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Foreign.
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Hi, I'm Santi Ruiz and this is Statecraft. As a reminder, the complete annotated transcript for this episode is at www.statecraft.pub. on this show recently, we've been pretty interested in big strategic documents that the executive branch puts out. So we had Dean Ball on the principal author of the AI Action plan in this administration, and then we had Judd Devermont on who authored the Biden administration's strategy towards Sub Saharan Africa. We're going to continue that trend today, but maybe at a higher strategic register. Today I'm joined by Nadia Shadlow. Nadia, thanks for joining.
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Thanks so much, Santi. It's a pleasure to be here. I love your program.
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Well, I'm a big fan of yours as well. And just to give listeners a bit of professional background, Nadia is the former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy in the first Trump administration. She served as the lead architect of the 2017 National Security Strategy, or NSS. And we're going to get into what that document is, what it isn't, what it does and doesn't do in a second. Currently, Nadia is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute where she focuses on issues of strategy, national security, and industrial policy. And Nadia, you have a long storied career in this kind of strategic space that I'm going to leave for listeners to, to dig into later today. What I want to focus on at the beginning is what these documents are, national security strategies, why they matter, and how they're produced they are the result of. And then what they do in the world. And then I'd love to talk to you a little bit both about what's happened in the world in the kind of strategic world since you left the White House, and how we should read some elements of the most recent National Security Strategy, which came out about a month ago as we're recording in the middle of January.
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Okay, sounds good. The first part might be easier than the second part. We're just going to have lots of competing interpretations. But we could certainly speak initially about why strategy matters in the United States and maybe writ large.
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Sure, I think. Yeah. One thing that I expect us to get into is how much there's like a hermeneutical game with these documents that there's a huge amount of interpretation after they're produced in.
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Exactly. You could have entire courses on them. You know, what is it called? Deconstruction and all these literary theories that apply to literary texts. I think a similar set of activities happens on this side as well.
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Well, let's start there. I think I want to hear from you what a national security strategy is, but maybe the first thing to note for listeners is that you're the principal author. That's kind of the classic designation that you hear, which does not mean you're the sole author. And in fact, this document and every national security strategy is a multi party creation. Will you say a little bit about how that actually works?
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Strategies should be, in my view, a multi party creation in a democracy, because essentially they are about coalition building. But let me step back a little bit. What's the purpose of strategy? Strategists and academics like to use phrases like ways, ends, means you know, what you want to achieve and how you're going to go about doing that and what resources you're going to apply to doing that. And that's all well and that's good, but I think for a broader audience, to me, a strategy is explaining to a broader audience, in this case to the American people, the particular objectives and goals that a new White House, new president has and why those are important. It generally begins with a set of assumptions, a description of here's how the world looks today and here's why it's good or bad or not advantageous or more advantageous to American interests. So I think sort of in a broader way, fundamentally strategy is about explaining to the American people the direction that a country is going in. Now, backing up to your question, if that's to have any meaning in reality, you need to build coalitions of people around that. Because in the end, much as we're having big debates now about the nature of democracy and autocracy and all these issues, implementation and actual outcomes depends upon bringing people together to get things done. No one person can actually implement very much in this country. And we can talk about that debate, that a lot of people think President Trump can do what he wants and is doing exactly what he wants, and that's implementation. But longer term problems, medium term problems require sustained implementation. And that goes back to why you have to create coalitions.
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B
Interesting that right off the bat you flagged the kind of multi party nature of these documents is a good thing in your view, because sometimes you see this as a criticism of these documents. So I was in the, in the prep for this conversation, I was reading one critic of the 2025 strategy, so the one that came out recently calling it a consensus document produced through quote, least common denominator bargaining between its authors, would you accept that frame? Exactly.
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I accept that as a criticism of many of these documents. I think it's sort of a balance. Strategy making and articulation is not a science. There isn't one way to do it. There isn't even an established formula for doing it. When I first got to the White House in 2017, it's not that I had this how to. Of. Of how do you actually create a strategy? You read different things, you read different assessments, you read past strategies, and you develop an idea of how you think you might construct one based on a lot of inputs. So having said that, that's the process, but in terms of what it actually contains, again, I think in a government with different competing power centers, with different viewpoints, whether it's a Republican administration or a Democratic administration, you're going to have a sense of that. You'll have different ideas in the document. I think chief drafters can do a better job or a lesser job of cohering them, of maybe taking out real inconsistencies or editing certain types of language. But if you're just reflecting one point of view that's not reflective of key other power nodes in government, you're not likely to see progress on those other issues. People just won't do anything.
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B
Will you talk to me a little bit about that set of power nodes? Not asking you to gossip here, but just to kind of describe as you're producing a document like this, what are the kinds of forces that you're trying to bring to the table.
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You have your traditional departments that see things in different ways. So I think it's fair to say, you know, when I was in government last time, I think probably the Treasury Department was less hawkish on China than other parts of the government, as example. Right. The Treasury Department traditionally represents or is influenced by or speaks to Wall Street a lot. Financial interests, a lot. Interests that don't necessarily want to be constrained in their investments into China, for example, mediating then between that point of view and the China hawks that were more prevalent on the National Security Council, probably including me, as well as in the Defense Department, being concerned that US Investments were going toward Chinese firms that were contributing to the People's Liberation Army. So I think that's a good example of the kinds of interagency debates and discussions and navigating that. Another example might be within the defense and military establishment. So when I was there, but this is continues to exist today, the degree to which more of the defense budget should go toward what are called legacy systems or platforms, aircraft carriers or drones. These are real debates that go on, and they're important because they get to what does future war look like, is it going to be dominated by smaller precision drones? Do we still need aircraft carriers? Do we need these big legacy systems? Do we need tanks? That's often called capacity. Do we need stuff? A lot of stuff, I should say, or just a few big exquisite systems. So these are the kinds of debates that go on and are reflected, I think, in a strategy for something like
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that, drones versus aircraft carriers dichotomy, to pick one split in the national security space that you hear often. Where is that kind of debate reflected in the national security strategy? Because after the national security strategy, executive branch has to produce a national defense strategy and then a national military strategy, and there's all these documents that kind of flow from that original document that I would assume get more into the literal nuts and bolts here.
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No, you're exactly right, Santa. You're exactly right. So the debate I just described would be one that would come out more in a national defense strategy or in subsequent implementation documents. But at the national strategic level, it might come out, I don't have the strategy I worked on right in front of me, although I should. It's probably here. We discussed it in terms of how to frame the language around capacity, around the need to say more capacity. So this is where adjectives come in. And I'm not a big user of adjectives, so I think you have to be very careful with them.
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But.
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But in this case, more capacity would send a certain signal about needing a quantitatively bigger military. But you're right, the specifics would come out later. Sometimes they're kind of signaling words. Or you might say something about the need to produce more at scale more quickly because of the environment we're facing. And then you might describe that environment. So it would come out at that level. But you're exactly right, you don't want it to be too specific because otherwise you'd have a very, very long document.
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And let's imagine that I'm a partisan on one or another side of that fight. In a kind of military context. I really want to produce way more drones rather than spend more money on some massive naval systems. And let's say that the adjectives in the National Security strategy seem to lend themselves more to my way of thinking. How would I go and leverage that or use that in my fights to get what I want?
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You'd go to. With the language. So I think now we're getting back to sort of process and technicalities. But I do think it's important. And one of the lessons I learned in government from the first time I used to work at the Defense Department many years ago was how important those initial talking points are or the bullet points are, or what's called in government speak, the paper drop. You know, if you can be the first one to put the piece of paper down, with the language down, you have a competitive advantage in the interagency process. It's probably the same in business. I haven't worked extensively in business or in corporate America, but there is a power to that because then automatically everyone else has to respond. So you're creating the template. Second, though, it comes down to your principal. The secretary, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Treasury, who's willing to fight it out at the table, or who's willing to send their delegates to fight it out. And then generally you find some compromise language or not. Not everyone was happy with every element of the 2017 strategy. And I think I learned sort of the art of how you are polite, get inputs, balance ideas, think about things, but in the end take a decision that's not necessarily always popular. Climate change was not mentioned in the 2017 document. Like that was shocking to people, but it wasn't a priority for President Trump. You know, still isn't, but back then 2017, it wasn't. It didn't come up as a major security interest for the United States. And it was really a departure from the previous administration.
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Who else was unhappy about language in the, in the 2017 strategy?
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You know, I think there was less disagreement than people wanted there to be in that. I was always asked, you know, after what were the great big massive knockout drag out fights. And there weren't that many big fights. I think there was a sense that it's clear that the document needed to articulate a worldview that at the time was consistent with the President and was consistent with what he had said for the most part on the campaign trail. And then after that, many of his speeches during the first year of his first administration. And I think it did that. So there was pushback by some who focus on Europe, concerned that there wasn't enough mention of the European Union, for instance. And these issues seem small and tactical, but they tie to President Trump's overall view of the European Union, which was an entity that he's frustrated with, that he sees as not pro free trade, as disadvantaging the United States in terms of its trade policies. Those are his views. And so those basic views or that articulation would come out in the strategy.
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It's kind of funny if those critics were frustrated at how the EU was talked about in the 2017 strategy. Yeah, you should have told them, just wait till the 2025 one. You'll really get a kick out of that.
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And I think for me it was more of a sense of it's not going to be seen as a center point of power and we shouldn't talk about it as such. And so it wasn't mentioned that much. I learned also from that experience at the national level that country mentions are important externally to the other countries. So it would be important for countries to be mentioned or obviously regions, but a sense of they, many of them wanted to be mentioned, articulated that this was an American priority and of strategic importance.
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As you read these, and I read a few of them in preparation for this conversation, almost all of them going back to, I think, the first one with Reagan's second term, when it was first congressionally mandated, have like a list of regions in the world. And in each section, each, you know, Europe and Africa and the Western Hemisphere or Latin America, depending on how you slice it, there is a little bit of a laundry list of here's all the priorities. Here are the kinds of partners that we care about. Is that principally motivated by a sense that in each domain we want to flag to partners, to allies, to potential rivals. Here's how we're approaching it. Like, how much is there a, a formal messaging component to other countries?
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I think it's probably a combination. I think partly it's because those regions of the world that are mentioned matter to the United States and are of strategic importance to the United States. Then what's required is a sense of how, what our role is in those regions, how we manage what outcomes we want. And so there's a traditional way of thinking about balance of power and regional balances of power, which interestingly actually is articulated in the 2025 National Security Strategy, which we can get into. But that approach is generally, we don't want to see one region dominated by a bad actor, in the Middle East's case, you know, by Iran. Eurasia, we hope, is not dominated by China or Russia. If you look at the whole Eurasian continent or the Indo Pacific, we hope, is not dominated by China, that countries in the region play a role in balancing. And that concept of balancing power is very compatible with burden sharing and getting allies and partners to do more. But it also indicates that the US has an interest in keeping those regions stable and balanced and that that's good for American interests.
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Glancing at the 2025 one again, and it has a section that I'll paraphrase, it basically says explicitly to your point, we're not going to mention lots of countries and we're going to leave certain regions mostly off the table for this document. And we want to flag it's not because we don't think those countries are intrinsically unimportant, but we're going to take a very particular view of American interests. And that just means we're going to leave some things off the priority list, in a sense, trying to respond to that point you mentioned, which is the countries really want to see themselves and hear how America conceives of its relation to them.
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But it's interesting that this document did mention five regions, Western Hemisphere, Asia, Europe, the Middle east and Africa. Not just mention them, discusses them. I mean, Western Hemisphere gets a lot more space and words in the document. But I do think it was a definitive kind of pushback to a view that this would be an isolationist administration. And clearly now, as events have unfolded over the first year, it's hard to say that that was the case at all or has been at all, and even with Trump won. But I think it was a narrative that developed and a concern. And we can talk about that too, because obviously there are concerns about how US Relationships will unfold across the world. But right now there's a lot of activity.
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I'll want to get back to that and I'm really interested in that. But just before I lose my own thread about the creation of this document, I want to go back to that list that we started of various kind of power centers that play a role in the drafting of this document. We talked about treasury, we talked about China hawks, which you classified yourself in that category. Keep going through that list. What were some of the other power centers that you were mediating between as you created this document?
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Yeah, I mean, of course, border issues, there wasn't disagreement, but ensuring that border security was elevated in the 2017 strategy in a way that it hadn't been in previous documents for many, many years, decades maybe. So articulating the importance of a non porous American border was very, very important. Articulating the concept of how to protect our borders. And missile defense played a key role. Right. The idea of protecting the security of the American homeland, which became what was called the first pillar of the strategy. We had four pillars which were essentially four core American national interests, as I've said in other discussions of strategy. And it's not that other administrations don't really agree with those objectives. Right. Every president wants to protect the American homeland, to Grow economic prosperity to preserve peace through strength, meaning a strong military, but one you hopefully don't have to use and to advance American influence. So those are four core strategic objectives that we described in the document. Now, having said that, politics comes in and how you go about doing that differs from administration within administrations, even in some ways, maybe from Trump 1 to Trump 2. The how is where the politics get sort of hashed out.
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Talk to me about the role of the Department of State in this document and the one that you worked on. I think we've talked in the past. Well, really I'd like to hear your perspective on both State and the intelligence community in this one, because we've had several folks from State on, several folks who have been at the CIA at one point, maybe still are for all I know. And they've often talked about the kind of particular cultures that they come out of and the lenses that they bring to bear. How do those cultures show up for you?
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The State Department culture showed up more in a sense of being primarily focused on how other countries would receive the document and look at the document, whereas the White House culture was. And my culture was how this is a document that we're writing for the American people. That's an outward facing document, but it's basically focused on the American people to articulate a view of what the world looks like from here and the things we're going to do to improve America's position in the world. The State Department generally is interested in how will the document be received by respective countries, how will it impact directly kind of US relationships with a particular country? I'm generalizing, but I think that's fair to say. And I think in the process that I ran while we included everyone, we had this, you know, so called interagency process, which is the most overused word and one of the many overused words in Washington.
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Why is it overused as a word? Is it just that there's too many of them? It's overused because it's actually overused.
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Yeah. It could just be so blobby. It's such like a blobby word of what does it actually mean? Can you just have these talks and talks and talks that are interminable that go on because you're trying to include everyone around the table versus actually just making a decision and like finding that balance? Again, there isn't a formula for that. A lot of it comes down to personality. So clearly the president is not super interested in the interagency process. Right. It's not his personality at the lower levels, it may or may not be going on to varying degrees. I ran one for the 2017 strategy, had the autonomy to do that, and I found it to be useful. That's where the State Department would come into the room. You know, we hosted a meeting. You'd host meetings in the Old Executive Office Building, the EEOB Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and you'd host the meeting and you'd invite the State Department, meaning representatives of key offices. I don't decide who comes. State Department decides who they want to send. Same thing for Department of Defense and treasury and Commerce. You sit around the table and you work through a particular agenda. But I didn't host meetings all the time. I think we had about 12 substantive, significant meetings and discussions.
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B
As principal author, did you set that agenda?
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That was my job, to set an agenda to drive the production of the document. I had the autonomy to do that, which was great. And in that sense, I think the Trump White House, both in one and two, is there's a lot of autonomy that everyone has, which can be good and bad.
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B
Give me a little more sense just because I'm actually curious about this. What would a typical agenda look like for one of those 12 meetings?
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I don't think it's typical. So for, for me, they were related to. Okay, here are some ideas for the structure of the document. What do you think? With debate focusing on, as I mentioned, what became the four core pillars at the time, it was how do we treat the concept of sovereignty and the nation state? Because clearly that was a clear theme and it continues to be a clear theme of both Trump administrations. How do we grapple with this concept and get inputs right? Traditionally, many previous documents had been highly focused on the multilateral and the global and an order that the US Helped to shape and build and which did wonderful things, but which Trump came in saying what's working and what isn't. So how do you create a set of meetings to address that without becoming an academic, irrelevant process? Lots I like about academia, but you have to run a process that has an endpoint. It's not just a course you're taking here.
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B
I am curious. I mean, people have strong feelings about the topic in general. You could go off in all kinds of different directions. How do you run a meeting with a bunch of these important stakeholders to actually give you something useful to go write a document and then close the thread.
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You ask for inputs. You ask them to come to the table with mini papers. I think that that's also just a useful. And thinking of A toolkit for listeners of what's useful in your jobs. I think that's useful too. Ask people to come to the table with their views on paper. Two pages, three pages generally, not more. How should we articulate the concept of sovereignty? What do you think? How should we articulate the problem of jihadist terrorism and its underpinnings? And how. What are the words we should use and how should we do that? So asking others around the table, and ideally people that you know that might have different viewpoints to present the papers for discussion. So the papers in that sense wouldn't initially come from me, they would come from others and you could take their inputs. So that's one way to run a meeting and to have a clear agenda. And the basic things stay on time. Don't let one person dominate. So those are sort of the art of running a good meeting, I think is to a certain degree an art because you want everyone to feel that their views have been taken into account. They've had a chance to speak. You always have the person at the end of the table or someone at the table who's generally sputtering or sort of enraged because they haven't and you know, listen to. And you get all riled up and you can see that happening. It happened to me. I've been on the other end.
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B
I like to talk. I'm always the one sputtering when I'm not included. I'm like that. I'm sorry, I'm so. I'm so stuck on the actual mechanics of these meetings. But I'm just curious, as someone who's never been in one, did you do like this Amazon style, everyone sits in silence and reads in the meeting, or did you expect everyone comes having read.
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That's a good point. Ideally they should have come having read the paper because it's not like reading time. Because a lot of times, you know, the individuals won't. They won't have the time. So they end up glancing down, looking at it. That's why you keep the papers short. But ideally, most meetings have like what we call, you know, the book. It's the prep book. It's the agenda and it's the relevant papers. Both at my level, which was more still working level. It wasn't with the secretaries of the departments for these meetings or the deputy secretaries. These were working, working level meetings of assistant secretaries or deputy assistant secretaries. But it's the same thing all the way up to the president. You know, you have the book, you have who's preparing the briefing book. Starts with the agenda, generally starts with the purpose of the meeting. You know, the purpose of the meeting is. And we really tried to run our meetings that way. And I think the National Security Council in that period. Well, I know with General McMaster as the National Security Advisor, he ran the meetings very much that way. His meetings, the purpose of this meeting is. And generally at that level, there are two types of meetings. One can be informational, if you really need to get information out there. But the second is to take a decision on a topic. You shouldn't have meetings that have a lot of other purposes at that level.
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B
Were there parties or agencies or departments that were consistently better or worse prepared to play an active role in these meetings?
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I think it depends on the. There's a lot of, you know, gamesmanship. There'd be not speaking out of turn. I think some of the post Trump one books talk about it. There'd be these paper drops, you know, by the State Department at the time, which means that you're kind of ignoring everything in the briefing book and coming in with your own agenda saying, Here are the PowerPoint slides that we should be looking at right now.
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It's pretty aggressive if you're the one setting the agenda and they're proposing their own.
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Secretary Tillerson might have done a little bit of that, which I think has been in some of the books that were written after. So that would always enrage people. You know, that would really make everyone mad. Like, you can't do that. You can't do that. But of course, you know, from his perspective, he's like, I can do it. I'm Secretary of State. And. And this is a topic that is of big interest to the State Department. So, of course, I always see it both ways. And it's just part of how to navigate Washington. I assume this happens in other domains. Just the stakes are. Are high sometimes because you're not giving people enough time to prepare their argument. On the other hand, you could argue they should be smart enough and well versed enough on the issue to make a counterpoint. Right there.
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B
I listened to a podcast you taped relatively shortly after the publication of the 2017 strategy, I think the following year, in which you talked about when you would circulate drafts, on occasion, you would circulate them as PDFs to make it a little bit harder for other people to give you detailed line edits. Are there any other tips of the interagency trade that you'd suggest?
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A
I'm not sure I would. You know, that one. You have to be careful at. But that one thing I'm. I feel secure about my writing skills in that I'm a picky editor, and I didn't want it to get all gobbledygooked up, you know, where everyone's throwing in random words and crazy adjectives like robust or leverage. Leverage is like the favorite verb of the Washington policy community. And it just. Things can go nutty and they don't actually mean anything. You know, you're like, well, what's a robust defense as opposed to a defense like, like. Like, you know, I always like asking that. What? Leverage. I mean, leverage was like seesaw, actually. Literally. Like, it's an engineering term in a way, and now it's gone crazy. You know, it's everywhere. Or as I probably mentioned in that podcast from a long time ago, now Washington likes to include three verbs whenever it can, as opposed to one.
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B
I encounter this a lot in my editorial work, that there's a triplet thing, and I like triplets sometimes, but it gets beaten to death a little bit.
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Yeah, you need to have the purpose for all three. Are all three really necessary, or is it just the last one? Because you implicitly need to do 1 and 2 to get to 3. So that was why I did it as a PDF. It allows you to come in and say, you know, Nadia, this is wrong. These issues are just like, you've gotten these three things wrong. And that's what I wanted to hear. Or, Nadia, you need to say this more clearly. And that's what I wanted to hear, but I didn't want to have, like, just random words just randomly changed.
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B
So that's the process of creating this document. As you pointed out, a lot of how it gets implemented comes down to what the actual principles in the administration actually believe and what they're willing to advocate for and give people political cover for. So will you help me understand what's the utilitarian value of a national security strategy for getting things done inside the government? Because I think we covered it speaks to the American people. It sends a message to partners, adversaries abroad. What does it do for somebody who wants to pick it up as a tool inside the federal government?
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A
Let's take pillar one on our border and ensuring that we have a strong border. The national security strategy spoke quite clearly about the need to build a border wall, about the need to have a strong border that we monitor. You can take that language and basically use that if you're the secretary of Department of Homeland Security or others that. That are relevant and say, okay, we need to go and do this. So it gives you kind of the White House political imprimatur to say, let's go and do this. The President said we need to do this. Now again, in the actual system, it's not where everyone listens. It's not a do this or else you're off to the gulag. Right? I mean, we live in a democracy. We do. And it becomes a way for you to negotiate, just like, you know, most things basically. But if you're able to say we're going to strengthen our border. The first document, for instance, page nine says strengthening control over our borders. An immigration system is central to national security, economic prosperity and the rule of law. It gives you kind of the COVID of what you need to tell the people. And also Congress, like this is a priority. And then you get into the rolling up your sleeves and the fighting and how to do it and how to appropriate the money. That's not something we do. Right? That's not something I did. That's not what the NSC really does. That's what the departments do. Department of Homeland Security, Congress, Office of Management and Budget, omb, they're the money people. They kind of sit in a room then and argue. But it allows you to say, hey, the President said we're going to do this.
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B
To play devil's advocate here, the President had said many times in the 2016 campaign, we're going to build the wall. It's kind of maybe the one thing people remember most about the campaign. So what does the document do that that's, that's his message doesn't do well before he's President.
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I think there's a difference between what someone who's campaigning says and then actually putting it on paper. And I think there is a value to capture themes and ideas in one place. So you have an integrated strategy. And it also allows people to say okay in one place. So you said you want to do all this for border security, but later on you want to do these other things. So how are you going to make the trade offs or fund one over the other? I think with anything, having a consolidated statement of interests and goals is really what strategy is. It's not just one. It allows you to have the arguments about trade offs goals and it allows you to see, well, maybe they're in control consistencies too. But as a candidate, his power is just different than when he's president. So I think, you know, again, allows you to go to the Hill and say here the priorities that we're looking at.
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B
Does Congress Play a role informally, even in the creation of this document. Obviously, Congress is not privy to the interagency process formally outside the executive branch completely. Are there ways in which you or people in your shoes would get information or have touch points with congressional leadership
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A
in a formal way? The White House has a congressional liaison team, so you could formally work through them and ask members of that team where Congress is on particular issues or a sense of how is Congress likely to respond to that language. For instance, that I just read on border security. Informally, yes, you play a role, but you have to make sure it's an informal role because there are rules and regulations about how often executive branch officials can speak to Congress and different things. And I'm not a lawyer, but there are rules about that, so you have to just make sure about that. But informally, with the permission of the Legislative Affairs Office, you can go up to the Hill and you can brief the Senate Armed Services Committee or staffers of here are the general lines of argument. And especially after, too, you could definitely, you know, also having the discussion of here's the strategy, here's what we meant, here's what we said. You know, you have a back and forth, forth. You have a discussion. So there is back and forth. But you're right, Congress does not have any formal role in developing the strategy or shaping it, although in the end, they're a key part of implementation. Right. Because they control the purse.
- [33:05]
B
Well, I imagine that informal back and forth with Congress is maybe a little bit easier today now that everybody in Washington uses signal.
- [33:12]
A
Exactly. Or I guess they just. They just use X too, right?
- [33:16]
B
That's right. That's right. Many of those barriers have. Have fallen, kind of move from the 2017 strategy to today. So it's been close to a decade since that document was published. And the most recent, this administration's national security strategy, I think, obviously in some ways has a lot of key similarities to the one that you principally authored. And I think some striking differences in content and in tone. Maybe let's talk about the tonal piece first and then move to the content and the kind of the broader strategic vision.
- [33:50]
A
I mean, I think the tone is definitely different. As I mentioned, every drafter, whether it's one or several, you have a style of writing. You know that Santi, because you're an editor. And I think the style in this document was just stylistically different. I think the 2017 strategy had a more measured tone, maybe not as emotional in some ways.
- [34:12]
B
Would you call this one more emotional, more confrontational?
- [34:16]
A
Yeah, it's probably more confrontational, probably more angry. There's more frustration maybe expressed in this document. But if you actually look at the similarities, I think in terms of content, I think there are many. It was organized differently, but clearly protection of the American homeland, clearly a concept about how to grow the American economy. A lot on trade in both documents, a lot about how America has been disadvantaged by global mobilization, a description of the rationale for tariffs, the role they would play. So I think a lot of those elements are the same. The peace through strength element of a strong military to deter is in both documents. As I mentioned earlier, concepts of balance of power and power mattering is in both documents. I was glad in this one to see an elevation or at least the recognition of allies and partners being quite important, especially in the Indo Pacific. So I think that that was important. Well, we can get into it. The Europeans are not that happy with this 2025 document.
- [35:19]
B
That's one way of putting it. These strategies often tend to introduce strategic concepts or new language for a concept, or at least they often claim particular language to structure and explain how the administration is thinking about a given idea. So the second Obama strategy talked a lot about strategic patience. The Bush Doctrine was a feature of the first George W. Bush administration's strategy. Are there concepts or kind of language about strategic concepts that you leaned on a lot in yours that you don't notice in the second Trump strategy, or vice versa? New language that is about strategic concepts.
- [35:58]
A
I think, again, there's consistency. I mean, maybe different words were used in this one. I think in 2025, flexible realism was used. I think in ours, we used a different version of that in 2017. But realism definitely comes through in both, maybe with an adjective. We're going to adjectives before it. The idea of the nation state as being a primary actor, as sovereignty being important.
- [36:24]
B
It's very present in both.
- [36:26]
A
Yeah, in both, I think deterrence, Right. Becomes important. And to go back to our discussion about language, in this case, the two words matter, you know, deter and if necessary, defend or fight. Right. So that kind of phrasing makes sense. And that's where it's okay to use a couple of different verbs. Because you want to deter. That's the primary purpose. And if you can't deter, and if deterrence fails, for a whole host of reasons, you want to have the capability to defend yourself or punish your adversary. So having a strong modern nuclear deterrent, that comes out in both documents, the importance of reinvigorating our nuclear enterprise. I did not actually, you know, go and do the chat GPT comparison. I'm sure people have. I didn't do that. You know, to our earlier point of how you can end up in these kinds of very esoteric analytical discussions, I've avoided it.
- [37:19]
B
I have done that, actually. I have gone and asked a couple LLMs for their perspectives on the comparison after reading them myself. You noted a lot of the similarities across the documents, and I certainly take your point and agree there's a lot of consistency. After all, it's the same president. I think there is an argument that this national security strategy is maybe closer to the perspective of President Trump than the 2017 one, or at least closer, tonally closer. In some sense, it feels more like a Trumpian document, at least to me. Am I crazy for thinking that?
- [37:50]
A
No, I don't think so. I think that the President has a certain way of speaking, a certain way of communicating and kind of a voice, both literally and figuratively, that I think probably is more evident in this 2025 strategy. I think it also reflects, you know, to. To get into some of the differences. I guess I'm now creating difficulties for myself by asking myself questions, but it's
- [38:12]
B
like, take it away, Nadia.
- [38:14]
A
Moderator gone. You know, both sides gone crazy. But, you know, so there has been a criticism of the 2025 document for not being as China hawkish as the first one. Right. And I think that in my response to that has been, and I think continues to be, yes. I mean, China is not called a strategic competitor. Specifically our document, the 2017 document used that term strategic competitor. And that was important at the time because actually a lot of Washington, to go back, that was a phrase that people initially were like, oh, no, oh no, definitely raise.
- [38:48]
B
And maybe listeners younger than me will not have the same kind of sense of how striking that was when it came out that you were, you were choosing China as the. As the single single kind of like, biggest threat facing. Facing America.
- [39:01]
A
But again, that was President Trump at the time, and that's how he was articulating the China problem at the time. I think the second document reflects a view that he wants to leave the opportunities for negotiation open. Right. He wants to kind of not poke, poke, poke, poke and basically kind of say, here are these opportunities for discussion. So I think the second White House chose to use different language. And again, it's still no. 1. Strategies don't stay the same, frankly, nor people always stay the same. Right? They evolve. Their thinking evolves in different ways. But I think if you actually not think, if you actually look at the document and look at what it actually says. When it speaks about predatory state directed subsidies and industrial strategies, when it discusses unfair trading practices, job destruction and deindustrialization threats against our supply chain risk, those are pretty strong statements and they're not geared toward Spain, Italy. I mean, it's obviously China.
- [40:03]
B
And that's without even getting into the talk about the South China Sea and our commitments to Taiwan. And I mean, it is kind of funny. I did notice that criticism of this year's strategy, and then when I read it, the strategy, I was a little surprised that that was such a strong criticism. It seemed more one of emphasis or tone or what else was being included in the document rather than a major shift in the actual approach to China.
- [40:29]
A
That's a good point, Santi, because the language on Taiwan in this document is quite strong, like very strong. It might even be stronger than 2017. I have to go back and look at 2017. I've been focused on the 2025 one. But it definitely articulates, you know, a status quo for Taiwan, which is we don't want to see a change, which means we don't want to see China invade or try to change the status quo. It articulates the importance of Taiwan more broadly, beyond just being a place where some of the most important economic drivers exist, meaning semiconductors and chips. And it also discusses, you know, the importance of growing and keeping our military strong. And again, we're doing that because we see China as being the main peer competitor in that domain.
- [41:12]
B
Iran is briefly mentioned in this most recent one. By the time that this one came out, Operation Midnight Hammer had already happened. We already struck their nuclear program. So that's mentioned briefly. North Korea is totally absent from this one. It's not named or mentioned at all. What's up with that?
- [41:29]
A
I don't know. I've said before, I think it's either is it. I think the question is, is it an omission process? Is it a omission due to process like just not going to all the people maybe it could have gone to? And you kind of say, oh, where's North Korea? Or is it deliberate? And then there's a reason behind it, which maybe is about keeping the opportunity to communicate about it open, not knowing the direction that things are going to go, necessarily, because it's obviously a super complicated problem that we've had limited success in dealing with, even though the first Trump administration really, I think, was the most forceful in decades to articulate, you know, a strategy, a maximum pressure strategy. But I think I think if I had to guess my senses now, I've moved more toward thinking it's more about just keeping options open vis a vis North Korea. And maybe there's not a settlement internally on how to address that. Could also be that maybe it wasn't. Things are still being debated in year one of the second Trump administration.
- [42:29]
B
Is there anything else that's confused you or that has raised open questions for you about this document? I think obviously we could get into a lot of the substantive language about the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine or the focus in the Western Hemisphere. But in terms of things that are not totally intelligible to you, whether or not you're critical of them, I'd probably
- [42:49]
A
have to think about that more, I think, because it's written pretty clear. I think the Europe part, just really wanting to articulate, you know, NATO is a critically important alliance. It's one of the most successful features of the post World War II order, and one that should continue to exist. You can't recreate it. Why would you not want to keep it strong? And now we're debating how to keep it strong. And, you know, Trump's toughness on NATO, he would argue probably no one speaks for the president, but he would probably argue it's made the alliance stronger, which I think is a good thing. But we do want to remember that these are our allies, too.
- [43:26]
B
I'm not going to make you talk much about Greenland, and also by the time we publish this, the facts on the ground may have changed. But I would say, although maybe I'm more comfortable with the administration's position in other senses on NATO, the Greenland stuff seems, I'll just say, seems very stupid to me and counterproductive.
- [43:43]
A
I think it's counterproductive. And I think it's a different case than everyone likes to take one episode and say this is indicative of, you know, Maduro means then we're going to do this in Iran, and Iran means we're going to do this.
- [43:55]
B
And to extrapolate one case to every domain.
- [43:58]
A
But I think Greenland, it's fair to say that there's no when you can achieve your outcomes. Improving the US And NATO security posture in that region, access to critical minerals, all of the things that the president wants to do. If you can definitively achieve your outcomes without the use of military force, why wouldn't you take that course of action? You don't want to lead with your military. You could argue that in the case of Venezuela, and this is what he did argue, and I'm sympathetic to it, that basically we were being infiltrated by drugs and these cartels. And this was a definitive, you know, it was a you can make an argument for use of force, and you can definitely make an argument for use of force vis a vis Iran and certainly the strikes there. You're not going to achieve that with negotiations, with diplomacy, with a changed posture. But in terms of Greenland, you can achieve your outcomes without the use of military force in so many ways. So it's just. Yeah, I don't completely understand it. I mean, I understand the impetus to being saying get serious about Greenland. Sure.
- [45:05]
B
I think there's a strong argument there. Yeah. But the saber rattling to me seems goofy. Let me ask you, Nadia, about what you're thinking about these days, since in the past year you've written a lot about kind of a cluster of related ideas, I would say, about the idea of strategic depth, about having the time and flexibility to choose your response to circumstances, about time as an underrated dimension of strategy. Talk to me about first what your intellectual interest is in this cluster of ideas, and then why does this matter? Practically come down from the ivory tower and help us understand why strategic depth matters.
- [45:39]
A
Well, I'll start with time, because that one, I think, is something that really animates me. And then I'll get to strategic depth. It's amazing how long things take to get things done, and I think it's both obvious and amazing. And yet we're still unable to kind of move ahead. So without considering how long something takes from start to to finish, we're undermining confidence in our democracy. We're creating cynicism. I think it's a huge part of the dynamic domestically, too, of everything from. We've been saying the same thing about the reform of America's public schools for 30 years, and things aren't getting done. We've been saying that we need to rebuild our infrastructure, and maybe we're rebuilding a part of our infrastructure, whether it's, you know, the highway to get to John F. Kennedy Airport or some other. But it's taking years and years and years, and we conveniently avoid this question of time. And I think it's hurting us domestically, it's letting our politicians and leaders off the hook, and it's definitely hurting us internationally because the organizations like the UN and other organizations have spent 30 years even longer talking about the same sets of problems. So this article that appeared many Several years ago now, 2023 in the Atlantic, was inspired by an article written many years ago by a very famous Historian named Michael Howard, who I love. He's a great military historian and wrote about history, military history. He wrote an article called the Forgotten Dimensions of Strategy, which is also, I'll
- [47:18]
B
just say, a very clear read, like the 2025 National Security Strategy, very straightforward read. As a text on this topic, it's great.
- [47:26]
A
And it just says, you know, we like to talk about strategy at the big level. In some ways, the way you and I have had this conversation, and it's fun and it's interesting, but there are also these concrete inputs, logistics. You have to be able to get from here to there what people think about the unfolding of award. So these forgotten dimensions. And in thinking about that and rereading it, I thought, you know, time really is a forgotten dimension or it's not put front and center. And I think today there's a real opportunity with data, all of the data we have to do that. We no longer have the excuse of saying, well, we don't really know how long it takes to build, you know, to go from, let's say, a new mine from start to finish. Well, we do know it takes something like 16 years at least. That's a long time. We can also say, well, we know how many regulations are involved in that. We can use AI to do that. So we can do things differently today if we want to.
- [48:21]
B
I'm very sympathetic to this view because a lot of our work at IFP in the day to day is about trying to reduce the amount of time it takes to build things. In America, we're pretty fixated on this. The amount of time it takes to run a clinical trial and test a new drug. But in the national security world, in the Blob, why is this, as you call it, a forgotten dimension of strategy? I would kind of naively assume this would be kind of like an obvious question. After all, the American military is famously focused on logistics as a logistical beast. Why do people in your world need to hear about the importance of time and strategy?
- [48:55]
A
Because it shouldn't take decades to develop a particular weapon system or to integrate something into our Defense Department. It shouldn't take decades or years and years and years to negotiate a particular deal. So having said that, how do you solve for that? If you evaluate it front and center as a key input, if you evaluate it as something that's really important. If you do a Gantt chart. I did one essay, you know, that had been about sort of the electrical vehicle debates during the Biden administration. And the title was, like you, Gant, do this g A N T, T a little bit hokey, but it works. You know the basic idea that Gantt was an engineer in the early 1900s who. The Gantt chart that a lot of listeners who are in the private sector will know that I learned about. It's a great concept. How do you get from A to Z or to where you're going and what's the timeline? We need to do that more systematically, definitely in the national security and foreign policy space. And then you understand what the obstacles are, what regulations are impeding you, where you need to focus your action. So the more that you input this as a core component, the more you're held accountable to it, the more you focus on it and maybe you chip away at it. But to be honest, I think an organization like yours, there's room here for helping to answer that question. I don't know the complete answer of what are the formulas or what are the approaches to improve this, but this is ripe. Like there are probably five or six specific ways that you could do this in the FDA process. I bet people would have an answer. They do have answers. I just don't know them because I don't follow that area.
- [50:36]
B
You've given me a wonderful excuse to link some of our work in the show notes without feeling like I'm abusing the listener.
- [50:43]
A
It's true. There are different, like operational concepts for doing this. They're different approaches. What's the right combination of things where you could make a difference here, those combinations. There's probably not just one answer, but the point of that article was to say the very least. We talk about, as I said, ways, ends and means will, where does time fit in along that? And actually then how do you evaluate one project over another if you put time into it and say we like to use this term in Washington. Well, the. The perfect is the enemy of the good. I mean, I guess that's everywhere, but. So you develop this perfect system, this perfect weapon system versus one that is pretty darn good and can be produced quickly at scale. Time matters there. So you're making a choice, maybe taking a risk, but saying in this case the speed of acquisition and the speed of deployment is more important than maybe the perfect precision of another system. So that's a good example. It helps you make trade offs too.
- [51:41]
B
Nadia, it's been a real pleasure talking to you. Before I let you go, I want to change gears one more time and ask you about your background in Soviet studies. I found almost by happenstance, not on purpose, that a big pile of the Reading I did last year was Russian or about Russia. And there's several more books on the docket this year that I'm hoping to get to. I want to understand Russia historically and today. What from your study and experience, would you recommend I read?
- [52:12]
A
Yeah, that's a great question. You're. You're really super dating me because as soon as you say Soviet studies, you're like, she's old. Because that major doesn't even exist anymore.
- [52:21]
B
But I would love to get a. Do a night class in Soviet studies may not exist anymore.
- [52:26]
A
Back when I was reading about the Soviet Union, anytime you want to understand or try to understand a country, you know, it's always the combination of the cultural and then the history and the political science. And I think with Russia especially, it's always important to read Russian literature and so not saying anything new but the classics and just reading them or deciding in 2026 which ones to read. But I think it's important because even in today's discussion about Ukraine. Right. People will point to key Russian nationalist thinkers and how they think about Ukraine as being very important for the way Putin thinks about Ukraine.
- [53:00]
B
Sure.
- [53:01]
A
As much as it is wrong, it provides them with a rationale that we should understand. But when I was studying the Soviet Union, you know, we read Adam Ulam, Richard Pipes. Those were two key authors.
- [53:14]
B
Pipes is on my list. Very high on the list for this year.
- [53:18]
A
Now I read Stephen Kotkin. He's wonderful. He does some. Has done some great podcasts.
- [53:23]
B
The third volume of the. Of the Stalin biography is coming this year, right?
- [53:27]
A
Yeah, I think biographies. You know, I've been rereading a little bit about not. Not first person, Tukhachevsky, Russian, a famous general, Soviet general, actually, who was killed by Stalin after articulating some really important and interesting concepts that had to do with how to.
- [53:44]
B
Kind of the worst thing that can happen to somebody like you in the national security space is you come up with some important new concepts and killed for them.
- [53:52]
A
Yeah. So that got me, you know, realized how many of, like, at that time the Soviet general Staff were killed. And depending on who you read, you know, it had a. It had a material difference on the war. But I've just been reading about him because to go back to the strategic depth point you made, that's a concept that essentially is a concept about time and space and about having the territory and enough territory to keep an adversary busy until you have time to counterattack, fundamentally. So the best example of that is what happened to the Soviet Union, to Russia in Its history with Napoleon's initial invasion and then later the Nazi invasion and Russia. There's this great chart that I came across which depicts that invasion is called the Minard graph M I N A R D. And it's one of the most famous graphic depictions of a whole bunch of things. So if the people who love, I guess there's an art related to the depiction of events and it's one of the most famous. What is that art called? It's a particular.
- [54:56]
B
There's that Edward Tufte book on the display of visual information. And that's a touchstone for one of my colleagues and for the way we think about our work here at ifp. So I'm glad you're.
- [55:06]
A
That's exactly it. And you can link to that.
- [55:08]
B
And then we go.
- [55:09]
A
The essay that you referred to begins on First Breakfast, which is a. A sub stack that I think writes, you know, is. Is a great forum. I mean, I'm biased because they take my stuff, but everything I read there I like. So it's on there. And the Menard graph is there. And it depicts Napoleon's army going into Russia. It's a big thing, thick black line going in depicting 400 something thousand troops and a very thin black line coming back out showing that something like 10,000 troops survived. And that's to go back to this idea that they were able to draw in the troops, use the territory to regroup and to have the time to counterattack. And so again, the concept of time comes out. But I'll stop there and let me know actually what you're reading. And I think recently I don't have the names in front of me, but there are a couple of contemporary Russian authors that have come out recently. And I think it's useful too, in the same way that people who want to understand China often read the science fiction book the Three Body Problem. I think it's useful also to read some contemporary Russian authors to get a sense of what society is like today.
- [56:13]
B
Well, the three books I have on my list for this year hopefully are Richard Pipes's book on the Russian Revolution, which you mentioned, Dostoevsky's Demons, which is one of those kind of classics I've read. I have not gotten that deep into Dostoevsky's work, so I'm doing my best here. And then Secondhand Time, which Alexeyevich is supposed to be one of the excellent interviewers. They're tracing the follow. So I could use advice on how to interview better or observation of those. But any. Anything else that you'd put on my list in the. From the modern era. I would happily throw on there.
- [56:45]
A
You need to have, like a little sidebar. Book club here could be enough, you know, just.
- [56:51]
B
I need you one more project is what you're telling me.
- [56:54]
A
Exactly. Book club. Yeah. I mean, a particular view about book clubs, but we won't get into that.
- [56:58]
B
Oh, wait, no, tell me.
- [57:00]
A
I mean, I'm not a big book club fan. I really. I don't like to be forced to read. I like suggestions. And I love those end of year lists where all publications have their suggestions. I love that.
- [57:13]
B
Yeah, me too.
- [57:15]
A
To me, reading is a very personal, lovely, you know, way to spend time. And it just. I need it to be completely mine.
- [57:24]
B
I very much feel you. And I don't think I'm a very good book club leader, despite having tried several times which might tell me something about, you know, my true temperament or what I'm capable of or not.
- [57:35]
A
No, I mean, yeah. No, I think. Yeah, I'm with you. I think it's okay, Santi. It's okay. I mean, I'll listen. Love to take a course listening to someone who, you know, is an expert on a particular book. I think it would be very hard to read the Odyssey alone. And like, those are hard books. And like having a professor or someone who really knows that book and learning from him or her, that I love. But that's different than book clubs.
- [57:59]
B
Well, Nadia, I'll leave it there. Thank you again for joining. It's been a pleasure.
- [58:03]
A
Thank you so much, Santi. Super fun. I really enjoyed it. Thank you,
- [58:12]
B
Sam.