FEBRUARY 4 — CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS covers a wide range of topics with United States President Barack Obama in New Delhi at the conclusion of his state visit to India last week. Topics included the threat of terrorism, China’s apparent distress over his burgeoning friendship with the Indian Prime Minister, Russia’s failing economy and its success in destabilising Ukraine, and the legacy of his administration. Below are excerpts from the interview, aired on Sunday.

Some people say that you downplay the significance of terrorism. You want to downgrade it as a threat to the United States.

Look, I have to talk to the families of those who are killed by terrorists ... So, I’m pretty mindful of the terrible costs of terrorism around the world. What I do insist on is that we maintain a proper perspective and that we do not provide a victory to these terrorist networks by over-inflating their importance and suggesting in some fashion that they are an existential threat to the United States or the world order.

The truth of the matter is that they can do harm. But we have the capacity to control how we respond in ways that do not undercut the essence of who we are ... It means that we don’t approach this with a strategy of sending out occupying armies and playing whack-a-mole wherever a terrorist group appears, because that drains our economic strength and it puts enormous burdens on our military.

What’s required is a surgical, precise response to a very specific problem. And if we do that effectively, then ultimately these terrorist organisations will be defeated because they don’t have a vision that appeals to ordinary people. It really is, as it has been described in some cases, a death cult or an entirely backward-looking fantasy that can’t function in the world. When you look at ISIL (the Islamic State), it has no governing strategy. It can talk about setting up the new Caliphate, but nobody is under any illusions that they can actually in a sustained way feed people or educate people or organise a society that would work.

Let me ask you about this trip (to India). It’s been striking, it’s clearly gone very well. But already the Chinese government has twice in three days criticised both the United States and India. Is this the start of a kind of a new geopolitics of Asia?

I was surprised when I heard that the Chinese government had put out these statements. I visited China just a while back and had some very successful meetings with President Xi (Jinping).

China doesn’t need to be threatened because we have good relations with India. My belief is that in this moment in history, there is an opportunity to create a win-win formula in which all countries are abiding by a common set of rules and standards, and we’re focused on lifting up prosperity for our people, not at the expense of others, but together with each other, and that’s what my discussions with Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi have focused on.

I’ve continually emphasised that it is very much in America’s interest to see China continue with its peaceful rise. What’s dangerous for us is a destabilised and impoverished and disintegrating China. It’s much better for us if China is doing well.

But what we’ve said, since the start of my term in office, is China’s growth shouldn’t be at the expense of other folk. It shouldn’t bully small countries such as Vietnam or the Philippines around maritime issues, but try to resolve those peacefully, in accordance with international law. It shouldn’t manipulate its currency to give itself trading advantages that others don’t have.

Sometimes, we’ve been successful in getting a response from China on those issues, sometimes less so. But I care deeply about China’s success, and I want to make sure that we continue to maintain a constructive relationship.

There’s no doubt that there are aspects of India that make us closer to India. Specifically it’s a democracy, and reflects the values and aspirations as well as some of the warts of our own country, in a way that China could not. And so I think there’s an affinity there that I feel personally and I think the American people feel as well.

Would it be fair to say that with regard to Russia, your policy has been pretty effective in imposing real costs on the Russian economy, but it has not deterred Mr Vladimir Putin from creating instability in Ukraine. Conflict seems to have even escalated in the past few weeks. (Next month will mark a year since Russia annexed Crimea.)

I think that’s entirely fair. And I think that is a testament to the bad decisions that Mr Putin is making on behalf of his country. You think about where we’ve been in terms of US-Russian relations; when I came into office, we talked about reset, and I established, I think, an effective working relationship with Mr (Dmitry) Medvedev.

And as a consequence, Russia’s economy was growing, they had the opportunity to begin diversifying their economy, their relations across Europe and around the world were sound, they joined the World Trade Organization with assistance from us.

And since Mr Putin made this decision around Crimea and Ukraine —not because of some grand strategy, but essentially because he was caught off-balance by the protests in Maidan and Yanukovych ... — this improvisation that he has been doing has gotten him deeper and deeper into a situation that is a violation of international law, that violates the integrity, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, has isolated Russia diplomatically, has made Europe wary of doing business with Russia, has allowed the imposition of sanctions that are crippling Russia’s economy at a time when their oil revenues are dropping. There’s no formula in which this ends up being good for Russia.

The annexation of Crimea is a cost, not a benefit, to Russia. The days in which conquest of land somehow was a formula for great nation status is over. The power of countries today is measured by your knowledge, your skills, your ability to export goods, to invent new products and new services, your influence ... None of those things are provided by his strategy.

What is absolutely true is that if you have a leader who continually drives past the off ramps that we’ve provided and given the size of the Russian military and the fact that Ukraine is not a NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) country, there are clear limits in terms of what we would do militarily; so Mr Putin has not been stopped so far.To those who would suggest that we need to do more, what I’ve said to them is that we can exact higher and higher costs, and that’s exactly what we’re doing, and we can bring diplomatic pressure to bear. I don’t think that it would be wise for the United States or the world to see an actual military conflict between the United States and Russia.

What are you most proud of?

Internationally, I’m proud of the fact that we’ve responsibly ended two wars. Now people will say, well, you’re back in Iraq. But we’re not back in Iraq with an occupying army; we’re back with a coalition of 60 countries who are helping to stabilise the situation. We are working with Afghan national security forces to help stabilise the situation there. But we don’t have 180,000 troops who are deployed in those two countries.

What we have also done is reflected the best values of America — in trying to nurture this nascent democratic movement inside of Burma; in ending what I believe had become a counterproductive policy in Cuba; in strengthening alliances with countries such as India, where there’s just enormous potential, and sometimes we don’t pay a lot of attention to it. But I’ve been paying a lot of attention to it because I think that our future prosperity and security is going to be tied up with how we’re doing with 1.2 billion aspiring Indians who share our values and share democracy with us; how are we doing in Latin America, with countries that generally are more favourably disposed towards the United States than they’ve been in a very long time, in part because of the actions that we’ve taken.

There are big chunks of the world — the Asia-Pacific region — where my commitment to rebalancing has led to not only concrete agreements and actions with ASEAN (Association of South-east Asian Nations) countries, for example, but has also sent a clear message to China that we want to be their partner, but that they have to be part of a rule-based system, rather than free riders or bullies because of their size and strength.

One of the things that I’ve learnt in this job over the past six years is that sometimes progress is incremental, but when I look at (things) overall, the steps that we’ve taken, I believe they are the right ones. And I am very confident that America is stronger, more prosperous, safer and more influential today than it was when I took office. — TODAY

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