Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. One of the most difficult and demanding jobs in any White House is that of National Security Advisor. It comes with a long list of responsibilities. You're a counselor to the president and someone who coordinates with policymakers and intelligence officials and governments all over the world. It's as close to a twenty four to seven job as you can find, and it's one that's been held by Condelliza Rice, Henry Kissinger and Jake Sullivan.
You know one thing I've learned over four years is national Security advisor is that the most persistent question that one faces in a job like that is okay, then what?
There is no downtime. You're always thinking about what will happen next. During Sullivan's tenure, war erupted in the Middle East and the conflict escalated in Ukraine. There was chaos as the US withdrew his forces from Afghanistan. Since January, Sullivan has had a chance to gather his thoughts and
to catch his breath. He's fielded questions about decisions he made, and in interviews like this one on the Rockman Review podcast from The Financial Times, He's been asked about the president he worked for and that presidential debate in June of twenty twenty four, which led to Joe Biden stepping aside.
So the debate, I mean it was bad. Did it come as a shock too, Yeah, it came as a shock to everybody. I mean it was shocking, and it was shocking to me. I thought it was something I had not seen before that kind of How did its response. I don't have a good explanation. I mean, I think some part of it has to be the stakes of that performance, and you know how people get in their own heads, but that's just armchair. Yeah, you know, I
don't know. I watched that and I thought that is something I have not seen from Joe Biden before, nor had other people.
In an interview at the Aspen Security for Him, Jake Sullivan and I talked about regrets he has and about his time in the Biden white House. Sullivan also shared his perspective on today's foreign policy and national security challenges, which he is now watching play out from the sidelines
as a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. And on that note, before we talked policy, I asked him something i'd wondered about what happens when you leave a job that is so all consuming, like national security advisor, what happens when you're done well?
In the most immediate sense, I had a security detail, big secret service detail. They were with me twenty four to seven, and at twelve noon on January twentieth of this year, they dropped me off at a bar and walked away, I mean shook my hand and I said thank you to them, and then they walked away and I went to the bar and joined friend and hadn't
early drink. That's the short answer. The longer answer that it's obviously a huge shift from the point of view of adrenaline stress intensity, and it takes them getting used to.
I'm David Gera and this is the big tape from Bloomberg News Today. On the show, my conversation with former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. At a time when there is so much conflict around the world, when long standing alliances are under strain and President Trump is waging a trade war, I asked former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan what concerns he has about the US national security apparatus he helped oversee.
I would say I have two major concerns. One of them is immediate to some of the decisions taken by this administration in the last few months, one of which is more long standing. The immediate one is that I I really do believe there has been an basically all out assault on the professionalism the patriotism of incredible public
servants at multiple different agencies. And I think DOGE drove a lot of that, but it's continued beyond DOGE, attacking people who gave their career at USAIDE or the State Department or other federal agencies. And I think this is
something deeply corrosive. It is going to reduce the extent to which people are inspired to get into public service, and I think that will come at both an immediate cost to us because of all the talent capacity we've lost and all the institutional memory and know how we've lost, but I think it will come as a longer term
challenge as well. And then the more long standing thing is that I fundamentally agree with the critique that says we cannot move fast enough, big enough when it comes to solving some of the key challenges that we face. Fixing our defense industrial base, solving our reliance on rare earth minerals from China, other things like that. Where do I feel we've made progress in the Biden administration, Absolutely more than we'd seen before. Do I feel we solve
the problem? No, these are generational problems, but we don't have a generation to solve them. We got to solve them much more rapidly.
Let me take those in kind and start with your first concern, and that is the level of expertise that's left government. Has it trickled down from Washington to the rest of this country? Do they see the damage that you say has been done?
You know, I think it's really hard to ask somebody who is working a job, taking care of their family, thinking about their aging parents, trying to make ends meet, to care deeply about a reduction in force at the State Department. And I would never profess to do that. But I do believe that there are going to be practical, real world manifestations of the hollowing out of government capacity. And you know, I think we'll see those when crisis hits.
I think we'll see those when it comes to people being able to rely on government to deliver the services that are required. And then I also think that there's something else going on here which isn't quite so transactional. Am I getting exactly what I want from government? That's a little bit more about a sense of pride and purpose in our country. If you run down and denigrate public servants constantly, you say they're you know, in it
for the wrong reasons, they're criminals in certain cases. I think you undermine a basic sense of cohesion and common purpose in our country that I think has all kinds of lingering effects that aren't about a particular agency not having a particular level of expertise. It's that more ineffable quality that I think is eroding, the kind of deep sense of American can do and the sense that you know or out for a larger purpose that really will leave a mark.
I think a lot of people saw the videos from a few days ago of career employees leaving the State Department for the last time to the applause of their colleagues. When you look at the cuts that have been made both to funding and to staff, are you optimistic that that can be reversed in a future administration or is the damage going to be wherever?
Look, you can rebuild these muscles, but it takes longer to rebuild them than it takes to destroy them. And that's true in our lives, like if you lay off exercising for a while, it just takes you that much longer to get back in shape, and I think that's going to be true with government as well. And I want to be clear, I'm not arguing there is no scope for streamlining or personnel reform or programmatic reform or
budget savings. I'm not arguing that at all. What I'm arguing is something more fundamental, which is the method by which this has been approached has been, in my view, basically to borrow a tailor swift line. It's been casually cruel in the name of being honest. They say, oh, we're just doing what's right, and we're telling it like
it is. No, there's a cruelty to this that I think is totally unnecessary, and I think it also means it's not rigorous, targeted, focused on genuine reform, genuine streamlining. It's using a bludgeon a sledgehammer, where I believe that much more precise tools are required to improve the function of government.
Let's talk about a few hotspots and you spend a lot of time shuttling back and forth between Washington and the Middle East, certainly after October seventh, and I'm curious how reconfigured the Middle East is today than before that attack that Hamas launched. How different does the Middle East look today than it did?
It's considerably different, So first when we left office, and even more so now, Iran is at its weakest point since nineteen seventy nine. It's lost its main proxies, it's lost its main client stat a SAD, lost its conventional military deterrent, and now its nuclear program has been set back but not completely eliminated, and we are going to have to continue to solve for that. So that remains a constant, the need for a deal to solve a
Iran's nuclear program. Then you look at the possibilities that exist in both Lebanon and Syria, but their attendant with really significant risks as well. And so to me, the most important thing that can happen at this point is to get an end to the war in Gaza and then to get a credible pathway to a Palestinian state, because without a credible pathway to a pals Danian state, I do not see a future for normalization between Israel
and Saudi Arabia and other of its Arab neighbors. And I do not see a way of building on the promise of a new Middle East. I think we may just get into further cycles of instability and challenge. And what we've seen, for example, just in the last few days in Syria is a reminder that this is not just going to be some smooth pathway to a better
future for Syria or for other countries. It's going to require hard decisions, and it's going to require connecting military actions today to a strategic endgame tomorrow that is sustainable and just. And so far I haven't seen from this Israeli government a willingness to do that to.
Israel has attacked Syria in recent days. Do you share this administration's optimism about the path forward for Syria.
I believe that it is right to give this new government in Syria a chance, And in fact, the Asad regime fell in the closing weeks of the Biden administration, and almost immediately we sent a senior official to go meet with El Shara and the new leader of Syria. We began the process of lifting some sanctions, and we set a pathway which then President Trump took a huge step forward on a quite significant step in basically saying We're going to normalize relations and lift all the sanctions.
And I applauded that at the time, and I think that that is the right thing. Does that mean I share optimism as an irishman, I'm going to reserve anything remotely resentling optimism here. What I would say is, there is an opportunity, and we should do our best to test and pursue that opportunity. But we also should be strong in pushing back against actions, including actions by Israel, that could potentially take this fragile opportunity and make it more difficult to consummate.
The last time you spoke with Bloomberg was in January, and you said, of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, there could be a deal maybe in a matter of weeks. Here we are many months since then. What's it going to take to get one, as you see it?
Well, first of all, there was a deal within a matter of weeks after I made that comment. There was a deal consummated in the closing days of the Biden administration. It was a ceasefire. The ceasefire consisted of six weeks of an end to all of the military action on both sides, the return of many hostages, and a surge
in humanitarian assistants. And it also included a key provision that said, during those six weeks, Israel and Hamas should begin a series negotiation through third parties to turn that temporary ceasefire into a permanent ceasefire. That's what we handed
off to the Trump administration. That's what they inherited on day one, a ceasefire in place for six weeks, with a provision not only that they should use the six weeks to turn it into a permanent ceasefire, but also that the six weeks could be extended indefinitely if they were making progress. After forty two days, instead of working diligently towards a permanent ceasefire, Israel went back to the conflict.
And so here we sit today in July, after many more months, and the answer is quite straightforward, which it is time to bring an end to this war, to bring the hostages home, to get humanitarian assistance in and to work towards a two state solution. And I believe that the Trump administration, having taken the action, they took in. Iran should use all of their capacity and clout to
try to bring that about. But my hope is, and I can't say it's my expectation because I don't know what will happen, But my hope is that in the coming period a ceasefire will get in place and it will stick.
How did you navigate the thorniness of Israeli domestic politics during all the negotiations that you were party too and trying to encourage. So we've seen this very comprehensive piece in the New York Times laying out the timetable from October seventh to a day when there were deals on the table, when they weren't, when they were scuttled. And an overarching theme of that is that Prime Minister Ntya, who's domestic concerns play the sizeable role in how all
of this has evolved. Is it going to continue to play that bigger role going forward? Do you think? Well?
It has over the course of the past several months. It had did under President Biden, it has under President Trump. That's a fixed variable. Prime Minister Ntya, who is going to focus on his political position, That's what he's done,
That's what we will continue to do. But I think I have to say that even though I never found prime Minister in Nyah who particularly the enthusiastic about doing a deal, was not enthusiastic about doing a deal either, And there were many months where Israel had actually said yes to a basic framework where Hamas really didn't want to negotiate seriously. Now, do I think that that means it's all Hamas's fault and not the prime minister's And
that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is you had, on the one hand, a prime minister who was not particularly keen on closing a deal. But on the other hand, you really didn't have a party in Hamas that was serious about closing a deal. And that was also a factor we had to contend with in the Biden administration.
I remember speaking with Secretary State Anthony Blincoln days before he left office, and it was clear to me in that conversation how much diplomacy surrounding the war in Gaza was weighing on him. The moral stakes of that, chiefly is that something that you think a lot about. How difficult is it to, on the one hand, undergo the diplomacy the work of it, and then have the other compliment to that, the moral aspect of that weighing on you, of course.
I mean, you wouldn't be human if the tragedy of October seventh and it's aftermath and the war between Israel and Hamas, if that didn't weigh on you. And it weighs on me every day. It keeps me up at night. I mean, it's just an god awful tragedy. The suffering, the death of innocence, the holding of hostages, the struggle of civilians. Yes, it's policymaking at the end of the day, is about human beings occupying these jobs, not automatons. And
it's about the human stakes and consequences of things. And no word is that more true than in the war on Gaza. And of course I wish that things had turned out differently so that so many civilians, innocent people hadn't died, so that we could have gotten even more humanitarian assistance in while we were there, although I worked every day and so did Tony and others to get more humanitarian assistance in and to stave off of famine.
And I think about many other decisions too that have human mistakes and consequences, and you'd be an unthinking and unfeeling person if you didn't ask yourself, what could I have done? Could I have made this decision differently or
that decision differently? But one thing I will say is that when we handed off to the Trump administration, through all of the challenges and difficulties that we confronted over a four year period of great turbulence, I felt that we handed off a circumstance in which our alliances were stronger, our adversaries were weaker, the engines of our national power had been enhanced, and we were no longer at warm. And so I felt we handed off a country that
was in good shape. And for that I am immensely proud. Even as I continue to turn over in my mind, I had many of these difficult issues, among them very much centrally among them the issue of Gaza.
My conversation with former National security advisor Jake Sullivan continues after the break. During a wide ranging conversation with former National security advisor Jake Sullivan, we talked about many global conflicts, including the ongoing war in Ukraine. I'm curious as you look at President Putin and has approached this conflict from the beginning through today. What do you see as the mechanism, the thing that's going to get him to withdraw step
back from the conflict. He seems unmoved by loss of life. The economic situation in Russia has been worsening. What's going to make a difference do you think in the status of that conflict.
I think fundamentally Putin needs to be convinced that time is not on his side, and in order to convince him of that, he needs to be convinced that the United States and its allies are going to stand behind and continue to increase support for Ukraine and continue to increase pressure on Russia. So grind on, I wouldn't even
say grind on. What I would say is display clearly and emphatically that Ukraine can rely on us for the necessary material to hold their ground and can rely on us to turn up the dial, particularly when it comes to oil sanctions on Russia. And what was more difficult two years ago because of a very tight global oil market, is now much more straightforward. The supply is there and therefore the opportunity is there to take Russian barrels off the market, and in doing so, reduce the revenues to
Putin's war machine. And if President Trump took that step, alongside really doubling down on the provision of military assistance to Ukraine, I think you can begin to make Putinc that the long term trajectory of this conflict is not going in his favor, and that would set the conditions for a more favorable negotiation for Ukraine. Now, a big question is will President Trump see that through? And that is a question we will have to watch play out here over the course in the next few weeks.
So let me posit that over the last few weeks we've seen a different President Trump in the context of NATO. He went to the NATO summit and was talking differently about the alliance than he has in the past. It seems like he's talking differently about his relationship with President Putin as well. Do you detect a similar change, and if so, do you expect that to stay?
Definitely? I don't know if it will stay. I hope so. But it's absolutely President Trump singing a different tune on both NATO and on the Russia Ukraine war, and in both cases I think he has moved in the right direction. Interestingly, in both cases, I think he's moved in the direction of the American people. The American people support NATO and the American people support Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression, and they do so on a bipartisan basis. So my
hope is that it will continue. And when he takes steps like that, I will stand up and say that's a good thing. Let's keep going. But the question is, does putin think President Trump's going to stick with this. President Trump needs to prove to him that he will. And I think one key step he could take to do that would be to tighten these oil sanctions that he's threatened. He should actually put them on.
I want to ask you about that more generally, because of course, the Bide administration, like the Obama administration, indeed like the first Trump administration, did, rely on sanctions as a tool of national security. There are some who question the efficacy of them, see means by which countries can get around them. Now that you're out of government, how do you think about the role that they play, the utility of that tool in an administration's toolbox.
It's not a silver bullet. You're not going to solve an international crisis or compel an adversary to particular behavior merely through the use of sanctions. But it is one in a range of tools that we can bring to bear in defense of our interests and our values and to try to shape the behavior of our competitors and adversaries. And thinking about how to apply it in the most effective and coordinated way with allies and partners is a critical part of state craft and I think will remain so.
And by the way, I should just say on the Russian economy, it's definitely true that the Russian economy has been more resilient, that sanctions alone have not stopped them in their tracks. I acknowledge that it is also true that the Russian economy is facing particular headwinds and pressures right now as we speak that I think are going to have to weigh on Putin's decision making, and in that respect you can see how it's a tool that can be of some considerable use.
I mentioned that NATO summit, and I'd love to get your perspective on the integrity of that alliance, how you're feeling about its current strength, its prospects going forward in light of the higher commitment these countries have made to financing their defense budgets. How do you feel about the integrity of the NATO Alliance today?
I am I'm a mixed minds on this. First of all, I'm proud that when we handed off the NATO Alliance, it was bigger, it was more purposeful, it was more burden sharing than at any previous point. When President Trump left office, nine NATO allies had met their two percent of GDP commitment. By the time President Biden left office, that was twenty three. So that was a big move, not in terms of pledges for the future, but in
terms of actual dollars spent. So I'm proud of that, and I think President Trump did a good thing in pressing for an increased commitment with respect to defense spending. There's a real question about follow through. Now we have to make sure that that actually happens. The Germans have taken a big step. I'd like to see others do so as well. But there is also increasing talk in Europe about how much they can trust the United States, and that concerns me, and to a certain extent saddens me.
You know, we were working very closely with Europe over the four years of the Biden administration on an aligned strategy to collectively de risk from China reduce our strategic dependence on China. Now, a lot of the talk in Europe is not necessarily about de risking from China. It's about de risking from America. And I don't like that because I think if we have cohesion and common purpose
with our European allies, we are stronger. So I think this was a good step at the NATO summit, but it comes against a backdrop of deep uncertainty about where exactly the trust and the common purpose in the relationship will be in the years ahead. And as someone who believes deeply in the trans Atlantic alliance, I want to contribute to that trust and common purpose in any way that I can.
Is that principally because of the trade war, because of the position that the administration has taken on its trade relationship with Europe, that you see that change.
I think there's a few factors. I mean, I think it was a signal moment when the Vice President went to Munich and gave a speech that was greeted frankly with horror by the Europeans. And I think the Vice President has adjusted his framing to a certain extent since then, I think it was part the image of President Trump with President's Lensky in the Oval office, and there again
now you've seen President Trump adjust course. It's the trade war and the coercive effort to bend friends to our will rather than try to work through whatever issues we have with them. And it's a lot of flirtation with a particular ideological current in Europe which says we're going to you know, we have a preference for right wing parties. You know, when the Vice President went to Germany, he didn't meet with the chancellor, but he met with the
head of the AfD, which is their far right party. Okay, people in Europe take notice of that. So these are some of the factors at play. On the other hand, the logic behind this alliance, the history behind this alliance, the people to people ties undergirding this alliance, the deep integration of our economies and our defense industrial bases and our militaries and our intelligence services. These are all very
powerful things. So I think there is an opportunity to have NATO remain a strong and vibrant and task oriented alliance. But it's going to require work and it's going to require the current administration to take a hard look at the ways in which it may be eroding the foundations of that alliance for the longer term that could come back to harm America in the future.
After the break, former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and I talk about the relationship between the US and China and what issue he thinks isn't getting enough attention today from policymakers and politicians. During his first term as President, Donald Trump and Poe a twenty five percent tariff on Chinese exports, and President Biden kept that policy in place.
When Jake Sullivan started as National Security Advisor, tensions were high between the US and China and communication between the two countries had broken down. I asked him where he thinks that relationship stands today, some six months into President Trump's second term. So much of what the Biden administration did Visa VI China had to do with just re opening lines of communication between these two countries after the
first Trump term. I remember talking with Secretary Jenny Yellen about that, the work that she did, the trip she took to China to again re establish that conduit of communication. What do you make of the current level of dialogue between these countries. Of course, against the backdrop of the trade war what you've seen, particularly when it comes to what levers both sides have here in that relationship, principally when it comes to rare earth minerals.
Yes, So just on the diplomacy piece, I mean, the core element of the Biden administration strategy was we were going to compete intensively, investment in the sources of our own strength, build up our relations and common strategy with our allies, impose export controls so China couldn't use our most advanced technologies against us. And we took all of those steps, and I think when we left office we
had dramatically strengthened our competitive position visa ba China. But alongside that intense competition, we practiced intense diplomacy because our view was you had out to have to manage the competition so it doesn't tip over into conflict, and in particular that requires not just transactional conversations, but deep strategic
discussions about our respective perspectives and priorities. And I carried on more than fifty hours of those discussions with my counterpart one Yee, the Foreign minister and their polyp Buro member in charge of foreign affairs. I don't see that happening right now, and I think that that is to the detriment of both the United States and China. And there's nothing inconsistent with pursuing that diplomacy while also pursuing competition.
On the other hand, there is an active and ongoing channel on the trade issues that occasionally produces flare ups and escalations and then de escalations and so forth, but it's clearly an open channel. And then, finally, one of the things I'm proud of is that we got military to military communications re established at a high and sustained level and basically got that to hold through thick and thin, and it's continuing to hold even despite all of the
trade tensions between the two countries. That is a good thing. That is how you avoid unintended escalation into conflict, and I think that's to the benefit of the American people.
I've asked you about the Middle East, Ukraine, China. I would often marvel as I looked at my inbox and got readouts of the calls that you had of how wide your remit was. When you were National Security Advisor how many conversations you were having, how much you had to focus on is there a conflict or an issue? Certainly we haven't talked about, but people generally don't talk about that you think bears more attention.
Look, I think AI is getting more attention, But I still think in the national security community and particularly on Capitol Hill, is not at the level it needs to be at, given how fast this technology is moving and how rapidly we need a common sense of both managing the risks and seizing the opportunities of it, and I just don't see that reflected in the policy conversation in DC. I think that is a real challenge. Then in terms of conflicts, you know, I used to say India Pakistan.
Then of course it flared up and we had a real escalation between two nuclear armed superpowers that then de escalated. But that challenge is not going away, and I think will require careful attention in the years ahead.
You had this job as National Security Advisor. Your successor now has that job and three other ones, including being Secretary of State. Can you fathom doing your job the job you had plus these other ones. Does it make sense to you to operate that way in this current environment.
Well, look, I like to joke that when I was National Security Advisor, I never once for a moment, thought, man, I have enough spare time to be Secretary of State. No way. Being national security advisor is more than a full time job, so as being Secretary of State. So also, frankly is having a bench with enough people who you can throw at these challenges. And I think if you shrink that bench too much, that comes at a cost. But almost by definition, there's going to have to be
a trade off. A Secretary of State who's supposed to be engaging the world, a national security advisor who's supposed to be coordinating the government and the policy process. Something's got to give. On the other hand, you know, each president sets up their national security decision making apparatus as they choose to do so, and this is what this president has chosen to do. At the end of the day, what matters is how does this play out over time,
less than who's particularly occupying what role. So let's see.
This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gerra. The show is hosted by me, Sarah Holder, juanha and Seleiah Mosen. Aaron Edwards, David Fox, Eleanor, Harrison Dengate, Patty hirsh Rachel Lewis, Krisky, Naomi Julia Press, Tracy Samuelson, Naomi Shavin, Alex Agura, Julia Weaver, Young Young, and take Yasuzawa make the show. To get more from the Big Take and unlimited access to all of bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg dot com Slash podcast offer. Thanks for listening.
We'll be back on Monday,