what? look at what happened in afghanistan and iraq. libya. he even learns from his own mistakes in libya where he feels like, they used the military in a way that seems to solve the problem and might actually have made it worse, or at least made it more complex. charlie: he took the advice of his secretary of state on libya. fareed: he thinks there is too much attention paid to crisis management. too much of a sense the u.s. has to solve every small problem in the world. i think, the way i would put it, those are correctives for somebody who has a lot of respect and trust. look at who he appoints. robert gates, david petraeus. these are not people who are wild eyed radicals. he views his job as to ultimately keep that longer-term view. charlie: he is not opposed to the use of military force. fareed: also, think about the drones. charlie: the pride they take

every time they get an isis leader. fareed: i have talked to him and he is troubled by the legal, constitutional -- charlie: but not troubled too much. fareed: not troubled too much and here is why. let's keep in mind the alternative is a terrorist group grows in strength and attacks and kills many more civilians than any drone will ever kill. you allow a country to get more and more dysfunctional because the group grows. or we have to send in special forces to do the work the drone did, with the potential for collateral damage. the analogy is not off ace. he is very cool. he is willing to kill. he personally approves every drone attack. charlie: china, the president goes to china.

he then goes to laos. he loves vietnam. it does represent what he is talking about, does it not? fareed: vietnam has become a case of a country, people don't understand what the war is all about. they are worried about china. increasingly pro-american. it does remind you of our fundamental inability to understand foreign countries, iraq, vietnam. when i visited vietnam, my reaction was, these guys really don't like the chinese. i remember talking to some but he about the war with china.

he said, which war? they invaded us 11 times. how could we have thought they were ponds of the chinese. that part of the world remains complex. it has not been possible for obama to forge the great relationship with china he had hoped for except on one issue, climate change. he made that his priority. he thought there was no way you could get much done in the world if china, the world's leading polluter, was not on board. and he has gotten them to move significantly. other than that, he has presided over, i don't think caused, resided over a troubling rise of chinese nationalism. they are becoming more nationalist in terms of what they do in the south china sea. in terms of how they deal with western companies. the chinese government seems to be systematically disadvantaging

the western companies they once invited in. cyber attacks and cyber theft. the rhetoric the chinese leadership has been using. that is going on for deep internal reasons. china is going through a slowing of growth, a reassertion of power by the coming. in that context, it has not been possible to create a strategic partnership or even a meaningful dialogue. charlie: so you are saying the president could have done more except for the internal chinese events. fareed: the chinese have been very strategic career they wanted to become a numbers of the world trade organization. they knew the only country that could deliver that was the u.s. now we are in a different world. the chinese regard him as a colorless leader, a lost decade for china. with bush, you say no great gains or losses. business as usual. charlie: i hear you say there could have been more progress, but obama wanted to become --

fareed: bush did not. charlie: let's lay more responsibility at the foot of the chinese president. fareed: bush came to office with no particular views on foreign policy. his thing was, i don't want to do nationbuilding. charlie: which is what he did. fareed: his entire foreign policy was a reaction to 9/11. charlie: how successful has the president been in terms of building a relationship with those countries like india, vietnam, the philippines, japan that have some growing fear of

chinese flexing of their muscle you cited earlier. fareed: i think the obama administration has been successful in terms of reassuring and showing up alliances. japan, five years ago, maybe i have the numbers, eight years ago, in japan, there was serious talk of expelling u.s. troops. now, what is going on is the opposite. we are reinforcing basis in japan, building a base in australia. there is talk of a new base in philippines, even in vietnam. this is mostly just talk.

the main point is, all of these countries are closer to america than they were. the india has been the slowest, steadiest movement. the indians have been reluctant to be seen as joining with the united states to gang up against china. india has had a colonial hangup against western powers. but india has moved closer to defense cooperation with the united states. all of those areas, obama has been able to push forward. what obama has not been able to do, he does not develop close personal relationships with leaders. charlie: the interesting thing to realize, the pivot to china from the middle east to asia, also included a pivot to latin america and africa. he wanted the u.s. to record highs where there were emerging economies. we had a much more positive role with much more possibility of a productive relationship. fareed: the way to think about it is he thinks like a ceo says, i am not going to invest laces

where i am losing money. i'm going to invest in places where i'm making money. whether our opportunities. it is a question of how you view the world. do you view it as she ate colored by the middle east, a part of the world that is in historic crisis, going through a decades long instability? where the bottom is falling out? these nations don't exist, syria and iraq. yemen, libya. is that what defines the world? or is it any fact that in asia, you have pro-american leaders in indonesia, india, japan. vietnam. you look at latin america, where argentina has turned this extraordinary corner? you look at africa, where kenya is reforming. places all over africa where you are seeing a new business class.

is that the world, or is the world iraq, syria. iraq, syria, iran. charlie: were some of the argument is, we don't want to go into modernity. fareed: the question is, who is going to shape -- at the end of the day, history is usually not defined by the losers. the people who are collapsing. they are collapsing noisily but collapsing. it is defined by the winners. the rise of china will be the fundamental trend. the rise of asia. who remembers the civil war where millions of people died in nigeria? that happens. the trend lines that reshape it or when countries come from behind, become powerful and reshape the regions. charlie: fareed zakaria, thank

you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

mark: you are watching bloomberg west. let us begin with a check of your first word news. donald trump is attempting to clarify his original position on the iraq war. a day after being accused of flip-flopping, he spoke in cleveland. >> i opposed going in. and i opposed the way hillary clinton took us out. >> mrs. clinton will convene a meeting of national security advisers on friday. she says killing the leader of the islamic state will be a top priority of her presidency.