Transcript
A (0:00)
Dan.
B (0:00)
I'm Dan Kurtzphelin, and this is the Foreign affairs interview.
A (0:06)
In the end, an architecture that allows the United States to have the freedom of maneuver it needs to operate, to be treated fairly. All of those things, I think, require a sense of global involvement and staying involved.
B (0:20)
Donald Trump's first national security strategy, released at the end of 2017, announced the start of a new era for American foreign policy, one that put great power competition at its center and focused especially on intensifying rivalry with China. For all the dissension and turbulence in American politics since then, that framework for American foreign policy has proved remarkably durable. Nadia Shadlo was deputy National Security Advisor in Trump's first term. She was the primary author of the National Security Strategy, and it was Shadlo who helped crystallize the return of great power competition as the organizing principle of American strategy. But what it means now for America's greatest challenges, and whether it still accurately describes Donald Trump's view of the world, is an entirely different question. Shadlo joined me to talk about the second term Trump approach in Ukraine, in Asia, in global trade and more, and laid out a vision of what a successful Trump foreign policy might look like. Nadia, thank you so much for joining me. I've been looking forward to this conversation.
A (1:26)
Me, too, Daniel, thank you so much for having me.
B (1:29)
You, of course, served as Deputy National Security Advisor during the first Trump administration in 2017 and 2018. In that capacity, you helped drive and really crystallize what may be the closest thing to a paradigm shift in US Foreign policy in the last couple of decades. The return of great power competition as the organizing principle of US strategy, as it was put in the 2017 National Security Strategy, which you were the principal author of. How would you summarize that new paradigm that you saw take hold in the first Trump administration? And to what extent has it really persisted across administrations and parties? The Biden administration had a very different view of how you wage a great power competition. But in the basic outlines as you sketch them in 2017, there does seem to be a lot of continuity across administrations.
A (2:15)
Yeah, I mean, I think at that time in 2017, there were essentially, you know, sort of three to five main themes that came together in that strategy. One was that the world was a competitive place. Two was that China was our main strategic competitor and that it was okay to call China out and to describe China as such. A third theme was that power mattered in the international system and that we were not all necessarily converging toward of the happy end state that had been the assumption behind globalization. And fourth, the US could be a catalyst. Right. That we weren't going to be able to necessarily do everything, nor should we do everything, but we could catalyze change. I think those were four themes that come out through that strategy, but they were themes that existed when President Trump was first campaigning for office. They were themes that were in all of his speeches from the time he got into the White House through the next year. A lot of times people try to sort of create daylight. And I always say, well, go back to his speeches, look at those speeches, and you'll see that there's actually not much daylight between the national Security strategy that emerged and what he was saying and doing during that first year in the White House.
