The Negotiator

Summary

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Autocracy in America – The Negotiator

The Atlantic, September 12, 2025
Host: Garry Kasparov
Guest: Jake Sullivan, former U.S. National Security Advisor

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Episode Overview

In this incisive episode, Garry Kasparov sits down with Jake Sullivan, a top national security advisor under President Joe Biden, known for his pivotal role in shaping recent U.S. foreign policy. Despite past sharp disagreements, Kasparov and Sullivan join forces for an in-depth conversation about the threats facing American democracy—both foreign and domestic. The discussion traverses U.S. policy toward Russia, the enduring perils of American isolationism, authoritarian advances worldwide, and the fragile state of U.S. democratic institutions heading into the 2026 midterm elections.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Persistent Threat of Vladimir Putin

(03:04–05:52)

• Sullivan's Take on US-Russia Policy:
  The U.S. and its allies have failed to deter Putin’s growing aggression. Sullivan recounts his memo to Secretary Clinton in 2012 warning of escalating danger as Putin reclaimed power.
  • “Vladimir Putin has become an increasing menace to his neighbors, to the world, to his people. And neither the United States nor anyone else has been able to reverse that trend.” — Jake Sullivan, 03:45
• The “Reset” Policy Reflected:
  Sullivan clarifies that the infamous 2009 “reset button” moment with Russia was not his idea and critiques the limited effectiveness of such symbolic gestures.

2. Decision-Making on Arming Ukraine

(06:40–13:00)

• Weapons for Ukraine – Debates & Delays:
  Sullivan outlines internal disagreements in the Obama-Biden administration over arming Ukraine. He notes Vice President Biden supported lethal aid, but President Obama resisted.
  • “President Biden was very clear… the United States should step forward and supply that defensive assistance…” — Jake Sullivan, 07:00
• Analyzing Trump’s Russia Policy:
  Trump’s administration is characterized as soft on Putin, despite providing some arms to Ukraine, never levying tariffs on Russia unlike other nations.
  • “…at no point has he been prepared to take tough action against Putin's Russia. Even… [when] he did not impose tariffs on Russia. It is a very strange, consistent feature of his approach…” — Jake Sullivan, 07:38

3. Invasion of Ukraine: Warnings and Responses

(09:01–16:37)

• Timeline of Recognizing the Imminent Invasion:
  Early 2021 intelligence heightened U.S. concern, but Sullivan clarifies they only became convinced of invasion in Fall 2021.
• Weapons Transfers – Realities vs. Critiques:
  Sullivan defends the pace and volume of U.S. military aid, addressing criticisms about delay with specific systems (Abrams tanks, F16s, ATACMS).
  • “Every single dollar Congress gave us, we spent on time and in full to push weapons into Ukraine.” — Jake Sullivan, 13:00
• Deterrence, Sanctions, and Russia’s Nuclear Threats:
  Intelligence estimated a 50/50 chance Russia would use tactical nukes if its forces collapsed—a risk that heavily influenced U.S. decisions.
  • “If there was a catastrophic collapse of Russian lines, it was a coin flip as to whether Russia would use tactical nuclear weapons…” — Jake Sullivan, 16:53

4. Sanctions, Oil, and Global Coordination

(17:44–20:59)

• Leveraging Russia’s Economic Weakness:
  Sullivan advocates squeezing Russian oil revenues, now more feasible as oil markets slacken.
• Balancing Acts:
  The U.S. held back on the harshest oil sanctions to avoid spiking American gas prices, risking domestic support for Ukraine aid.
  • “…the administration's judgment was that [spiking gas prices] would crater U.S. support for the war.” — Jake Sullivan, 19:04

5. American Isolationism and Global Alliances

(22:12–25:30)

• Dangers of True Isolationism:
  Sullivan warns against an “America Alone” policy, arguing for investment in U.S. strength and prudent global engagement to avert war.
  • “…it does require an active, engaged America, not an isolated America, not this kind of America alone America…” — Jake Sullivan, 22:38
• Authoritarian Alliances (“Dictators, Inc.”):
  The rising unity among authoritarian leaders, led by Xi Jinping, is seen as partly a reaction to U.S. efforts to rally democratic alliances.
  • “…She looks at all of that and says, I need an answer to this to a certain extent…if we stick with our strategy…we have the winning hand.” — Jake Sullivan, 24:13

6. Threats to American Democracy from Within

(27:31–31:41)

• Internal Deterioration as the Main Threat:
  Sullivan asserts the United States itself now poses the greatest risk to its own security, through the erosion of the rule of law and democratic norms.
  • “We ourselves are our greatest threat. That is us turning on the things that made our country great.” — Jake Sullivan, 27:47
• 2026 Midterm Election Fears:
  Kasparov expresses fears of election subversion; Sullivan urges broad, bipartisan pushback to defend fair elections, warning that Republican silence enables backsliding.
  • “It is imperative on everyone…to speak out on the essential principle of a free and fair election in 2026…” — Jake Sullivan, 29:14

7. The Democratic Party, Optimism, and Leadership

(30:21–31:41)

• Democratic Party Preparedness:
  Sullivan professes uncertainty but believes the tools exist within both the Democratic Party and wider pro-democracy coalitions if they are mobilized.
  • “We do. We just need to make sure that we exercise it effectively in pushing back against the…Democratic backsliding…” — Jake Sullivan, 30:26
• On Optimism:
  Sullivan invokes his Irish heritage—a “sense of tragedy that sustains us through temporary periods of joy”—but ultimately trusts the American people not to tolerate a dismantling of democracy.

8. A Vision for America's Role Post-2028

(31:41–38:41)

• Restoring American Strength and Leadership:
  Sullivan outlines priority reforms: rebuild industrial capacity, overhaul defense industry, restore the innovation ecosystem, revive alliances, and lead on transnational issues (climate, AI risk, pandemic preparedness).
  • “If the United States is tending to the sources of its own strength at home, we are going to be a very powerful nation in the world.” — Jake Sullivan, 32:17
• Institutional Reform:
  Sullivan supports modernization of both the UN and NATO, emphasizing technological, industrial, and holistic responses to hybrid threats.
• Security Guarantees:
  On NATO Article 5 and Baltic security, Sullivan asserts guarantees must be credible and operational, not merely rhetorical.

9. Common Ground in Defense of Democracy

(38:41–39:10)

• The episode closes with calls for unity—even across sharp political divides—in defense of core democratic values.
  • “...people who find themselves at odds with one another politically should still find common ground in supporting the values that will preserve our democracy.” — Gary Kasparov, 38:41

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On U.S. Policy toward Putin:
  “Neither the United States nor anyone else has been able to reverse that trend.” — Jake Sullivan, 03:45
• On Internal Threats to Democracy:
  “We ourselves are our greatest threat.” — Jake Sullivan, 27:47
• On Defending Elections:
  “It is imperative...to speak out on the essential principle of a free and fair election in 2026 and to call out every step that is taken that goes in the wrong direction.” — Jake Sullivan, 29:14
• On Optimism:
  “It is said of Irish people that we have an abiding sense of tragedy that sustains us through temporary periods of joy.” — Jake Sullivan, 31:00

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Important Timestamps

• 03:04 – Introduction of Jake Sullivan and framing of U.S. policy failures toward Russia
• 06:40 – Discussion of Obama/Biden approach to arming Ukraine
• 09:01 – Sullivan on why U.S. believed invasion wasn't inevitable until late 2021
• 13:00 – Debate over criticisms of U.S. military aid speed and substance
• 16:53 – U.S. intelligence’s assessment of Russian nuclear risk
• 19:04 – Rationale for withholding full sanctions on Russian oil
• 22:38 – Sullivan defines "isolationism" and dangers for America
• 27:47 – Sullivan names domestic decay as the number one security threat
• 29:14 – Urgency of protecting free and fair elections
• 31:00 – Sullivan’s “abiding sense of tragedy” quote about American democracy
• 32:17 – Sullivan lays out his vision for America’s leadership and renewal
• 36:57 – Affirms Ukraine’s NATO future
• 38:41 – Call for unity across political lines to defend democracy

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Closing Reflection

The Negotiator brings two erstwhile adversaries together in a sobering, deeply informed discussion that is as much about the state of America's democracy as it is about foreign policy. Listeners gain rare insight into the dilemmas and pressures at the highest echelons of U.S. policymaking, and the existential struggle to defend democratic norms at home. Through forthright, sometimes blunt exchanges, both Kasparov and Sullivan model the very coalition-building they prescribe as America faces another perilous crossroads.

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Transcript

[Narrator]

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[Commercial Announcer]

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[Gary Kasparov]

In a fight as important as the one to save American democracy from the grips of would be autocrats and dictators. We must partner with people who would otherwise be our political opponents. We must welcome them to the cause and put aside other disagreements, at least for the time being. This is a lesson dissidents in unfree places understand well, but not one that comes easy to Americans. It is a lesson I hope to personally demonstrate in today's episode. From the Atlantic. This is Autocracy in America. I'm Gary Kasparov. My guest today is Jake Sullivan, the former national Security advisor for President Joe Biden and before that a top advisor to Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State and when she ran for President. My disagreements with him are too numerous to detail in full, but I will offer this summary. Sullivan and the presidential administrations he has worked for have too often failed to understand and predict the threats of facing the world and misjudged what those threats mean for America and its democracy. They have been flat footed time and again in Afghanistan, in Ukraine, in the Middle East. The list goes on. In 2023, I called for congressional hearings into Sullivan's leadership at the National Security Council and I even wrote that Biden should fire him to be replaced with someone who understood the meaning of deterrence. But even with all those many disagreements, Jake and I still see eye to eye on the threat to American democracy. And that's why I asked him to join me for this conversation. Hello Jake. Welcome to the show.

[Jake Sullivan]

Hi Gary. Thank you for having me.

[Gary Kasparov]

I want to first say thank you very much for accepting my invitation to speak, given that you know I was one of your fiercest critics and that I'm about to ask you some very difficult questions. Thank you for your courage, which is so important and necessary now, as we face challenges that may feel insurmountable. I, of course, want to ask you to analyze the war in Ukraine as it stands now. But first, let's add some context to the conversation. Let's go back to the early 2000s. Vladimir Putin rose to power, and every subsequent US president has had to deal with him. Tell me how you view America's foreign policy, specifically its Russia policy, in this quarter century.

[Jake Sullivan]

Well, what's clear is that Vladimir Putin has become an increasing menace to his neighbors, to the world, to his people. And neither the United States nor anyone else has been able to reverse that trend. And it is certainly the case over the course of the past quarter century that President Putin, Vladimir Putin, has just kept growing his appetite for death and destruction, disruption. And I think it's fair to say that the sum total of US policy from the late 90s through the 2000s and the 2010s was not able to turn that around.

[Gary Kasparov]

Let's go back to the early days of Vladimir Putin's rise. Why does every new administration seem to fall into the same mistake with Putin negotiating with him as though he's someone who would keep his word?

[Jake Sullivan]

Well, it's harder for me to speak. I wasn't in the Clinton administration or the Bush administration. I did serve at the State Department and then as National Security Advisor to then Vice President Biden during the Obama administration. And of course, the Obama administration had the reset. That was when you had President Medvedev technically leading the country. Though, of course, we knew that Vladimir Putin remained the power behind the throne. Interestingly, Gary, when I was the Director of Policy Planning at the State Department from 2011 to 2013, and thanks actually to some really, really smart Russia experts on my team, I actually produced a memo for Secretary Clinton in 2012 that basically said, this is going to go in a very dark direction as President Putin comes back to power and we have to be ready for a very aggressive and assertive Russian. In fact, Secretary Clinton ended up sending her own memo over to the White House, essentially making that case at the end of 2012. That was when watching Putin come back into power, that I really saw the threat and challenge that he posed. And I put that down on PA and made my views clear.

[Gary Kasparov]

At the time, you mentioned Hillary Clinton and the reset policy. Failed reset policy. So I was always wondering, and maybe you can tell us a secret. Whose idea was it for Hillary Clinton to give a reset button to a counterpart Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, in 2009?

[Jake Sullivan]

Well, that was not Mine. But that's not for me to say. That's for for others to say. All I could say is it was not my idea. But that was a policy that Secretary Clinton was carrying out. Of course, the original concept of the reset had emerged in the transition and then was enunciated by the White House and then of course carried forward by the State Department as well.

[Gary Kasparov]

So then you moved to the White House to work with then Vice President Biden and that was the beginning of Russia's Russian war in Ukraine. So I understand that Vice President Biden want Obama to give at least some lethal attack weapons to Ukraine, like the Javelin anti tank weapon. What was your advice to Biden?

[Jake Sullivan]

Well, of course, I'm very careful not to share my private advice to principals. I think it's important that I not do that. What I can say is that President Biden was very clear about his view that the United States should step forward and supply that defensive assistance, defensive equipment to Ukraine at the time. And of course, President Obama didn't agree and chose a different course. But that was the advice coming out of the office of the Vice President.

[Gary Kasparov]

Okay, now we can miss four years of Trump's presidency. Though I still want to ask you, how do you evaluate Trump's foreign policy vis a vis Russia and Ukraine?

[Jake Sullivan]

At the time, I think basically President Trump was focused on just trying to maintain a decent relationship with President Putin for reasons I don't fully understand. And I think he had people working for him who were very active in wanting to support Ukraine. And I think steps like the provision of javelins were good. But writ large, I felt that his approach vis a vis Putin, as we saw on display in Helsinki, for example, was one that Secretary Clinton had predicted, which is him basically cozying up to President Putin in ways that I did not think advanced U.S. interests. What's fascinating though, is that he has been prepared to take very tough action against friends. He's been prepared to take very tough action against competitors like the 145% tariffs on China. But at no point has he been prepared to take tough action against Putin's Russia. Even when he applied tariffs across the board, almost every country in the world, even Ukraine, for goodness sake, he did not impose tariffs on Russia. It is a very strange, consistent feature of his approach to foreign policy that Putin tends to get a pass.

[Gary Kasparov]

Okay, now go back to your tenure as the National Security Advisor. So you're in the office and at what point you recognize that Putin's invasion of Ukraine would be inevitable.

[Jake Sullivan]

I don't know. About inevitable. But we were concerned about the possibility of an invasion of Ukraine in the spring.

[Gary Kasparov]

Spring 2021.

[Jake Sullivan]

Yes, in the spring of 2021. The large buildup of Russian forces. Actually, one of the reasons that President Biden met with President Putin in a summit in Geneva in the summer was because there had been a big buildup of forces on the border of Ukraine that spring, and it certainly didn't look like a drill.

[Gary Kasparov]

So what are the results of these summits and why you are convinced that Putin would attack Ukraine?

[Jake Sullivan]

Part of the purpose of those was to lay out what the consequences would be with respect to, A, the economic sanctions we would impose, B, the support we would provide Ukraine, and C, the way in which we would rally the world against Russia. And President Biden made no bones about that. He laid all that out for President Putin to let him know that this is what would unfold. So we made an effort, of course, which was not successful, to avert. To head off, even though we knew it was a long shot.

[Gary Kasparov]

No, it seems that he was not impressed by the consequences.

[Jake Sullivan]

Well, not impressed by the consequences or simply, as many of our Russia experts in the intelligence community noted, determined to invade Ukraine no matter the cost. And of course, as we see today, with more than a million Russian dead and wounded and the economy under massive pressure and Russia having mortgaged its future, he's still determined because this is something that President Putin has decided is the most important thing for him to do.

[Gary Kasparov]

Jake, I see a little gap in the story, because if you were convinced back in June, July 2021 that Russian invasion of Ukraine was very likely, if not inevitable, and then to consequently.

[Jake Sullivan]

Sorry, no, I didn't say in June, July, we thought an invasion was likely or inevitable. I'm not. Sorry, I'm not making that claim. What I'm saying is that the risks, the concern over what Putin would do with respect to Ukraine was present in March and April because he did a huge buildup. Then we had the summit had no real outcomes on Ukraine. So the concern remained, where's this all going? But it wasn't until we saw the intelligence in the fall that we became convinced that this was going to happen.

[Gary Kasparov]

Then. Okay, fall, but then why the United States decided not to provide Ukraine with any lethal weapons in this period, you still had four or five months to beef up Ukrainian defenses.

[Jake Sullivan]

As I recall, we did provide Ukraine with defensive assistance that fall.

[Gary Kasparov]

It's what, Javelins and Stingers? I mean, it's not any heavy weapons that could have been very useful facing Russian invasion.

[Jake Sullivan]

Well, I Think. In fact, the Javelins and Stingers were what helped the incredible and brave Ukrainian.

[Gary Kasparov]

Defenders save Kyiv and throughout the war. So this is 2022. Ukrainians demonstrating heroism and determination, survived, defended Kyiv, inflicted huge losses to Russian force attacking Kyiv. It was a big victory. Liberated territories near Kyiv, and then they had a massive counterattack in August 2022. And then there was the moment in 2023, in June, long awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive that unfortunately did not work. So tell us why United States was always very slow in providing Ukraine with more weapons that, as we know, were available.

[Jake Sullivan]

You know, Gary, I've heard this critique obviously many times, including from you, and I'd like to divide between two elements just so we're at least on, on the same page with what the argument is, and then we can respectfully disagree. Or maybe we come to agreement. One is that we were slow generally in supplying weapons. The other is there were certain weapons systems that we were slow in providing. The way you just put the question and made it sound like we just were slow in giving them stuff generally, I don't accept that at all. I think we moved incredibly rapidly to supply at speed and scale a massive amount of military equipment to Ukraine, far beyond what anyone would have expected when the war broke out in February. And in fact, we built an efficient pipeline in Poland that not only supplied American military equipment, but was able to draw in military equipment from around the world and supply it. So that by the time the counteroffensive started in June, everything that had been agreed between the US Military and the Ukrainian military in terms of their needs was provided. So I would just disagree with the premise of the question in that regard. Then we can talk about the particular weapon systems that are the source of criticism, one of which was the A1 Abrams tanks. And there basically our military said, these tanks are not going to be useful. They need Bradleys, which we supplied at great scale. Those are much more effective fighting vehicle than the Abrams. But to this day, Gary, the Abrams have never been a particularly useful or central weapon in this war. So that's the Abrams. Then there are the F16s. President Biden approved the F16 transfers in May of 2023. You and I are talking here in September of 2025, more than two years later. And there's really only a handful of these planes in Ukraine. And that's because it's very hard to build an air force, which was the argument our military was making against doing it put the money and the effort towards other systems that you can actually get in because you're not going to be able to build the whole F16 Air Force in Ukraine. And then, of course, there was the issue of the atacms. And on the atacms, what the Pentagon consistently argued was, we have a limited number of these. We need to keep a certain reserve for America's combatant commands, and we just don't have enough to give Ukraine for it to make a material difference on the front line in the battlefield. That was an argument that they consistently made. Eventually we were able to give them. They were used, and they were used to good effect operationally, but obviously they're not a silver bullet for changing the course of the war. And so I think there has been an overemphasis on these particular weapons systems at the expense of looking at the full suite of material. Every single dollar Congress gave us, we spent on time and in full to push weapons into Ukraine. And we were, in my view, really resourceful in doing so. And we went way beyond just the kinds of things that were on the front page of the paper on a given month. In fact, from the beginning, we played a critical role and helped stand up Ukraine's drone program that now is operating to such good effect. We sourced and developed entirely new capabilities that had never been fielded before to transfer to Ukraine. And I was holding a meeting every single day in my office, basically trying to figure out how we could get more, faster, better to Ukraine. And I did that from the first day to the last. Am I satisfied? No. I would have obviously liked to get more money from Congress, give more stuff to Ukraine. But I think that there has been a kind of view among a certain group of critics that somehow we were sitting there holding back, being cautious, not providing. And frankly, I just don't. I don't think the record actually reflects that or the enormous effort that was put into this. Coordinated from the nsc.

[Gary Kasparov]

Did Russians explicitly threaten to use nukes?

[Jake Sullivan]

Well, you saw them publicly constantly.

[Gary Kasparov]

I'm talking about conversations. It's public stories is one story. It's one level. But was the threat used in the negotiations between your team and the Russian counterparts?

[Jake Sullivan]

Well, we didn't have really negotiations with our Russian counterparts, but yes, we did have engagements with them. I would say they were not saying to us, hey, we're about to use nuclear weapons. What the most senior people at the CIA and the DNI presented to the President was that if there was a catastrophic collapse of Russian lines, it was a coin flip as to whether Russia would use tactical nuclear weapons to respond to that. That was the information given to President Biden. That's what he had to contend with in terms of the risk. And that was based on. Well, it was based on things I can't go into in this podcast.

[Gary Kasparov]

Okay, okay. Now we are where we are now. September 2025, and the war keeps going on, more people being killed. So what do you expect?

[Jake Sullivan]

I guess there's a difference between what I hope and what I expect. I'm just not sure what to expect, honestly, from President Trump. I don't know if he'll follow through and finally impose pressure. But there's an obvious roadmap here, and the roadmap is that the Russian economy is very weak and oil markets are pretty permissive. And that means there is room to really squeeze Russian oil revenues in a way that puts a hurt on Putin's pocketbook. And I think if we combine that with a further surge of military assistance to Ukraine, we can create the conditions in which a real negotiation for a real, just and sustainable peace could take place. That's what I would like to see happen.

[Gary Kasparov]

I remember that in August 2023, I was in Denmark. I met Danish Foreign Minister and his team, and I asked them why Denmark was so shy not to shut these two straits, two key straits controlled by Denmark that are vital for Russia's oil export because more than half of Russian oil export go through the north. And after giving me some nonsense about wto, they just ended up saying, look, we can't do it because Americans don't want to see oil prices going up.

[Jake Sullivan]

I can tell you, Gary, I don't recall any conversations with the Danes about closing the straits and stopping all Russian ships going through. So I don't know. I don't know if that happened somewhere else, but I don't remember that. However, I will acknowledge, I have acknowledged publicly before, as have others, that the reason that we didn't impose all of the sanctions that we could on Russia's oil program was because we had to balance sustaining American support to provide weapons to Ukraine with taking money away from Russia. And if you tell Americans your gas prices are going to go up by 2, 3, 4 bucks at the gallon, then our judgment, not my personal judgment, but the administration's judgment, was that that would crater U.S. support for the war. Those are the kinds of hard decisions you have to make if you're president. You're looking at this. You're saying, I'm going to need to continue to ask the Congress and the American people for tens of billions of dollars for Ukraine. And if I'm creating a policy that is hitting Americans hard in their pocketbook. I'm not likely to be able to achieve that. So it wasn't actually until late in 24 when, remember in 22, 23, oil prices were really high. The oil market was really tight. By the end of 24, the oil market had become a lot more slack. And so President Biden said, let's go, let's tighten oil sanctions because he was trying to put the maximum amount of pressure on Russia without creating the kind of backlash in a democracy in the United States that could leave Ukraine without the support that it would need ongoing. And that's part of the reason I said that. It's not just that Russia's economy is weak right now. It's in fact that the oil market is permissive. We could do this without harming the American people while hurting the Putin war machine. And that's why the moment is ripe for this to happen. And I hope it does happen.

[Gary Kasparov]

We'll be right back.

[Claudina Baid]

Hey there. I'm Claudina Baid and I lead the audio team here at the Atlantic. I think a lot about what makes great audio journalism. It commands your attention but isn't noisy. It brings you closer to the subject, but leaves room for you to make up your own mind. And when you hear someone tell their story in their own voice, you understand it in a deeper way. When you subscribe to the Atlantic, you'll be supporting this kind of journalism. You'll also enjoy new benefits just for Atlantic subscribers on Apple podcasts Think ad free episodes of our shows and subscriber only audio articles. To join us, go to theatlantic.com listener. That's theatlantic.com listener. If you're already a subscriber, thanks. You can head to the Atlantic's channel page on Apple Podcasts and start listening right now.

[Gary Kasparov]

Okay, so I want to ask a key geopolitical question. If it's about American isolationism, it is a strain of thought that has run through the last decades. Obama saying he would end foreign wars. Trump, of course, with America first and again ending all the wars. Biden to a great extent as well, in my view. Now Trump again. Can America afford this isolationist instinct? Is it a self destructive policy?

[Jake Sullivan]

Well, it depends on what you mean by isolationism. If what you mean is this kind of we have no responsibility for anything in the world, we shun our friends, we don't stand up to bullies, all that kind of thing, then no, we can't afford that. If what you're saying is, can we effectively pursue a principled foreign policy without putting the US and US Men and women directly at war. I do believe there's a way to proceed without ending up in deep and extended military entanglements overseas, while discharging our responsibilities to our own people and to the cause of a more just, more free, more prosperous world as well. So what I would like to see is investments in the sources of American strength and power, including military power, so that we can deter wars, so that we can have strong allies, and so that we can effectively win the competition against our competitors and adversaries, so that the world works for us rather than against us. And that does require an active, engaged America, not an isolated America, not this kind of America alone America. F everybody approach that President Trump is taking.

[Gary Kasparov]

But a couple of weeks ago, we saw the demonstration of the unity of non democratic leaders. Okay, authoritarian, call it Brotherhood Dictators Inc. Led by Xi Jinping. So clearly he's calling the mantle of the global leader of this anti Western alliance. Is it the result of the vacuum created by the United States?

[Jake Sullivan]

To be honest with you, I think in many ways it's the result of the United States pulling together the free world. Why did Xi start going down this road? It's because he saw President Biden rally NATO, grow NATO, add Finland and Sweden, rally Japan and South Korea, an unprecedented level of military and other forms of cooperation, and link Europe and Asia. And then of course, deepen the relationship with India. She looks at all of that and says, I need an answer to this to a certain extent. So do I think that there is a real competition underway? I do. Do I believe that if we stick with our strategy of rallying like minded democracies across every dimension, defense, technology, economics, supply chains, you name it, that we have the winning hand? I really do believe that. And I think the hand we passed on to Trump alliances at all time high in Europe and Asia. What he's chosen to do with that in the last eight months is a whole other deal. And I think it has made the Chinese in particular look and say, holy cow, he's doing our work for us. And I think that that's a shame because I think that works really strongly to America's strategic disadvantage.

[Gary Kasparov]

Now I want to shift from foreign policy back to domestic issues because all the issues we argue about, all the disagreements, they pale in comparison to the challenge of the threat to American democracy. And one question I can't avoid asking, was it a mistake for President Biden to declare that he would run again instead of looking for a more viable candidate to oppose Donald Trump?

[Jake Sullivan]

Well, I think it's important to divide between two issues that I think have gotten very much conflated. One is, should President Biden have run again? I mean, he left the race, so obviously no, he shouldn't have run again. The other is, did I have concerns about him actually doing the job of president while he was president? No, I did not. But the way things played out, obviously he left the race.

[Gary Kasparov]

But was it too late?

[Jake Sullivan]

Yes, and I think that answers your question.

[Gary Kasparov]

Okay, so that's too late. Just the mood in the administration. I mean, how the team, you and others surrounding President Biden evaluated the chance of Donald Trump coming back and causing this tremendous damage both to American democracy and to global stability.

[Jake Sullivan]

Look, we were extremely concerned about it. And just to take one example, what it would mean for the war in Ukraine. When President Trump was elected, we had 78 days to surge equipment into Ukraine as rapidly and fully as we possibly could. But as soon as President Trump was reelected, I was deeply concerned because they had laid out a playbook in Project 2025 and beyond, saying the kinds of things they were going to do to chip away not just at the institutions of democracy in America, but at many of the things that are America's fundamental enduring strengths and qualities. Our ability to attract talent, our innovation ecosystem, even our manufacturing base where we've actually lost manufacturing jobs over the course of the past several months.

[Gary Kasparov]

Okay, Jake, you are the nsa. You know much more about the global threats to America than almost anyone. Do you agree that the greatest threat to American security now comes from within?

[Jake Sullivan]

I do, yes.

[Gary Kasparov]

So tell me about the threats as you see them.

[Jake Sullivan]

Look, we face real threats and challenges from abroad. Deep, long term strategic competition with China, the threat that Russia poses, the threat that North Korea poses. And then there are threats like the climate crisis and nuclear prolife pandemics and the like. But we ourselves are our greatest threat. That is us turning on the things that made our country great. And that starts with the foundational principle of the rule of law. When that gets challenged, everything's up for grabs. And all of the elements that have made America the most dynamic, the most prosperous, the most innovative, the most free nation in the world. Each of the pillars that built that are being chipped away at systematically. And that is so much greater a threat to the long term health and vitality of the American way of life than anything that emanates from abroad.

[Gary Kasparov]

I believe that people around Donald Trump are openly preparing to seize power in the midterm elections. It may not Be free and fair elections, first time in American history. So how do you see this challenge of the 2026 election season where I'm afraid that FBI and DOJ could play a crucial role in securing a result Donald Trump wants to see?

[Jake Sullivan]

I think that it is imperative on everyone, whatever your platform, whatever your voice, to speak out on the essential principle of a free and fair election in 2026 and to call out every step that is taken that goes in the wrong direction as far as that's concerned. And I think we should be collectively pushing back against any effort to stack the deck or unlevel the playing field or do even more extreme things. And that's not just the candidates or the party that needs to do that. That is everyone. And I think especially it's important to pin down people in the president's own party to say what's too far. I think we've already gone too far in many respects, but there has not been pushback from the Republican Party. And so I think there should be a constant question to members of Congress, Senators, governors who are Republican, to draw some lines, say, no, you will not allow it to go beyond this. And I think that work has to start now.

[Gary Kasparov]

Do you think the Democratic Party is properly equipped to do the job?

[Jake Sullivan]

I think the jury is out right now. We don't know. Do I think that there are a sufficient number of really smart, dedicated, competent people who could, if they were empowered and stepped up? Do we have it within ourselves, not just the Democratic Party, but all of those folks who are concerned about what might come to pass? Do we have the tools? Do we have the capacity? We do. We just need to make sure that we exercise it effectively in pushing back against the backsliding, the Democratic backsliding that we're seeing.

[Gary Kasparov]

Are you optimistic?

[Jake Sullivan]

You know, I've said this before, but I'm Sullivan. I'm Irish. It is said of Irish people that we have an abiding sense of tragedy that sustains us through temporary periods of joy. So I'm never very optimistic about anything but my abiding sense of tragedy on the one hand. And my concern about what I'm seeing is to a certain extent offset by a genuinely deep belief in the American people that they're not going to tolerate a dramatic effort to upend our democracy. They're just not going to tolerate it, and that that will ultimately be a break. But it's not good enough just to assert that everyone's gotta do the work.

[Gary Kasparov]

Now, back to Trump. Trump doesn't have a vision in My view, it's just, it's all transactional. But Trumpism as a concept offers a vision. A wrong one, but it's a vision. So what is your vision? What to do with Europe, with China, with Russia? Say you come back in 2028. What's the right cause for America to recover from all the failures and all mistakes made since the end of the Cold War? So make the case for how it will be better than it was when Biden was president, or Obama was president, or of course, much better when his Trump was president.

[Jake Sullivan]

So I think that there are a few basic elements and it's all about the execution. Number one, we need to invest in the sources of our own strength. We need to make sure that we fully rebuild our industrial capacity. And we made strides in the Biden administration, real strides that we hadn't seen in a long time. But, but it wasn't enough. And it was because we faced all kinds of bureaucratic and technical obstacles to really finish the job. Number two, we gotta overhaul our defense industrial base, drag it into the 21st century in a real way. Again, we made some progress in the Biden administration. I think we arrested the decline, but we didn't build up everything we needed to. And that's a long term project. We need to rebuild our innovation ecosystem, which Trump is destroying, by going at universities and science funding and the like, so that we continue to have the most dynamic and innovative economy in the world. If the United States is tending to the sources of its own strength at home, we are going to be a very powerful nation in the world. So that's 1, 2. We need to get back in the game when it comes to strong, robust, diversified alliances. And I think if we do that, then we're playing with a hand that is much stronger than our authoritarian competitors and adversaries are. And so for me, it's executing those elements in a full throated, robust and effective way. And then finally, the US has to get back in the game of mobilizing collective action across a range of countries to get after these underlying dynamics like the climate crisis, like AI risk, like the possibility of a future pandemic that's even worse than COVID 19. And we gotta be at the head of the table in organizing a collective effort to make those risks, to reduce them so they don't come to bite Americans down the road. That's how I see an effective foreign policy. And from my perspective, a piece of that is, is making sure that we have built up our deterrent and defensive capabilities in Europe and Asia, but that we've asked our allies to step up to do their part. And part of it is that we've built a technology ecosystem among like minded countries so that technology works for us rather than against us, and that China's not writing the rules of technology for the rest of this century and beyond. So that's what I would argue for. And I think that that is within our grasp. And I actually think it's what most Americans want at the end of the something rooted in their interests, but enlightened self interest. That is, we all do better if we all do better working in common cause with other countries who share our values. And that's exactly what Trump has torn up out of the playbook. And I think that we have to put back together.

[Gary Kasparov]

Just a couple of questions to clarify. So would you demand the reform of the United Nations? In my view, it's outdated institution that has to be reformed.

[Jake Sullivan]

That's a complicated question. It operates on consensus in some cases on veto and other cases. But no, I'm not going to say that the UN as currently constructed is fit for purpose and it could use an update and overhaul.

[Gary Kasparov]

And what about NATO?

[Jake Sullivan]

Well, one thing I think that NATO has to do, which we took a lot of strides forward on, in my view, is think about security in a very holistic way. So we really introduced cyber as a critical component of NATO. It hadn't been there very much before President Biden came in thinking about issues like defense, industrial base coordination. How are we all collectively going to have the magazine depth so that we can credibly fight and win a war? And because we can credibly fight and win a war, we can deter a war. We need NATO to think about broader supply chain resilience in everything from critical minerals to semiconductors so that we're not exposed to being squeezed by China or anybody else. So I think NATO needs to have a more holistic picture of security and a greater degree of resilience against the type of hybrid warfare and gray zone activities that we see from the Russians and increasingly from other adversaries as well. All of that I think we took steps on, but we didn't get far enough and there's a lot more to do.

[Gary Kasparov]

Will you take Ukraine into NATO?

[Jake Sullivan]

Well, we said at the end of the Biden administration, of course, the Trump administration has essentially taken that off the table that Ukraine's future is in NATO. And I stand by that.

[Gary Kasparov]

And will you offer ironclad guarantees to, say, Baltic nations that they will be protected by all American military might Russia crosses the border.

[Jake Sullivan]

That's what Article 5 says.

[Gary Kasparov]

Yeah. Article 5 is still a piece of paper.

[Jake Sullivan]

It needs to mean that. It needs to mean that without any question whatsoever, coming and going, absolute sacred obligation to follow through on Article 5.

[Gary Kasparov]

So the new administration, new Democratic administration in 2028 very likely will bring America back and with all the commitments and will not be shy of using force if necessary, correct?

[Jake Sullivan]

Well, I cannot predict what a new Democratic administration will do by any stretch.

[Gary Kasparov]

No, no, no. I just. It's the. You are. We're talking about the vision of Jake Sullivan. So. And I believe, because I believe he will play a role in formulating these new, new concepts. Probably one of the most renowned experts in the party. So would you suggest that America will play this, you know, the leading role and will not be shy of using force if necessary, to protect the allies and the global stability?

[Jake Sullivan]

I think that we need to send a clear message that when we make a security guarantee to a country through Article 5, whether in the NATO context or our allies in Asia, that we will follow through on it coming and going and that we mean business. And I think the most important thing in that is not the assertion. It's having the capacity through our defense industrial base, through our technology, and through the strength and robustness and burden sharing of our alliances that, that we can make that a very credible and real deterrent.

[Gary Kasparov]

I think we should close with reflection about how people who find themselves at odds with one another politically should still find common ground in supporting the values that will preserve our democracy. And it would seem that you and I found ourselves in this particular situation. Thank you very much for joining the show, Jake, and good luck.

[Jake Sullivan]

Thank you, Gary, and thank you for everything that you're doing, Dan, in Day out to fight for the values you love and this country that we both love.

[Gary Kasparov]

This episode of Photography in America was produced by Arlene Orevolo. Our editor is Dave Shaw. Original music and mix by Rob Smirciak. Fact checking by Ina Alvarado. Special thanks to Paulina Kasparo and Mick Gringott. Claudia Nabay is executive producer of Atlantic Audio. Andrea Valdes is our managing editor. Next time on Autocracy in America. We've moved from a world where the difference is between liberal and conservative to a world where the difference is between liberal and illiberal. Because I think the Republican Party to a great extent has become an illiberal party, not a conservative party. There's an important distinction. I'm Yerik Esporov. See you back here next week.

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