A (6:00)

That's fascinating. So it's almost an American version of hide and buy it or a certain kind of detente. Keep things stable with China while we deal with other problems. Is that a fair way of characterizing it?

B (6:10)

Yeah, I'm not sure it was a plan. I think that's just how it's evolving because of the situation around the world. And look, I think that is the benefit of China as well because Xi Jinping has got a difficult situation with his economy. It's overheated. They got, still have a terrible real estate bubble. He's, he's got the, the problem of not having, well, well, he's got rare earths and processing capability. He needs to bring most of them in from overseas. He needs to bring most of his oil and gas in from overseas, from Russia and through the, the Gulf and the streets of Malacca. So there the, you know, I, I think both leaders are looking at this situation and, and don't want a conflagration with, with each other at this point.

A (6:55)

On the, the rare earths point. Listening to senior members in the second Trump administration, I'm not sure I've heard this from the President himself, but listening to Marco Rubio and others, they seemed almost taken aback by the ferocity and effectiveness of the Chinese response, the Chinese weaponization of, of the rare supply chain and other related products. Do you think it was a mistake to go that aggressively on tariffs before shoring up our own vulnerabilities on rare earths?

B (7:22)

Well, look, we need a new supply chain for our earth again on both the extraction and the processing side. There's no question about that, Dan. And I think we all knew it. The thing about the minerals is it's a relatively small portion of the trade between the countries. It's a billion dollars. And yet it's so important to the defense industry and the automotive industry that, you know, it gives the Chinese a lot of leverage. I think the, the Chinese are using a 100 year old technology very well to leverage it against our cutting edge, you know, chip strategy. But at the same time they may have overplayed their hand. And unless those export controls were, were designed to buy them a window to take Taiwan or to invade the Philippines, I think they've basically created a situation where there is going to be a competitor. And the idea that, I think the Chinese have always, in the past, whenever we've started to close in, the Japanese or others have started to close in on the rare earth issue. They've undercut the new companies and those new suppliers and dumped product and basically maintain their monopoly through a combination of dumping and, and then it's overpricing when they, when they eliminate their competitor. I think now governments realize, Australia, Japan, US at a minimum realize that, you know, there will probably have to be some tax incentives, some subsidies and we're going to have to have a rare industry. And I hate, as a Republican, I hate to talk about industrial policy or state subsidized industries, but we may have to have that for the rares given the Chinese have weaponized in a way to try and maintain the monopoly. So by the way, I think it's going to happen. I think it's happened within three years and I think the Chinese are going to lose a lot of their bargaining power they had. So they played the card. They played it very ruthlessly and effectively. But they may have created a backlash more than they needed to.

A (9:23)

I want to linger on your fascinating point about the new approach to China and the reasons for it. It does seem like a pretty major change from Trump's first administration. You wrote a piece for Foreign affairs in your last months as National Security adviser where you wrote, and I'm quoting you here, the Trump administration has spoken with candor and shown the spotlight of transparency on the CCP's true character and will continue to do so. And then you again in 2024, writing in your piece called the Return of Peace Through Strength on Trump's foreign policy. You criticized Biden for saying we're not looking to hurt China and you called for seeing China as an adversary. I mean, is that still the fundamental reality of this relationship? In your view, even if we need to put a pause on some of the tensions.

B (10:04)

Yeah, look, I think that's a fair characterization. I don't think the CCP has changed its stripes. I mean, it's still a Marxist, Leninist, totalitarian power. The way they're treating Christians, the way they're doing exit bans, especially on dual citizens of the US And China, the way they're still abusing the Uyghurs, the, the vast territorial claims that they have, not just on Taiwan, but against the Russians, against the, the Indians and the, and other, other countries in the region. I mean, none of that has changed fundamentally. But I, I think, you know, we're in a situation where, you know, we've got a very big foreign policy plate and we have to rebuild the military. We have to, you know, get ourselves in a position of independence with rare earths. We need to restore energy dominance for the US and, you know, I think all those things militate for a pause and maybe the, the hardline approach. Although, again, I don't think that the actual export controls and customs controls and sanctions that have changed fundamentally since, since we left office, since Biden left office and in the current Trump administration, everything's still pretty much in place. It's just that the, the tariffs that we put in to deter the fentanyl trade and the tariffs that we put in place to protect American manufacturing have come down as a result of the truce, and they're supplying some riders. So I think it's more of a trade dispute now. Again, I don't think the fundamentals of the relationship have changed dramatically.

A (11:36)

You note that one of the key American tools there is export controls on advanced technology, especially chips and chip making equipment and other parts of that supply chain. Your former deputy, Matt Pottinger, one of the, one of the key architects of the hardline approach on China, has been fairly critical of the decision to give China access to a greater number of chips or more advanced chips. Do you see that as a major concession in the trade war? That was a big part, of course, of the interaction between Trump and Xi a couple of weeks ago.

B (12:06)

Listen, so I still talk with Matt regularly, and I'm a big fan of his, and he's a super smart guy on China, no question about it. And he played a key role in the first administration, both as my deputy and as the President's deputy National Security advisor. But I don't think there was anyone who's more hawkish on China than I was. I brought Matt in as deputy and hired him and got that policy going. But we have had a little divergence on this issue. And the divergence that we've had is on this issue of legacy chips because the chip making is moving so fast. And when I was in office, I mean four years ago, five years ago, five nanometer chips were the cutting edge. We're now down to two nanometer and the companies are talking about one and a half nanometer chips and some people are talking about using atoms and putting circuit boards on atoms. It's just beyond my comprehension having a political science degree and not a real science degree. So it's moving very quickly. And so things that were cutting edge a few years ago we are now starting to call commodity or legacy chips. Now it's important for, for us to have and for our industry and for our defense manufacturing folks to have access to those chips. And certainly the Chinese want them, but as long as they're not the cutting edge chips. Look, my feeling is I'm going to be very careful how to say this. I'd rather have US chips and Chinese military platforms than Chinese chips in American military platforms. And I'll just leave it at that. I'd much rather have the tech stack around the world for AI and for machine learning and for quantum being made with American chips and American design chips than Chinese chips. When I came into office, you remember this, Dan, Huawei was about to take over the 5G industry in the whole world they have 100% monopoly. Even in America we're told, well, we'll have to, we'll encrypt around the Chinese. Yeah, they'll get all the 5G communications, they'll store it all, have access to every communication in the world, but we'll encrypt around it. We'll just let them have that. And we said no. And everyone said that was a fool's errand and we wouldn't be able to stop it. We started with Italy and Australia and Japan and the UK came along and pretty soon the free world for the most part had a non Huawei 5G network or platforms. But the funny thing is, Dan, was I didn't have an American product to sell. I was basically an unpaid spokesman for Nokia and Ericsson selling or you know, Scandinavian cell phones because. And towers because we didn't have the product. I mean Microsoft was working on a product and made some other American companies working on a product, but we weren't involved. So I was basically out, you know, flogging the Europeans goods. We need to make sure that we don't find ourselves in that situation again. So I've had a little divergence with Matt. We don't fundamentally disagree on policy, but I think on the issue of what constitutes a legacy chip and what constitutes a cutting edge chip, we're probably a little farther apart.

A (15:19)

Matt, of course, wrote a controversial piece in our pages with Mike Gallagher, former congressman from Wisconsin, Republican, arguing that it should be American policy to weaken and eventually change the nature of government in China. Share that as an ultimate objective for our strategy, even if the short term looks a little different.

B (15:37)

Yeah, you're taking me down memory lane. So Mike Gallagher is a great American. He was another good friend and someone who I fundamentally agree on the issues with him like I do with Matt. But, you know, look, as a baseline, you know, I, I grew up in the Reagan years, Dan, a little older than you, and you know, we live in individual freedom and, you know, kind of free, minimum free markets and, and the, the striving for liberty among people. And so I'm always inside on the side of those seeking freedom and liberty who don't want the secret police knocking on the doors or burning the church down or arresting their pastors or, you know, imprisoning people because of their, their, their race or their religion. I mean, that and all that's happening in China. So, you know, I, I personally. China would be a much better place if they had freedom and the world would be. Can you imagine how amazing the world would be right now if China was free and, and it had free people and weren't involved in trying to take over their neighbors and, and spent their time doing good and instead of, you know, trying to build up a military to defeat the United States and we. Not just a golden age for America, but a gold nature of the world. So it would be great if, great if China was free. But look, I was also in the Bush administration and I, I saw, I spent years of my life working on world law in Afghanistan, and it's very tough to change regime. And I think we have to be modest as Americans about our ability to change regimes. We should always be the shining city on the hill. We should always be the beacon of liberty and support democracy and personal freedom. But I think we've also got to be very modest in how we exercise our power to change regimes. And so as much as I'd like to see a free China, I don't think, you know, America can afford or either militarily or economically to, you know, get into that sort of a contest with China about trying to change up.

A (17:31)

The CCP with Apologies for bouncing around geographically. I want to jump to Venezuela because you mentioned regime change. The administration has, of course, started these strikes on boats which are alleged to be drug smuggling boats in both the Caribbean and Pacific. It's made noises about striking targets in Venezuela and called for President Maduro to go. How do you understand the strategy in Venezuela? What do you think they're up to?

B (17:57)

Well, so this is a continuation of part of what we did in the first term. So when Covid hit Dan, one of the first things that I took away from it on the national security side is we had very good intel and Bill Barr and I went to the briefing room and disclosed it and said what we're going to do. We had very good intel that the cartels were going to try and stockpile cocaine and fentanyl in America and take advantage of COVID to do so and then sell it for the next several years, having moved it all up when they thought our defenses were down. And so against Mark Esper's wishes, because he didn't think the military should be involved in that. We got the Navy, we got the codes.

A (18:38)

Secretary of Defense in the latter part.

B (18:39)

Of the first term. Correct. And he took a very narrow view of what the military should do and certainly didn't get along well with the president, unfortunately. But Bill and Pompeo and the president, we all agreed that we got to stop this cocaine and fentanyl coming into America. So we had some huge drug busts, massive stopping them. And Bill Barr wanted to go even further. Bill Barr wanted to start using hellfires to take out processing plants in Mexico and in Colombia and Venezuela. We didn't get there at the time, but it was certainly, certainly something that was considered. You know, I was concerned about the sovereignty issue of Mexico because, you know, even though the relationship can be sometimes difficult with the Mexicans, you know, we're blessed to have them as a partner and ally. We don't want to, you know, turn the Mexican people against us. You know, we've got a history of doing that, and we want to keep them on site and encourage them to bring their. The strength of their government to bear on the cartels. Very hard to do for the Mexicans. It's a life or death situation for the political leaders because you can be killed very easily by the cartels and takes a lot of courage to fight them, but we need to bolster them. But the idea of really rationing up the war against cartels to stop the 50,000 deaths a year that we're experiencing from Fentanyl and from cocaine and other drugs. It was something that was important then and it's important now. I think that's driven some of the China talks as well. I don't think the Chinese took it as seriously as President Trump and Vice President J.D. vance, who's very engaged in this issue given his background and what he's seen growing up in Appalachia, the Chinese fentanyl precursors coming into Mexico. I think one of the reasons the Chinese may have agree to take a harder line on that is they saw us taking out the drug boats. They don't want to see us taking out Chinese, you know, ships and aircraft. I, I, I really do think this is about the drugs and not about the Maduro regime. But the, unfortunately the Maduro regime has gotten so embedded with the drug traffickers that there's maybe, it's maybe a distinction without a difference. And I think he's playing a very dangerous game. I, I, I don't think the President went into office. I mean, Rick, Rick, re al went down and had a couple of good meetings with the Venezuelans, brought some hostages home. Things seem to be going pretty well. So I don't think it's just an ideological rift between Gran and Rubio. I think that there was an effort to bring Venezuela on side when Maduro sided with the cartels and refused to take the trend immigrants back and give sanctuary to the cartels. I think that he really lost. President Trump and certainly Marco Rubio, he why they lost from the start. So I think he's put himself in a dangerous situation. I still don't think the policies regime change, but I think the President's going to do whatever it takes to stop the drug imports. And if that means Maduro has to go, it means he has to go. But I truly believe this is driven by the drug situation.

A (21:51)

Do you think it would be a mistake to turn this into a regime change operation?

B (21:54)

You know, it may become a regime change operation as a result of taking out the drug cartels. I mean, so this is, I think, and I think we have to wait and see what's going to happen happen. I mean, frankly, look, I, I don't advise foreign governments and I don't advise Maduro, but if I was Maduro, the guy's got like a billion dollars supposedly in cash stacked up, you know. Yeah, he had to pull a gani and put him on a helicopter and get the heck out of Dodge with his cash and go live a nice life in Cuba or, you know, I'm sure we'd make some arrangements for him to go to Qatar or to Abu Dhabi or somewhere to he could take his money with him and get out and love Machado and the Venezuelan people have their country back and get rid of, bring the US in to help, help them get rid of the cartels and that. I, I think it's kind of like self deportation, right? It's, it's kind of self regime change. I think Maduro would be much better off at this point, he and his family and his friends leaving for Moscow. Beijing maybe cut a deal to go to one of the Gulf shakedoms, but it's time for him to leave Venezuela.

A (22:56)

I think going back to the China strategy conversation, one of the places where those of us in the foreign policy establishment, or the Blob as it's sometimes called, get most exercised is around the question of alliances. It's of course been a centerpiece of American global strategy for almost 80 years. It's I think pretty widely seen as a massive advantage that the US has over its competitors that we have this enormous network of alliances. Trump has taken a different approach. I think it's fair to say that has as you point out in your recent piece for Foreign affairs, yielded fairly substantial gains in defense spending, first and foremost among NATO allies, but also increasingly in East Asia and elsewhere. There is a kind of price to that. Over time there'll be kind of less deference on the part of allies when it comes to American interests. And you do hear from lots of officials and allies, governments, a kind of sense of abandonment by the US A sense that they won't trust us in the same way. How do you weigh the upside of more defense spending against some of those concerns about reliability? And I think what's kind of hard to deny that there is a change in a sense of kind of American commitment both among European and Asian allies over the last several months.

B (24:05)

Well, I, I agree with you on the strength of our alliance system and the, the advantage it gives America. I mean we have countries and nations as allies that, that truly share our values that, that they're not rent rented ally like Pakistan or North Korea. The Chinese I don't think have an ally. Right. I mean they, they, they rent them when they need them. They going with belts and roads and suborn a corrupt leader in Africa to fill up his bank account in Geneva. And, and those, those aren't real alliances. I mean our, when you look at our alliances with in the Asia Pacific region, for example, Indo Pacific, our alliance with Japan, our, our alliance with Australia, Tata and the Philippines. I mean these are longstanding true alliances between democracies and, and countries that have had, you know, many, many shared experiences together in war and peace. And so that, that, that's fundamentally different as you point out and the blob would point out the only thing Ben Rose a blob. But those alliances are important, but an alliance has to be a two way street. And so when, when I talk about NATO and I wrote about this before I, before I was in the Trump administration, when I was a former, you know, Walker Romney guy and Bush guy who had no plans to go into the Trump administration, not, not that I didn't want to, but didn't they be asked. I wasn't part of his campaign and he was generous enough to ask me to come on board first as hostage envoy and his national security advisor and now on the plan. But I wrote about this one before joining this campaign that or before joining the administration after the campaign that every presidential candidate, I went back and looked at the campaign like the little, little campaign brochures and pamphlets from every candidate, Republican and Democratic candidate going back 1972, Nixon MC on through Carter Ford and you know, Reagan, Carter and you know, every candidate on both sides had part of the platform, part of the pamphlets that Europe had to pay their fair share, Republican and Democrat. It was a bipartisan concern. And Europe never paid their fair share. No, no president ever got them to pay their fair share. And Trump took office in the defense even before he started rattling the cages. The defense for many countries started to go up because they realized there was a new sheriff in town. This president who believed in America first was going to require the alliance to be a two way street. I mean I've compared, I think NATO is the most effective alliance in the history of the world. The only alliance that may have been better or compared was the Roman Latian alliance, right. When Rome did the fighting. But the Latin people, the Italian people supplied with soldiers. But again even that was a two way street, right? Rome buried the brunt of the, the strategy and the, the cost of the wars. But the Latin supply supplied the Latin soldiers of the people and everyone eventually we're doing citizenship in Rome. And it all worked out pretty well. But, but it's always a two way street in the lines. And I've been told the, the, it was a massive one way street. I mean the, you know, the Europeans couldn't defend themselves to any extent. The, the British army which was kind of the pride of Europe was down to 55,000 soldiers. Like, like, you know, much smaller, a third of the size of the US Marine Corps or fourth of the size of the US Marine Corps. I mean, we were bearing the entire burden. So I, I think President Trump is coming to revitalize the alliances and granted there's going to be pushback for that because look, yeah, it's, it's great not have to spend any on defense and have, you know, Uncle Sam take the burden for you. But the world's changed with the rise of China, with the, the Indo Pacific commitments that we have with, with the rise of Russia and our, our debt. I mean we're 50 trillion dollar debt or whatever it is. And we, we just can't, the American taxpayer can no longer bear the burden, the entire burden of the, of defending the free world. And I used to tell my German counterparts, I talked to a teacher in Tennessee who's working as a school teacher and then goes on the weekends the Amazon Fulfillment house and works at an Amazon plant for two days a week or two and a half days a week. And she doesn't get a day off the whole year. And you've got a German burger taking the month of August off and driving a station where you're down to the south of France again as a four day weekend work week the rest of the week or the rest of the year. Now look, I'm all for the Germans doing that. That's great. And it's great for the German workers. But it's not fair that some school teacher in Tennessee is bearing the burden of that. That just fundamentally isn't right.

A (28:46)

We'll be back after a short break.

C (28:52)

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A (30:27)

And now back to my conversation with Robert o'. Brien. One of this is not an American alliance, but it's an incredibly important relationship and relationship that I think many people would like to see grow into an alliance in the coming years. Your successors, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, wrote a piece advocating that in foreign affairs a few months ago. That's the relation with India. This has been, I think, one of the most perplexing developments. One of the surprising developments, frankly, in the Trump to foreign policy is the rift with Prime Minister Modi. They had a great relationship last time around. Strategically, it seems to make a lot of sense. How do you explain the India rift, other than this kind of strange series of events and effective diplomacy by Pakistan and strong ego, strong personalities on both sides? What's driving this?

B (31:10)

Well, the first thing, I like Prime Minister Modi a lot. I spent a lot of time with him. He's one of the foreign leaders that as national security advisor I spent time with both in America and in India and also in summits in Bangkok and other places. He's a great guy, very smart, very tough guy. And I wrote a piece last year when President Trump was first coming into office in which I said, look, there's a lot of Trump and Modi. Modi's an India first guy. He's a Indian nationalist. He wants to bring manufacturing to India. And he's got the chance of a lifetime. He's got the chance of a generation. I've told this to Dr. Jashenkar Minister and Ajit Duvall, who's his national security advisor, who a similar background to me. He was the hostage negotiator for hijacked planes back in the days of hijacking and got a lot of people freed before he became national Security advisor. So he and I have a lot in common. And look, I, I love those guys. We had a great trip to India. We had a great, several great visits by Modi to, to America. We had the Howdy Modi event down in Houston at the, the basketball stadium which was packed for President Trump and President Modi. And look, the two of them get along very well. They used to, you know, compare who had the most Twitter followers and the most Facebook fans and all that sort of thing. And, and I think Modi has a once in a generation chance with companies de risking and deleveraging China. You know, you've got companies like Apple and Facebook and Google moving to India, manufacturing moving to India. This, this is an opportunity that India has that is truly once in a lifetime for, for any leader. And so I think Modi wants to take advantage of that. Look, and if it's this, the alliance makes sense, that the partnership makes sense between the US and India, that we're far away from each other, we've got no claims with each other's territories, we've got no, no rivalry. And yet we've got China, you know, butting up against both countries and, and in India's case, you know, brutally killing Indian soldiers on the border. I mean, you know, abusing their bodies and mutilating them and doing terrible things that, throwing them to crevasses. I mean, just, just a terrible bully in the, in the region. So when that happened in, we were, we were there for the Indians and a very quiet way and supply them with the down jackets they needed and the down sleeping bags so their troops would stay in the mountains over winter. We supply them with intelligence and so the, the relationship makes a lot of sense now. What the heck happened, you know, to that relationship which it was genuinely friendly between Trump and Modi? I mean, you know, what, what happened? I, I, I think two things happened. I think the Indians have traditionally been very well, one, they're very good negotiators. I mean people don't realize how tough the, the Indians are when it comes to they, they negotiate over everything and they're very stubborn and they're very, they're very effective. They're, they're smart, they're mot motivated and they're tough negotiators on, on trade especially the, the Indians are probably the most in, in the whole world or the, the slowest negotiators. I mean they held up G rounds, they held up WTO rounds. There's one country holding up the entire world and just dragging out negotiations. And so when they showed up after Liberation Day to get their deal and I, I think there, there was and is a deal in the, in the making. You know, I, I think that they added a year timeline which they thought was fast and, and they clearly didn't understand that we were talking about days, not a year. So that, that got everyone started off on a very bad foot on the trade negotiations. And then look, I think the President did something prior to Alaska that again, this is Just, I haven't talked to President Trump about this. This is my take on it. It's very easy to sanction China for buying Russian oil. When you take a country that we're as close to as India and say, look, you're buying more. You're not just buying Russian oil to survive like the Hungarians, but you're buying Russian oil and refining it and selling it to third parties. You can't do that, and we're going to sanction you. Basically. Going into the summit in Alaska, President Trump did two big things. He deployed the National Guard on the streets of Washington, D.C. and he shot massive sanctions at a close strategic partner. And I think both those were messages to Putin, kind of like Reagan firing the air travel controllers that, look, we're serious about this. We're willing to take heat from our friend to, to show our displeasure with what's going on in Ukraine. Not just from China or not just from Iran or North Korea, we're willing to hit India. I think the Indians were taken aback by what happened. I think it was the dual nature of the, the Putin summit and also the, their stance in the trade negotiations. I think, you know, I'm not claiming any credit for this, but I put a tweet out saying, look, I tweeted a picture of Modi and Trump. I said, look, these guys are great friends, and the trade negotiators are getting back on track with the trade negotiations.

A (36:22)

You mentioned President Trump's meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. This has been part of the rather dramatic saga of the administration's approach to Ukraine, at least as it looks from the outside, over the course of the last 10 months. How do you understand the strategy? What is Trump's plan for ending the war as you see it?

B (36:40)

Well, look, I think he laid out the strategy pretty clearly early on, and I think he thought it would be resolved very quickly. And to be honest, I thought that the war would be resolved very quickly both before and after the election. President Trump's election. I thought this was going to be one of the easier things to resolve, to use a term from the Bush administration, I misunderstimated Vladimir Putin and his, you know, commitment to the war. When you, when you look at what President Trump basically offered him from the outset, and Trump was criticized for this, you know, heavily. We'll. We'll give you. Does your recognition of Crimea, fine. Crimea is Russian. It has been forever. It got moved over to Ukraine and administrative action under cruise ship in the Soviet Union, but, you know, Russia. And for me, I've Always been, you know, associated. I'll give you a recognition of that. And this is my understanding for public statements, right, we'll do a de facto recognition of the Donbass, Luhansk and dynasty control. Yeah, at least the February 14th lines. And, you know, that, that will freeze that kind of like a North Korea situation. Well, maybe we will not allow Ukraine to join NATO, which you're concerned about, but we'll put NATO peacekeeping troops in. We'll put a Polish armored brigade or a French or British airway night, put serious security forces in Ukraine. But, but not call it NATO and not, not, not call it an Article 5 situation. And, and then we'll, you know, rebuild Ukraine. And for Russia, I think the offer was, the additional incentive was we'll remove all sanctions and we'll, you can return the world economy, stop being Rhodesia and, you know, you can be part of the world economy again. I mean, so it was, it was a very generous package for the Russians. You know, I thought, and I thought it'd be very difficult for Vladimir Putin to reject it. Yet he did, and he continues to war. He can. You know, what I'm saying now is that he'll fight to the last Dagestania, the last Chechen to take Ukraine back because you see very few, you know, Russian kids from St. Petersburg, Moscow being drafted or being conscripted into the fight, but he's, you know, putting the, the Dagestanis and the Chechens and the, the other Russian minorities to the meat grinder in Ukraine. He's using North Korean troops and not, not very good effect. But he, he's showing no inclination to end the war. So, I mean, well, what I, what I've come out and said, and Larry Kudlow's joined me in this. President Trump's economic adviser in the first term put massive sanctions on the Russians. We've, we've started, but we need to sanction the Russian Federation Central Bank. I mean, we need to go, I'm calling full road to use of sanctions. I mean, we use sanctions, but we don't use them effectively. We don't use them. We use them like Seratum, with sanctioned individuals and entities and banks and that sort of thing. We need to cut the Russians out of the world economy. When they take him off the SWIFT system, kick him out, maybe kick him out of the itu, kick him off the mobile phone system. You know, stop letting the Russian people travel freely to the west or Turkey or Cyprus. This war and the killing and the, the, the, the attacks on the Ukrainian civilians has Put them outside of the civilized world. We need to treat them that way economically and culturally, and that, that might put enough pressure on Putin to, you know, to, to end the war when as oligarchs can't go use their yachts and the in Turkey, they can't go to Dubai for vacation. And Russian oil sales drop from 10 million barrels a day to 7 million. That takes the cream of the, that's keeping the society afloat and then making the war easy for them. That takes it away. So, look, we're never going to stop all Russian oil sales. I'm not that naive. It's a fungible commodity. But we can limit them and take the ability of Putin to ameliorate the economic crisis for his people and northern Russia, take that away from them and make the war costly.

A (40:50)

I think it's time you say that you misunderstimated Putin. Do you think Trump misunderstimated Putin as well? He seemed to have the expectation that Putin would take this deal when he didn't. And I would note that both of your predecessors as National Security Advisor in Trump's first term were quite struck and spoke out publicly about what HR McMaster called Putin's hold on Trump. And John Bolton said something like, Putin thinks he can play Trump like a fiddle. So there does to be a pattern of this over both this term and the previous one.

B (41:17)

Yeah, well, here's the thing. It's just disagreements for Bolton to say that. I mean, Trump didn't have a personal relationship with Putin. He was cordial with him. They had, like, one meeting in Finland. They've had a couple of phone calls. I was on the phone calls with Trump and Putin. There's no love between Trump and Putin. This is, he's cordial. He gets along with them as he should. I mean, Putin's got 2,500, you know, tactical notes pointed at Europe and 1300, 1250 tactical strategic notes and the delivery systems pointed at the United States. You know, you want to have a relationship that you can, you can talk to a foreign leader, even if you're an adversary. So trying to conflate the ability to talk with a foreign leader and you got some sort of sympathy for their, their cause is, is just ridiculous. And so I, I just don't think that's the case at all. And look, I like hr. He's a smart guy. And, you know, I, I think HR is taking a different tack than, than Bolton did. But, but look, I, I was with Trump for two years, three years, if you count my Guys, I, I didn't see any of that. And you know, we had a lot of deals with the Russians. I dealt with Patricia all the time. That's just nonsense. But going back to the surprise, I don't think it's, he has a whole Putin as a whole on Trump. I think that like a lot of smart people, including a lot of people who wanted the Ukrainians to make no concessions to the Russians, thought that Putin would take the deal that Trump offered because it was a good deal. I mean, it. But, you know, Putin obviously has motivations beyond, you know, getting a good deal. I mean, he wants to, yeah, he obviously wants to reconstitute at least Ukraine into the Russian empire. And what is it? What does he get from that? He gets land, of course, but he also gets demographics, which he's, you know, the, Russia's facing a major, you know, demographic demography problem. The, the problem Putin has is I, I don't think anyone's explained to him the Ukrainians don't want anything to do with the Russians. I mean, maybe, maybe the 10 of Russian speakers who are over in Crimea and Donbass, you know, and the last time I was in Crimea was in 2014 for the, the post maiden observing the election as a US observer, no one, no one in Western Ukraine wanted anything to do with the Russians. And the problem I've got with Zelensky is that like, like at that time, a lot of Ukrainians were saying, let's just give the dynasty hands back to Russia and get them out of our polity and not have them elect Russian speakers to our parliament. And all the problems, all their corruption was coming from the East. So, but, but the Western Ukrainians, which is, you know, 90 of the population, they're looking to Prague and Warsaw and, and you know, Vienna is, is their home, not, not to Moscow. They don't have any affinity with them. And I, I don't think that anyone's explained to Putin that these, these are not like some, these guys aren't a Russian minority. They want to be reunited Mother Russia and are being held up by a couple of fascists, which, the idea that these people want to re, somehow could be coerced into reuniting with Russia or want to want Putin to be a leader is just ridiculous. And so I don't know if Putin's either just purposely blind to it or people aren't explaining to him the situation, but he needs to change his war aims pretty quickly because eventually Europe and the west are going to get fed up with it and See, very bad for Russia. And he's gonna be nothing more than a vassal state to Beijing and Xi Jinping.

A (44:50)

Do you anticipate that President Trump will follow that path and escalate military support to Ukraine as well as economic and other kinds of pressure on Russia?

B (45:00)

Look, I think there's definitely an escalation of economic pressure. He put in a little love tap in the Alaska engagement when he overflowed with F35s and the B2. I mean, that was not to honor you. And so, yeah, everyone saw smiles about that. Honoring Putin. That was showing Putin that that's what just took out the Iranian in Operation Midnight Hammer. That just took out the Iranian facilities of Fargo and the Tans and your presidential bunker out. And, you know, Moscow could be taken over, taken out before you knew it. So I, like, I, I, but again, that military escalation is always dangerous to the Russians. I'm always concerned about that because they do have, you know, potentially in, in the world. And you always have to be cognizant and careful that when you're at the highest levels of, of government and people may, may take it, take it lightly, but I've never met one of my former colleagues who was National Security advisor and had the backup nuclear codes in the safe in your office and had the briefings. Who's ever taken that anything other than with the utmost seriousness? And I, I think presidents are the same way. I think, you know, Biden did, I think Trump did, and Trump does. And so we've got to be careful with that. But I, and careful with going up the escalation ladder. You know, it's one thing for the Ukrainians and Russians to fight. It's another thing for Americans and Russians to fight. So we've got to be careful there. But on the, on the economic front, the Russia isn't entitled to be part of the Swiss system. They're not particularly part of the world banking system. And so, you know, I, I think those are the levers that could put a lot of pressure on Putin to settle this war.

A (46:38)

You mentioned the strikes on Iran in June. So let me take us to Middle east before we close. There were 12 days of Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear and military facilities. The United States joined for a couple of days. The Iranian program is not entirely gone away. The IAEA reports that most of the highly enriched uranium is still in Iran, still has not been destroyed, still accessible. Do you see a return to negotiations with Iran and return to some kind of deal, or is there some other path to really eradicating this problem for good.

B (47:09)

We thought the Iranians would come to the table in the first term with the maximum pressure campaign. And frankly, I thought they'd come to the table after the strikes. I think the Israelis wanted a few more days of strikes to maybe ensure the regime was eliminated. I think that's, again, I don't think President Trump, like President Bush and like other presidents at the end of the first Gulf War with Iraq, with Iraq. And I think there's a natural reticence to, to get into a policy regime change around the world. And I think Trump shares that reticence as well. But at the same time, he said, and he said this in the first term, he said in the second term, we're not going to allow the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon. And these are the same people that have threatened to kill him and produce very slick videos of, they had the assassination of President Trump on the golf course. So, I mean, the Iranians have no love loss for Trump. But the thing about President Trump is he's so willing to put the country first that even if it's to his personal benefit to take out the Iranian regime, if it's better for America to negotiate and have them actually give up their nuclear weapons voluntarily, kind of the way South Africa did or Libya did, then, you know, he, he's willing to do that. So I, so I think the Iranians have an open partner for peace if they want to give up their weapons. I, I think unfortunately their mentality is a little more like Kim Jong Un who said he would but didn't. And I, I think that's the problem, or Hamas giving up weapons in Gaza. I think the Iranians are just very reticent. They believe that that nuclear power gives them some staying power as a regime. And so it's about regime survival and they're not going to give up their nicks. But they could negotiate and they could get a negotiation. They could get a settlement with President Trump if they wanted to. I'm convinced of that, even though it wouldn't be necessarily in Trump's personal interest.

A (49:08)

Gaza is, of course, another theater where there is a degree of ambiguity about where things stand and where Trump is going. There's of course a ceasefire that is holding somewhat tenuously right now, thanks at least in part to pressure from President Trump on Netanyahu last month. How do you see Trump pushing this from here? This 20 point plan talks about a fairly traditional approach, as I read it, to a two state solution and a peace process. But where do you imagine this Going.

B (49:35)

Well, look, I think the first thing that happened that President Trump did that was so incredibly useful and saved lives, and he's all about saving lives, is getting the house as his home. The 20 Israeli hostages. I'm actually surprised that the Hamas gobbies are the ultimate leverage for Hamas to stay in power. And you know, God bless President Trump and Marco Rubio and Steve Litkoff and Adam Bowler and J.D. vance, all the whole team that, that got that deal done. I've been in touch with the families for, since October 7th. Even getting the remains on Dan is important. I mean, not, not just because it's important for the Jewish religion down to Barry, but just for the, the family to have closure and to allow their loved ones to rest in peace in Israel. And if they're idf, like Hayter golden who came home and I've been working on hater Golden's case since I was hostage envoy for many years to get him home and buried in Israeli cemetery, military cemetery in Jerusalem or on like great, you know, holiday, they can go to their, their son's grave and you know, Leah and her husband can go put flowers in their son's grave. That's really important. So, so if, if nothing else comes with the Gaza ceasefire and the peace seal and the hostage and the remains being brought back to Israel, it's still a success. But look, yeah, there's the old saying that Palestinians never miss an opportunity, to miss an opportunity. I, I think they've got the opportunity here to, to actually build a new Gaza and to have a two state solution and improve the future of their people. But they have to give their weapons, they have to go up to terrorism. And it's just been so ingrained for, for so many years, starting with Arafat and PLA and Pillow and PLA has been a little bit better, but with Hamas, I mean, Hezbollah, the, you know, Palestinian jihad with Abu Nadal, I mean, it's been such a history of terrorism for so many years in Lebanon and all the Levant and the Mediterranean. For them to let go of that and to embrace peace and a new future is going to be tough. But if they do, I have no doubt the Palestinian people can be very successful and very prosperous.

A (51:49)

Do you see Trump as committed to the creation of a Palestinian state? There'd be a lot in it for him and his desire for a Nobel Peace Prize and also his desire to help broker a regional normalization with especially a relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia. How does he see a Palestinian state?

B (52:07)

Look, I think he'd be open to it. He certainly to get the Abraham Accords done. At the time we were doing the final negotiations, Israel was talking about annexing our extended sovereignty over parts of the West Bank. The UAE said if that happens, we're out. You know, we had to deliver a very tough message to Bibi Netanyahu. And you know, the night before he met with Trump at about 2 in the morning, I gave him that message of our house. And he, Bibi Netanyahu did the right thing and decided not to be the Israeli leader who was going to walk away for peace. And yeah, every Palestinian leader has walked away from peace. No Israeli leader ever has. And so even though the Israelis right now are pretty tough on the two state solution, that's probably the ultimately the only way to get to some end point. So I think Trump would be amenable to that. And there have to be obviously security guarantees with Israel. They're not going to have Palestine state that has an army or that has an air force or navy or even a very big paramilitary force, police force. There have to be a lot of guarantees. But I think ultimately that that's the way this thing. If it's going to be resolved and if the Palestinians do want to have peace at some point, they've got to say yes. They've been saying no since 1948 when the UN gave them half in Palestine.

A (53:25)

Will Trump put pressure on Netanyahu to that end, do you think?

B (53:28)

I think that the Palestinians were willing to accept a two state solution and recognize Israel and guarantee Israeli security, yes. But again, after October 7th and the massacres that took place, and I was a kibbutz Miraz and the music festival site after the massacres, you can't ask the Israelis to forget what happened. So there really has to be a new Palestinian attitude and real security guarantees for Israel, not just fake ones. Not putting some Belgian peacekeepers on the border of Gaza and say that everything's okay.

A (54:03)

One of the most prophetic elements, I would say in the piece you wrote in 2024 called the Return of peace through strength, was your call to resume testing of nuclear weapons. And Trump picked up this call recently ahead of his meeting with Xi Jinping. He called for testing on an equal basis with, with Russia and China. What do you understand that to mean? What do you think he has in mind?

B (54:22)

Well, look, the first thing is this is President Trump's idea was on my idea. And you know, a lot, a lot of people, including on Fox, have gone to my article where I said this could happen and said it's my Idea, President Trump's idea 100%. But you know, it's something we've talked about from time to time. Look, what we saw at the end in the first administration is the Russians cheating on every nuclear treaty, whether it was the INF treaty, the open skies new start. I mean the, the, they, they just blatantly abusing them. And the, the Chinese were s. Kind of under the Russian cover, not bound by any of the treaties to, to build up a, a massive nuclear force, both conventional or both short range and long range, tactical and strategic. So we had it, we had it in that and then what we saw with Trump coming into power. And again, this is not how you deal with President Trump, at least in my view, already strong American leader, President Reagan, President Bush. When the Chinese roll out the, the new ICBM at their military parade in Beijing for the anniversary of the second World War, which by the way the, the nationals won and, and we helped them and the Russians and Communists who, the Communists basically set out World War II and did very little against the Japanese. You know, for them to take credit with this massive, massive military parade with Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin as a VIP said that was a little ridiculous. But when they rolled out the massive new icbm, that was a shell across the bell. When President Putin, you know, days before President Trump made the announcement on testing, said the Poseidon is now IOP in its operation phase of the, the Russian version of iop. We can, we can send the nuclear propelled torpedo that has nuclear warhead on it, double nuke and create a tsunami and take out the naval base of Norfolk or take out New York City. You know that, that's pretty provocative. And so I, you were, you were going to draw a response from President Trump. And he responded by saying look, we have to start testing nukes again. And you know, we all, we've all talked about it, hopefully it didn't have to go there. But look what we can allow our adversaries to rattle the nuclear saber and put themselves in a position to blackmail us Nuclear on the nuclear front. I think more important than testing is, is what President Trump is doing with the modernizing of the triad. And we're going to probably build 100 plus B21s huge. We're modernizing the, the old Minutemen and with this Sentinel program with North Rugal also has and did a good job on that and we're going to start cranking out Columbia class submarines. So I think that that sends a message adversaries even, even more than testing.

A (57:16)

The nuclear wonk crowd has responded to calls for a return to testing nuclear weapons with the argument that first of all we don't really need to, it doesn't gain us that much. And second, that returning to that kind of testing would advantage Russia and China more than it would us. Do you see that as wrong?

B (57:34)

Look, President Trump, as I said, we'll do the testing and we don't have the money appropriate for live testing yet from Congress. The Secretary of Energy has pointed that out. So there's a lot of testing. Whether you can do sort of explain a bomb in a, you know, drill hole in Nevada, we may get to the point where we have to do that to show that, that our, the, the physical material still works and it's still effective. And, and we, so we may get there but I think right now is, you know, testing delivery systems, doing computer testing, you know, testing. We, we, we can test a lot of the system without actually exploding nuke so. Well, I, I think we're going to do a lot of that. But at some point the President has made it clear if these guys keep rattling the nuclear saber and threatening us with nuclear weapons, we're going to have to go back to how it was and spin our own centrifuges and, and do it doing live tests. Russia and China may do the same. But look, I, I trust an American built missile bomber, submarine SLBM summary launch ballistic missile, hypersonic missile. It's got a nuclear warhead from us. I trust our delivery system to work better and our warhead to work better than anything Chinese or Russian. That's not to say that the Russians are Chinese are damn smart. They've got space programs, they know what they're doing. But I trust our kid more.

A (59:03)

Let me end on a couple of especially nerdy questions. One is about national security process. I mean when I look back at the process you were running as National Security Advisor and Nat pontiture as Deputy National Security Advisor, it looks fairly typical, more or less typical at least compared to where we are now. Now there seems to be nothing resembling the traditional national security making process. How do you see Trump 2 policy making and how does it differ from one which surely has implications for policy if that process is so different?

B (59:34)

Well, what I said the first day I was National Security advisors that I was going to reimplement the Brent Server so Scroft model which the Obama, you know, NSC did not really use. I mean they were, they had a mini State Department and many Pentagon, a mini Energy Department and many Commerce Department, treasury all, all over the eob, I mean, they had so many people there, probably a fire hazard to get out of the building because they, they wanted all the power consolidated. The White House, I, I didn't think that was the way to run a national security process and I don't think. And it didn't empower the agencies and the departments of the federal government which are supposed to. The Pentagon should be running war policy and defense policy. The State Department should be running diplomacy and the Commerce Department should be running commerce policy and export controls. And the treasury should be doing treasury stuff. We shouldn't try and recreate all that over at the White House and run it from 69 in Pennsylvania. And so my goal is to downsize the nfc, to streamline it, but then to have a very effective policy process where we had, you know, regular deputy, regular deputy committee meetings every week, principal committee meetings every week. And if you didn't, if you were the principal and you weren't on travel or the funeral or in the hospital, you were going to be there, you were g, you weren't going to, you couldn't send a deputy or a undersecretary and have your department have a, send the policy. And so we, we, we got, we empowered the agencies and said you're going to run the policy, the departments, but you got to participate. You can't, can't just have one half and not the other half. So if you want a real, you know, Scroft model, you got to participate. And I think Matt and I did that in the first couple of meetings when the Pentagon sent over some colonel, you know, to, to a deputies committee meeting. And Matt told them to sit on, on the, the back chairs of the, the situation Room and they could listen and take notes, but more to speak. And I think they got the message pretty quickly how it was going to work and so we had a good process. Look, I think what's changed is that the President has had a full first term and so this isn't a new president who doesn't know where the levers of power are. President Trump is very, very aware of where all his levers are. He had a well formulated policy that he was going to implement. And you know, Marco Rubio, I spent time with Marco one on one, you know, talking about the role of the NSA and the sex state. And he, he's an incredibly effective guy and he's, he's trying to be far more impressive in both roles than I thought he would be. I didn't, you know, I thought very highly of him. I was very friendly with him as chairman of the intel community but you never know how someone was going to set in the sex state job but then to add the NSA job on top of it, I mean that they're both more than full time positions and Marco's holding up well so far. So he's, and the only person who's done that in the past is Henry Kissinger. And so he's got big shoes to fill but he, right now he's filling them. And so I, I, and I, I think the process is working better than people think. It's probably not as public but they're vacuuming deputies, committees, vacuum PCCs and PCs and, and principal community, principal means. And so I, I, I think it's with you know, Andy Baker and the other folks who are there. I think it's, it's, it's more normal than it may look because of the dual handed of Marco and Marco spends half and half his day at Foggy Bottom and have his 16, 1600 Pennsylvania and it's, he's not sleeping the rest of the time he's iron force one with the President. So he, he's working very hard but look he's, he's well respected, he's got a good relationship with J.D. vance and, and the other CA. I think it's working better than people thought it would.

A (63:22)

You mentioned Trump's understanding the levers of power. That seems like the really striking change in both domestic and foreign policy from the first term. What do you think Trump learned? What is his sense of the power of the presidency that he didn't know last time around?

B (63:35)

Well, look, I think he understands that the American people elected him and the bureaucracy and you can call the deep state or the, the, you know, the permanent, permanent government or permanent Washington, they weren't elected to anything. And if they're going to stay on in the federal government, they got to implement the policies of the President of the United States. Which again they may not like his rhetoric but his policies are really pretty. When you people don't understand this Trump, he's one of our least ideological presidents. I mean closing the southern border would not have been controversial even under Obama. Rebuilding the military would not have been controversial under, you know, any Republican president. Getting our allies to pay their fair share was a, as I, I talked about before was a bipartisan goal. So, so things that he's doing that, that people don't want to implement, you know, he, he, he was elected by the American people to do that. He's, he's confident in that mandate and he's going to push it through. And a lot of the robot got played with us in the first term and that the, the outright resistance just isn't going to be tolerated now. And so look, if people don't want to implement the role, you know, the, the job of the, the policy, the president's lines are legal and lawful, then they can take off, they can go work at a think tank.

A (64:57)

You and your 2024 piece mocked the tendency of people in the foreign policy world to talk about the rules based on international order or the liberal international order. Trump certainly does not seem to be a fan of those concepts or that kind of language. Does he have a vision of the international system that you think all this is leading to? Does he think about order in those terms?

B (65:17)

So Dan, that's a good question. I think what President Trump thinks about is democracy and sovereignty. And so he goes to the UN and says you're all great nations and should pursue your own interests. I mean, he doesn't believe nations should be invading each other. He doesn't believe Russia should be invading Ukraine or China should be invading Taiwan or India or you know, Venezuela should be threatening Guyana for that matter. I mean, I, I think he really believes in sovereignty and then that the nation shouldn't interfere with the affairs of their neighbors. And I, I think that's the bedrock. And by the way, that's the whole Australian order. I mean that's been the, that, that's really the foundation of the, the west, it's the foundation of the, the UN and you know, going back to treaty with west fl. So it's not controversial, it's just, it's, it's, it's not Davos, it's not the eu, it's not global governance, it's not Paris Peace accord or Paris Climate accords. And so I think that's a little kind of controversial. I, I think the idea, this rules based international order, which is based on, you know, Article 5 of the, the UN Charters, Article 50, the enforcement power, you don't invade your neighbor, you know, that, that, that, that should be the foundation of the, the international order. It's not climate change treaties or you know, trans rights in sports, in the Olympics. I mean it's, or Bravo. Setting the agenda for the world. I think the idea is that every country has their own national interest and they're going to pursue them and they should do it pacifically and not use force as the ultimate lever.

A (66:55)

And you would include the US not invading Canada on that list.

B (66:58)

We're not going to invade Canada. All right. There'd be too many Democrat voters if we took over Canada. If Alberta wants to come on board, that's great. But, well, the Canadians are good friends and then, look, think about Canada. I can't think of Canada and not thinking about the the Canadians rescue our diplomats in 1980 in Tehran. So we're cousin or brother that we have spats with, but we're going to get along from Canada. All right.

A (67:27)

Well, there's a lot more we can talk about in the world, but let's end on that note of affection for the Canadians. Ambassador Brian, thank you so much for doing this and for your recent pieces. It's been fascinating and we will look forward to more in the future.

B (67:40)

Thanks, Tess. It's an honor to be with you.

A (67:48)

Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show@foreign affairs.com this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Ben Metzner and Kanish Tharoor. Our audio engineer is Todd Yeager. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Arina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show where 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.