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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
In a funny way, because America is playing the role of disruptor in living color in such a dramatic way, China is adopting a strategy of claiming to be almost the guardian of the order and the projector of stability. So I don't see them acting as a massively revisionist power right now because they're looking at the US Acting as a revisionist power and positioning themselves as the protector and defender of the rights and interests of everyone else. In the face of all that disruption,
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A
it is an understatement to say that America finds itself at a particularly fraught geopolitical juncture. The outcome of the war in Iran is still uncertain. The war in Ukraine continues with no end in sight. Add to that US China, competition, overlapping planetary crises, a highly erratic hegemon. The list could go on. Such an unstable world presents a formidable test for policymakers in Washington and in every other capital. And no one understands that test better than Jake Sullivan. He served as Joe Biden's national security advisor for four years after serving in a number of senior national security jobs in the Obama administration. Much of what he dealt with in those jobs, from Iran and Gaza to China and Ukraine, remains at crisis or near crisis levels for U.S. foreign policy today. And as Sullivan writes in a new essay for Foreign affairs, technological change, especially in AI, is adding new layers of complexity and risk to all of those challenges. I spoke with Sullivan, through whom I worked, I should say, at the State Department in the first part of the Obama administration on Monday, April 20, about the key tests for the United States today and about what American power will look like in the wake of Donald Trump's. Jake, thank you for doing this.
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B
Thanks for having me. Long time listener, first time caller.
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A
All right. Well, thrilled to have you on it's been a long time coming. I want to start with your essay in our new issue. It's called the Tech High Ground, and it occurred to me while reading it, it's about the technology competition between the US And China. But in reading lines like the very striking one you have in the intro where you say that technological power is translating directly and rapidly into geopolitical power to a degree the world hasn't seen in years, it's really striking how quickly this shift has happened. And as you reflect back on the US China competition, as you've seen, as you've been involved in it over the last couple of decades, were we missing the centrality of technology? If you go back 10 or 15 years or has something about the geopolitical context and technological progress made it central in ways that it wasn't before? If we step back and try to understand where we are, look, I think
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B
it was a feature of the landscape even 10, 15 years ago, but we probably were under emphasizing it. And then beyond that, I think technology has simply accelerated in terms of the degree to which it is shaping all other forms of power. Economic power, military power, indeed diplomatic influence, as countries around the world are looking for technology offerings from the US And China and kind of designing their relationships to a certain extent around these things. So I think the answer to your question is a bit of both. We were, I think, not placing as much weight on this as we should have 15 years ago. But a lot of it is a changed landscape, really primarily driven by the explosion of capability and artificial intelligence, but also reinforced by what we're seeing in other domains like quantum and biotechnology. So for me, the most important factor here is recognizing that right now, at this moment, it is the vital input, in my view, to the overall power equation in the world and between the US And China.
- [03:59]
A
The other striking claim at the beginning of the piece is that as you write, China has moved beyond simply chasing American invasion. It is pursuing a different theory of power, one that places production, scale, and control of critical inputs at the center of its national strategy. Interested in you kind of expanding on what that theory of power is, but there's also, I think, somewhat of a tension in the piece between a degree of admiration and envy and a sense that we should be learning from that theory of power, but also some skepticism about it, some risk that we overlearn those lessons. So as you consider that theory of power, what is relevant to us? What do you think may be the weaknesses of it?
- [04:38]
B
Well, first, let's just start with we have very different systems. And so importing the Chinese model into the United States and trying to graft it on to our economy in our society would warp the United States in ways that would take us beyond recognition. And I'm totally opposed to that. However, particular points that I think China has recognized to a greater degree than we have recognized are important. And one of them is this link between production capacity at speed and scale and the ability to innovate over time, chiefly driven through the mechanism of learning by doing, which, by the way, has a very long history to it. It goes back to industrial revolutions, where a lot of the breakthroughs that you saw in the United Kingdom, particularly in the second Industrial Revolution, were tinkerers who were making things. And then Learning through making things to make better things and so on and so forth. And the US remains dominant in a couple of areas where we continue to learn by doing jet engines is one of them, where we've actually maintained production capacity and therefore maintain the ability to remain at the cutting edge, far beyond where China has been able to come despite their effort to grow a domestic industry. But China has done this across industry, across by industry. And they've done so with a very centralized, top down, state directed approach that then tries to generate competition in each of these sectors. A kind of dog eat dog fight, whether it's in the electric vehicle space or increasingly in biotechnology or in other things. And one thing we have to learn from that is it is not enough to leave it entirely to the invisible hand of the market to sustain and grow America's industrial base, because leaving it to the invisible hand has led to the degradation, the hollowing out of that industrial base. And so we do need modern industrial strategy targeted at frontier industries, taking some of the kinds of tools China has used, adapting them for the unique American context and trying to do it in a way where public investment and public policy is lifting up and crowding in private investment rather than essentially displacing it or competing with it. And so there is admiration, there is also just a clear eyed recognition that they're doing things that are effectively putting a heavy thumb on the scale. It is not fair competition in the sense of open market economies. It is China putting a heavy government thumb on the scale. And in reaction to that, the United States of America I think does have to re embrace the idea of industrial strategy that we had gotten away from for a very long time.
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A
The other piece of this that you get out in the piece is the focus that China has on diffusing technology globally and having a kind of technology offering that is not just the most innovative or the most technologically advanced, but that is affordable and accessible to large swaths of the earth. I mean, what in that approach do you think we need to be mimicking and what in that is a threat to us?
- [07:26]
B
Yeah, I think, look, if we go totally laissez faire on this, which is just to say let OpenAI anthropic Google X AI go try to sell their offerings around the world, I think China will effectively undercut us in a major way because they're going to go make these offerings for free. And we've seen that in the 5G Huawei case where they dramatically undercut the Western competition, Nokia and Ericsson. And this is a place where in my view, the United States has sufficient interest in the world being built on a backbone of American technology, where you need US Government tools through the Development Finance Corporation, through the Export Import bank, through other means, to try to make these offerings to other countries, both with respect to the adoption of models and with respect to the diffusion of the compute technology, the data centers that get built globally. It doesn't have to be a literal competitive offering because I think China will drive that to zero, but where cost is sufficiently reduced as an overall gap between the US And China, that countries can look at the quality the US Is offering and all of the benefits of being part of the American technology ecosystem. The Trump administration has made a lot of noises about American dominance and about exporting the American technology stack. They have not really translated that into an effective global promotion initiative that involves some degree of concessional financing to make sure that, in fact, other countries are adopting American technology in the American stack. And I think we have to do that.
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A
There does seem to be an interesting disagreement or tension between the Biden administration and Trump administration approach to this. You were central in shaping the Biden administration's strategy here, which you've described both when you were in government and in the pieces as small yard, high fence. The Trump people who are doing this, you know, David Sachs and others, you know, think that those controls weren't effective, that it was too restrictive. How do you understand the kind of underlying theoretical arguments there? And is there anything you would take from the Trump approach that you, you know, think is actually a better idea than what we were doing a few years ago?
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B
Well, so there's a couple elements to the fundamental differences between the Biden approach and the Trump approach. One has to do with just the basic question of whether safety and risk should be something the government is working on to try to manage for through any form of regulation, be it very, very light touch to heavier touch. And the David Sacks view is let the private sector cook. Laissez faire. No regulation. Safety is overrated. Safety is essentially a watchword for slowing down in the face of intense competition with China. Leave this in the hands of the private sector. I think even that is changing for the Trump administration with what's happened with this Mythos model that Anthropic has developed but not yet put out into the public. I think they are recognizing, in fact, that safety and risk do matter and that the government does have to have a word on this issue and cannot purely leave it to it happening to be Dario, as opposed to someone else who produced this model and decided not to put it out when it could represent a real danger. So that's one area where I actually think you will see the Trump administration, I predict, move to a certain extent. The second area goes more to the heart of your question, which is at the end of the Biden administration, we had something called the diffusion rule, and this was about how you sell the most advanced computer chips that power AI models to other countries. And we essentially had three tiers. The first tier was the closest allies, and that was more or less open season for the sale of these chips. The third tier was competitors and adversaries, and that was highly restrictive. And then the middle tier was a balancing test, and that was countries in the Gulf, India, others. And that balancing test was essentially trying to balance three things. One, we do want to sell chips because we do want to build data centers, and we do want these countries to be part of the American technology environment and to have American models run on American chips, maybe on local applications in those countries. So that's one part of it. Second part of it is we're worried about security. We don't want those chips to leak out the back door to China. We don't want those data centers to be kind of open for penetration. We wanted high standard security at any of those facilities as they were getting built out. And then the third kind of point on that triangle of balanced interests is we did not want to end up in a world where most of the computing power to drive the AI revolution is built outside the United States and not in the United States, because that would replicate some of the challenges we saw with outsourcing of chip manufacturing in the first place or other forms of production where we became dependent on other countries for vital resources. Here we thought it was very important to preserve a healthy proportion of the overall computing power in the US Itself, so that we're masters of our own destiny, so we balanced among those. But where, I think there was agreement between the Biden administration and the Trump administration was, yes, we want an export of American computing capability, be it the models themselves or the chips to power the models. I think there was a disagreement about how to go about doing that. And right now my big concern is that it will take a much more active and engaged strategy to compete with China's low cost offerings. And I don't see the administration quite putting pen to paper or putting the rubber to the road on that, and I hope they will do so in the months ahead.
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A
What about the export control piece of this? The effort to deny the most Advanced technology, most advanced chips to China. I think there are people who are not in the Trump administration who see the Biden approaches as backfiring and prompting China to move faster. How have you read the evidence as we've watched a couple years of this unfold?
- [13:31]
B
So I touch on this in the piece, and I think there are basically three major arguments that are very much worth contending with on this point. Maybe there are four. So the first is, oh, man, you just incentivized China to indigenize. They were going to be dependent on the Nvidia stack and American chip technology, and now you've created the greatest incentive ever for them to create their own advanced semiconductor industry in China, and they
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A
otherwise would have been addicted.
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B
In the Howard Lutnick phrasing, addicted, Addicted, exactly this phrase, we're going to keep them addicted on American technology. First of all, anyone who knows the history of the century of humiliation in China, the Boxer Rebellion, the Opium wars, the idea that China will remain addicted on Western conveyances, I think is just kind of missing how the sort of Chinese perspective looks at all of this. But more to the point, I think that argument misses the actual timeline where China's public pronouncements from the very top that they were going to indigenize their chip stack, that they were not going to remain dependent on Western hardware that began roughly in the mid 2010s, around the time of Made in China 2025, and then accelerated through the later 2010s with Xi Jinping himself speaking to this issue. And this was not merely RHETOR put huge amounts of money into it and continue to do so. Now, I'm not going to sit here and argue that the actual application of these chip restrictions doesn't create some further impetus, because now that you can't get the chips, you might work a little harder. That's just human nature. But do I think structurally, fundamentally, we could have bet on a future where China would remain dependent on the Western chip stack indefinitely? No, we would have just been kind of giving them chips to fill the gap between now and when they had a completely independent and effective indigenous chip manufacturing capability. So I don't really buy that argument. The second argument is that it's just not working because China is able to keep pace at the frontier. This one, I think, is a little harder to parse. And I'm not the absolute expert on it, because I think you really have to understand benchmarking and model capability and the like. But one of the things that is happening, in my view, is that China has adopted more of a fast follow approach where the US does have a decisive advantage, literally at the frontier, meaning China's not able or has not yet demonstrated the ability, maybe this will change to leapfrog the United States and take the lead at the frontier. And I think that is all about compute, and we're in the middle of that story because this should compound in the next year or two. And if it does, then the chip controls will have been very effective. It doesn't compound, but the US still maintains remains elite. The chip controls will have been effective. They will not have been as effective maybe as the most optimistic scenarios would hold, but still be effective. So that's kind of the second argument. Sebastian Malaby made a version of this argument in a piece in the New York Times recently. The third argument is that, fine, you can stay ahead on the models, but the time when this is really going to matter is still many years away, that we're not getting to ASI or AGI or the types of capabilities where a small lead converts into decisive strategic advantage. And by the time we get there, China will have built its own thing. This is an argument really about you kind of pulled the trigger too early or the compute advantage you're gaining in this window isn't going to translate into the kind of technology advantage you'd hope for. That's still an open question and we'll have to see. That's kind of now to 2030, but my view is, yeah, it's possible that it doesn't convert because we hit a plateau on the tech or whatever, but I'm not sure that argues very effectively against doing it. It just says, look, we took our best shot and the overall effects were more modest. Final argument, and this is the other half of Malaby's piece, is by doing this, by doing these chip controls, you have denied yourself the diplomatic space to engage China when it comes to AI risk. And I completely and totally reject that. I believe one of the things we demonstrated amply in the Biden administration is that you can compete and cooperate at the same time. You can impose export controls and reach understandings on things like AI enabled nuclear risk, which we did. You can have government to government dialogue on AI risk, which we did even while implementing these controls. And I don't accept that to get, get in the door for a serious conversation on AI risk with China or to come to agreement on AI risk with China, we have to start by saying to them, we've removed all the controls, so please be nice to us. I think that is simply a kind of a mental model error and is not required. And so my view is, and I say this in the piece, compete vigorously. But absolutely, we should be sitting down with China at very senior levels to work through these risk issues and try to come to some common understandings on the way forward.
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A
One of the tech high grounds that you focus on in the article is integration of AI into military applications. We've seen this on, I think, kind of moving much faster than many of us would have expected in the war on Iran and elsewhere. We saw the very interesting back and forth between Pete Hegseth and Dario Amadeh, the head of Anthropic, a few weeks ago over whether Anthropic had set restrictions on military use and autonomous systems especially. It does seem, as we've watched this, that in some ways the horse is out of the barn, that things that we're seeing now would have shocked us a few years ago. And some of the debates about safety and constraints and restrictions seem a little kind of quaintly high minded. But I'm curious how you, as you've watched the war in Iran especially, but also how quickly this has developed over the last year and a half or so, whether you think we need to rethink our approach here, the way we thought we could constrain this is simply one work at this point.
- [19:49]
B
First, to me, it's a little hard to tell from the outside when you don't have access to the actual tech or how it's being applied, the degree to which this is as real as some of the reporting suggests, or is a little more hyped than the reporting suggests. And I have yet to come to a firm and settled view on that. But regardless of where things are, literally today, In April of 2026, we know where this is going and going very fast. And here I think what the anthropic Pentagon standoff really pointed out is that there is not a sufficient set of rules and norms in place in granular detail in the Pentagon that are transparent. That could be the basis for how to think about lethal, increasingly autonomous weapon systems, big data and mass surveillance that is AI enabled. These other questions that were at the heart of that dispute. I am sympathetic to the idea that it shouldn't be the private company that's adjudicating all of that. But I'm also sympathetic to Dario's view that right now the government has not promulgated that in a very serious way. And I think that has to happen. And those arguing, well, we just can't do it because our adversaries are moving forward, pell mell. I don't discount that they are and they're not going to apply the same level of scrutiny or rigor to standards and guardrails around these things. But nonetheless, I think it is vital for the United States to do this and to do it in a somewhat transparent way. And the current leadership of the Pentagon to me does not inspire confidence about our ability to do that in a meaningful way. And that should make us all a bit nervous.
- [21:26]
A
And if we do that in a meaningful way and China doesn't, or Russia doesn't, or Iran doesn't, does that put us at a disadvantage in your mind?
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B
So to a certain extent, yes. It's hard to argue that if they're just kind of moving unfettered on some military basis, they have a certain advantage. I think. One, that requires us to get into this dialogue I was talking about to try to get some agreed guardrails. Verification and enforcement is obviously a challenge, but may have at least some constraining effect on them. And two, I'm sorry, but at some level we cannot just accept, well, whatever they're going to do, we're going to do. We have to apply a theory of human judgment and oversight, a theory of safety and values relative to the application of American military might and power that is consistent with who we are, and then manage for whatever risks or threats come from that. But I do not believe that we should accept a simple race to the bottom here.
- [22:34]
A
One of the other risks that runs across the various high grounds in the piece is reliance on China and other countries for critical inputs into our own tech ecosystem. For all of the focus on building chip capacity in the United States through the Biden administration, huge percentage of high end chips still come from Taiwan. That reliance has not diminished that much. Where's your level of anxiety on precipitous action in the Taiwan Strait? On China moving quickly through either D day style landing or more of a blockade strategy. But that would lead to unification in the near term.
- [23:07]
B
My current read is that the Chinese leadership believes that their strategy is working. A strategy of persistent pressure, coercion, momentum, pushing Taiwan inexorably into the Beijing orbit. From their perspective, that strategy is pointing the arrow in the right direction right now, which means the odds of military action in the next couple of years in my view, are quite low, very low, not zero. And there could be a precipitating event that we don't even quite recognize. Or there could be something in terms of the policy of the current leadership in Taipei that provokes the leadership in Beijing to act in a certain way. So I don't rule it out. And I think of the scenarios, the blockade scenario is the more credible one than the D Day style landing. If something were to happen in the next couple of years, years, I think 28 is an incredibly important year because it is the year of the next Taiwan presidential election. And I think from Beijing's perspective, they see the KMT gaining some political standing and gaining likelihood of winning that which would only reinforce their view that their strategy is working and they can continue. If the ruling party, the dpp, the Democratic People's Party, wins that election, then they'll go, I think, take a harder look at whether they need to change course and do something more dramatic, including something potentially military. That's also the year of the American presidential election, the last year of the Trump administration. So we should look at that time. I think it will be important. It was striking to me that the party leader of the KMT showed up in Beijing in a quite interesting posture of almost sort of supplicant. And Beijing really played that up. I think that is just a reinforcement of their idea that the tide is going their way and they should play out this string, not to mix metaphors for a bit longer. And so that for me makes me think the odds of military action are not that high.
- [25:12]
A
Do you think they're right? Do you think those analysts in Beijing have the correct read of the situation?
- [25:16]
B
I mean, on the politics of what's going to happen in 28. Look, I have a hard time predicting anything about what's going to happen in America in 2028. So for me to predict what's going to happen in and Taipei would be folly. But they have evidence, they have reason to think that the current president is not that strong politically in Taiwan, that he won the last election with less than 50% of the vote, that the KMT has a decent shot of winning, that they have through propaganda and payoffs and other things. China has a fair amount of influence on Taipei that is injecting itself into the political conversation. I think all of that is right. I do think one variable that I'm not sure how they assess it or how they weight it is just like where generationally young people in Taiwan think of themselves increasingly with an independent identity. So is there something deeper and more structural that will just make the actual realization of this Chinese strategy more difficult than they think? That's a question I have. And also there's the time horizon. I mean, how patient Will China be, for example, does Xi Jinping think, I need this resolved by the time I leave? And that puts a clock on it, at least an actuarial clock, if not an actual political clock. And so I think there's some uncertainty about years out from now, how this strategy plays out. But I think over the next two to three years, the picture is a little bit clearer. And it means the risk of military action is not zero, but considerably lower, I think, than a lot of people have suggested.
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A
I went back and read a piece that you wrote in 2018 for Foreign affairs, called the World after Trump during the first Trump administration. We're still not in that world, I suppose, but there was a line that jumped out at me about China where you wrote that China has far greater capacity to. To upend the global order, but will be cautious in attempting to do so in the near term. Do you think that caution has eroded the second time around?
- [27:20]
B
It's interesting in a funny way, because America is playing the role of disruptor in living color in such a dramatic way. China is adopting a strategy of claiming to be almost the guardian of the order and the projector of stability. So I don't see them acting as a massively revisionist power right now, because they're looking at the US Acting as a revisionist power and positioning themselves as the protector and defender of the rights and interests of everyone else in the face of all that disruption. Now, that's not static. I don't think it means that China just wants things to go back to how they were, as opposed to how China would want to push them. But it does mean that their strategy is not cautious. But it's subtle. It's subtle shifts in what a status quo that emerges on the back end of a second Trump term looks like. It's not some radical rethink of things, but where China is increasingly at the center of the action, because they are the party that can look at everyone and say, while the United States is doing all of this bull in the China shop stuff, you can count on us. You can count on us economically, technologically, diplomatically. You can count on us to be more predictable and more willing to work with you and to be respectful of you than you can count on the United States of America. I think they will look to convert that into more durable strategic and geopolitical advantage in the years that follow Trump. And they're essentially trying to take advantage of an opportunity that they see as very much open because of the way the Trump administration has acted.
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A
When you watch your former frequent interlocutor Wang Yi and Xi Jinping try to make good on this opportunity. Do you think they're doing it well? Are they playing this skillfully?
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B
Well? First it was a Napoleon who said, never interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake. I don't want to overclaim just how proactive this is. I think a lot of it is falling to them quite readily and they're taking it so they're not acting in dramatic ways. And I think in a sense that's smart from their perspective is not to try to overreach here. But basically, yeah. I think their style of diplomatic communication, their outreach to America's erstwhile allies in Europe and Asia, their communication to the global south, their subtle posturing on this war in the Middle east, as they kind of let it be known that they're a little bit standing behind Pakistan and the like. I think all of that is consistent with what I would have expected them to do and from the perspective of Beijing is enhancing their strategic position.
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A
We'll be right back after a short break.
- [30:23]
C
What if you could explore places in the news like a reporter does? I'm Nicholas Wood, a former journalist with the New York Times and BBC. And 15 years ago I created the travel company Political Tours. Our small groups are led by top correspondents around the world. Later this year we're off to Mexico to look at cartels, migrants and Trump. And then we're in Colombia and the Amazon. Come and join us. Go to politicaltours.com that's politicaltours.com May 14th
- [30:54]
D
through 17th Independent brings together over 100 artists for a four day art fair in New York. Among the highlights, Comme des Garcons will present more than 20 recent, semi unique selections created by the house's founder, Ray Kawakubo. This will be the first New York presentation of its kind in nine years. See why the New York Times calls Independent an art world institution and discover what's next in contemporary art. Visit independenthq.com to learn more and book your ticket today. Did you know that Foreign affairs editor Dan Kurtzvalen sends a free newsletter every Saturday? Visit foreignaffairs.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 foreignaffairs.com spotlight sign up today.
- [31:55]
A
Let's go to that war in the Middle East. I should say we're recording on on Monday morning, April 20, and it's obviously hard to say where things will stand in the war or in the negotiations in a couple of days when this episode is out. But you spent a lot of time negotiating with the Iranians. You've thought a lot about the nuclear problem and the problem of Iranian power in the region more generally. As you look at where things stand now, what would a good deal that could plausibly be accepted by both sides look like? Assuming, of course, that there is such a decision?
- [32:21]
B
Well, I'll start by saying I do not think there can be a deal. If the United States holds to the line that Iran has to completely surrender in perpetuity its right and capacity to enrich uranium, I think the Iranians will regard that as surrender and they will not do it. That's my conviction. If I'm proven wrong, whether this week or in the future, so be it. But I would start from the premise that you're not going to get complete surrender. So what does a deal look like? A deal looks like a limitation on enrichment, and in this case, that can be a total suspension because there is no current enrichment operating in Iran because of the 12 Day War last year for a period of years, the disposition in some way, whether shipping out or neutralizing or down blending the highly enriched uranium stockpile that's inside Iran, the return of meaningful, verifiable inspections across the entirety of the nuclear enterprise in Iran in exchange for sanctions relief. And you know what? That looks a lot like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated in the Obama administration and that President Trump pulled out of in 2018. The timelines may be a bit different. The exact nature of the restrictions on centrifuges and enrichment capability may be a bit different. But the fundamental architecture of the deal, I think, will end up looking quite similar if there is to be a deal. And reports suggest that that is essentially the type of deal that they are circling around. Either both sides can ultimately say yes to it. We will obviously find out here in the days and weeks ahead. So that's what I think a deal should look like on the nuclear program. And no, I do not believe we should hold that hostage to maximalist demands on missiles or on proxies, just as we didn't do that in the Iran nuclear deal, I don't think it makes sense to do that now.
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A
So in the unlikely event that you got to take, I don't know, Steve Witkoff or Jared Kushner seat in negotiations this week, you think you could get to that deal in the relatively near term?
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B
It's hard for me to answer that because we're all basing this on the reporting that we're seeing come out of it. We're not in the room. And I do think there's a wildcard on the Iranian side where their decision making has both become more harder line and also maybe a little bit less centralized because of the loss of the Supreme Leader and the change in power and so forth. So the Iranian side is a little more unpredictable to me in terms of what they would agree to, what they will not agree to is pretty predictable. Agreed to, a bit less so. But do I think that there is a deal to be had in this neighborhood of what I've just been describing? I do think so. One of the things that the obstacles in the way of it, honestly, is the method of negotiating that President Trump has. The Iranians are incredibly proud. They really don't like anything that smacks of them, conceding or bowing in the face of pressure or. Or bluster or military force. And President Trump, on the other hand, really likes deals in which he gets to spike the football and say, I made them eat this. So there is this kind of very practical issue with getting to yes on both sides where if you go back and look at the jcpoa, there are a lot of sentences in that document that read like, iran announces that it will do X. You know, consistent with Iran's plans, it will do. Why? When in reality, it's a pure prohibition on some activity, but it's written in a way that makes it sound like Iran had a voice in that. Whereas Trump likes much more to say, they're prohibited, they're barred, we made them. And I think Wyckoff is more of the kind of character who would be able to do a deal that the Iranians could swallow. But. But the president himself does not operate that way. And so to me, it'll be interesting to see whether they can actually line things up.
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A
It's almost like he's willing to give ground on substance as long as he doesn't allow the other guy to save face. As opposed to the inverse.
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B
Exactly. So this is the opposite of Obama. Obama was like, whatever. The wording in the document is fine as long as the substance is right. With Trump, it's like, as long as the atmospherics are right, I can give some ground on the substance. And the problem is the Iranians kind of think exactly the same way as Trump, so it doesn't fit as neatly together. But there is still, I think, a structural incentive on both sides to come to a deal at some point here. I can't predict that it's going to be really soon or take a while, but that's how it looks to me.
- [36:47]
A
How significant is the Hormuz card in this at this point? I mean, the Trump administration was surprised by this. They should not have been had they listened, presumably to their own intelligence analysts, who would have pointed this out to them. But Iran has played the card. There's a lot of focus on it now. Now I wonder how much of a long term change in dynamics this really is though.
- [37:06]
B
So I think what's happened here is quite profound, which is a theoretical risk that Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz has been demonstrated as an actual capability. And I think that changes the deterrence equation. It means that Iran's credible threat to do this in the future is that much more credible. And the necessary restraints that will impose on everyone else, I think is quite real going forward. And that is a big loss, I think, coming out of this war. Now, do I think they can get the strait back open? I do. Will it be on some terms that are different from how things were before? Probably. Whether it's formally tolling or not, Iran, I think, will exercise a greater degree of operational jurisdiction over the strait, perhaps in concert with other countries than they did did two months ago. I think that's just going to be a reality. So that to me is less practically important because I think all of that can be absorbed and managed. The real practical importance from a long term point of view of deterrence and diplomacy is that now the Hormuz card is a card Iran knows it can play, and it therefore is something more powerful than it was before this entire conflict kicked off. And I'll just make one other point, which is I really believe that the reason President Trump didn't think that Iran would do this, would close the Strait of Hormuz, would attack Gulf oil infrastructure, is because after the 12 day war last year, when Iran really didn't react in any meaningful way, he became convinced that all these arguments that those of us who are pro diplomacy were making, hey, you get into a war, it starts to get real bad, that we were just wrong, that we had totally messed up, that Iran was a paper tiger, they'd been proven as such that they would essentially break if we hit them and they would not fight back in a big way. He took that lesson from the 12 Day War last year. I think his overall risk appetite was then even further reinforced by the Maduro raid. And so he was prepared to just go pell mell here and was surprised that what we'd all been saying all the way back to the Iran nuclear deal that the alternative to a deal is war, and war brings with it these very severe risks and consequences, that that's exactly how things have borne out.
- [39:20]
A
How do you read Iranian intentions on the nuclear front now? And especially when it comes to the risk that they could rush for a bomb covertly in ways that we might not be able to see, given the lack of inspectors and the uncertainty, it seems, at least about how much highly enriched uranium might be buried thousands of feet underground at Pickaxe Mountain or elsewhere.
- [39:40]
B
It isn't necessarily fashionable in a lot of foreign policy circles in D.C. to lend any credence to the old Supreme Leader's fatwa is people kind of like sneer at that and say, oh, how can you possibly trust that? But the fact is that the US And Israel and other intelligence agencies assess that Iran had not made a decision to weaponize, going all the way back to 2003. So that is more than two decades, whether in the deal or out of the deal, that there was something about the Supreme Leader's caution that was keeping Iran from sprinting for a bomb, bomb for all that time. He's dead. Okay? His son, who is much closer to the IRGC and the IRGC itself, I would think, are probably more risk tolerant and more convinced that the existence of a nuclear deterrent will keep this from continuing to happen in the future. And so I think that they are more likely to want to find a way to get to a bomb now. On the other hand, they're not irrational and they recognize that going for the bomb brings risks. So they're going to play things, I think, where they might be prepared to do a nuclear deal, but they're also going to constantly be assuming that deal could fall apart at any time. And they need a theory of how they get to a bomb in relatively short order if in fact the deal falls apart. So I think they are actively planning for multiple pathways to try to get to a bomb, even if they're not going to dash for one in the immediate aftermath of this war. And then what I can't quite factor in is the degree to which they think the Hormuz card alleviates a little bit the need for a bomb. I don't know, probably not that much. But the one thing they will recognize on the Hormuz piece, closing the Strait of Hormuz is a much more kind of malleable, dialable option than actually firing a nuke at somebody.
- [41:37]
A
There's no taboo against it in this case.
- [41:40]
B
Exactly. And it also can be incremented. It can be dialed up, dialed down, some ships can come through, it can be turned on today, turned off tomorrow. So it has a reversibility element to it as well as the Taboo piece. So I don't know how that factors in, but basically, I think the odds that you have Iranian leaders more determined to get a bomb today than they were determined to get a bomb course of a couple of years ago, yeah, those odds have gone up.
- [42:05]
A
What do you think the regional order, the Middle Eastern regional order, looks like in the wake of the war? How has that changed as a result of this?
- [42:11]
B
I think the biggest thing to watch out of all of this is actually not Iran's relationships with other countries in the region, but rather how the Saudi UAE dynamic reemerges. It kind of really burst into view as a serious set of tensions between these two countries in the months leading up to this war. It's been kind of on the back burner during the war, but after the war, I think how Saudi Arabia and the UAE relate to one another will have a huge impact on basically the entire rest of the region, including how each of them relate to an Iranian regime going forward, but also how they relate to the likes of Qatar and Turkey, how things play out in Iraq and Syria, and how the question of Israel plays into the relationship between the UAE and Israel and the potential relationship between Saudi and Israel. So for me, that dynamic is the thing that I really want to take a hard look at on the back end of this. And the decisions those two leaders make about how they position themselves will have a huge impact on things. And I think Iran itself will look for a period to consolidate at home, to ensure the kind of general survival of its proxy networks, even if they're bruised and battered. It will take some time then to think about exactly how it reengages and where. But meanwhile, this Gulf dynamic, I think, is going to unfold in a much
- [43:43]
A
more rapid basis on the regional picture. I want to take us back to, I suppose, an unpleasant memory for both of us, which was the line in the piece you wrote for us in 2023 when you were National Security Advisor are sent off to the printer On, I think, October 3, 2023, a few days before October 7, you wrote that the Middle east is quieter than it's been for decades. That was descriptively true at the time. And it was also, you know, you've taken your share of criticism for the line, but it was something that was, you know, it wasn't consensus Exactly. But there were a lot of people saying that at the time. What do you think we were missing about. About regional dynamics in assessing that. That situation at that moment?
- [44:21]
B
Moment? Well, one thing I'll say, Dan, is just kind of looking at you over zoom here reminds me that we had a bunch of back and forth in terms of that paragraph and editing of that paragraph, and I wrote multiple different versions of it. And one of the versions, I specifically was saying the Israeli Palestinian conflict is acute and dangerous right now. We ended up softening that down in a big way in the final piece. We being on our side. Not, not. That wasn't you.
- [44:49]
A
It wasn't bad editing.
- [44:51]
B
Yeah, exactly. So in the piece and in public comments I made around that time, similarly, I highlighted two things that could be the reason why, yes, that was true that day, but it could change. One being the Iranian threat and the other being the Israeli Palestinian file. And I think simply placing a greater weight on the likelihood of that happening, in hindsight, I should have done. But basically it was a just terrible phrasing of a statement about a different region from the one that we had seen with respect to civil wars in the Iraq War and the war in Libya and all of the other, and the ISIS caliphate and so forth. And that in 2023, things did look differently. But my phrasing around, okay, how could this change? I should have just been more acute about. These are the ways really sharply how it could change. But it was in view to us that both Iran and the Israeli Palestinian file were the two areas that would put the most pressure on the stability of the Middle East. And of course, that exploded into view on October 7.
- [46:03]
A
The Israeli Palestinian file has receded from attention since the war in Iran started, but it is continuing to. The situation has gotten much worse over even the last several weeks beyond where it was before. As you reflect back over the last two and a half years or so since October 7th, I'm curious what you make of US policy over that period and what lessons you draw going forward. You've talked since leaving office about being more willing to use leverage on Israelis with conditioning, weapon sales and other things. You know, as you look back at the approach that, you know, you and President Biden articulated shortly after October 7th, just based on this idea that if we, you know, hugged Bibi, kept the Israelis close, we would have leverage over them. I know you can point to plenty of examples where humanitarian access or other things were achieved as a result of that leverage, but the arc of that does not look especially good seeing where Israelis are in Gaza, and what's happening in the West Bank. What would you do differently? And how should that change the US Approach to Israel going forward?
- [47:06]
B
So I've thought a lot about this. I've stayed awake a lot of nights. I basically think about it every day because of the suffering and the harm and the death and everything from October 7th forward has just been a tragedy. It was a tragedy on October 7, and it has been a tragedy for the Palestinian people since then. And one conclusion I've drawn is that that we should have done more to put pressure on the Israeli government to change their approach than we did. And what I'm still working through is exactly how and when, what specifically and when. But I will definitely say that just very straightforwardly, we should have done more to put pressure on the Israeli government. And what we were trying to do throughout that period was get to a ceasefire and get the hostages out. And one of the things that happens when you are in the middle of negotiations like that is you kind of think, okay, there's a pathway to doing it. We can get it done. This month there's another meeting, and now we're going to make it happen. And let's not totally disrupt the dynamic. We may be able to get there in May or June or July or August. And time just passed. We ultimately did get to a ceasefire and a hostage deal, and that was in place. And when Israel went back to war, on the back end of that, I came out and said they should end the war. And then I came out and said that we should stop sending weapons to Israel because the situation was such that there were no longer credible military objectives to try to reach. And then more recently, there's been this whole issue of the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel deciding to take our two countries to war together in Iran. I think a totally misbegotten war that we should not be in. And I advise US Senators who were voting last week on these joint resolutions of disapproval, to vote against sending more weapons to Israel in this context. And so I think on a going forward basis, we have to just be very, very mindful of, specifically, what are US Interests and what are US Points of leverage, and how do we apply them most effectively going forward? And that's a lesson that I've learned and will continue to learn as we go. Now, when it comes to the west bank, we took the unprecedented step of creating an entire sanctions regime to sanction individuals engaged in settler violence in the West Bank. We've seen the Trump administration Rescind that. And we've seen this absolute explosion of settler violence over the course of the last year or so, and it's shocking and unacceptable. And I think the tools we put into place should in fact go back into place and be enhanced beyond where they were then. And that's something that I would advocate on a going forward basis.
- [50:00]
A
How should we think about the US Israel relationship? You know, I suppose we could say in 2029, this will obviously be a huge debate in the Democratic primary starting sometime soon. And Andrew Miller, someone you've worked with closely, laid out one framework on our pages calling for us to treat Israel, as he put it, as kind of a normal ally rather than an exceptional one. Is that the right approach? Are there other ways of thinking about this?
- [50:23]
B
I think we should focus on Israel's policy approach. And if it is the same or in the same ballpark as we see it today, then that will have a huge impact on our security assistance to them. And I've advocated in both last year and this year for withholding forms of military assistance. As long as the policy remains of the kind it is now, if the policy changes, and frankly, if there's a different government in Israel, we're not going back to how things were before, but then we would have a different approach. And so I think it very much is context dependent, as it should be in terms of what we are contending with. And then we just kind of ask the question, what are America's interests? How do those relate to this partner of ours? And then we'll make policy accordingly. And in that sense, it would take the form of a more normal diplomatic relationship.
- [51:19]
A
Is the two state solution still part of that formula?
- [51:23]
B
I think it has to be. I know it's difficult, but I don't think there is an alternative.
- [51:28]
A
Let me jump around in the time we have left to a different part of the world. Russia has also been, I think, a beneficiary of the war in Iran. Just given the depletion of air defense and other weapons stocks and the effect on oil prices, how do you see Ukraine playing out, given Putin's position now?
- [51:49]
B
Right now it feels to me like this war is just going to keep going almost indefinitely. It's hard for me to see the moment when it comes to a stop. From Putin's perspective, stopping the war is more risky than continuing it, both in terms of Ukraine being able to consolidate as a proud and fierce independent nation that gets stronger and stronger and more integrated into Europe. And with respect to him having to bring home hundreds of thousands of disaffected soldiers and to try to explain to his people what this was all about. So, in a way, he has incentive just to keep going. And now, as you say, he has more capital to keep going because he's getting more cash for his war machine from the elevated oil prices. And I think those elevated oil prices were. Will continue. And if I read correctly, at the end of last week, the Trump administration actually extended the waivers on sanctions for Russian oil majors, meaning, in effect, that Putin is raking in the dough. So I am very worried that this war will just persist and that Russia will keep just trying to grind on Ukraine, and Ukraine will have to continue to resist with the support of Europe. And with Orban out of the way, I think Europe will support to a greater extent than. Than they did before. And I'm not sure exactly what President Trump does at this point, because he's kind of consistently reverted to taking Russia's side on this conflict. Sometimes he starts leaning in the other direction, and then he invariably snaps back. So, unfortunately, as I look out the rest of this year, it's difficult for me to see how the war comes to a clear and clean end. And I think we will be contending with it heading into next year.
- [53:24]
A
If I could here again put you in the unlikely position of a senior official in the Trump administration, do you think a radically changed approach to the war in Ukraine could yield a different outcome? Or is that kind of forever war scenario where we would expect almost irrespective of US Policy at this point?
- [53:43]
B
I think the war in Iran has made it more difficult to build the kind of pressure on Russia necessary to change Putin's calculus. But I think that option was available to President Trump. He started moving in that direction with the oil sanctions. We could have gone a lot further to just squeeze economically in ways that may have changed Putin's calculus. I still think that is what we should do. I don't think it's going to be a panacea. And then I think we should be providing Ukraine with a sustained and even expanded level of military and intelligence support. And then I do think that would hasten an end to the war. It wouldn't end it tomorrow, but it would end it more rapidly and on better terms for Ukraine than the current US Policy policy is pointing toward.
- [54:27]
A
And that's a negotiated solution that involves security guarantees and some concessions on territory,
- [54:33]
B
which basically what the Ukrainians have said more or less, that they are prepared to have as the basis for a just settlement of this war. I think we could move Russia into that zone with the right combination of support for Ukraine and pressure on Russia.
- [54:47]
A
So the other winner, one of the other winners of the war in Iran is North Korea. This is not a problem that we're spending a lot of time talking about right now. There are a couple of great pieces in the issue that your pieces, and you will not have read these yet, including one by Victor Cha, just noting how much the North Korean nuclear program, North Korean capabilities have been enhanced, have accelerated in the last few years. Do you think we're underrating the risk of a crisis there? Is there anything we should be doing about North Korea at this moment? Moment, Just given how big a threat that could be.
- [55:20]
B
You know, it's interesting. In November of 2023, late November 23, so not just weeks into the post October 7th war and period of instability in the Middle East, I actually flew off to Korea for consultations with my counterparts there because even then we were starting to see some risk factors about things North Korea might consider doing. And I wanted to make sure that even with, with a war in Ukraine and a war in the Middle east, we were not losing sight of North Korea. I think it remains a persistent risk for some significant event, whether it's a nuclear test or a long range ICBM test or the testing of South Korea in some way. And I think North Korea is a bit unpredictable in this regard. That being said, I think right now Kim Jong Un thinks his strategic position is pretty strong capabilities getting stronger support from the Russians, economic position bolstered by relationships with both Moscow and Beijing. And you now see the degree to which Beijing is leaning into that relationship to try to restore some degree of its influence that has eroded over time. So there are reasons to believe that Kim Jong Un feels he can just keep doing what he's doing. And we should put that into our assessment. But there's always the possibility of something out of North Korea. And if you take your eyes off it too cleanly and for too long, something will pop off. So I think it's important for the United States to maintain focus there.
- [56:52]
A
Do you imagine, if you're back in government in the2030s, say, that we'll be contending with serious allied proliferation or proliferation risk?
- [57:00]
B
I think the odds have gone up. I don't know if they've gone above 50%, but they've gone up materially from where they were before. And that's true both in Europe and in Asia. And then that kicks into the Middle east and elsewhere. So we are in a different nuclear age. In a way, because the contemplation of this is just a much more central part of the conversation in all of these allied capitals. And so I think this is something for us to very much worry about and work on.
- [57:27]
A
Let me close by going back to a piece you wrote in 2018. I think the first piece you ever wrote for Foreign affairs, that's the essay called the World After Trump. Trump. And you made the argument there that the, the rules based order will survive. I know you've since decided that it's unwise to ever utter the words rules based order because that's, you know, politically not very helpful. But if we can linger on that concept, you know, you said then that it would survive a term of Trump, but you weren't sure it would survive too. What is your assessment now and what do you think we're we're looking at in the wake of this Trump administration?
- [57:55]
B
Unfortunately, I think that that basic observation is bearing out. We don't know the end of the story yet, but is bearing out because one term was an aberration, leading to everyone say, okay, now we can get back not to business as usual, but to something resembling the order we knew after a second term of Trump. I think just the recalculation of the relationship with the United States by every country in the world, and not just about what's happened in the past, but about what could happen in the future future. Given the unpredictability and the wild swings in American politics, this is going to be a central feature of the landscape and it makes sustaining America's traditional leadership role much more challenging than it was before. So that doesn't mean that we don't have to hitch up our pants collectively and say we are going to play a proactive, effective, engaged role in the world. We're going to have allies, we're going to have friends, we're going to build institutions, we're going to solve problems. We have to do all that. But we're going to have to do all of that against a fundamentally different backdrop and with different cards in our hands. And that's just going to be the reality of what confronts the next administration and the one after that and the one after that, because this is going to have a long tail to it.
- [59:12]
A
That will make for interesting debate in our pages and elsewhere over the next couple of years. So we'll hope to revisit those questions as we approach that point. But for now, Jake, thanks for the great piece in our current issue and thanks for doing this today.
- [59:24]
B
Awesome. Thank you for having me. Dan,
- [59:31]
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 Rose Kohler and Kanish Tharoor. Our audio engineer is Todd Yeager. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Irina Hobby 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.
- [60:20]
D
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.