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The Foreign Affairs Interview
Does Trump Have a Strategy? A Conversation With A. Wess Mitchell
01:06:12
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- [00:00]
A
Dan I'm Dan Kurtz Phelan, and this is the Foreign affairs interview.
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B
Our hand of cards is better, I think, long term than the Chinese and certainly than the Russians. But near term, it's wise and right to say we need a period of time in which we're really clearing the decks and getting things on a level for the long haul.
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A
Both of Donald Trump's presidential administrations have prompted sharp debates about the direction of American foreign policy. But how to, and whether it's even possible to discern a strategic logic to Washington's approach have been particularly vexing questions since Trump returned to the White House. Wes Mitchell helped shape these debates as Assistant Secretary of State in Trump's first term, and he has been uniquely interesting in shedding light on them since, including in a number of essays for Foreign Affairs. I spoke to Mitchell on Monday, May 18th. We discussed how he understands the strategy driving Trump's second term foreign policy, and where, in the wake of Trump's meeting with Xi Jinping and with wars in Iran and Ukraine far from settled, he thinks that strategy should go from here. Wes, great to have you on the podcast and to have your essay A Grand Strategy of Consolidation in our major initiative.
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B
Dan, it's great to see you. Thanks for publishing my article.
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A
Absolutely. That essay is interesting in its own right, but I think especially so when considered in the context of the arc of American foreign policy thinking more generally over the past decade or so. And so before digging into the new piece, I want to go back to the shift that really became clear in Donald Trump's first term, especially in his first national security strategy. You were in the administration at the time and that you wrote about in a 2019 essay called the Age of Great Power Competition for Foreign Affairs. Your co author on that piece, notably was Bridge Colby, now the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. And you and Bridge argued, and this was quite persuasive at the time, that great power competition, a new concept to a lot of people at that moment, focused especially on China but also on Russia, would be the kind of clear central concern of US Strategy, to quote you, it would drive US Foreign policy under presidents from either party for a long time to come. Is that still true, and if so, how has competition in our understanding or approach that competition developed over the subsequent seven or so years?
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B
Yeah, I think it's very much true and I think it will continue to be true. It will continue to be a focus of successive administrations. Great power competition kind of frame or template the policies at a given moment. That's A prudential matter. And we can argue whether the specific policies of a given administration tend to help or hurt in the overall frame. But I think the frame is well established and I think it means a couple of things that are enduring. One is a focus on the opponent, right? So being clear, what actor in the international system has the means or the strength, the power to such a degree that their behavior affects us the most. So that needs to hover in the background of all of our policies on trade, economics, defense, regional focus, and secondly a focus on oneself. So this is part of my argument in consolidation, looking at your own strength, your own policies, against the metric of where you stand vis a vis the main competitor in particular. But maybe kind of this menagerie of of large state actors, China, Russia, Iran. So I think that's true and I think it was set in motion by the first Trump administration. It's interesting the Biden administration, despite a lot of criticism on the campaign trail that Biden made of Trump, Biden didn't change the big contours of US strategy, neither in the interim strategic guidance early on nor in the nss. NDS that that administration produced different emphases of policy. So for example, industrial policy under the Biden administration was more focused on subsidies and green technology, but there was an industrial policy and that was a carryover the approach of tariffs on China. Second Trump administration I see the great power competition focus very clear and strong in the nss. The nds, which I think is a very historic and significant document that bridge Colby really spearheaded the policies of the second Trump administration to my mind, continue to focus on great power competition even in the current situation in Iran. We can talk more about that. I don't see an effort by the administration to revert to a sustained primary focus on the Middle east and the substance of our policy in that region. We're not trying to go back to nation building. It's not democracy promotion. I think it's a much more or an attempt at a much more targeted and disciplined approach and we'll see how that pans out with time. But I think the focus continues to be primarily on China and there's a cognition in the administration that I perceive across different policies of how our actions in various seemingly unrelated regions or areas speak back to the theme of great park competition and competition with China in particular.
- [05:13]
A
I want to come back to Iran and Trump's thinking in the second term on this. But first I think it's worth drawing out you some more on how you think of this and how you got to this the focus on consolidation in the more recent essay. It's interesting looking at the earlier piece that you and Bridge wrote where you were much more focused on kind of military tools. It had a sense of kind of a wake up call that you were issuing, but focus much more on kind of getting tough. As I read the new piece, I think the backdrop of it is a sense that competition is not going well for the United States, that we have an ends means gap, that we've kind of failed to build strength and leverage in key ways and that we as a result need to sort of bide our time. That China may, in your view, not be less of a challenge than it was six or seven years ago, but that we need to be a little more patient in that competition. Is that an accurate way of understanding your diagnosis? And if so, I'm curious how you got there.
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B
Yeah, that's mostly correct. I would just modify one thing towards the end. I don't think my argument is to buy time, it is to use time. Time is central to my argument, but it's a significant acceleration of US Effort internally restoring the foundations of our strength. So it's not so much patience, which would indicate that we think that China with time is going to kind of peter out. It's more buy time externally in various ways, limiting conflict to the extent that you can, avoiding a big war, rebalancing your allies, but with the aim that you're going to focus inward and you're going to use that time wisely, both with respect to re industrialization, which I think is the central thrust of the second Trump administration's economic and commercial policies and more broadly your use of natural resources, how you view your defense budget, what you're doing in your defense industrial base. So there is a sense of urgency, but it's an argument, it's kind of a council of prudence to use time wisely. And I think that's really at the heart of consolidation as an idea, at least as I read it in history. And it is a very old and well established template in history.
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A
Where do you see the key areas of overstretch in US Strategy at this point?
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B
I think if you gained altitude on our situation, you'd see a combination of structural and unforced or self imposed issues. I think the structural ones are pretty well known and commented on that coming out of the last 30 years of the post Cold War moment, we behaved as a great power in ways that didn't show a lot of circumspection for, you know, how this would impact our strategic position. And, you know, you can see that abroad in kind of our expenditure of effort in the Middle east, and not just the blood and treasure that was expended, but what that did to our force structure and readiness, kind of the wars that we were equipping for, what we were, what we were preparing for. I think more broadly, structurally, after the Cold War, you know, our, the nature of our relationship with China, we've now reached a point where I think we, the United States, our populace, and certainly our politically have kind of collectively awakened to where our policies with China eventually led us. But, you know, I think also there are unforced errors in this. And the scale of US fiscal expansion in the period since the mid 2000s is. Is pretty eye popping. So, you know, a series of really big government stimuluses all the way back to 2008 and kind of coming forward and culminating in Covid. And if you take that in tandem with our outlays for wars in the Middle east and then you step back from it, you look at the size of our debt. I'm not a declinist, but you've got to pay attention to the debt at this point. The interest payments are larger than the defense budget every year. So I think that's just kind of where we're at as a result of both structural factors, the rise of China and then self, let's just say, unforced errors. That in retrospect, maybe it was inevitable that a power in America's position after the Cold War was kind of flush, would behave, in retrospect, a somewhat profligate fiscal manner. But now we wake up at this moment of sort of sobriety, and I think there is a means, ends issue for us. And my argument for consolidation is it's better to take stock, try to undo the forced errors, rebalance your alliances, mark time with rivals, get yourself in a better position. That's preferable to me. And not to simplify it, but the other two obvious alternatives, one of which is retrenchment. And I think retrenchment says your core is so weak that no amount of creativity is going to improve your power position. You've really got to draw back, you've got to disgorge these international commitments entirely and kind of come home. That's not my argument at all. But also, clearly, this is not the moment to put your foot to the gas measured by almost anything like weapons and munitions, public willpower, the state of our finances. This is not the moment to try to go all out in Democratizing Iran or pursuing regime change in Beijing or some sort of maximalist objective. So it seems like the sweet spot to me.
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A
The retrenchers, both on the Republican side and Democratic side, to your mind, would look at the ends, means gap and say let's significantly and indefinitely reduce our ambitions. Kind of address the inside of that. And your argument is let's temporarily pause those ambitions, get our means up to the point where we can return to more ambitious acts. Is that, is that a fair.
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B
That's largely right. I mean I think the retrenchers would look at our external commitments, including our alliances. So not just how we, how aggressive we are towards rivals or whether we're trying to democratize countries, but they would look at the entirety of it, kind of the rolling stock of U.S. foreign policy and they'd say all of this is a symptom of and a cause of the problem, step back from it. And my argument is more yes, we have some real structural problems facing us and we have some self imposed errors, but there's some awful good things that came out of the Post World War II era for the United States. I mean I like having the dollar as a reserve currency and I like having alliances in the rimlands of Asia that are going to tend on their own locus and their own desire for survival to resist attempts at hegemony from Russia or China. I like that. Let's preserve those things. But to preserve them we're going to have to change aspects of both our domestic policy, our economic policy, like whether we can even build ships anymore, and our alliance policy. How reciprocal are our alliance relationships? We can't run open ended trade imbalances of this scale with allies indefinitely and still try to re industrialize. So I look at it more in that sense of the prudent gardener or reformer who wants to again consolidate but shore up and improve your position. But yes, the goal is you want to have greater disposable power as a result of these steps. Now going forward, I would think that in light of what we've experienced in the wars in the Middle east, that even as we regain strength and shore up our position, that there is a greater circumspection in the use of American power in a more multipolar setting than there was in a unipolar setting. But mine is not a council of retreat or defeatism. I'm not calling for a minimalist US foreign policy, it's preservationist.
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A
I want to dig in on the Iran piece of this. But first we're zooming back and Just talking about the Middle east more generally, if you go back to any decade since the end of the Cold War, the Middle east has thwarted the hopes of policymakers and analysts outside government who have been arguing for a greater focus on great powers, really going back to the 1990s. Why is that so persistent and dynamic? Why does the Middle east keep dragging us back in in that way?
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B
It's an interesting question. I think it's noteworthy that when you look in history at almost any international order or international system, there's almost always a region kind of like the Middle east, that despite the best efforts of the great powers, it just draws you back in. I'm thinking of the Balkans in the early 1900s, late 1800s, early 1900s, and classical European state system, where you had great powers that saw that the Balkans wasn't really worth a great power war and even set out in various deliberate ways, spheres of influence or these different templates that were attempted to avoid this becoming like a mare's nest that pulled them in. And yet it just kept pulling them in all the way up through World War I. So in the case of the Middle east today, if I had to just boil it all down to one thing, it's the natural resources that come out of that region. And what's interesting is that US Reliance on natural resources from the Middle east has gone down precipitously since, say, the immediate post Cold War period. So it's not so much that we have a direct energy stake in the Middle east today, and I think it's more that the resources that come out of the Middle east still do float the global economy. They're important to our allies. They would be important to our rivals like China in a crisis. So our ability to have an effect in the Middle east still matters. And then finally, just want to add a point which is something that's new, is the extent to which this region that according to US Strategy is like a Quaternary priority right now. It's the petrodollar, right? It's the idea that you have states in that region that are basically recycling dollars in the oil trade back into our AI boom here in the United States. And so we clearly have a stake there. I would argue it's an indirect stake and that the Middle east is not a primary interest for the United States. But the ideal strategy for the US in that region would be some sort of kind of light onshore, offshore balancing approach where we're still present. It's a minimal military structure. We've got allies in the region The Gulf states, Israel, that we're both assuring but also restraining. But the goal is that you're trying to contain what is the weakest of our various big state opponents, Iran. And just my view of the situation there too is that I think the administration was striving for a calculated and very disciplined use of force with scoped objectives. I mean, kind of building on what we saw with Fordo and Maduro. But of course the enemy gets a vote and it's turned into something more prolonged. But I think it's the resources at the end of the day that keep bringing the United States back to the Middle East.
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A
I would note that you and bridge in the 2019 piece were quite emphatic that engaging in war on Iran would be a distraction from great power competition. And then you reiterate this in a new piece where you say this piece was closed in early April towards saying you reiterate that the war it launched with Iran in February could advance consolidation if it remains narrowly scoped, but it could undermine the strategy if it becomes retracted. We're at a point where it does seem to become a protracted conflict that's going to have pretty long term repercussions for both our own military stocks, for energy prices and inflation, our own domestic economic situation, and even more the economic situations faced by our allies. Do you think we're at a point where the war is at risk of undermining that strategy over the long term? What would success look like in a way that would serve consolidations, maybe another way?
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B
Well, it's interesting if you, if you step back from the current situation and you looked at it objectively and said what are we to make of this in purely strategic terms? Some of that I think is actually a motivation and some of it is you're imposing a logic from the outside. But what would be the strategic logic? And one could look at the US Move in Iran and say this is basically offensive sequencing. This is an opportunity came along to really debilitate the weakest of your three main rivals at a moment when the other two rivals weren't quite ready to confront you and that there was a logic to it, whether you agree or disagree with the logic. I think there's a logic there that says, hey, if we can get the Iranians to a point where their missile forces and their nuclear capabilities are conventional forces, their proxies are so depleted at an economy of force effort from us, then in a future scenario where if the famous simultaneity problem really popped for us in strategy and we were dealing with the Chinese in a Taiwan scenario, keeping an eye on the Baltic. Well, the odds of Iran really making big trouble for us have gone down big time because of this kind of bold play of sequencing. That would be the basic strategic case for the Iran move as it's turning out. I mean, what I would say is that to work. My argument in the article is one of the things that you need in order for consolidation to work as a strategy is relative calm. And specifically, you need there to not be a great power war that would deplete you decisively, and that would undercut the main logic of consolidation. There are examples of great powers in history that were pursuing consolidation, and then for one reason or another, they got pulled into a regional war. And then think of like Hadrian when he dispatched multiple legions to the Levant, it was very clear to the Romans that this would throw off their strategy. So when that happens, I think the metric of such a war for the consolidating power is whether that it can be kept limited in scope and duration. And that's the question about Iran today. So I think the logic is clear. My view of the blockade is that it's an attempt to step back and put limits on this war. And I think that's good. I think that was as it became clear that the war wasn't going to deliver quick results, that was the best option for us. And it shows that the administration set out with limited objectives. And when the administration hit obstacles, rather than like, doubling down and trying to, you know, like a ground invasion or physically seizing the strait, you know, by putting troops on the land, instead it looked for ways to kind of modulate and keep control over the scope. And that suggests to me that there is a larger strategic purpose here. And then I think it's wise, in my view, to pursue it at that level. So going forward, the test is whether we can render kind of a new status quo in which the Iranians are contained in some fashion, the regime or something like it will still be in place. There's a kind of uneasy status quo that sets in over the strait, eventually through diplomacy, but where our allies in the region, including the Israelis, are both assured and restrained. But it's more like a containment effort vis a vis Iran going forward so that we can shift more military attention to the Indo Pacific, increase our deterrence there. And all of that, to me, fits back. It only fits back to. But it's really necessary for consolidation because I can't think of anything that would more throw off consolidation or be worse for us right now than just an open ended Middle east war that eventually drew in ground troops and nebulous objectives. So I don't think that's where the administration is at, but I think it's important to keep in mind that's something very much to avoid.
- [21:10]
A
And that that logic seems very clear and coherent. It doesn't always line up with Trump's rhetoric and, and certainly the way the Israelis seem to have set an objective for their part of this. Do you write off the regime change talk and the supporting protesters and all of that as posturing from a, you know, kind of president who does not exactly have discipline when it comes to the way he talks about things, or do you think that the objectives have narrowed over time as the Iranians have responded?
- [21:40]
B
Yeah, I think if you looked at Trump's statements about Iran over time, I see a fair degree of consistency in viewing the potential for regime change as a positive externality that could come out of the action. I've viewed it as scoped and limited in purpose from the beginning. To me, it boils down to this window in which after Fordo, the air defenses were so debased and we had, you know, the proxies had been pared back by earlier Israeli moves and there really was a window there for this.
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A
This is referring to the war last June, the US And Israeli strikes last June.
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B
Yeah, I think that was the central strategic logic. That's how I see it, is that we've got a moment here, an opportunity, we're not going to get it again. And, you know, you could, you may like or not like, but I think the strategic logic was basically, was basically that. And then as I've read statements by President Trump and other senior administration officials, I think it's consistently viewed the potential for regime change as a possible positive externality, but not the central purpose of the effort. And I think that's further supported by the fact that again, rather than doubling down and trying to go in with a more maximalist type of moves that you would need to effectuate regime change. We've stepped back and pursued the blockade. Who knows what the economic pressure may yield and changes to Iranian diplomatic objectives and behavior. But that's how I viewed it from the beginning.
- [23:11]
A
We'll return to my conversation with Wes Mitchell after a short break.
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C
Did you know that Foreign affairs editor Dan Kurtzvalen sends a free newsletter every Saturday? Visit foreign affairs.comspotlight to get the editor. Spotlight, a weekly email from Dan featuring more of the helpful context and clear analysis that you get here on the podcast, that's foreign affairs.comspot sign up today.
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A
Let's go to Ukraine. You were Assistant Secretary for Europe in the State Department and the first Trump administration, and you've followed this war extremely closely. How do you assess the military balance there? As you look at where the war
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B
stands, it certainly looks like from the outside that both parties are kind of reaching this point that we weren't able to find over the last few years, where Russia in particular, is beginning to draw the conclusion that there are limits to what it can achieve militarily. I think Ukraine has been there for some time. They're in the defensive position, and they're trying to get their country back. But for there to be a diplomatic resolution, both parties have to reach a point where they believe that there's no alternative but diplomacy, because that they can't reach their objectives by military means. And up to now, the story has been that the Russians certainly weren't in that state of mind. It's always hard to tell with the Russians, but it sure looks like from their behavior and their public noise and the slowness of their advances so far in this warm season have been a lot lower than commensurate gains over last year, I think because of Ukrainian advances in military strategy and drone technology. But from a U.S. perspective, I think the administration's approach is broadly right, and that is to try to veer this towards a negotiated settlement of some kind over time. I think that makes sense for us in the strategic perspective globally. Again, it fits with my consolidation argument because you're trying to mark time with rivals, but also specifically because we do need over time to have more focus on the Indo Pacific. It'll take pressure and patience. I think it took Ike and Truman two years plus to end the fighting in Korea. And I think Trump's approach has been to engage with Russia on kind of the contours of a deal while working in tandem to tighten the constraints on the Russian position. And I think that's been broadly the right approach. And you usually need mutual exhaustion in a war to kind of get to a point where diplomacy makes sense to both parties. But I think we're rapidly approaching that point.
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A
Your former colleague in the first Trump administration, Fiona Hill, was on the podcast a couple weeks ago, and she has focused more on the Trump's interactions with with the Ukrainian side, and she argues that that has has prolonged the war. It made Russia less likely to deal. We can go back to the Oval Office meeting between Trump and Zelensky last February, and the, you know, kind of much Diminished US Support. A lot of that's been picked up by the Europeans, but not all of it. How would you respond to Fiona's argument there?
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B
Yeah, I. I just disagree. I think we know from a lot of evidence in American diplomatic history back through the Cold War, that you very often do have to find ways to bring pressure to bear on both parties in a conflict, including your friend or your partner or ally. And I'm thinking of the Korean War, for example, where us Actually took very draconian measures. I mean, was definitely not on the same page with the Eisenhower administration, was not on the same page with South Korea, to the point that there was open hostility and we were conducting negotiations with the North Koreans and the Chinese without the support of South Koreans. But think of Henry Kissinger in the Yom Kippur War, where we took steps to rein in the Israelis. I mean, you know, stopping military aid in order to get them to a point where they were as amenable to a diplomatic process as their opponents. So I think it's similar in the Ukraine war that you had to reach a point at which it was clear in the mind of not only the adversary, but the smaller nation in this fight that there was a limit to how far the United States could go in providing material military support. You can debate what is the best way to go about that. How do you message that? But I think prior to Trump's coming into office in his second term, the message to the Ukrainians had consistently been, there's limitless will and limitless military support. We're going to do whatever it takes. And it's important to be honest, you know, even with your friends, or maybe especially with your friends, that it would be, you know, imprudent from the position of US Statecraft to continue that position at a moment when we don't have the military munitions to fight a war in the Formosa Strait concurrent with helping Ukrainians maybe fighting in the Baltic and also fighting in the Middle East. So there had to be a moment at which we signaled that, and that's how I read the administration's message to the Ukrainians.
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A
If you were back in your old job, say, what would you be doing to bring this war to an end in a way that would allow us to both rebuild munition stocks and also turn folks to the Indo Pacific? And how likely do you think that is over the next year, or say that we'd get to a real end of the war?
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B
Well, I think the general approach is right, and the general approach is you develop a framework There's a lot of shuttle diplomacy, but you're doing a couple things in tandem. One, you're supporting Ukrainians where you can. Two, you are bringing pressure to bear on the Russian position to try to get them to a point where an exit ramp seems more desirable. So the sanctions that targeted Lukoil and Rosneft, closing the Biden era energy loopholes, that made sense to me. Coordinating with the Arabs on increasing oil supply, all of that was pre Iran war. But I think the domestic deregulation and pumping up our energy resources and exports, getting NATO defense capabilities up, all of that is good. Even engaging diplomatic with the Chinese, I think those are all various forms of ways that we can put constraints on the Russian position and, you know, increase the pressure on Putin and squeeze Russian state revenue. Iran has. The Iran situation has complicated that. And I think that's one of many reasons that we. It's actually increasing Russian state revenue through oil, I mean, indirectly. So I think the conditions aren't completely ripe. They may be soon. I think you do need a kind of mutual recognition of a necessity of diplomacy. I think, though just a close and continuing contact with both parties that some framework that's broadly consistent with one of the later versions of the Wyckoff plan, which is a de facto kind of freeze of the conflict in certain places, demilitarized buffer zones, conditional sanctions, relief. But one thing I would add, I mean, it seems right to me in the Ukraine context is I would tend to delink the diplomacy on ending the fighting and freezing the war, kind of like in a Korea war type setting, focused on the now just getting that process underway and have a completely separate track on the larger political settlement or the negotiations for an eventual settlement where there's an agreement on the new status quo. And again, I'm thinking of the Korean War model where if we hadn't separated those two, I don't know that we ever would have reached the very tenuous ceasefire that we eventually did arrive at.
- [31:08]
A
In the wake of a ceasefire in Ukraine or some kind of end to the war in Ukraine, do you see opportunities to peel Russia away from China? This is often called the reverse Kissinger. But finding some ways to split a relationship that has gotten much closer in military terms, diplomatic terms and economic terms over the last several years. And that really complicates our own position in great power competition, if it is sustained.
- [31:33]
B
Well, I think we should always be watchful for that kind of opportunity. It's hard to see a near term rupture between the two, but their interests are not identical. And as the Ukraine war winds down, I see a couple of things that may be worth monitoring or pursuing with the, with the Russians. One is in arms control. I think after the Ukraine war, the Russians will have a very pressing need to recapitalize their conventional forces and that's going to be expensive. They've learned a lot from the war. I mean, their pre war military was not ready for this. And remember, up to this point, the Russian approach has been they have much more limited resources financially than the Soviet Union. So up to this point they've really prioritized their strategic assets, their nuclear arsenal, their navy, et cetera, at the expense of conventional land forces. So suddenly they're going to face this real trade off where they're going to be more reliant on nuclear weapons for security. They're going to probably double down on their escalate, to de. Escalate type postures and policy. But the reality is they're going to have to shift resources from the nuclear arsenal to recapitalizing conventional forces. And I think that is a classic condition, classic setting for arms control. In this case, arms control that we would use kind of a miniature version of what Reagan did when the Soviets faced a bigger version of that fiscal dilemma. And that is to pursue maybe a new form of start, new form of INF that utilized the Russian budgetary predicament to our advantage. So a new START that raised the central limits and had a sort of freedom to mix provision because the Russians have so many of these shorter range kind of tactical weapons that would immediately apply, whereas it would give us the ability to upload a lot more. And that would help us in the balance vis a vis China. And similar on inf, you know, a new arrangement that the Russians may look more favorably on because of their straightened budgetary circumstances, that it restricts limits to sort of like west of the Urals or something like this. So I think there's an opportunity there, I guess more broadly. Just one other thought on that. A lot of the current U.S. like the furniture of the U.S. of U.S. policy towards Russia, is appropriately built around the situation in Ukraine. But as that conflict winds down, I think there could come an opening for what Shinzo Abe was advocating near the end of his life. Former Japanese Prime Minister and it was this idea that you can create economic incentives indirectly for Russia to divert more effort and attention to its eastern territories. And I think that's right for the US Strategically. We want Russia to be more of an Asian power and less of a European power. And specifically what, what he was advocating at that time is if you could ever create the political conditions, you could soften secondary sanctions on U.S. allies in the Asia Pacific who could offer investment alternatives to Russia in the Russian Far East. But right now, the Russians are becoming completely dependent on Chinese capital and infrastructure. That's about as far as I would go. I mean, I do think that the diplomacy, like the Beijing summit, I think that helps us with Moscow to a point and vice versa. But I think the conditions are just so different than they were at the time of Nixon Kissinger, that I don't think conditions are ripe for us really wedging the two. But I think we should persistently, it should be a long term game of really fortifying our position in Europe, resisting a general settlement in Europe with the Russians, but looking for opportunities as they arrive, like those two on the Chinese side.
- [35:30]
A
I want to talk about the summit that wrapped up a few days before having this conversation. But I also want to get your understanding, get a sense of your understanding of the Trump to China policy. I think for a lot of outside observers, it's been a bit confounding. Trump, of course, was so critical to really solidifying this, I think, consensus around a relatively hardline view towards China in his first term. And by most appearances, I think there are, you know, different ways of reading this, but by most appearances, he does seem to be much more focused on the quality of his relation with Xi Jinping on a much less hardline focus in that relationship. And there were some signs of the summit even. Leaving aside what we saw in recent days, how do you understand or how would you characterize the Trump China policy in this term?
- [36:17]
B
Yeah, I think my view of Trump's approach on China overall is it's kind of two parallel tracks. It's engaging with the Chinese commercially and diplomatically, aiming for maybe something like a geoeconomic detente of sorts, but at the same time working to kind of shore up our position in ways that, again, going back to my consolidation argument, give us greater leverage over time, strengthen our position. So beef up the defense industrial base, you deregulate the economy, tap into lng, et cetera, so that we're in a better position for long term competition. I think that second plank has included moves by Trump over the last year and a half to kind of enhance his leverage. Before going into the meeting with Xi and I looked at the moves in Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran, in various ways as kind of pursuing, at least in part, that logic. I mean, those are three of China's biggest energy export export sources. I think the secondary sanctions on Russian oil to China did the same. In a way. Xi Jinping seems to be doing the same thing. He's betting on dual circulation, he's betting on de toleration, he's building up leverage in rare earths to get in a position he's not looking to, doesn't appear to be wanting to challenge us immediately over Taiwan. So the fundamental thing that the two sides seem to share is a need for time, and they're using diplomacy to do that. They're both steering the relationship towards some kind of plateau or like a temporary weigh station and then, you know, saving the harder stuff for later, building up strength for home. You know, could that expand into something more ambitious over time, like, you know, a full blown economic and security detente? I'm really skeptical about that. I think Xi is positioning for, for self sufficiency and then China's behavior will really start to change. But I think right now he wants stability. I think it's a time based strategy that he's running. So I think the US should be using, we should be using time wisely. We should use diplomacy to create breathing space, but we should be straining every nerve at home to get our military and energy and economic situation better. And I think that's broadly what the administration. I think that's been their broad approach. But the final thing I'll say on that is I think a lot of people who look at the second Trump administration and say, wait, you're not as aggressive vis a vis China on whatever export controls or semiconductors or as you were in the first term, does that mean that you're no longer thinking about great power competition? I think that's the wrong read. I think that's very simplistic. As I said a moment ago. I think if your frame is great power competition and you've got your eye on your main rival and their power relative to your own, I think how you calibrate your policies, economic, military, et cetera, I think it's a prudential matter that should be geared towards getting you in an overall better position. So a policy along those lines that maybe marks time with the Chinese and you don't want to go too far, you don't want to signal that you're like leaving Asia or abandoning Taiwan. But if you can mark time, you're betting that our system, the free market system, the free society system, will tend to produce more capital and better outcomes over time than the. That makes a lot of sense to me. So I don't see the deceleration of punitive U.S. actions and more of a detent minded move. I don't see that as uncompetitive. It may be like Kissinger later said of our detente with the Soviets, he said mine and Nixon's goal was to compete harder. And I think there's a similar logic here.
- [40:01]
A
Do you think detente is the right term for the US China relationship at this moment coming out of the zone?
- [40:05]
B
Yeah, I think it works broadly. It's not a strategic military detente of the kind that we saw with Brezhnev. It's more of a geoeconomic detente or an attempt at kind of a wary cohabitation like you would see with like the Venetians and the Ottomans or two trading powers, two economic giants that have decided not to step up. If you looked at Beijing, for example, we'll see the framework that comes out of it in trade. But it definitely shows that neither side right now really wants to escalate economically. Both sides are using their leverage to try to steer towards at least a temporary coexistence. And I think it is temporary. I don't think we're going back to the 1990s in US policy, and I don't think that Xi Jinping has suddenly decided to put economic liberalization over geopolitics. But. But clearly both sides are signaling at all levels that they want a period of time in which they're not escalating and they're not reverting to the past. So, yeah, I think detente works. It's a kind of modus vivendi.
- [41:19]
A
I'm struck in reading both your recent essay and also earlier work you've done for us and others, that you have a focus on alliances and coalitions and diplomacy that is not always central to the rhetoric of, of people in the Trump orbit. You write in a piece you wrote for Foreign affairs last year in 2025, that the goal of US diplomacy should be to build the biggest coalitions possible against Beijing. I think there are different ways of reading the effects on different alliances in different regions over the last year, but it does not seem like this is a moment where those alliances are in particularly good shape. And to the extent that European allies especially are developing new capabilities, they are much more focused on reducing dependence on the US and building up their own military industries and everything else. How do you see the state of that effort to build a coalition against Beijing?
- [42:08]
B
Well, I think you have to assess these kinds of things across a period of several years. You have to kind of gain altitude on it and Say, what is it that America needs to do with our alliances right now and how are we doing that? And I think the answer to the first question is we have to revise the bargain with our allies. And the bargain since World War II has basically been we have are open our markets to you on a non reciprocal basis and you recycle US Surpluses back into the dollar as reserve currency and that fuels our consumption. And I think that basic bargain made a lot of sense in the Cold War, especially the early Cold War. It was revised at various points along the way. Nixon, for example, with the Smithsonian agreement, and then Reagan with the Plaza Accords. So I think what, what we have to do right now is a grand version of those earlier adjustments. We have to say these alliances, both in Asia and Europe, have to work fundamentally differently. There has to be reciprocity in trade or we can't re industrialize and there's no hope of competing with China industrially, full stop. And they have to bear more of the defense and security burden. So really what we're talking about over a period of many years is first jolting allies into a willingness to renegotiate that basic bargain in a way that's more sustainable for us, not throwing it away, but fundamentally revising it, and then on that basis looking for that next plateau where we are trying to integrate more of the defense industrial base. I don't know that both of those two things can be done simultaneously. If you could wave a magic wand from about the mid-2000s onward, you would have started this process of these adjustments. But that's not how democracies work. And I think we're waking up late in kind of this in the world crisis. But I think what the second Trump administration has done, the way I've viewed it, is they are jolting allies into this awareness of the need for a revised bargain. And then the goal has to be steering that. You're creating kind of a creative disruption. And so steering that energy towards constructive outlets over time is the logical next step. And I think that's what the administration is doing. I mean, I could point to several examples, but bridge Colby's concept that he unveiled in a speech to Brussels earlier this year of a NATO 3.0, kind of going back to the earlier template of NATO. There's a constructive vision there that makes sense to the Europeans because their survival is at stake. It makes sense to us. We have to focus on Asia. So I think steering it towards these outlets and the prize over a period of many years, though, has to be we get to this point where these allies that we spent 80 years building up and they have been a blessing, it's an asset to us to have these allies. But we reach a point where the return on that almost century long investment is, is not just an EU that has like trade barriers against our pickup trucks and chicken exports or whatever. There is a degree of regulatory and industrial policy convergence where in defense production, for example, we, Japan and Germany, just to use those two allies as the main examples, are able to find economies of scale in producing basically mass attrition weapons in both theaters. That's going to be needed for deterrence. We're not going to do that on our own. So we've got to reach a point where these alliances really help us narrow the gaps between the means and ends at our disposal in our grand strategy in a much more material way than they were in the past. And I think for all of the news and reporting over kind of the atmospherics in these relationships, deep down, I think there's an understanding when I talk to allied officials in both of those regions that we, that this is desirable, that we are moving this in a direction where our allies will do more. We're still committed, but you know, I think that's widely understood.
- [46:14]
A
So the, the bet, if we look forward 10 years and obviously how these, these forces balance out over time, we'll, we'll see. The bet would be that you'll have much more capable allies who are spending significant amounts on defense and are producing lots of their own weapon systems and munitions and everything else. And that things like the threats over Greenland and tariffs and everything else happening that seems to be eroding trust right now will be more or less forgotten. Is that, is that, is that a fair way of just characterizing the bed? Obviously we don't know how it turns out, but that, that's the thinking.
- [46:47]
B
Yeah. I think, I mean my view of it is that within a few years time we reach this point where something like what you're describing is true, that there's a deeper degree of economic integration, particularly in certain strategic and military areas between the United States and allies in both of these regions, Europe and Asia, that there is a greater burden, acceptance by the Europeans in particular, kind of a revised Atlantic bargain that does look more like the 1950s, the original idea of NATO. And they've, they're kind of the, the primary defenders of their home area, but we're still present and backing them. We have maybe not a full convergence in regulatory terms, but we've managed to hack back Some of the more damaging EU regulations that really target our ability to produce innovation. And similarly on the Asian side that we've reached a moment where a military co production and coordination of commercial policy vis a vis China, which I think is going to be really key given the scale of the Chinese surplus right now that threaten both us and our allies. But yeah, that's the vision that there would be a convergence that like, it's almost like the political and policy substance would after a lag, follow the clear convergence of our interests. There will always be disagreement with allies over all kinds of things. And that's been true since the very earliest days of the Cold War. And the storms are always going to be there. But the glue is the shared interests and the goal is structures and incentives and behavior that better matches the shared interests than what we've seen, you know, over the last several years. Well, not last several years since the Cold War basically where people just, it was, it was easy to assume that kind of war and geopolitics was gone.
- [48:35]
A
And when you watch Greenland to take a relatively recent dust up here, you think that just gets forgotten. That doesn't have a long term effect on trust and a willingness of allies to embrace that kind of convergence.
- [48:49]
B
Well, I think one of the things that we'll see from the Europeans is an acceleration of this strand that already existed in Europe that kind of wants an equidistancing. They want to pursue a European pole of power in the world that is kind of detached from the United States. And there will always be voices like that in the debate. And they may look to spats that we've had over things like Greenland. They may look back at that as a salient reason for their approach. But the reality is that preexisted a lot of the disputes recently. I think Greenland, I think Trump is right with respect to the goal that Greenland needs to be brought more fully under the US Aegis in some fashion. And that's been a consistent goal of numerous presidents. They've stated it in various ways. But I think it shouldn't get the takeaway from all of this. Shouldn't just be the main thing is that there was a dust up or there was a difference. There's actually something vital in the US interest that needs to be achieved. And I think it's becoming more important to us as the ice lanes melt. You know, Russian and Chinese pressure there is very real. And also bear in mind we get our satellite feeds overwhelmingly through the polar region. So really the space race, the space element of geopolitics which is very hot right now, and it's going to get hotter. A lot of that is a function of pieces of real estate on Earth. The telemetry and the angle of the Earth favors satellite downloads and launches from that area. And we can't do everything we need from Alaska. So I could go on and on about that, but the point is there's a vital US Interest there. I think that's why past presidents have advocated for greater US Possession or control of Greenland. And then I'd also say I think Trump's shock tactics succeeded in moving the issue forward. And I sometimes hear people say we could have gotten the Danes to negotiate by just asking nicely, but the truth is we tried that and it didn't work. In Trump's first term, when he first raised the desire to acquire Greenland, the Danes categorically rejected it. The Danish prime minister at that time, she called it absurd. And the Danish government continued that line in Trump's second term. The point on Greenland is kind of analogous to my overall point on alliances, that to get these outcomes where we need them to be in the performance of our alliances and kind of, you know, strategic outcomes more generally, it. It may take a jolt, and I think that, that those jolts are moving things along. There's collateral that comes along, and there always is in politics, and that has to be managed. But the transit relationship has been through real storms in the past. And what always brings us back is we have deeply shared interests where United States and Europe are children of the West. And so we have a lot in common in our deeper DNA and the organizing principles of our democracies. So I'm confident when I look to the future of the alliance with Europe, and I think some of these storms may actually help in getting us to a better place than we would have gotten. And if we had just kept kind of, you know, drifting lazily down the river and saying it's all about NATO cohesion and congratulating each other.
- [52:03]
A
And is it your view, based on that first term experience, that the US does need to acquire Greenland in order to secure those interests or simply to get a better, better deal and better access and better guarantees from. From the Danes?
- [52:15]
B
Well, I haven't thought a lot about the final form that it can take, but if you looked at it through the lens of what we need, I think it's a couple of things. One, we need a lot more access that's predictable and regular and on a wider scale, I think, you know, some of what's being negotiated right now could Allow for that. But secondly, you know, one part of this is also the rare earths. And I think that requires something more than just basing rights. So I could, I can see it evolving in a direction over time where it's maybe like some of the US protectorates that they're self governing, except for in certain strategic areas. A lot also depends on what the Greenlanders want. I mean, up to this point, I've read the Greenland political discourse or debate vis a vis Denmark as tending over time towards greater autonomy. And if we assume that that continues, then the danger for the US becomes unless we have something more formal or explicit, an autonomous territory of that size and location with those kinds of resources that's so critical, the potential for that falling under the sway of either China or Russia is just an intolerable problem for us. So all of which is to say, I think the outcome would need to be one that was guided by those considerations, rather than starting out with kind of an artificial endpoint and saying we want X. I think prudentially you'd say we need an outcome over a period of years that has the following characteristics for our interests. And if you can check those boxes in a creative way, great. And you clearly need to engage with your allies and you want to do it in a way that strengthens NATO over time. But I remember in the first Trump term we had a hard time getting a lot of the European, the northern European states, including Denmark, really serious about a military component to our strategy in the Arctic. There were constantly concerns about the militarization of the Arctic. And I think, you know, breaking through that barrier and getting a consensus at NATO that this has got to be a no nonsense component of our approach. I think that's been one of the positive side effects of the dispute.
- [54:37]
A
I want to, before we close, go back to the essay and your thinking in the essay. One of the things I really appreciate about your analysis and your work is that you do not propose that all good things come together. You're very clear about trade offs and downsides to various strategies. You write in the most recent piece that a strategy of consolidation requires a willingness to accept obvious near term risks for long term gain. How would you characterize those risks as you look at the landscape now? What are the risks that you think we need to be most attuned to?
- [55:07]
B
Yeah, I think the biggest risk, and it kind of extends across several examples, it's kind of the organizing theme of risk for us is that we need a period of time in which there's not a Big war and where our external efforts are not zero, but they're minimalized in terms of conflict. And so the big risk to us would be that in pursuing this approach, I mean our opponents, our main opponents, Russia and China, they see the same logic that we do and they get a vote. And so you could imagine a situation where either or both of those actors judged the inverse of their interests or the inverse of ours that they say, look, we both, we being Russia and China, we undertook military buildups from starting with the Ukraine war forward. We've used time wisely. The United States and its allies have not. And they're just now kind of, they're waking up now. So the differential between where the Chinese are at military terms right now versus we're more in a trough and our allies are certainly in a trough. You fast forward a few years and if like let's say the Germans are really delivering, and I think they will, on their increased pledges from the Hague summit and you've got a German military establishment that increasingly outpaces, like Germany alone outpaces Russia, well, that's going to change the military balance of power in the European theater in a huge way that benefits us. The big investments that the Pentagon is making in defense, industrial based reform, the bigger military budget with time, that's going to bear fruit. So if you're the Chinese and the Russians, I mean the risk for us is they look at that and say, wait a second, you're in a trough but you're waking up. And maybe we're not exactly where we want to be in military terms, but relative to you, it's about as good as it's going to get before you really get into a full sprint. Big wars have started in history over assessments by leaders about those kinds of gaps. And so I think that's the biggest risk to us. And I think what it means in practice is that while we should be pursuing a geoeconomic detente with the Chinese, I think that's in our interest for now and we should be open to more of a traditional arms control type detente with the Russians when the circumstances are right, with Ukraine, et cetera, I think at all times you have to be keeping in mind that if there is that incentive for our opponents, that the signaling in our diplomacy becomes hugely important. So, you know, your deterrence moves in the Indo Pacific matter more. Getting bogged down in an Iran war is not something that you want to do in those circumstances, and I hope we don't because it could tilt the calculus in your adversaries minds more towards action in the near term rather than the long term. So I think that's the biggest risk and I think that's the one that bears monitoring the most. And one way to look at some of the things that Trump has done, Maduro Fordeau, even the current Iran situation, which I think is more complicated, I think you can go too far in saying that those kinds of things like deter our adversaries, like I've never fully computed, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't take it so far as to say that they see those moves and, and it scares them. But I, I do think that when, when we, when we can find low cost demonstrations of US military efficacy, it is good. And the key now, and this is kind of the heart of my consolidation argument, is that yes, mark timely arrivals, but plus up, consolidate your base, the deregulation in your economy that needs to be sustained, utilization of your energy resources, making really targeted plus ups in the American kind of the foundation of our strength. Now is really the time to do that. And I think the hour is late and so the faster we ramp that stuff up, the better.
- [58:56]
A
So the risk in the near term, if I understand you correctly, is essentially that consolidation is misread as retrenchment and as a result we have a deterrence failure.
- [59:07]
B
Yes, I think that's an inherent risk to all consolidations.
- [59:11]
A
The other thing I really appreciate about your work is the way you bring in really rich historical examples and look across history over the century, millennia and across geographies to try to make sense of our own strategic challenges. Now as you look at consolidation in other cases that you've studied, what determines and what are some of those cases, where it's gone well and where there's a kind of useful model for us and where have you seen it fail if we go back to those risks?
- [59:40]
B
Yeah, in the article I mentioned a couple of really big successes and I just love history. And so I think if you study it closely, they're not exactly like ours. It's never the case. But these are age old problems that great powers have faced. Edwardian Britain I would kind of underscore as a successful case where the Brits really understood, I think that they're the only other power in history to really operate a global maritime position like ours, roughly analogous to ours. And I think that consolidation of the Edwardian period, the early 1900s overall, has to be judged a success. The difference from them to us is that long term for the Brits, when you're a small island off the coast of Europe and you've got a Rimland empire with kind of holdings all over the place. And these big continental powers are congealing. There's only so far you can go with that strategy. And I think it's different for us. We're not a little island off the coast of Europe. And so that's actually why I think consolidation is an even better bet for us.
- [60:38]
A
But can I press you on that example? Can I press you on Eduardo Britain? When you look at the next subsequent decades for British power, you saw both World War I and then the. The decimation of the British Empire. That seems like a worrying example to me in most ways.
- [60:53]
B
Yeah. Again, I hasten to add the qualifier that we don't have as weak a hand overall as the Brits had economically and size of their land mass, but just kind of parking on that example for a moment. Everything's always clear in retrospect, but if you judged it according to the problems that the British had at that time, the alternative path would have hastened British decline so much faster. So I think the diplomatic recalibrations that Lansdowne and Salisbury and others made a succession of governments right at the start of the 1900s, it was not only aimed at a controlled reduction of effort abroad. And Jackie Fisher, who in the article I compared to Bridge Colby, I think this targeted reallocation of naval resources to the primary theater that all made sense. There could have. World war might have happened sooner, and you could argue that it strengthened deterrence for the British in the vital theater. And even at home, the British, Joseph Chamberlain was really pushing for kind of a revamped industrial set of policies and new trade policies vis a vis the empire. So it's hard to critique just conceptually and then an execution. And I guess the ultimate validator is that when the great crisis came, the British were facing one adversary. They had effectively handled their simultaneity problem. They didn't have great options, they didn't have infinite resources, nobody does. But given what they had, they concentrated on the thing that mattered the most. And World War I was horrible. The Brits made a lot of mistake, but their ability to concentrate on Germany rather than be spread out across all these different places. They had a concentrated fleet, they had better technology, their industry was in better shape. I think that has to be judged as success longer term. Of course, if you're the Brits and you're playing their hand, by the time you get to the 20s and 30s, their relative power position was so weak vis a vis The United States, the Soviet Union, Japan was rising. So longer term, the structure wasn't good for them. Actually, one thing that I, you know, one reason I argue for consolidation for the United States is that long term, we're not in that position. A good consolidation now, like the Edwardians do, there could be a lot of tread on those tires for us because we have deep reservoirs of power, we have allies that are strengthening their defenses. We've got energy abundance at home that our main adversary, China doesn't have. And we've got a very innovative private sector. So I could go on and on, but our hand of cards is better, I think, long term than the Chinese and certainly than the Russians. But near term, these structural problems and kind of self, you know, forced errors of the, of the post Cold War period, we just need a period of time, in my view. And it's not a small thing, but I think it's, it's wise and right to say we need a period of time in which we're really clearing the decks and getting on, getting things on a level for the long haul. Because once we do get into the long haul, as long as we've got our act together at home, I think we have a lot better prospect vis a vis China than Britain had vis a vis, you know, Imperial Germany, the United states, Soviet Union, etc.
- [63:54]
A
I wonder if you're pointing us towards a new, a new bipartisan consensus here. The way that Great Power competition was in Trump won. Because I do think in the Biden national security strategy, there was a sense of this decisive decade, that there was this kind of dangerous short term, but the long term position was good. Obviously the means would differ across Trump and Biden, but there does. Things seem to be a kind of interesting parallel there.
- [64:16]
B
Yeah, I hope so. I'm skeptical of anything that's a bipartisan consensus these days. But if you want to be optimistic, you could point to a couple things. One, I think there's a consensus about China. We can debate the right tactic and trade, but I think everybody gets it that China is a different kind of adversary than we've ever had. I think that's bipartisan. Secondly, I think there's a broad bipartisan consensus that we have to have an industrial policy. And again, you can debate the details. What you. I think the Trump approach is right. Which is more deregulation. You could add to that maybe an AI point that if you look at the size of our debt, you could say one way to view the massive US Investment right now in AI is that it's an attempt at a one time productivity gain to kind of outgrow your debt problem. And that's a wager. But I think it's a wager that, with some caveats on the far left I think is broadly shared. The execution of that is going to bring new political trade offs. The one thing that we are betting on in the US System that would make consolidation work is meritocracy.
- [65:24]
A
I think we could get into a longer argument about whether we're seeing a move towards meritocracy or something else, but let's leave that for another day. Wes, thank you for really powerful piece in our new issue called the Grand Strategy of Consolidation and thanks so much for doing this today.
- [65:38]
B
Dan, thanks for taking time to talk to me. This was fun.
- [65:46]
A
Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show@foreign affairs.com this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Ben Metzner and Kanish Tharoor. Our audio engineer is Christopher Cook. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Arina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.
- [66:36]
C
We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview. Don't forget to visit foreign affairs.comspotlight to sign up for Dan Kurtz Phelan's free weekly newsletter featuring more of the clear headed analysis that you enjoy here on the podcast. Sign up today@foreign affairs.com spotlight.