Hi, I'm Josh Hainer, and I'm a staff photographer at the New York Times covering climate change. For years, we've sort of imagined this picture of a polar bear floating on a piece of ice. Those have been the images associated with climate change. My challenge is to find stories that show you how climate change is affecting our world right now.
If you want to support the kind of journalism that we're working on here on the Climate and Environment Desk at the New York Times, please subscribe on our website or our app. From New York Times Opinion, this is The Ezra Klein Show. As the second Trump era dawns and the Biden era dims, it's worth asking, what was Bidenism? I think one answer to that begins in 2016, when Donald Trump wins his first presidential election.
That win was a rupture for many Democrats. To them, Trump didn't win so much as they lost. How disillusioned did voters need to be with Democratic governance to consider someone like Donald Trump? Jake Sullivan was Hillary Clinton's senior policy advisor in the 2016 campaign. That loss was a rupture for him. And he was one of the Democrats who, after that campaign, embarked on a very public rethinking.
a very public effort to get the Democratic Party to admit it was doing something wrong. It had to change. One of Sullivan's main conclusions was a Democratic foreign policy had become severed from domestic politics in a way that had left both vulnerable. For too long, Democrats had understood their domestic policies as serving the middle class and their foreign policies as being part of a free trade-centric liberal world order that America led.
But the task now was to build a foreign policy that the American middle class saw serving their interests. Because if you didn't, they would turn to strongmen like Donald Trump. You had to win democracy here at home before you could ever protect it abroad. After that, Sullivan became a senior policy advisor to Joe Biden in the 2020 campaign. And you could hear Sullivan's thinking echoing in the way Joe Biden pitched his candidacy. Ladies and gentlemen, political wisdom holds that...
Americans, the American public doesn't vote on foreign policy. But I think that's an old way of thinking. In 2019, foreign policy is domestic policy. in my view, and domestic policy is foreign policy. Biden introduced a slogan that made their project explicit. I will equip our people to succeed in the new global economy.
with a foreign policy for the middle class. Biden won that election, and Jake Sullivan was named National Security Advisor. And from that perch, he was one of the key architects of what I think Bidenism will be understood to have been. A recentering of industrial policy at the center of national strategy. A much more competitive approach to China. A belief that Americans had to see that you were putting their interests first. But if there was one promise...
that Biden made to the country in that 2020 campaign, and particularly when he won it, is that he would turn the page on the Trump era. And I think we can say definitively, he did not do that. And so if Bidenism was a foreign policy for the middle class, meant to drain Trumpism of its appeal, what does it say that Trump ended up coming back stronger than ever? What then did Bidenism achieve and what did it fail to achieve? And why?
I wanted to ask those questions of Jake Sullivan, who I spoke to during his final weeks in the White House. Jake Sullivan, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So I want to begin the conversation right after the 2016 election. You had led policy for Hillary Clinton's campaign, then Donald Trump won. You did some very public soul-searching and rethinking. What was your theory then for why he won and how the Democratic Party needed to recalibrate?
Well, first, during that campaign, I remember distinctly one episode where I went to Ohio to speak to a group of supporters. And in the course of my remarks, I referred to the liberal international order. talking about the future of the world and so forth. And somebody came up to me afterwards and said, I don't know what the liberal international order is, but I don't like any of those three words. And that stuck with me. It stuck with me through the primary.
where Hillary Clinton took on Bernie Sanders. And it stuck with me through the general where Hillary Clinton took on Donald Trump. And I think that there's a variety of reasons why Donald Trump won in 2016. And I don't have a unified theory, but. I do think one important dimension of it was that people looked at the global financial crisis and the aftermath and said, this economy is not working for me.
And they looked at America's position in the world and they said, part of why this economy is not working for me is that American foreign policy is not sufficiently focused on the needs of working people. And that was something that I took away as a main lesson of 2016. So one thing that emerges from that, and from your thinking in part, it becomes part of Joe Biden's eventual campaign, is this idea of a foreign policy for the middle class. What was substantively?
supposed to be different about that? Because you served under President Obama. I think if I had said to you then, is your foreign policy intended to serve the American middle class? You would have said yes. So what was the intended divergence?
Well, Ezra, I do think I would have said yes, but I think I would have paused for a second and reflected before saying yes, because it wouldn't have been instinctive. Because when I sat around the Situation Room table during the Obama years, the question wasn't frequently put. on the table in the Situation Room, hey, what does this mean for working people, working families in the United States?
And so I do think President Obama pursued a progressive economic agenda. But one striking thing is that his domestic economic policy looked a lot different from George W. Bush's. But his international economic policy really didn't. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, for example, was a Bush-era trade initiative that President Obama carried forward. So, yes, I do think President Obama cared deeply about the American middle class, but I don't think...
We were as attuned to the needs of the American middle class in the Situation Room as we should have been. Now, your question is, what does that mean substantively? For me, it means four things. First, that foreign policy starts at home with... major public investments in strategic sectors that help reinvigorate our industrial base and create jobs all over the United States. Second, that we put in place a
whose policies led to a shock in the United States in the early 2000s and deindustrialization of key communities. Third, that we protect American technologies, especially... technologies that have national security implications so that they can't be used against us by our adversaries. And then finally, that a large part of the energy we put into our allies and partners...
is about organizing and coordinating an effort. So they're similarly making these investments, and we are designing a coordinated approach to international economic policy that puts working people at the center. And if you take those four steps, which I believe the Biden administration... has, you create a long-term trajectory where the...
American worker has more secure jobs, the potential for higher wages where technology works for us rather than against us and critically where we have diverse and resilient supply chains. that aren't dependent on any other country, especially a competitor like China. So this is something that Joe Biden runs on in 2020. He wins the election. You're named National Security Advisor. And part of this strategy is...
pulling out of foreign projects and entanglements. One of the first major changes to American foreign policy that Biden makes is withdrawing from Afghanistan. That withdrawal is widely seen to be chaotic and underplanned. I always promise the American people that I will be straight with you. The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated. So what's happened?
Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed sometime without trying to fight. Biden's approval rating dips beneath 50% for the first time. It never really recovers after that. Tell me when you look back on it, what you think the administration got right and got wrong there. Well, I believe that President Biden got the big thing right.
The United States is better off today because we are no longer at war in Afghanistan. If we were at war in Afghanistan today, that war would be entering its 25th year. of American service members fighting and dying in Afghanistan. We got right that we could refocus our energy and attention elsewhere on the competition with China, on supporting Ukraine, and on building up the kinds of alliances and partnerships that I've just described.
And I would go further and say that the main arguments people made against leaving at the time have not borne out. One of them was that it was gonna undermine us with our allies. Our alliances are stronger today than they have been at any point in modern memory. A second was that it was going to lead to a massive upsurge of terrorism emanating directly from Afghanistan.
We've recently seen a terrorist attack in New Orleans and the terrorist threat remains real. But we have not seen that resurgence from Afghanistan. And we also showed that we could take out terrorists in Afghanistan by taking out Zawahiri, one of the architects of 9-11, even without boots on. the ground. And they also said we wouldn't be able to get out our allies who supported us during the war, our Afghan allies. But in fact, we've gotten out.
tens of thousands, even since the fall of Kabul in August of 2021, making good on our promise to those people. Now, one of the things when I look back that I saw as something we could learn from is that we... did not want to go out too early and start an evacuation because we were concerned that doing so would precipitate the very outcome that came to pass, the collapse of the government and the fall of Kabul.
The government asked us not to move too rapidly because they were concerned that it would lead to a collapse of morale. Now, in hindsight, the collapse happened anyway. And so we learned a lesson from that. And we applied that lesson in other places, like in Ukraine, where in the run-up to the Russian invasion, we shut down our embassy. We got all the diplomats out of harm's way. And so a lot of the things that we did to prepare for...
the Russian invasion were direct lessons that we learned from Afghanistan. I supported the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I still do. I think that... A lot of people who helped continue that war pretended there was going to be an easy and painless way to end it. But I've thought a lot since about why it was such a sharp change in the way the American public viewed Biden.
I mean, it really was a step change and it never really came back. One of Biden's, I think, real strengths in 2020 was running as a leader who could bring back order after the chaos of the Trump era. And there was something about that balance of order and chaos, is the rules-based international order, is the democratic approach to foreign policy leading to a world that seems more stable, that I think began to crack in that moment.
I'm curious if that feels true to you or how you would complicate it. Well, the way that I look at this is that we are in a moment of transition in world affairs. That is the culmination of a lot of factors leading to this point. The post-Cold War era is over. The period of American primacy from the 90s and early 2000s. That has come to an end. That came to an end before President Biden came into office. So our time in the seat, our four years, has really been about...
a competition for what comes next. What does that look like? So I do not deny that there has been turbulence, and I have the years off my life to basically affirm that there has been turbulence over these last four years. And yes, when you end a 20-year war with all of the decisions that had been taken leading up to the point when it was handed off to us with the Taliban in its strongest position.
the United States at its lowest troop level since 2001, and a Doha agreement that had us have to leave by May 1st of 2021. Yes, it was not going to be easy leaving that war. It was not. But for me, when history looks back at this period,
where necessarily there is going to be change and upheaval in the world. The question is, did we navigate through it in a way where we gave a stronger hand to the administration who's coming in than the one that we received? And I think that the verdict of history will be... that we very much did. Our alliances are stronger. Our enemies are weaker. The United States itself is not at war.
And the basic foundations of American strength, our economy, our infrastructure, our innovation base, our defense industrial base, are considerably more powerful and more robust than they were when we took office. And as President Trump comes into office... We have teed up for him, in my view, opportunities because the United States is in a position of considerable strength. I want to go through some of the competitions and the initiatives you sort of touched on there. And I want to begin.
with China, I would say to me, the biggest surprise of the Biden administration was that there was more continuity. between Joe Biden and Donald Trump on China than between Joe Biden and Barack Obama. The administration kept Trump's tariffs and added more. You laid down export controls on critical technologies. When you came in...
And you looked at America's relationship with China and our competitive position with China. What did you think the Trump team or Trump himself got right? And then where do you understand your approach as having diverged? or seen it a different way? I think President Trump was right, and I actually said so at the time, even before we came into office. I said he was right about the basic proposition that the United States was in an intense long-term competition with China.
That the era that they kind of called engagement, this idea from the 90s and 2000s that if you brought China into the international economic order, into the international system, they would somehow liberalize, transform, become a more responsible actor. had not worn out. The evidence on that was pretty clear by the end of the Obama administration. And so I think President Trump was correct in saying that
China is seeking to gain advantage in the international system at the expense of the United States, and the United States needs to step up to push back because our interests and our values are at stake. I think he was right about that. I think his execution of that was wanting.
in a lot of ways, but the most fundamental way was that he did not recognize the central importance of having strong allies and partners aligned with us in carrying out the competition with China. A mere month before we took office, In 2021, Europe signed a comprehensive investment agreement, a major trade agreement with China, right at the end of the Trump administration. This to me was a profound failure of the Trump administration.
to pull Europe along with us in a common view on this subject. And what we did when we came in was say, we're going to put allies at the center of our strategy because a united front...
vis-a-vis China is much more effective for the United States. That trade agreement, it's now on the shelf. And Europe has actually joined us in taking economic countermeasures against some of China's non-market economic practices. And in the Asia Pacific, if you look... at what we've done with AUKUS, which is the U.S., Australia, and the United Kingdom putting together a nuclear submarine initiative.
or what we've done with Japan and Korea in a trilateral arrangement. We have brought our alliances to a new level in terms of our ability to both burden share and deter China in the Indo-Pacific region. And then there are other areas where I think...
President Trump talked the right game but didn't deliver. The fundamental investments in America's industrial and innovation base that President Biden has done over the last four years were things that President Trump suggested he would do but never did. whether it's chips or clean energy or infrastructure. And those have put the United States in such a profound position of confidence and capacity in the competition with China.
all the while also engaging in intense diplomacy so that the bottom doesn't drop out and we veer into conflict with China. We've managed the relationship stably while also competing, in my view, quite effectively. Ezra, when we walked in the door... The conventional wisdom was two things. First, that China would surpass the United States economically within the next several years.
And second, that China, not the United States, was going to lead the world in artificial intelligence. Because of what President Biden has done. Nobody's talking about China surpassing the United States anytime soon and perhaps ever. And second, the United States is the leading power when it comes to artificial intelligence, not China. And we intend to keep it that way. So I'm worried about that.
bottom dropping out. I understand the arguments for more competition with China. I understand the anger over the China shock and that freer trade didn't lead to a more liberal China. But I would say I've been surprised. by the real rise in signaling over the past few years that we would go to war over Taiwan. President Biden made comments that were explicit about that in a way that was a break with previous policy.
You didn't want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons. Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that? Yes, you are. That's a commitment we made. The administration sort of walked those back, but Nancy Pelosi herself went to Taiwan. Our delegation came here to send an unequivocal message. America stands with Taiwan.
And in both parties, there's been a rise in general hawkishness towards China that feels like more than just competition. It feels like people are starting to imagine the possibility of war in a way that they weren't 10 years ago. So what changed? I would say the main thing that's changed is China's changed. China's engaged in the largest peacetime military buildup in human history. Why? Why? It doesn't face any particular acute threat.
It's done so in no small part because it has signaled publicly that at some point... It wants to ensure that Taiwan is part of China and has put explicitly on the table that military force is an option to make that happen. So that's just a reality that we confronted before we walked in the door. And we had to recognize that.
American policy towards China has been consistent over the course of decades. It is to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and to deter the conflict you just described because that conflict would be absolutely catastrophic. catastrophic, catastrophic in terms of the loss of lives. And we should ensure it never happens. And every day I sat in this seat for four years, I was determined to ensure it did not happen. And I believe it does not have to happen. It is not inevitable.
by any stretch of the imagination. Now, taking a step back to the underlying premise of your question, which is... are we veering down an incredibly dangerous road with China that inevitably leads to conflict? I also think the answer to that question is no. When I talk about China,
I speak about two truths. One truth is China is trying to surpass the United States as the world's leading power economically, technologically, diplomatically, militarily. They're trying to do so, and they have said so. President Xi has said so. But we are also going to have to learn to live alongside China as a major power for the foreseeable future. That is also a reality. So our policy has to account for both of those realities. And for me, the best way to do that... is to compete vigorously
but manage that competition so it doesn't veer into conflict, to maintain lines of communication. And I have spent, I think the technical term is umpteen hours with my counterpart in multiple countries around the world to manage the conflict.
competition, including on the question of Taiwan, so that we don't end up in conflict with one another, so that we have a degree of stability in the relationship, and crucially, so that we can work together with China on issues where our interests align, where we do have to work together, whether it's on counter-narcotics. and fentanyl precursors, or it's on climate, or it's on macroeconomic stability. So I think, actually, if you look at particularly the last two years,
where I've tried to intensify this channel and where President Biden has met twice with President Xi to convey a degree of stability in the relationship. We have worked hard to create space to compete.
but also to create a floor in the relationship. And we believe we've done everything necessary to do so, and we'll pass that off to the next team. Something you suggested a minute ago definitely seems true to me, which is that China... looks much weaker than it did six years ago, eight years ago, even 10 years ago.
isn't to say they have not advanced to the frontiers of technology. They have. That isn't to say their industrial base isn't stronger. It is. There are things in terms of national power, given China's size, that it is doing very well at. But in terms of its growth rate... its productivity rate, the age structure of its people, things look a lot harder there. And I'm curious to hear your reflections on what is different.
Between managing the relationship, the opportunities, the risks, with a rising China, a China that is able to offer its people rapid growth, rapid increases in prosperity. And a China that is struggling, a China that might need to find support, unity, a sense of national ambition and forward motion in nationalism, in expansionism, in some of the other things that countries do.
when that promise of prosperity begins to break down? It's a question I think about a lot because... A China that is struggling domestically, as you suggest in your question, may be looking abroad to deliver some sense of national purpose to its people, including through military conquest, including through something like trying to seize Taiwan militarily.
I think that's a distinct risk. It's something we're going to have to look at quite carefully. But I think that the jury is still out in exactly how this will impact the leadership in China, because frankly, I don't think they have yet entirely. wrestled with the reality you just described. I think they have not fully yet incorporated the...
economic slowdown, the demographic challenges, and they have a residual confidence that they can manage and overcome those things as they have over the course of the past decade. So I'm not sure we're going to see a dramatic change in their policy, at least in the near. term because they have this reservoir of confidence built up. I also believe that the Chinese leadership fundamentally is convinced that the United States is in secular decline.
And that is because they misjudge a fundamental fact about America, which is our capacity for resilience and reinvention.
And so their leadership is fond of saying the East is rising, the West is declining. And they can point to political turbulence and other challenges the United States surely has. But I don't think they were quite ready for the... moves that we have made from the point of view of manufacturing and innovation, the robustness and resilience of our economy, the extent to which this is the destination people want to come to for investment.
And they're grappling right now with that reality. But coming back to the fundamental question you're asking, There is a distinct possibility that a domestically weakened China becomes more assertive and aggressive globally, but there is also a possibility that it leads them to adjust towards greater caution, as previous Chinese leaders have done.
Deng Xiaoping was famous for saying that the fundamental Chinese strategy should be bide and hide. Hide your capabilities and bide your time. And President Xi really broke out of that in a big way. Perhaps... the result of the challenges that he is confronting will lead to some restoration of that basic mentality for a period, or perhaps it will go in this other direction where nationalism really dictates a much more aggressive and assertive policy. I think...
That has yet to be determined, and it will partly be determined by the policy of the United States and the actions of our allies and partners over the course of the coming years. I do think one reason people began to think differently about the question of Taiwan is that they watched... Russia invade Ukraine. And so the idea that great powers sometimes invade the countries they have long said they intend to reabsorb feels more real. That invasion was almost three years ago now.
How do you assess where the war between Russia and Ukraine stands right now? Well, I've said this a couple times before, but I think it's a helpful thought experiment. A lot of people say, hey, Russia's doing pretty well in this war. Isn't Putin kind of smart for having invaded Ukraine? Let's imagine in February of 2022 that Joe Biden... went on television and told the American people, I'm invading Canada and I'm going to seize Ottawa in a week and replace the government.
It's going to be not a war, but a special military operation, and it'll be done in a few days, and the Canadians will welcome us as liberators. And three years later, the American army was in the wheat fields of Manitoba. grinding out mile by mile, having lost dead and wounded 600,000 Americans. having inflation near 10% and the interest rates near 20% in the United States, having mortgaged our economic future technologically and in terms of our high-tech industrial base.
Would anybody say, hey, America's doing pretty well there or Joe Biden's a smart guy? Absolutely not. fundamentally, Russia's strategic objectives in this war have failed. They failed to take Kiev. They failed to destroy Ukraine. They failed to break NATO. And so now the question is, how do we drive? to a just and sustainable peace that allows Ukraine to emerge as a free and independent, viable nation rooted in the West. I think that that opportunity is present.
And I think our job right now is to continue to supply Ukraine with the leverage they need to get a good deal at the negotiating table. That is what we're trying to do in our waning days before passing the baton to President Trump. Does Ukraine want a deal at the negotiating table? I mean, something Zelensky has been clear about is that what he wants is victory and Russia ejected from Ukrainian land, which is...
both an aspiration that I think is just and seems quite unlikely. There's been frustrations that America has not put more pressure in for negotiations. What is that deal you're... talking about look like and what would change to push the different players to the table? Well, first, President Zelensky has said publicly that definitely this war has to end in diplomacy. And he recognizes that and he accepts.
the basic American proposition that our job is to put them in the best possible position on the battlefield so they are in the best possible position at the negotiating table. And in fact, even before the election. In September, he came to Washington to see President Biden, and he brought with him what he called his victory plan. Now, that victory plan, in part, was a plan.
to put him in a position to be able to negotiate a just outcome to this war. So even before the election, the idea was that whoever won, whether it was President Trump or Vice President Harris... that there would be a turn into negotiations at some point such that Ukraine would have the necessary leverage to get the outcome that it needs. And that outcome has a critical element to it, which is...
sufficient guarantees for its security that if there is some kind of deal, Russia can't just wait a year and turn around and do it all over again. But it is fundamentally up to Ukraine to choose both. when to engage the negotiation and what the ultimate outcome of the negotiation will be. And, you know, I've heard the critics who say, why doesn't the United States just make Ukraine accept a deal? And my answer to that question is, this is Ukrainian land?
These are Ukrainian lives. It should be up. to the democratically elected Ukrainian government to make its determination about whether to bring the war to an end or whether to continue it. So for me, the real issue is not, hey, Washington, why don't you just squeeze Zelensky till he gives up X amount of land? The real question is, how do we make sure that President Zelensky has sufficient leverage and is in a position to get to the negotiating table and do a deal?
A critique I've heard of the administration from many in the foreign policy community, Richard Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, is one of these people. And it stretches across some domains. We'll talk about it around Israel, too, is that there... is this complexity in a relationship with what get called difficult allies, where, yes, it is Ukraine's decision. It's Ukrainian land. It is Ukrainian lives. But in terms of American...
politics and decision making it is American money and American weaponry that is making the defense possible. And so the idea that this isn't really up to us in some level. is in certain ways a break with past dimensions of American foreign policy, but just doesn't feel quite right to people. When you've got to keep going back to Congress to ask for more money, then, well, then obviously it's at least somewhat up to us and that we should be using that leverage.
I doubt that you feel you haven't used your leverage, but walk me through the distinction between these two positions, because obviously when we're the armory, we do have a say. Well, I think you made a really important leap in... the analysis underpinning that question and its leap I wouldn't make. You said, obviously, we have a say.
because we're giving weapons. And then you said, or implied, so we should go tell them to stop. And it's that leap I don't want to make. It's true. We could cut Ukraine off. We could say you get nothing more unless you accept that Russia gets X percent of your territory. That is an option available to us. So empirically, I agree with you on that analytical point. But on the prescriptive point, should we do that?
I do not agree. I don't think that the United States should tell Ukraine, you just have to give up. We're done unless you give up. That, I believe, is an inappropriate use of American leverage. Now, it's one thing— But isn't there a difference between— just give up and moving into some kind of negotiated peace process. Well, first, I would just say, personally, I was engaged over the course of 2023 and 2024 in a variety of formats around the world, in Jeddah, in Malta, in Copenhagen, in...
Kyiv itself around trying to put together the principles of a just and sustainable peace. We were feeling our way through what it might look like to get to an ultimate solution to this war. But what I don't think is right... is for the United States to dictate to a country that's fighting for its very survival what the exact terms or shape of a negotiation should look like, unless it's going to drag us into war.
And it hasn't dragged us into war. What it is asked of the American people is what I believe is a very sustainable thing for us to give, which is the supply of weapons and intelligence and support. And I don't believe... that it is a sufficient cost to the United States to continue to do that, that we should compromise our moral support for a country that is being... attacked and that is having its sovereignty stripped of it. So for me, the argument doesn't stack up.
that because we're supplying weapons to Ukraine, we, the United States, should dictate the outcome to Ukraine. And I would add one further point, which is one of the hallmarks of the Biden approach on Ukraine. that I don't think gets enough credit, is our capacity to hold the unity of the alliance together. President Putin, at the beginning of this, bet that he would break NATO, that he would divide Europe. We have held together a coalition of 50 nations through thick and thin.
The United States coming along and telling Ukraine this is how it's going to be would surely shatter that unity. And one good metric for whether the Haas position... is a position that could gain purchase is, are there a bunch of allies out there, significant allies of the United States and Europe, who are saying, hey, America, go force Ukraine to the table and make them do a deal? There aren't.
And for those who say, well, this is a very passive approach, I can just tell you the sheer number of hours I spend every day. helping continue to corral the broad base of international support for Ukraine, the work that we do to supply them with the necessary munitions to stay on the battlefield, and the work that we have done.
to discuss the shape of diplomacy in this series of engagements over the course of the past two years. This has been a highly proactive, highly effective strategy to frustrate Russia's ambitions and to keep Ukraine a sovereign, viable nation. And I believe we have succeeded in doing that. And I believe that there is the possibility for a deal to be done. And that when Ukraine is ready to sign on the dotted line of that deal, we can hold our heads held.
high that we did not impose a dictated outcome on a sovereign and free people. The New York Times app has all this stuff that you may not have seen. The way the tabs are at the top with all of the different sections. I can immediately navigate to something that matches what I'm feeling. Play Wordle or Connections and then swipe over to read today's headlines. There's an...
article next to a recipe next to games. And it's just easy to get everything in one place. This app is essential. The New York Times app. So in April of 2023... You went to Brookings and gave a speech that I think is one of the more important documents of the Biden era. And what you say there is building on the approach to competition with China.
building on the vulnerabilities we had seen with both relying on China for goods we needed during the pandemic, but also the vulnerability that we saw with Europe relying so much on Russia for natural gas, that industrial policy... and on-shoring supply chains, was both at the center of building a strong middle class, we had a foreign policy for the middle class, to go back to that idea, but also at the center of national security.
And you present this as a break with a consensus that came before it. I think of this as one of the more important ideological breaks of the Biden administration. So what was the consensus that you were challenging there and why?
Well, I think the consensus really was rooted in the idea that international economic integration, the free flow of capital across borders, the bringing in of every country in the world to a single international economic system would lead to greater efficiency, greater responsibility of action by all of those players. and that everyone would ultimately benefit from that. This was essentially the thesis of globalization through the 90s and the 2000s, that markets efficiently allocate capital.
at all times. Fundamentally, all growth is good growth. It's all the same. It doesn't matter what type of growth it is, whether it's the growth of the financial sector or the growth of the industrial sector. And that Bringing in China or bringing in Russia to the World Trade Organization would make those countries play by the rules.
At its core, a lot of the elements of the international financial and economic system were sound and helped deliver robust top-line growth and technological progress in the United States, but also created these huge vulnerabilities, supply chain vulnerabilities, a lack of...
of capital to the great crisis of our time, like the climate crisis, a greater inequality and the hollowing out of our industrial base in the United States. And those were the kinds of things that we needed an updated international economic policy to try to address. I was surprised to see the blocking of the Nippon steel deal. There's been a lot of controversy over that. Japan is very much an ally of ours. Tell me how you think of that in this framework. Why would having a...
deep ally in competition with China and just in general, owning an American steel company and upgrading it, working on it. Why does that fall in the wrong line of this test? Well, the Nippon steel deal is really... a very specific national security question. And in fact, the Committee on Foreign Investment that looks at this, these questions of foreign acquisition of major strategic...
domestic industries, actually was unanimous in saying it does pose national security risks. Because if a foreign entity, even an allied entity... is not as invested as the United States is in making sure that we maintain the level of steel production in the United States that we feel is necessary for our national security, that's a risk. The real debate within the committee was over whether there was...
sufficient steps that could be taken to mitigate that risk. President Biden ultimately decided that fundamentally, there has to be some percentage, some... element of the American steel industry that is American-owned, American-operated, and driven by American workers. And that was a judgment he made. I do not think one should look at that deal and say,
Okay, that means President Biden isn't going to work with allies and partners because the record is replete with instances where we're working with Japan on critical minerals, on semiconductors, and so many other things. But rather...
a unique case that was looked at hard on the merits and the president reached a judgment. So in your Brookings speech, what I understood you'd be arguing was that when you look at this competition between autocracies and democracies, The way for democracies to win was to show they could deliver and that you are connecting that to industrial policy, that the Democrats need to use industrial policy and trade policy to deliver first and foremost.
if they were going to make democracy look like the winning bet in the world that we now live in. Is that fair? And how did it play into this speech? Well, there's a professor named Danny Roderick. who writes a lot about international economic policy. And 15 or 20 years ago, he described what he called a trilemma. He said that when you look at the international economic system,
you can't have all three of democracy, national sovereignty, and globalization. One of the three has to give. And he describes... various times in history when democracy gave so that you could have both national sovereignty and globalization, and times like with the European Union where national sovereignty gave. But he says you basically can't have all three.
And I have thought a lot about that. And what I laid out in the Brookings speech is an effort basically to solve that trilemma. It's to say, how do you have... America at the center of an international economic order that is open and transparent and allows for trade and investment, but at the same time... allows for a strong industrial and innovation base in the United States, does not allow for supply chains to be choked off by competitors or leveraged to punish us.
that delivers actual benefits to working in middle class people so that you don't end up with massive inequality. How do you build that? And the Biden approach, the foreign policy for the middle class that I laid out. is an ongoing, in my view, generational effort to sustain democracy and national sovereignty while also not ending up back in the protectionist and nationalist mistakes of the 1930s.
Will it succeed over the long term? I don't know, but I think we have put some events in motion here that kind of regardless of who's in the White House. unless they're just completely ripped away, will end up serving the United States and the international economic system well over time. And now we have to see what Donald Trump does with it. So that Brookings speech was in April 2023.
And then a few months later came October 7th. It's been 15 months since October 7th. Since then, Hamas, I think it's fair to say, is destroyed as a significant military force. Sinmar is dead. It would seem like Israel's war aims are largely achieved, but there's still no plan for who will govern. Gaza, except for Israeli occupation, there is an ongoing and horrible humanitarian crisis in Gaza. You have infants dying of hypothermia.
And the administration disapproved $8 billion more in arms deals for Israel. How does this at this point serve U.S. interests? Well, first, I would start just on basic principles. Why did this war start? This war started because Hamas committed the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and Israel responded to try to root out.
the threat that Hamas could do that again, as its leaders said it wanted to do again and again and again. Second, the way that Israel has had to prosecute this campaign. has been unprecedented in history because you are talking about an area with hundreds of miles of military tunnels underneath, with Hamas using hospitals and schools and mosques for military purposes.
and with a highly densely populated area where, unlike in almost any conflict anywhere, those people were not allowed to go anywhere else. Now, that does not lessen Israel's responsibility to minimize civilian harm. And too many civilians have died in this war. And too many civilians have struggled to get the necessary life-saving sustenance, food, water, medicine, etc. And we have pushed hard.
and I believe have made a substantial difference in the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza to stave off the worst effects of famine that were predicted over the course of many months. Sitting here today, it is true that Hamas's military formations are shattered, its leader Sinwar is dead, and yet it continues to hold hostages, including American hostages, and it continues to fight.
and continues to assert that it will represent a long-term threat to Israel. Now, over the course of the past several months, we have been trying to work to get to a ceasefire and hostage deal so that hostages begin coming out and humanitarian aid can surge in.
get to an end to the war alongside that we have also been working with all of the key players in the region on a day after plan but you say it's been 15 months that's so long it's been years decades that American presidents have been trying to deliver an ultimate political solution to the Palestinian question.
And no American president has been able to do it. Yeah, but I'm not asking about that. I'm not somebody, just to be very clear, who believes there is a ultimate solution to the Palestinian-Israeli question on the table in any foreseeable near future. I'm a realist about this.
I think the question I'm asking, the question I hear from anybody working on humanitarian aid there who are just unfathomably furious about how hard it is to get it in. And I know you all have worked on this with Israel and criticized Israel publicly on this. But this goes back to this question a bit about what both leverage and responsibility does the provision of U.S. arms give us? There are just no end of people. And at this point, I'm one of them who think.
At what point do you not want to be party to this level of suffering? At what point is enough enough? At what point is there too much collective punishment for the threat that the remnants of Hamas still pose? To Israelis.
Well, if the question fundamentally behind all of that is why don't you just cut off weapons to Israel or offensive weapons or whatever it is, which I think the question that you're asking is, one of the things I would point out to you is that over the course of the past 15 months, Israel has...
not just been fighting Hamas. Israel has been fighting Hezbollah. Israel has been attacked by the Houthis. Israel has been attacked by the Shia militia groups in both Iraq and Syria. And Israel has been attacked directly by Iran. So to talk about the... cutoff of American military assistance to Israel is not just a question of, hey, do we have leverage over them in Gaza? It's a question about,
our obligation to help Israel defend itself against a myriad of enemies, many of whom are our enemies as well. And there is complexity in someone sitting down and saying, okay, I get all that, but because of Gaza, I'm not sending them any more of the kinds of weapons that they've had to use to actually fight those various foes. So...
That's one thing to keep in mind. Before you go to the other thing, doesn't that argument go both ways? Because I hear that argument. When I went to Israel, I hear versions of that argument. And I don't even disagree. But it would seem to me that argument would make it more important. that Israel listened to us and treated us as a partner because they do have these very significant external threats. Hamas is not, in my view, that much of an ongoing threat to Israel, but Iran is.
And it has been, as I understand it, a huge amount of work on the part of America in building out these coalitions to make sure that some of Iran's reprisals were not more dangerous for Israel. But it just seems strange to use that as an argument for why.
We then don't have the ability to negotiate with our partner to say this war in Gaza, like there has to be some transition out of it. And certainly there has to be a level of humanitarian aid that is completely unlike what they've been letting in.
thus far, because they are dependent on us, because their threat is not just Hamas. Look, I just want to be clear, Ezra, I wasn't just trying to put forward an argument. What I'm trying to do is just give an explanation of the complexity of the decision-making when you sit in my seat.
that when the proposition comes in, just cut off arms, what are the things we have to think through? So I'm not here trying to engage in a polemic and say, this justifies that or the other thing. I'm just trying to explain to your listeners. One reality that we contend with is the cutoff of arms has consequences for Israel security well beyond just Gaza. So that's one point. The second key point here, I think, goes to kind of the nature of a...
friendship and alliance. And the broad-based cutting off of arms in the middle of a war is a truly dramatic act that has far-reaching consequences. And for that reason, President Biden has been very reluctant to think of our relationship with Israel in these kinds of transactional leverage-based terms that you've just described. Now, there have been targeted instances.
where the president said, for a particular type of weapon system, it just doesn't make sense. So he paused the supply of 2,000-pound bombs because he said, the military utility of these in densely populated areas compared with the civilian harm is just out of whack. And that, he said no. But the broad-based cutoff, he has not been...
persuaded makes sense in light of our relationship with Israel and in light of the circumstance in the region as a whole. But I would argue that if you actually look at what the United States has done... on the question of humanitarian assistance over the course of the past 15 months, we have made a considerable difference.
from a period when Israel said, we are not going to allow anything into these guys because Hamas is going to take it to today, where we do have trucks going in on a daily basis. Thanks. to the kind of sustained American pressure that has, in fact, produced results. Not everything we wanted, and you're right, there have been periods which we have called out really far from what is acceptable.
But I would just say to you that the president's mindset, his approach on this, has been an approach that says, we are going to speak to our values and we are going to call out that the Palestinian civilians in Gaza are going through hell. that there have been too much dying, too much suffering. But at the same time, that at the end of the day, we have an ally who is basically being...
attacked by all sides, by multiple different directions, and a full cutoff of weapons to Israel in these circumstances is simply not a policy that President Biden decided to pursue. I guess the question, or one of the questions that I've had... throughout some of this is that, yes, I mean, if you phrase it as the policy on the table is a full cutoff of weapons, that is a profound rupture. But obviously that would be Israel's decision.
Certainly many people I speak to who are engaged in this believe that that assistance should be much more sharply conditioned, that there should be things for us that speak to our interests in the region, both moral and strategic. You just had Moshe Ya'alon, who had been defense minister under Benjamin Netanyahu until 2016, saying that the path Israel is on is an ethnic cleansing.
We know that annexation and settlement building in the West Bank has accelerated. That makes any question of Palestinian statehood and any kind of solution in the long run much harder. And I guess that has been... What has been striking to me to watch Israel at the same time that they do need our aid, making our long-term interests there much harder to imagine coming to fruition, which also I think is bad for their security and bad for ours.
Maybe you believe they would just say no and then they would sacrifice their own security and say no to our weapons rather than abide by what our limits were. But would that not be their decision as opposed to your decision? Well, first, I think there's something a bit metaphysical about whose decision it is, because it'd be us who was saying, we're going to cut you off if, et cetera. So the leverage and transactional determination would be taken from our side. But I think the...
Listening to you lay this out, and of course I've heard this argument from people of good faith, people I respect deeply, and people who I know feel deeply about the plight of the Palestinian people. I've also heard the argument from the other side that... The Biden administration has been insufficiently supportive of Israel, that withholding 2,000-pound bombs and calling out Israeli excesses and—
speaking about our concerns, that somehow this has been empowering of our enemies and harmful to Israel. And that is not a small constituency in this country. So I say sitting in my seat very much on this issue, we get it from both. sides. What we have tried to do is adopt a policy which says we are going to continue to support Israel in its attempt to defeat terrorist enemies.
and to deter Iran. We are going to do so including through the provision of military assistance. At the same time, we are also going to be unflinching in our critique of Israel where we believe they have gone too far, and we are going to push them. to a better place on things like humanitarian assistance. We have stood by those basic principles throughout this conflict. But the question of Gaza obviously continues.
to be a daily struggle, in part because we are trying to deliver this ceasefire and hostage deal. And just having Israel say, okay, we accept a ceasefire, we have to just stop at a time when all of these hostages are being held, that doesn't wash. There was, over the last 15 months, when you think about that wider question of Hezbollah, of Iran, of the Houthis, a lot of concern about what would happen if the war widened.
It did widen. And I think there's a sense, and you can tell me if this is incorrect, particularly now with the fall of Assad in Syria, that the map of the Middle East has been remade in ways that are... positive for Israeli, maybe even American security, and create some opportunities. Iran looks weaker, though I know there's concern that might lead them to race faster towards a nuclear weapon. Hezbollah is...
And then Syria, I don't really know how to think about that. I hope actually you do and can tell me. This is a different geopolitical Middle East. than we had a year ago, even just in the sense of how strong existing players are. So what is possible there that you would not have said is possible, you know, before the war widened? And what is a risk right now? I think things are unfolding so rapidly in the Middle East right now that it's difficult to give you...
any kind of confident answers to those questions. I'm reminded of my fellow Minnesotan Bob Dylan's song, The Times They Are A-Changing. Iran is weaker than it's been since the Iranian revolution, and yet a weaker Iran still represents a... genuine threat because a weaker Iran could decide it has no choice but to go nuclear. And that's something we are going to have to contend with. In Syria, the fall of a brutal butcher in Assad is a good thing. That man...
has no business ruling over a people that he's massacred at scale over the course of many years. On the other hand... It has created a genuine threat of extremism and terrorism that is going to have to be managed and contained over the coming months and years. I will point out one concern I have that's quite immediate,
Our biggest counterterrorism partner against ISIS was the Kurds, a group called the Syrian Democratic Forces. There is a threat now against them from both Turkey and Turkish-supported opposition forces in Syria. to take territory that the Kurds hold in Syria. If they do so, it could lead the Kurds to take their eye off the prisons where thousands of ISIS fighters and ISIS families are being held. And if that happens, you could see...
prison breaks that lead to this huge number of ISIS fighters running free. And so on and so forth. You can follow that down the path of your imagination. The most important thing from my perspective is that we recognize what America's fundamental interests are here. Our first interest is to make sure that we continue to keep the pressure on ISIS so that ISIS does not reemerge as a major territorial challenge as it did a decade ago. The second is that we support our friends in the region.
So that the instability that's emanating from Syria and elsewhere does not wash over them in Jordan, in Iraq, in Egypt, of course, in Israel, and to keep this fragile ceasefire in Lebanon and try to have it grow out. The third is actually to try to ensure that Iran can never get a nuclear weapon. That has been a position of Democratic and Republican administrations. And the fourth is to try to...
address the human suffering that has come as a result of all of these conflicts through surges in humanitarian assistance. That's what we've got to try to do. But what is the outcome of all of this? I think it is too early to predict. When good things happen, there are bad things around the corner. That's true across foreign policy. It's especially true in the Middle East.
Let me go back then to the question that I asked you in the beginning. You did a lot of thinking about why Hillary Clinton lost the foreign policy that you and the Biden administration pursued was partially a product of that thinking. And now... Four years after coming to power with everything Americans knew and know about Donald Trump, he won again. He won more convincingly. How has that changed your thinking? Do you have a different...
way of understanding that now than you did then? That's a great question to ask me in six months after I've slept for a really long time, because honestly, I haven't had the time since November to reflect. I was hoping to reflect and then... Assad fell and lots of other things happened, even just during the transition. So I can't give you a fully formed, coherent answer to the question, but I can give you the beginning of an answer, which is that I actually think...
This election was determined less by the deeply structural factors we were talking about earlier and more by immediate things, post-COVID economics. high prices, the feeling people had of dislocation in the years following the pandemic. And what I believe quite deeply is that President Biden's economic policies, the fruits of them...
And the benefits that flow to the American people will be measured in decades, and political cycles are measured in years. And the gap between those two things, I think, has a lot to do with why President Trump won this election. When you look back on these four years, is there more you think the administration could have done or should have done such that its policies were felt in years?
Well, when the other side wins the election and you lose the election, if your answer to that question is no, there's nothing else we could have or should have done, then you'd have no business, you know, still being around. Of course, I think about that because, of course, the answer has to be yes. Because we could have and should have done things, obviously, to try to produce a different result.
President Biden had a deep conviction about what he was trying to deliver for the American people at the end of the day. And it wasn't completely about just setting up the terms of reelection for Democrats. It was about his... view of what was going to make America safe and strong and especially working families in the United States safe and strong. And I think he believes he set all of those things in motion in a quite dramatic and profound way. And that...
when we look back at the policies he pursued, the investments he made, and the course he set the country on, it is going to look pretty damn good. You know, I found myself as we've been talking, thinking about... the story you told me right at the beginning about being in Ohio and talking to someone. And you're off there in the way of a liberal internationalist talking about the liberal international order. And he says, I don't like any of those words.
We sort of talk about what the liberal international order does and does not provide. And I think one of its deep vulnerabilities has proven to be that people don't necessarily believe it provides order. There was an order on the border. That wasn't the liberal international order, but that was the Biden administration and decisions about policy and Congress. There was a sense that we were enmeshed in the...
Ukraine-Russia war, but without a clear endgame. We're enmeshed in something just nobody likes in Israel and Gaza, almost no matter what side of it they tend to fall on. Now you have Donald Trump promising to bring back order in the way a strong man can offer order.
But I'm curious if this sparks anything for you, because I do think something that I heard even from people who I think in many ways are sympathetic to the Biden administration's values was they just felt the world had become more disordered. And maybe what, you know, foreign policy, what people want from it isn't so much that it's for, not for the middle class, but that it makes it so they just feel that they don't need to worry so much about the world that somebody has this handled.
I'm not saying it is possible to handle everything, but I'm curious how you think about working with that desire that I think actually Trump himself speaks very effectively to, even if he doesn't, I think, when he is governing, answer it all that well. I've thought about this a lot as well. I guess I believe we are in a plastic moment in the world, a time when our competitors are trying to challenge the system in a profound way.
It's true of China. It's true of Russia. It's true of Iran. And they're doing so trying to push the boundaries of what they can, for lack of a better term, get away with. And so I believe that in a period like this... There is no way to prevent all crisis, all turbulence. I don't think that that is a viable endgame for American foreign policy. I think the endgame for American foreign policy should be. Can we manage that period without ourselves getting dragged into a major conflict?
We have done that. Can we manage that period with our alliances stronger than we found them? I think it is indisputable that we have done that. where our adversaries are weaker than we found them. And in all three cases, China, Russia, Iran, I think the record is clear that they are demonstrably weaker. And on the two areas... that I think are going to matter the most to our future. One, is AI going to work for us or against us? The US has led and has actually shaped both.
the technology and the rules of the road? And on the clean energy transition, are we going to make it through this transition in a way that is just and efficient? We have moved supply chains. We have moved investment. We have moved innovation. The United States right now, you look around the world, there's no one else who has anything remotely resembling the hand the United States has. If the measure is...
Are there any wars happening anywhere in the world at this time? If there are, you failed. Well, there are wars happening. If the measure is... is there conflict in the Middle East unfolding, then there hasn't been a presidency, including the Trump presidency, where there hasn't been a substantial amount of disorder in the Middle East. But if the measure is, is America in a stronger position?
on the issues that actually matter to the long-term health, security, and prosperity of the American people. I think the answer to that question is demonstrably yes. And where things stand in the Middle East today. compared to under the Trump presidency or the Obama presidency or before in terms of the relative position of our friends and our adversaries, I'll take it broadly that that, I think, is an opportunity for the new Trump administration to seize.
of the events that continue to unfold in Gaza. As you said, it is heartbreaking. It is brutal. It keeps me up at night. And I think about that from both the perspective of the Palestinians and the Israelis. And I believe that if we can get... a foothold in the ceasefire and hostage deal and try to carry that forward into something more enduring, we can move into a different era on that conflict as well.
I know you said you're not one who thinks there can be an ultimate solution. I have not entirely given up hope on that despite the sense of hopelessness that is there right now. And then the very final point that I would make on all of this is... We have thought hard about how you integrate foreign policy and domestic policy so that at the end of the day...
What we are doing in terms of our investments in the American people and what we are doing working with countries around the world is most likely 10 years from now to put the United States in a position. where we aren't dependent on other countries for critical supply chains. We aren't facing adversaries that are overmatching us militarily or technologically. We have great and strong friends who we stand behind and stand behind us.
And it is a real dividend to Donald Trump that he's being handed a hand that does not involve the United States at war. Then always our final question, what are three books you recommend to the audience? Well, first, I'll just say that I frequently get Amazon deliveries from my dad because he listens to your podcast and then takes a book that one of your guests recommended and he sends it to me. For your huge amounts of...
Spare reading time, I'm sure. Yeah, exactly. So for me, three books. The first is actually a report from 1945 by Vannevar Bush. to FDR called Science the Endless Frontier that has been turned into a book. You can get it on Amazon. And it's basically the blueprint for America's national science and technology policy for the next several decades. And I think it has so much.
resonance to what we need to do today on semiconductors on ai on clean energy on biotechnology on quantum and it's really a story about bold public investment and experimentation, unlocking both private sector and academic research that powered American innovation through decades. And he delivered that right at the end of the Second World War.
to the president, and it makes actually for a very good read. The second is a book that I'm just partly through, but I actually, I'll read the whole thing, but I skipped to the end because I really wanted to focus on the AI part of it, which is Nexus by Yuval Hariri. And I think everyone should read this book because, to me, I don't agree with every word of it, but it paints a picture of what we are going to be contending with artificial intelligence that, frankly, is a little bit worrisome.
but is also so deeply thoughtful. One of the points he makes is, for the first time, humans are inventing not a tool, but an agent. And this has all kinds of implications. And then the third book, a totally different kind of book, is a book called The Situation Room, which George Stephanopoulos wrote. If you want to understand my job and what sitting in the situation room is like...
dealing with crises with presidents, with secretaries of state and defense. This book actually walks through the history of the Situation Room as told through a series of episodes over multiple presidents. I recommend it simply because it's hard to know what the heck a national security advisor does. You read that book, you'll have some sense of the reason why the bags under my eyes are so heavy. Jake Sullivan, thank you very much. Thank you.
This episode of The Ezra Klein Show is produced by Roland Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, mixing by Isaac Jones with Avim Shapiro and Amun Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Elias Isquith, Kristen Lynn, and Jack McCordick. We have original music by Pat McCusker, audience strategy by Christina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.