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- [00:00]
A
Dan.
- [00:00]
B
I'm Dan Kurtzphelin, and this is the Foreign affairs interview.
- [00:06]
A
As the west we made some terrible mistakes. You know, foreign policy is a series of predictions and bets with the future. And if you get your bets wrong, you lose.
- [00:18]
B
In early September, around 20 Russian drones entered Poland's airspace. NATO and Polish forces scrambled fighter jets to shoot them down, but not before several had traveled hundreds of miles into Polish territory. To Poland's foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, the incursion was not just a test of NATO's resolve. It was a reminder of the precarious position of the alliance's frontline states as the war in Ukraine grinds on for its third year and as Donald Trump upends the basic bargain of the transatlantic alliance. I spoke to Sikorsky on the morning of September 24th in New York, where he was attending the UN General Assembly. We discussed the ongoing threat from Russia and what it will take in Washington and European capitals to prevent it from escalating. But more than that, Sikorsky is grappling with a moment of sharp change in geopolitics, trying to understand both why the old order collapsed and how to navigate the new order just now taking shape. Radek, thank you for joining me. It's a busy week in New York where we are having this conversation, and I imagine it's been a particularly interesting time to be in your job.
- [01:32]
A
Yes, indeed. Important shifts happening, not only wars like in Sudan, in Ukraine, in Gaza, but also the future of UN Itself at stake.
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B
By way of preface, I should say that we're having this conversation the morning of Wednesday, September 24th. That's particularly important to mention in this case because Donald Trump radically changed his position on Ukraine and related questions, particularly close to Polish interests, in the hours before we started this recording, this. And for all we know, he may change them again in the hours after we start recording. So, just for listeners, awareness. But Roddick, you've long warned, including in a Foreign affairs essay a couple of years ago, that Vladimir Putin would, in the absence of a much stronger deterrent by NATO, start to test NATO countries in increasingly aggressive ways. Earlier this month, as you of course, know very well, 20 on Russian drones entered Polish airspace. That was followed by Russian fighter jets violating Estonian airspace and overflowing some Polish oil platforms in the Baltic Sea. The Kremlin has its own story about the drones in Poland. What's your understanding of what happened? What were the Russians up to and why?
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A
Well, we think it was a deliberate provocation because we tracked the drones from the moment of launch. And the place of launch was different from the launches at Ukraine. Had it been part of the Ukraine operation, you would expect the mix of drones, armed and unarmed, to be similar. Yet they were all unarmed and they had extra fuel tanks instead. And the assault lasted seven hours. So between the first entry into Poland's airspace and the last shooting down. So it was a firefight, not a mistake.
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B
Were you surprised that it happened?
- [03:29]
A
We see it as part of Putin's spectrum of hybrid means to test nature. And those include disinformation, obviously espionage, but also arsons. We've caught people trying to set fire to a factory and a huge shopping center was burnt in Warsaw. Assassinations, as you know, in England, in Berlin, in other places, and the sending of these flammable parcels by dhl. And this is just the latest. Russia trying to test our public, our command systems, solidarity of our allies. We feel that we've stood the test. But we've also learned something, that we need a Ukraine like system to address this particular threat, namely drones, because it's not really cost efficient to be dealing them with F35s. We need cheaper ways of doing it. So we need more combat helicopters with Gatling guns and we need probably turbo props with machine guns on board.
- [04:49]
B
The response from most observers watching the NATO reaction, especially Trump's relative non response in the days after the attack, is that, you know, if this was a test, if Putin was testing NATO, that NATO did not fare especially well and that Putin comes away from this feeling emboldened. Do you think that's right?
- [05:07]
A
We were pleased. We called for Article 4, which is urgent consultations when you feel threatened. It was immediately granted. And rallies allies, particularly in Europe, rallied round several countries sent extra anti air assets and fighters. And our planners need to address this gap in our defenses. So yet another disappointment for Putin, I think, because we've he's increased our sense of being threatened and therefore given us a chance to do something about it.
- [05:46]
B
And Trump's response, I wonder what his.
- [05:49]
A
Response would be if 21 Cuban drones flew over Florida. But distance does matter. He has now declared that if Russian fighters breached NATO airspace, we would be in our right to take them down. Which states the obvious, but nevertheless, it's welcome that he said it.
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B
And you felt the need to state that relatively sharply at the Security Council.
- [06:19]
A
On Monday because you need to draw the line somewhere. And if the wreckage of a Russian plane fell on our territory, so we had proof that they breached our airspace, we have procedures for this. You know, you get told what to do. By ground control. If you don't follow that, you get intercepted by planes on duty, and if you still don't obey, well, that's the next. That's the next stage.
- [06:46]
B
Trump's comments about NATO yesterday and about endorsing your right to shoot down anything that came into your airspace followed his 57, 56 minute speech to the General Assembly. You were sitting there watching that speech. What did you make of it?
- [07:01]
A
Well, it was definitely memorable. I shall remember it for many years. And only he could have made such a speech. As a result of the speech and of his meeting with President Zelenskyy, he sounded more forthright in backing Ukraine. So far, so good.
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B
The speech, though, did suggest a fairly dramatic shift in America's role in the world, America's view of global order, even a more radical change than we saw in Trump 1. Surely that changes Poland's sense of how it.
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A
But you and I were not surprised.
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B
Fair enough. But I imagine you're shifting strategy in certain key ways in response to that change, even if the speech itself is not the prompt.
- [07:46]
A
But President Trump told us in his first term that we need to spend more on the fans. We actually listened, and I was one of the first to give him credit for doing it in his inimitable style so that people would actually sit up and listen. And we've doubled our spending since then. And at the Hague NATO summit, we've declared doubling yet again, which, if fulfilled, Poland is already fulfilling, would mean that the European pillar of NATO will be spending as much on defence as the United States, and then we'll be able to deter Putin on our end and thereby get ourselves more respect both in Moscow and Washington. So I think that the correct path is just to do what we've pledged and then it will be fine.
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B
Are there other shifts in Poland's own national security strategy that you think are still work left undone that you still need to focus on?
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A
Well, we have not delegated our sovereignty to anybody. So if somebody crosses our border with a tank or a ship or a plane, in the end, our army will do what our Constitution says we need to do. But it's nice to feel allies, feel our pain. And we are glad to have 10,000American troops on our soil. We were glad to hear at the White House two weeks ago that if we want, we can have them. And even More, we contribute $15,000 per annum to every US soldier. You have a very good Status of Forces agreement. It's cheaper to keep them in Poland than in the United States. We have some good Exercise grounds. It's cheaper to exercise them too. And they are where the threat is.
- [09:32]
B
And I imagine you remind Trump of that any chance you get.
- [09:35]
A
Well, it costs us. He knows about costs, so, sure, we think we are giving him a good deal. And so every time he's asked about Poland, he says, yeah, Poland's solid. You know, I will stick up for Poland. Good.
- [09:52]
B
There's been lots of speculation in the foreign policy crowd about the possibility that Poland would someday decide to acquire its own nuclear weapons. Is there any scenario where you can imagine taking that step? No. No shift in NATO, no uncertainty about the alliance would prompt that. I want to go back to the essay that you wrote in foreign affairs in 2023. You were in the European Parliament, not in your current job, but you'd been working on these issues for a long time. It was at the time a fairly scathing assessment of Europe's, I would say, lack of seriousness on national security and on defense spending. Its failure to really step up even a year after the full scale invasion of Ukraine had started. I will quote you directly, but as you put it memorably, Europe still lacks a strong defense capability and a common approach to security. As long as that is the case, the bloc will remain a toothless superpower, which is to say, not a superpower at all. To what extent has that changed and what needs to happen to really fully overcome that judgment from you?
- [10:51]
A
I think we've done better on defence. Germany, as you know, has changed its own constitution to generate a trillion euros, half of it for infrastructure, half of it for the feds. And the European Union has passed a safe mechanism under which we will be spending 150 billion euros on defence, including on collaborations with Ukraine. Unfortunately, Europe's defence budget, wonderfully called the European Peace Facility, is still blocked by a veto from Hungary. And we are still a confederation, which means that we don't have unity of command. So on defense, we've geared up. Where we've done worse, I think is on trade, because on trade at that time, I was assuming we are in a trade power equal to the United States. And actually Europe, unlike China, cracked under Donald Trump pressure and we've allowed ourselves to agree to have one sided tariffs imposed on us.
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B
The deal that Europe struck, after years of talking about at least building up some capability to engage in this kind of economic competition, was rather astonishing. It was 15% tariffs on European goods and basically nothing on American.
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A
How did that happen?
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B
It just seems kind of remarkable.
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A
I wish I knew, because I think I'm not an expert in this field. But I think the original commission proposal that we go to 0 and 0, which I think would have been mutually advantageous, didn't take into account President Trump's forthright views on tariffs and in particular on vat. So we've allowed the argument to prevail that VAT is somehow a discriminatory tax against Americans.
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B
This is a value added tax.
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A
Yeah. Which is just not the case because everybody pays vat. European companies pay vat. Chinese companies. You know, anybody who wants to sell anything in Europe pays vat.
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B
I'm struck by your comments about Germany. It's just kind of remarkable to register that a Polish foreign minister is praising the rearmament of Germany. It's a kind of amazing historical shift.
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A
Well, I spent the last 20 years, I had a motion to recall me my when I was previously foreign minister in the Polish parliament, when at the height of the euro crisis, I said that I fear German power less than I fear German inactivity. I've doubled on this in my last speech, saying that as long as Germany is in EU and NATO, I fear German pacifism more than German rearmament.
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B
And you are no longer censured for that position in your own country.
- [13:54]
A
At this point, Germany is backing up Lithuania with a tank brigade, thereby providing cover for our northern flank. And Germany has repeatedly provided Patriot batteries for Poland against the Russian threat. So I think even the Polish right is grudgingly beginning to acknowledge that Germany is an ally.
- [14:22]
B
You note in the piece that there have been several moments in the post Cold War era when Europe has pledged to step up on defense and on security. You go back again in the piece through several cases going back to the 90s. You noted the pretty striking commitments that were made at the last NATO summit last summer.
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A
But this time, the combination of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump seems to be doing the trick.
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B
So this time is different. As a result.
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A
It is because we're spending real money. The contracts are at last being written and the factory production lines are at last being built.
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B
And that gives you faith that there will be follow through on all these pieces?
- [15:03]
A
Yes. And if we spend the money and build the factories and buy the equipment and the ammo, then by the end of the decade, we will have an army which will not be an equivalent of the United States, but will be sufficient to deter Putin. You see, we don't have to be as good as the US what about.
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B
The potential political backlash within European democracies? When watching from afar, that in some ways seems like the weakest part of this. When you watch skepticism, especially from far right parties, also some far left in France and Germany and even in Poland.
- [15:36]
A
We have a consensus to rearm. And I think people are seeing that actually it also is a way to re industrialize Europe. And you know, since it's. Since the Russo Ukrainian war is a new type war, many militaries around the world will have to retool. And if we make the best drones and anti drones, then actually this will be export stuff.
- [16:10]
B
And you don't worry about the French right or the German right coming into power or coming into a coalition and hindering some of that spending. I imagine the trade offs in terms of spending on social welfare and other demands will become acute and politically difficult.
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A
They are already because apart from Germany and Poland, everybody else is maxed out on their credit card. But I think for the European populace, just like for American populists, migration is a more important issue.
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B
Have you seen a shift that you think will be sustained on the politics of migration and the.
- [16:45]
A
We pat ourselves on the back for winning our election in 23 by outflanking the populists on the right. So we won on the back of scandals to do with issuing visas. And I've personally mopped up those bad procedures and corrupt officials. And we've done a whole range of things to reduce both illegal and legal migration. So I've doubled the price of Polish visas. We've made it impossible to get a fake visa as a fake student. You know, we now verify whether people have the certificates to study in their own country, whether they can speak the languages of the. Of the tuition that they were supposed to, to take up. And we have beefed up consular services in those countries that have readmission treaties with us, for example, so that we can return people whose contracts have ended. We've also done something that nobody else in Europe dared to do. We've passed a law which gives the government the right for 90 days at any one time to refuse asylum claims on our side of the border, just not even allow people to apply. You can still apply in the Polish consulate or in Minsk or Moscow, but not having crossed the border illegally. And we completed our big and beautiful fence on the border. 440 kilometers, a physical barrier, reinforced underground sensors, overground camera, a technical road. And it's now 98% effective. It cost us half a billion euros plus extra units of border guards, of riot police and the army. And so we are now down to about 80 crossings per day. It's still too many. And we've literally just the last 10 days had our border crossing with Belarus closed altogether to signal that this has to go down further. So we are contributing to our bit of the Schengen external perimeter, because in Europe people value the fact that you can travel internally without passports, but quite naturally think that that system can only be held if the outside border is protected.
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B
And I imagine your advice to small illiberal parties elsewhere would be to focus on the migration piece is the key to it.
- [19:39]
A
Look, I'm of the view that you need to find the right language to talk about migration, but also you need to hear what people are saying. In the United States, in Britain, in France, in Germany, in Italy and in Poland, they all tell us the same thing. Fix migration or we will hire people who will do it for you. So it's either us doing it in a humane way or populists doing it while dehumanizing. Controlling migration is not racism. Countries have the right to decide what kind of migrants they need, at what volume, for how long, or how to make them into productive, loyal citizens. If you get it right, it can be mutually beneficial. If you get it wrong, you get fascism.
- [20:34]
B
We'll be back after a short break.
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C
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- [22:12]
B
And now back to my conversation with Radek Sikorsky. I want to focus a bit more on the Ukraine piece of this. You were recently there I believe a couple weeks ago. You've been there many times, I think we've in fact taken the train into Kyiv together from Poland. What's your sense of the state of the battlefield and Ukraine's prospects at this moment?
- [22:31]
A
I was impressed by Ukraine's confidence. You know, from afar, when you see these dramatic pictures of drones going into dwellings, into these blocks of flats, it looks like the blitz in London. But actually Kyiv is a huge city, three and a half million. And when a drone kills one or two people, it doesn't really affect the rest of the city. So I think the Russians made a psychological error. Just like the Germans bombing London, it actually consolidates Ukrainian around the defense of their country. They seem to think that these Pyrrhic victories and incremental gains by Putin are not actually bringing Russia closer to victory, but rather drain Russia's resources and give them more time to find new ways of striking Russia. When we were there two weeks ago, the incremental gains in Donbas had just stopped. In fact, since then, Ukrainians have gone locally on counteroffensive. And the campaign to hit Russian refineries seems to be effective. They seem to have already hit up to a half of Russian refineries. Of course, you and I don't know how permanent the damage is, but there are reports of petrol queues all over Russia. These are legitimate military targets. The Ukrainians seem to have new ways of hitting them with long range drones, possibly ballistic missiles. And so this battle of who will first run out of resources seems to be more equal than we had perhaps anticipated.
- [24:38]
B
And if you project that forward, what's a plausible kind of theory of victory for Ukraine over the next year, what.
- [24:45]
A
Impressed me also in my conversations with Ukrainian leadership and I saw the president, defense minister, foreign minister and so on, head of the military intelligence, they didn't buy this Western chatter about a ceasefire being around the corner and a peace operation needing to be sure. I mean, they think it's important to do contingency planning, but they are actually planning for the war with a three year horizon, which I think is the prudent thing to do.
- [25:16]
B
Do you worry about Trump getting frustrated with the lack of a ceasefire and turning on Ukraine again?
- [25:22]
A
Well, I hope he gets frustrated that his friend Vladimir is mocking him. And then I hope President Trump does what he promised already in August of this year, namely new sanctions on Russia. Because when you make a threat, when you draw a red line, as we learned under some previous administrations, you should come through.
- [25:52]
B
How important is American support to the war effort at this point, Trump has not withdrawn as much support as well.
- [25:59]
A
As, you know, the Ukrainians are getting the fag end of the Biden era supplemental, but it's drying up. All the support for the Ukrainian state to function. Pensions being paid, salaries being paid, traffic lights working, that comes from Europe. And actually the majority of weapons deliveries also now come from Europe. And in addition, we've just created a fund for paying for American weapons to deliver to Ukraine. And we are just now, finally, I hope, finding a way of using frozen Russian assets to fund the war for the next three years. And if we do that, I think sooner or later Putin will have to conclude that he can't win this. American help is still important. Starlinks for which Poland pays and for which I hope Mr. Musk doesn't again switch off at crucial moments. Plus US targeting data are useful.
- [27:17]
B
Are you more assured that Musk will in fact comply with your wishes now? Thanks.
- [27:25]
A
I had a lively exchange with Mr. Musk on Twitter. He. He appeared to threaten that if he switched off Starlink's, the front would collapse. And I took him up on that. I'm told that that Tweet cost him 1.5 billion euros because the Italian government was considering going over to Starlink in its global communications. And they looked at the fact that Mr. Musk did stop some terminals working during the Ukrainian counteroffensive, and they seem to have started looking for more reliable suppliers. We are paying for 25,000 terminals, and since we're paying, we demand reliable service. Michael Kirk.
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B
So you went head to head with Musk on his own, his own terrain, his own platform, and you feel pretty good about how you came out?
- [28:24]
A
Well, I didn't respond to him initially. He said, be quiet, little human. Starlinks are irreplaceable. I waited three months until he got chucked out from the White House, and I responded, see? Great man. Politics is harder than you thought.
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B
Fair enough, I could add, but I.
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A
Wish you luck on your trip to Mars.
- [28:50]
B
The other central piece of the Ukraine debate in the last month or so has been the question of security guarantees. And there's this sense that a strong European security guarantee is somehow key to getting us to a ceasefire.
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A
That discussion I find peculiar because I think it is based on an unusual definition of security guarantee. A security guarantee is I pledge that if you get attacked, I will join you in your war if we want. Those kind of security guarantees, assurances, if you like. Ukraine already has and they have not been acted upon. And if you want to make it for Ukraine, now Then it's confusing because the idea seems to be that we will give them security guarantees when there is peace. So if next time Russia attacks, then ho, ho, ho, we will join the war. Well, if you want to join the war against Russia, you can do it now. But I don't see any takers, any volunteers. So actually what people mean is not security guarantees, but such beefing up of Ukrainian capacities that Russia wouldn't dare do it again.
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B
A Ukrainian deterrent, an indigenous Ukrainian deterrent, and the notion of putting European troops, whether Polish or otherwise.
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A
We won't do it for historical reasons. There's a lot of history between us. We were the same country for 400 years. It would be like the British going to Ireland. But we would do everything else to make such a, such an operation successful. As you saw with the drones, we need to protect the hub. We need to protect the communication lines which are under espionage and assault. And I can imagine us doing an operation in the air from Polish airfields. But also remember that Ukraine has 110 brigades under arms and Western Europe could probably put up five or six. So this could help, but only when fighting has ceased. And what I find odd about this discussion is that to my mind, the hypothetical creation of a peacekeeping operation is not as urgent as sustaining Ukraine in the fight today.
- [31:27]
B
What about a no fly zone? What about that? Either in the near term or as part of a reassurance.
- [31:34]
A
When I flagged the idea a year ago, it was controversial. Today, 59 of Polish people would be in favor of us shooting down drones and unmanned missiles over Ukraine because you see, when they fly over Poland, then even the defense operation can cause damage. And if as a bonus of doing that, we were able to protect the westernmost Ukrainian airport and Ukraine could restart flights, it would be materially useful to the function of the Ukrainian state.
- [32:15]
B
And you don't imagine that would risk uncontrollable escalation with Russia?
- [32:20]
A
Well, the Russians have no business sending these drones or cruise missiles into Ukraine. If one of them gets shot down, no Russian gets harmed. I mean, we can pick up the wreckage and send it back to Russia if they want their property.
- [32:38]
B
That's the thoughtful of you. Yeah. I'm curious for your view of the, the Chinese role here. I think in the US Discussion there's a lot of focus on the Sino Russian relationship and Chinese support for not exactly the Russian war effort, but for the Russian war economy. You again, in that piece you wrote in Foreign Affairs a couple of years ago, were very focused on the risk that the US Would shift its focus to the Indo Pacific. And Europe would not be ready to step up on its own, especially in the event of a crisis in Taiwan. But just focusing on the China dimension of Ukraine, how do you see that? And Poland has a slightly, I think, different view of it than many other Europeans.
- [33:19]
A
I think the war suits China just fine. They are making a lot of money selling all the dual use stuff and other stuff to Russia. So they've taken over Russia's market for automobiles. They've taken over at the West's expense, Russia's market for domestic white goods. Russians apparently now use Chinese apps and smartphones. And Russia has become much more dependent on China. So China have got themselves a vassal, not just on the cheap while making money. What's not to like? And China probably doesn't like, wouldn't like the precedent of Putin losing power as a result of a lost war because of the rivalry with the United States. Pretty understandable. Russia doesn't. China doesn't want to be left alone. And since I wrote that piece for you, there was this fantasy in Washington about reversed Kissinger, which I never took very seriously, because this is the notion.
- [34:35]
B
That we would make Putin an ally against Xi Jinping.
- [34:39]
A
Yeah. I mean, if you were Putin, would you trust the west when you have a reliable partner in Beijing who has backed you in your war and who is a fellow authoritarian? Kissinger, Nixon in China happened because ofbecause Russia and China were at war with each other. I mean, a shooting war on the Usuri River. And even then it took years of patient diplomacy and building up trust. So I think this is partly unrealistic and partly maybe an excuse for a great economic reset with Russia just for the money. But there are precedents there. I think if we allowed Putin to conquer Ukraine and Russia got away with it, then I think Chinese leadership would understandably conclude that it's okay to recover what you regard as a renegade province.
- [35:40]
B
When you talk to your Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, about Ukraine, do you get anything constructive out of him? What are those conversations like?
- [35:47]
A
Forcefully that they are in favor of ceasefire, immediate ceasefire. But China is the only country that could force the end of this war if they told the Russians, stop this war, or we close the border, we stop trading with you. The Russians would have to obey that, I think, but they're not willing to do that.
- [36:08]
B
Seems like it would be an amazing boon to the Chinese relationship with the rest of Europe, that that would be a strategic opportunity.
- [36:15]
A
It would place China in the position that the United States placed itself when Teddy Roosevelt forced the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo Japanese War. It was that that launched the United States from a hemispheric power to a global power.
- [36:38]
B
The other dimension of these dynamics that have gotten some attention in recent weeks is what you would call the Global south dimension. People in many cases don't like that term, but you know what I mean. There's been lots of complaints about hypocrisy, about different responses to Ukraine in Gaza. There's been, you know, China has seen an opening here. Do you see that as an important part of these dynamics?
- [37:02]
A
I think Ukraine has more or less won the information war in the west and probably lost it in the Global South. I find receptive ears in the Global south when, as a poll, I tell them, look, colonialism wasn't just white on black, it was also white on white. The Irish were colonized in the 19th century, we Poles were also colonized in the 19th century, and the Ukrainians were colonized. And so think of it as a colonial war. And then you can see gears shifting and perhaps greater sympathy. But the United States is in the process of dissolving its outreach apparatus.
- [37:49]
B
I was surprised to learn this week that Poland had recognized a Palestinian state since 1988.
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A
I believe, yes.
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B
Do you, as you watch the push for recognition and moves by some of your European counterparts, do you see that as meaningful, as potentially constructive?
- [38:04]
A
Well, in practice, it will mean that there will be, just like there is in Poland, a probably accredited Palestinian ambassador. I mean, nice for that guy and for the pride of the Palestinian people. But in practice, it's Hamas that has destroyed the Peace Party and the Asser Arafat before them. My view is that if the Palestinians for the last 50 years had gone the way of Mahatma Gandhi rather than of Arab machismo, they would have got their state already. But unfortunately, they've gone the path of Jewish uprisings against the Romans, and we know how those ended.
- [38:56]
B
Before we close, I'm hoping to end on somewhat more personal note. You've, in a really striking way, kind of lived the story of the post Cold War. You saw the fall of communism and the kind of hopes of that post Cold War period. You were foreign minister and defense minister in an earlier era. And here you are back in this job at a much grimmer time when many of the hopes and expectations that were pretty prevalent in the 1990s have at least been delayed, if not permanently ended. As you've watched this transition and make sense of this moment, so you've lived that period. How do you understand where we Are how do you understand how we got here?
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A
Well, we liked the end of history, you know, when liberal democracy was supposed to have won the argument because we hugely benefited from it. We are now preparing for rougher times. Poland is a remarkable story of in a generation and a half from rags to riches. And I just feel very grateful for having been able to participate in it. As the west, we made some terrible mistakes. You know, foreign policy is a series of predictions and bets with the future. And if you get your bets wrong, you lose. So, you know, we bet that if we admit China into wto, China would liberalize their economy and maybe more. We lost that bet. China became an economic superpower without liberalizing. We bet that if we treat Russia generously, she will become a normal nation state, constructive, and live in peace with others. We lost that. We bet that if that Arab spring is like 1989, that there would be these more civilized form of, you know, more pluralist, more democratic forms of government in the Arab Spring. We lost that. And we bet that, you know, if we invade Afghanistan, Iraq, those countries will become beacons for their regions.
- [41:15]
B
What bet do you think we're making now?
- [41:17]
A
Well, the US Is betting a bet that if you withdraw from the world, you'll be safer and you'll rebuild your economy. Economy. And I wonder whether that's true.
- [41:29]
B
Do you worry about the United States at this point?
- [41:31]
A
You know, we've certainly had a transatlantic bargain, which we feel worked for both sides. The bargain was, as we said, you protect us from Russia and we defer to you on security issues and we buy American, at least American arms. And if that bargain is off, it'll be off altogether.
- [41:53]
B
I will look forward to someday having you pick up that question and evaluate that bet in our pages. But for now, thank you so much for doing this in a busy week and a busy time.
- [42:01]
A
Thanks.
- [42:08]
B
Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show@foreign affairs.com the Foreign affairs interview is produced by Kanish Tharoor, Molly McEnany, Ben Metzner, Caroline Wilcox and Ashley Wood, with audio help from Todd Yeager. Our theme music was written and performed by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Arena Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you like what you've heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning.
- [42:43]
A
In, Sam.