Debate, Debrief, and Dessert: The Role of the United States in the World

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Good evening and welcome to the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics. My name is Lily Yao and I'm a freshman studying government and economics at the college and I'm a member of the JFK Jr. Forum Committee. Before we begin please note the exit doors which are located on both the Parkside and JFK Street side of the forum. In the event of an emergency walk to the exit closest to you and congregate at the JFK Park. Tonight's program will be live streamed and archived online and will include an audience Q&A segment. Audience members asking questions are asked to identify themselves if they wish but they are not required to do so. Please also take a moment now to silence your cell phones and join me in welcoming Harvard College undergraduate Ludo Wilson. [00:01:13] Ludo Wilson: Good evening everyone and welcome to the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics. My name is Ludo Wilson and I'm a freshman at the college studying government and history as well as a member of the Student Forum Committee. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the third installment of Debate, Debrief and Desert. I'm a freshman at the college studying government and history as well as a member of the Student Forum Committee. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the third installment of Debate, Debrief and Dessert. Debrief and Dessert, a series that brings together individuals with differing perspectives to discuss some of the most pressing policy questions of our time. Tonight's discussion will explore American foreign policy and the role of the United States in the world. We are fortunate to be joined by two distinguished figures who have helped shape American foreign policy in recent administrations. First, Jake Sullivan who is the Kissinger professor of the practice of statecraft and world order at the Harvard Kennedy School and a senior fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. From 2021 to 2025. He served as national security advisor to President Biden previously during the Obama administration. He served as national security adviser to Vice President Biden, director of policy planning at the State Department and deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Joining him will be Michael Anton. In President Trump's first administration and served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communication on the National Security Council. Most recently, he served as the director of policy planning at the State Department until September 2025. Our discussion this evening will be moderated by Amna Nawaz co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS NewsHour. Following the debate, Julia Minson of the Harvard Kennedy School, author of how to disagree better will lead a facilitated debrief session about how tonight's discussion unfolds. So please make sure to stick around for that. Now, please join me in giving a warm welcome to Jake Sullivan, Michael Anton and Amna Nawaz. [00:03:37] Amna Nawaz: Good evening, everyone. Yes, thank you so much for being here tonight. It's an honor to be here. Jake and Michael, welcome to you both. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Just a reminder, I'm going to lead these two gentlemen in about 40 minutes of moderated conversation. We will make time for your questions as well at the end. So I'll let you know when it's time to go line up at the microphones. The conversation is on the record. Thank you both. And it is being live streamed. So thank you to everyone who's joining us from the far reaches. Let's jump right in. I want to begin just by expanding a little bit on the title of this talk, the role of the United States in the world. So I'm going to assume each of you, both of you believe that America should have a leadership role in the world. I think the question is what that leadership looks like. So I'll just ask each of you to take about two minutes each and sort of lay out what you believe American power should prioritize protecting. Is it democratic interest? Is it hemispheric interest? Like what should the role of the U.S. be in the world? Michael, I'll start with you. [00:04:57] Michael Anton: I guess I'm a bit of a Luddite on this question and I just go back to the very beginning. And I think the first fundamental thing we need to prioritize is physical security, security borders, security of infrastructure, obviously security of peoples. Some of those interests are overseas and not at home, but most of them are at home. I think we need to prioritize the securing of vital, and this has been true of American foreign policy since the early republic, vital trade routes around the world without which American commerce cannot be safely or profitably conducted. And I think that we -- I have a much longer answer to this that I won't give because I only have two minutes, but I think what happened is in the immediate -- You can take it a little longer than -- In the immediate post-Cold War period, usually when I give this lecture to students, which I do a lot, I see there was a four-year debate that kind of coincided with the first Bush administration, the '41 administration. It was internal and it was external, and it was resolved, but it wasn't really intellectually resolved, by which I mean the debate was, okay, we won this thing that we didn't -- We wanted to win, but nobody thought we were going to win it this soon. Now can we stop doing all of this stuff that we've been doing? And one side said, no. The fact that we won is a grand and unexpected and glorious thing, and we're in a prime position, and we should keep going. And another side said, no, we should pull back. The first camp won the debate, by which I mean their policies were implemented. And I think where we are now and have been for a decade, maybe longer than a decade, is -- I'm struggling to think of another word -- kind of suffering for -- Because of overextension, trying to do too much as our relative power, and to some extent even as our absolute power, but certainly as our relative power has declined because of the gaining strength of other powers. And I think that American -- I'm not for a full retreat. I like to use the dreaded I word, which people throw at me all the time. They want to be able to just say, he's a bad person because he's an isolationist. Ooh. I like to say when I come to a place like this -- obviously I'm right of center and I work for Trump -- like, I know what my assigned role is, and I'm willing to play it. So if you need me to twirl my mustache and tip the top, like, I can do that. I deny being an isolationist, but by the standards of people who criticize this notion, any pullback at all is isolationism. And that's where I say, you know, I mean, come on. Everything is finite. American power is finite. American money, American man hours, American focus. Everything is finite. We've got to pick and choose. My last point -- and I know Jake has worked on -- I've worked on three of such documents. I know you've probably worked on ten, but one of the things when I teach my students is when I go through the national security strategies of the United States, which are public written documents that go back to 1986 required by Congress, and just show them how every new iteration until you get to 2017, the definition of what counts as a core national interest just gets bigger and wider and wider until by the end everything is. And it's an old business adage that if you focus on everything, you're not really focused on anything. And so I think reining it in and getting back to basics is useful and necessary. [00:07:57] Amna Nawaz: Jake, over to you. What should American power prioritize, and has America been overextended? [00:08:01] Speaker 5: I will agree that, in general, national security strategy documents are not that good, in general, in general. Nor are they necessarily a great guide for how administrations actually tend to execute foreign policy. Look, I think it comes down to a very simple proposition, which is the object of U.S. foreign policy should be to make the lives of the American people safer, better, and easier. And for me, fundamentally, that comes down to three or four really fundamental priorities. And the first is investing in the sources of our own strength here at home. In particular, our industrial and innovation base. And I think our foreign policy has to be much more focused on working with allies and partners to strengthen those engines of American innovation, American industry, and American economic dynamism to deliver for the American people. And the second is this larger emphasis on alliances. One of the great things the United States has had over the course of the past several decades is powerful, capable allies who can work with us, both to deter war, but also to solve problems. Problems that no country, including the United States, even at the apex of our power, can solve on our own. I think the third thing is that we do now have a peer competitor in China who has the purpose, the intent, of surpassing the United States as the world's leading economic, technological, diplomatic, and military power. And we need to compete vigorously. And then finally, and I think here, maybe Michael and I don't disagree that much, I think it was high time to turn the page on the post-9/11 wars to get out of the business of forever wars in the United States. And when President Biden left office on January 20th, 2025, he was the first president this century who could say the U.S. is no longer at war. Now we're back in war and I think that comes at a cost to our capacity, our power, our credibility, and our purpose in the world. [00:09:57] Amna Nawaz: So, Michael, this idea of a so-called Dunro Doctrine, right, as it's been called, that spheres of influence should kind of guide our national security or foreign policy interests, do you agree with that? [00:10:10] Michael Anton: I mean, I wouldn't put it that way because the phrase spheres of interests conjures up 19th century or even older ideas of sort of ownership or de facto ownership by great powers of neighboring lesser powers. And I don't think any of us, I mean, somebody must, there's always somebody, but I don't think I or anybody who's thinking about this from my side of the aisle is thinking about it in those terms. But if you want to, Dunro, of course, refers to the Monroe Doctrine, which is another thing I teach to students all the time. I don't have time to go into all of that here, but Jake mentioned China. So let me just say that one of the fundamental purposes, goals, aims of what the president is trying to do in the Western Hemisphere is there's been a massive, massive amount of Chinese encroachment in very, very bad ways in countries all over the Western Hemisphere. That is detrimental to US interests and ultimately is detrimental to those countries' interests. But the front end terms of the deal seem so attractive and the United States and other countries can't offer those kinds of terms that some countries unwisely take it. I could tell you stories about, you know, us giving warnings, people taking the country, taking the deal anyway, realizing they got burned and coming and we have to kind of give them a we told you so lecture, but also try to help them extricate. And there's an extent to which Russia is playing in this field too, much less because the Russians have a lot less money, a lot less power, and they're very tied up in Ukraine. But any hostile or even adversarial great power encroachment in the Western Hemisphere can be very bad to the long-term security of the United States. And I think that's what he's focused on and should be. [00:11:39] Amna Nawaz: So do I hear you saying that you should be prioritizing the Western Hemisphere as an interest then because China's intervened in Africa and Middle East as well. You're saying that should be for the US a priority. Is that right? Yes, absolutely. [00:11:50] Michael Anton: It's close to home. It's the front yard. It's the backyard. It's the, you know, the greatest asset to US security, according to George Washington, and I'm nothing if not a fan of George Washington, are the two giant oceans and just the distance. Now, obviously, that distance has been reduced because of technology and missiles and the ability of planes and navies, right? But we are -- have been blessedly freer than any other great power in history from nearby adversaries who can do bad things to us. And the more we let that advantage go, the more we're imperiling our own security. [00:12:23] Amna Nawaz: Jay, do you agree with that? [00:12:24] Speaker 5: I do agree with that at a very fundamental level that our neighborhood matters profoundly to our security. And Michael's right to mention these two great liquid assets we have, the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. We have two other assets, too. We have neighbors to our north and south with whom we've historically had peaceful, commodious relationships. Now, if you take a poll in Canada, people are worried we are going to invade them. I mean, we have a big problem on our hands with our relationship with our neighbor to the north that I think is entirely self-inflicted. And then beyond that, the other concern I have about taking this notion of the Monroe Doctrine too far in the 21st century from the 19th century is it can lead you to very 19th century forms of thinking that I think are harmful to America's interests. One of those is a formula that the president used in his most recent UN General Assembly speech. To the victor, go the spoils. And here he was referring explicitly to Venezuela, basically saying we more or less conquered the place by seizing the leader. We now get to decide what happens to the oil there. I do agree with reducing Chinese influence in the Americas, but if we replace Chinese influence in the Americas with our own form of neo-colonialism, I think we will -- the United States will end up worse off, and we will pay for that over the longer term. [00:13:45] Amna Nawaz: Michael, do you want to respond to the point Jake made about Canada in particular? [00:13:48] Michael Anton: I do want to reassure any Canadians in the room or watching the live stream that I'm pretty confident the United States is not going to invade you. And that's, you know, good news, I suppose. [00:13:57] Amna Nawaz: So why the threats from the president? [00:13:59] Michael Anton: But then again, you know, yeah, some of the rhetoric has made relations between the two countries more fraught. This is difficult to deny. Look, the United States, as the president has said many times, the United States put itself in a position of being kind of a chump and getting ripped off in a lot of its deals, and putting up with that on the notion that any time you stand up for yourself, you're inevitably alienating an ally. I think there needed to be a corrective to that. There maybe has been some over-corrective to that in speech and in deed. But we needed to do something to get these relationships back more in balance. And I will say, on the question of alliances in general, yes, Donald Trump has been fairly impolitic in the way -- well, not all the time. Sometimes he's actually quite eloquent in the way he talks about this. But he's often also been very blunt in impolitic in the way he speaks to and about European and other allies. But the tough love has worked, right? The spending is up. The investment in capabilities is up. And most NATO leaders will tell you that same thing. And the first person who will admit it -- actually, the last two -- will be the secretary generals themselves. We'll say, "Thank God you came along." Because what had happened before -- I've seen this movie many times, and I know Jake has, too -- is presidents would say all the right words, but nobody believed him. So it was like when your mother tells you to clean your room and you don't and you never get punished, you could say, "Yeah, yeah, I'll clean my room." Like, whatever. You're just not going to do it. The reason the behavior finally changed is because they believed him. They believed Donald Trump. This guy scares us. He may actually get out of the alliance or do something that I know the past three, four presidents of both parties would never dare do. Maybe we've got to get our act together. And, of course, the other factor that scared them was the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But I think the tough love rhetoric worked. And, again, a lot of leaders of NATO countries would tell you that. And the past two -- the current and past two secretary generals of NATO would tell you that. [00:15:54] Amna Nawaz: I want to come back to alliances and to Venezuela, which you raised in just a moment. Michael, you've made my segue for me, because I do want to begin -- we're going to kind of take a tour around the planet here a little bit -- with Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine, because the last week has been a real doozy when it comes to a tipping point in this war. So it's been over four years since Russia's full-scale invasion. It's now the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II. We know U.S. efforts to negotiate an end so far have been unsuccessful. And in the last week, we've seen a growing rift between the U.S. and Ukraine. President Trump appearing to be easing all the pressure on Russia and applying more pressure to Ukraine. So, again, I'd ask you both just to take a couple of minutes and lay out what you think the U.S. role should be in helping to bring this war to an end. Jake? [00:16:44] Speaker 5: Well, first, I think doozy kind of understates the last 10 days. So if we go back to a week ago Friday and then just look at that period between then and now, you have the President of the United States waiving sanctions on Russian diesel and putting billions of dollars in Putin's coffers. You have the United States throttling Starlink and Star Shields so that Ukraine has a harder time actually shooting down the Russian Shehead drones that are striking civilian infrastructure. You have the U.S. denying Ukraine intelligence and forewarning of Russian ballistic missile attacks, again, designed to try to plunge Ukraine into cold and darkness this winter. You have the President saying, "Zelensky's got to go," and then just in the last 36 hours, you have the President coming out and waiving sweeping sanctions and tariffs that have been imposed on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis. And to me, I think that is objectionable on the kind of fundamental grounds that it is aiding an aggressor against a free people who are trying to stand up for their own right to exist as a country. But I think it also sets back President Trump's own stated goal of ending this war, because at the end of the day, this war only ends when the aggression by Putin and Russia ends. And that only happens if Putin calculates that the United States is going to stand by and stand up for Ukraine alongside a coalition of other nations. And the longer Putin believes he can just kind of wait this whole thing out, in my view, the longer the war will go on. [00:18:21] Michael Anton: Michael? Yeah. Not being there, I don't know what the rationale -- whether, you know, the internal debated rationale for all of these actions is or what it adds up to. I do know that the President and people around him have, for a long time, felt that whatever the answer is, if it is sort of continued U.S. aid that just maintains a stalemate for another year, another two years, another five years, that isn't really any good for anybody, especially as -- I know some of the -- I was going to say the media, sorry -- question this as a talking point or as a fact. But I believe it is a fact. And I was shown the data when I was still in government that our stocks of all kinds of things that we need and that we were supplying to Ukraine are way down, in part because of, if not the failure, the weakness and underinvestment in our defense industrial base. We can't produce this stuff fast enough. The administration is trying to work on a program to address that, but it's not going to be fixed in a year and a half. As somebody who actually negotiated with the Russians over this, you know, I've played a small part in it in 2025, I can say that what we, led by Steve Wyckoff, obviously led by the President, the Secretary of State, told them we were willing to do and willing to put up with, and the domestic and international price we were willing to pay, I thought was a very good deal for them. Perhaps, I know you would say, much better than they deserved, but it would have stopped the fighting. And I personally think, you know, I know I'm going to be accused of some kind of crazed Russophilia for this statement, but I personally think Russia has paid an extraordinary price for what they have done so far, and I don't see what they got for it. I don't know how many of you know the numbers and I'm not that up to date, but the last time I looked, the casualty counts are so gigantic on a population base that is demographically shrinking. You have to ask if Putin hasn't harmed his country for the next 50 years over this to gain, what, he's got all of two oblasts, about half of another and a third of another in four and a half years, not to mention the economic damage and the diplomatic isolation. And Donald Trump was offering him a way out and Donald Trump was going to get roundly, roundly, roundly condemned if they had signed on the dotted line. And they wouldn't go for it. Almost no terms you could offer. I mean, they had their terms. They were just absurd. [00:20:44] Speaker 5: I mean, that, to me, we ran a real-life experiment in 2025. When President Trump was running for office in '24, he said he believed he could end the war in 24 hours. And I think he believed that because he thought fundamentally Ukraine was the obstacle to peace, and he didn't recognize at the end of the day that Russia was the obstacle to peace. That even a remarkable deal being offered, not just on terms with respect to Ukraine, but on terms with respect to the United States' relationship with Russia and relationship with Europe and NATO, all of that was put on the table for Putin. And he said no. So the lesson from that, to me, only reinforces the point that to get Putin to a serious, just, and sustainable peace when it comes to Ukraine requires more pressure on Putin, not less. And in the last week, we've moved radically in the other direction. And I think, as a result, not only will more Ukrainian civilians die and the Ukrainians will have a harder time defending themselves, but also the war will be prolonged because Putin will take exactly the message from this, that this totality of activities is sending so piercingly, which is, hey, the longer you wait, the better this is going to get for you. [00:21:57] Michael Anton: Yes, but it's also true that, by definition, the war will be prolonged the more the United States acts on behalf of Ukraine, the more weapons it supplies, intelligence. And I'm not saying there's an easy answer to this. There is really no easy answer to this. Given that I am a partisan Republican who worked for Trump, it will surprise no one that Barack Obama was not my most favorite president. But he said many wise things. And the wisest one that I recall that I always use in class because I'm sort of a student of the NSC system. He's talking about this system. You know it well, right? Of course you do better than I do, right? All these papers fly back and forth. And we have deputies committees and principals committees. And eventually the whole part of the system is that every complicated issue, if possible, is supposed to be resolved at the lowest possible level to save the time of everyone in the level above them. And President Obama said at one point, this was in a book I read, one of the many, said, by definition, if it gets to me, it's a 50/50 call. And that's absolutely right. By definition, if it gets to the president's desk, it means the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Defense, they don't know what to do. Because there's no easy answer. You keep going with this support. Well, then you prolong the war. You deplete U.S. stocks. Do you stop? Well, then maybe you're arguably rewarding aggression and you're contributing to the suffering of the Ukrainian people who don't deserve it. But it's just so complicated that there's often not an obvious answer to which then I come back to my sort of hardheaded mustache twirling grumpiness and ask how much of this is really a core national interest of the United States. And I think there we really disagree. [00:23:26] Amna Nawaz: Jake, does providing Ukraine military support prolong the war? And given that, I'm curious how you look back on some of the criticism of the Biden administration that they slow rolled support for Ukraine out of fear of Russian escalation. Could the war have been over sooner with more robust U.S. support? [00:23:41] Speaker 5: Well, first, just on the question of whether the United States supporting Ukraine prolongs the war, I think we have to come back to a very fundamental proposition, which is that if Ukraine just stops fighting or the world stops helping Ukraine fight, it's the end of Ukraine. If Russia stops fighting, it's just the end of the war. So at some level, this is not just two belligerents going at one another. This is a war of aggression and conquest that is being waged by one party against another. And so the idea that providing defensive capability for that country to continue to stand on its own two feet and to survive as a sovereign, independent nation is chiefly the best -- the lens of that is prolonging the war as opposed to helping its, like, essential national survival, I think, is just a fundamental categorical misread of the situation. That's point one. Point two, I do believe, at the end of the day, Putin needs to get worn down, and that's through a combination of economic and military pressure and just the redoubtable defense of Ukraine on the front line by its very brave soldiers. And I believe that it is becoming increasingly clear to Putin that without help from Donald Trump, his ability to take the rest of the territory he's seeking to take militarily and sustain this war indefinitely is being challenged. So among the choices -- and I agree with Michael, this is not, you know, there are some black and white elements of this issue and there are some harder calls. But I don't think this one is a particularly hard call. Now, on the question of the Biden administration's support to Ukraine, the Biden administration provided an incredible amount of weaponry, capability, intelligence, logistical support to the Ukrainians from before the war and throughout the war. And there were debates over time about certain weapon systems, but I really do have to vehemently push back against the idea that there was slow rolling. [00:25:51] Amna Nawaz: Michael, do you want to take a minute to respond and then we'll move on? [00:25:53] Michael Anton: Yeah, just -- I don't think I agree that -- maybe -- I don't know what you mean by Ukraine stop fighting, but I don't know that it means the end of Ukraine. I mean, what's under dispute here, and I'm not -- I'm not trying to make excuses, but -- are these four eastern oblasts which, in Putin's mind, somehow have a historic and mystical connection to Russia and don't belong to Ukraine and so on. And he wants those back. Now, he did -- remember, he did try to militarily capture Kyiv and a few other places in 2022, and he got his you-know-what handed to him, right? It did not go well. Down in the south, he can't cross the river. I remember -- I always pronounce it badly, so I don't want to offend any Ukrainians. There's -- if you look at the actual territorial gains and losses in the movement of the front line over four and a half years, there -- the Russian casualty count, by the way, is a lot worse than the Ukrainian casualty count, by a lot. But we're talking about very minuscule movements that -- I could see the war -- and, by the way, if, you know, either side -- well, had we been able to do something in 2025, like, Ukraine was going to, for some period of time, you know, have to cede -- if not -- not cede formally, you know, recognition wasn't really on the table -- but not control a lot of territory that has been Ukrainian since 1992. I don't think that necessarily means the end of Ukraine. I don't even think it means the end of Ukraine if Putin ends up controlling all four oblasts, which is what he wants. It's not a -- it's not a great outcome. I'm not saying that that justifies whatever. I'm just saying, again, super complicated situation, almost impossible to know what to do. What you practically can do as a country, especially when you're stretched, your industrial base is not functioning as it needs to be, your stocks are running low, you've got problems all over the world. This is something clearly Russia considers its number -- or Putin, I guess, who embodies Russia at this moment -- its number-one priority, and I question whether -- I don't even question. I know it's not our -- it shouldn't be our number-one priority, and I sort of question where it is in our priority list, but I know that I would place it lower than Jake. [00:28:04] Amna Nawaz: I want to give you 30 seconds to respond since there was a lot -- [00:28:06] Speaker 5: I'll just make two observations. One has to do with what Putin's ultimate aims are here. I believe that if this were just about the territorial question alone for Putin, we'd be in a different situation. I think he doesn't just want the four oblasts, and I think he doesn't just want a neutral Ukraine. He wants a neutered Ukraine, and he wants it neutered so that at some point he can come back in and take all of it. So he wants a peace outcome, "peace," in quotes, that will allow him ultimately to render Ukraine essentially a non-viable entity. I think that's his goal. Okay. And I think he needs to be denied that goal because I do think it is in the American national interest not just to provide the support we're providing to Ukraine, but also to ensure that this kind of aggression cannot ultimately succeed. [00:28:56] Amna Nawaz: We'll have to leave that for there because I do want to move on now to the war in Iran. It's been nearly eight months since the U.S. and Israel launched that war, and we should point out some of the early goals, as articulated by State Department and Defense Department officials, have been met: the degrading of the Air Force, the naval capabilities, the diminishing of the missile launching capabilities. The war has not yet, however, reached the goal of degrading Iran's ability to exert power in the region. I mean, we've seen that with continued control over the Strait of Hormuz. It's rippling across the global economy, the conflict intensifying with Saudi Houthi violence as well, and now fears of Iran-backed attacks as far away as England. So, Jake, we'll start with you here. What has this war revealed to you about the limits of American power, and is this war in American national interest? [00:29:49] Speaker 5: Well, you've been consistently on the record since before the war started that I don't think the war is in our national interest. I think it has set us back in terms of Iran's ability to hold the Strait of Hormuz at risk, its ability to hold our bases in the region at risk, its ability to hold energy infrastructure and energy flows at risk. And it has also sucked us back into a war in the Middle East just as we were getting out of the forever wars in this area. And I think all of that is on the negative side of the ledger. It also has had an impact on people here at home. They're paying more out of pocket because of this war without any demonstrable strategic gain. So I think the war has basically been a folly from the start. But more importantly, and I would love to hear Michael talk about this because last year he was working on negotiations with the Iranians. I believe you cannot actually solve the Iranian nuclear program once and for all without a nuclear deal of some kind. You can bomb them as the Trump administration did last year and set the program back. But at the end of the day, Iran still has enriched uranium. It still has centrifuges and it still has scientists. And the only way to get a verifiable block on Iran's pathway to nuclear weapons is through a deal. And I think we have actually set diplomacy back rather than moved it forward since a year ago before this war started. [00:31:16] Amna Nawaz: Michael, what's the war revealed to you so far? [00:31:19] Michael Anton: I just -- I want to start by saying in my study of nuclear matters, which, you know, isn't as extensive as, say, Graham Allison's, but it's not bad. I'm pretty sure that every country that's ever sought and really wanted a nuclear weapon has gotten it, has succeeded. And the countries that haven't have voluntarily said, okay, we're turning this off because of diplomatic pressure or the isolation or the cost is too high or whatever. So it's hard to coerce a country out of wanting a nuclear weapon. And the criticism of Iranian nuclear diplomacy always was they're just stringing you along, right? They want to keep talking. They want to see what concessions they can get, but they're never really going to give up on this. And so is that true? I don't know. The evidence is, in my limited experience, as Jake mentioned, I did talk to them a couple times, three times, ambiguous. The fundamental core problem, which seemed kind of unbridgeable, is we were saying to them, you can't ever have enrichment, and they said, we must keep enrichment capability. And they had a point, which is to say, according to the terms of every international treaty, you know, they have a right to the full fuel cycle if they have a civilian program and no bomb program. The question is, do they actually have a bomb program? Formally, they say they don't. The IAEA doesn't formally acknowledge it. Various intel agencies around the world say they actually do, but it's surreptitious. Unless they're absolutely caught red-handed, though, they're not in violation, which is the talking point that they will always come back to. We're not in violation, and therefore, we have a right to the full fuel cycle, and you're essentially insulting our national honor if you say we can't have enrichment. So the trick was, in 2025, if this were possible, to find a way where one side could claim they didn't have enrichment, and they could claim that they did have enrichment. And, yeah, of course, you know, had the terms of the deal shown something like that, a lot of people were going to say, well, this obviously can't be true. X and not X cannot be true at the same time. But, hey, diplomacy's been made -- there have been all kinds of successful deals over the years that have that character. I'm not completely sure it was out of reach. That could just be the optimist in me. And, by the way, I'm not optimistic about anything at all, ever. So that would be a rare -- that would be a rare trait. But, Michael, is there -- [00:33:35] Amna Nawaz: I know we're not there now. Is there a diplomatic end to this war or just a military one? I mean, how do you see American power -- I don't know that it has to be diplomatic or military. [00:33:42] Michael Anton: It could just kind of stop and go back to a -- [00:33:46] Amna Nawaz: When did that happen to Ministry of War? Oh, it happens all the time. [00:33:51] Michael Anton: Actually, it's common enough. Right? Now, I mean -- So, the one thing you mentioned that I'm actually -- I'm sort of tracking but I'm skeptical of, this is something U.S. Intel has always been talking about. But when people start giving actual examples, you've got to reach back pretty much -- pretty far into the past for the Iranians doing genuinely terrible things in, say, Western capitals. We've caught them planning some stuff a couple of times. But when was the last time they actually -- no, I'm not excusing anything. And if they're going to do it again, that's terrible. And we ought to be stopping that. But to me, the biggest problem right now is the straight. And if you asked -- you asked earlier, like, what surprised you? I can tell you what surprised me. Yeah. I didn't know that the U.S. Fifth Fleet would -- and all of our capabilities can't keep the straight open. I didn't know that in advance. I thought, that's why we're there. We can't do that? Okay. [00:34:42] Amna Nawaz: That was a surprise to you. [00:34:43] Michael Anton: I -- admittedly, maybe I'm naive. Yeah, I was a little bit -- I was a little bit surprised by that. [00:34:48] Amna Nawaz: Was that a surprise to you? [00:34:51] Speaker 5: The fact that Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz with its asymmetric drone and missile capabilities, I think, was a huge risk going into this war that was briefed to the President. [00:35:00] Michael Anton: But keep it closed for as long as -- I mean, it closes. It's open. It closes. It's open. But the balance of it, anyway, I've been a little bit surprised by it. [00:35:09] Amna Nawaz: Well, we've now seen Iran kind of turn the logic of U.S. bases in the region on its head a little bit. They used to be a source of security for a lot of our Gulf allies, and now they're seen as targets. What does that say to you about U.S. allies in the region, Michael? [00:35:25] Michael Anton: I mean, okay, U.S. allies in the region are in a pickle because they are and always have been, even before the Iranian Revolution, been afraid of Iran for historic, religious, ethnic, geostrategic reasons that predate political events of the 1970s. For instance, the UAE as a country basically exists because seven -- it was originally going to be nine -- Emirates got together when the British said, we're not guaranteeing the Gulf anymore. And they said, we're going to have to form something bigger than what we've got because of the Iranians. And that was '71. That's before. So they are afraid of Iran, have always been afraid of Iran, have always relied on the U.S. And one of the encouraging things in the Middle East in the past, I don't know, five years, maybe a little longer, is increasing cooperation on a kind of enemy of my enemy basis among countries in the Gulf and with Israel has been very encouraging. So, on the other hand, I do sense from reading the reporting some frustration. This is just leaks, you know, who knows? I mean, leaks. Sometimes they're reliable, sometimes whatever. [00:36:34] Speaker ?: Some frustration. [00:36:35] Michael Anton: We're saying like, well, yeah, we've always been afraid of Iran, but, you know, now look, now look what's going on. And we're bearing the brunt of this. It's another one of those just extremely difficult predicaments to be in for the United States. We can't abandon these countries to Iran. I mean, that's the whole point of the alliance structure over there. But it's hard to know what to do going forward right now. [00:37:02] Amna Nawaz: Jake, what do you think the U.S. should do moving forward? [00:37:05] Speaker 5: So, I'm going to borrow this from my wife because she got asked this question. And she said, there's an old Irish joke about a farmer in rural Ireland. An American tourist comes along and says, how do I get to Dublin? And the farmer looks at him and says, I wouldn't start from here. And that's how I would answer what I would do about the situation in the Strait of Hormuz and with Iran right now. I would not start from here. I know that's slightly glib, but honestly, we have created a circumstance in which the viability of freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz is now sustainably in doubt. And where our allies correctly are saying, well, what the heck was this all about? And where, frankly, I kind of agree with Michael, maybe the most likely outcome of the whole thing is we just kind of walk away and pretend it didn't happen, which isn't so great either. But basically, I think we're in a land of more or less terrible options. And the best thing the president could do at this point, in my view, is retrench, is cut a deal, get a deal in place, and then try to essentially regroup and work for the future. [00:38:24] Michael Anton: But one thing you left off the ledger there is even if that were to happen, we would still have pocketed all the degradation talked about earlier that probably set back not just the nuclear program, the missile program, all kinds of other programs, back any number of years, hopefully, that really does reduce their capabilities over the long term. Now, as for getting a deal, it's just like anything else, what we were talking about with Russia. They've got to want it. And do they want it? Do they want it? [00:38:50] Speaker 5: I don't know. I think they want it a lot less today than they did when you were talking to them a year ago, because they've now gone through all this. And also because the even harder men of the IRGC have even greater purchase. And where the new supreme leader, I think, is probably more aggressive on the nuclear question than his father was. [00:39:09] Amna Nawaz: I want to move on to Israel, because we've seen Israel's war in Gaza continue. And we just saw President Trump endorse Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in this pivotal upcoming election. This is more a question about American duty, responsibility, or commitment outside of our borders. So this upcoming contest in Israel is going to decide, obviously, if Netanyahu can stay in power. There are ongoing wars in Gaza, in Lebanon, and in Iran. And this is a government that's seen a real dip in American support over the last year-plus. And 62% of Americans now view this Israeli government unfavorably. Some 55% believe military support should be reduced or ended. It's a government that's been accused of genocide in Gaza by an independent UN commission. So I want to ask each of you, what do you believe the U.S. relationship and commitment to this Israeli government, specifically, should be? Michael, I'll start with you. [00:40:07] Michael Anton: I mean, this government is hard. I mean, one of my -- I'm generally opposed to any foreign -- whether it's us getting involved in other people's elections or them getting involved in ours. I just think we should all stay out of it, right? And I just think it's kind of none of our business. Let other countries sort out the leadership that they want to choose themselves. And, you know, I would say that about any president weighing in anywhere or any foreign president or prime minister weighing in on our elections. Because the United States' commitment traditionally, fundamentally, has not been to any particular Israeli government, but to the state of Israel itself since recognition in 1948. It doesn't mean the United States has to endorse everything the Israelis do necessarily. And, in fact, the United States privately objects all the time to things the Israelis do or want to do. And a lot of this all goes on in private. And there is some building Israeli -- actually, I shouldn't say that. I mean, building -- it sounds like it just started. It's been going on for a while. It's building more and more Israeli frustration with that so that you have a growing -- consensus is too soft, but a growing body of opinion that may come to a consensus that Israel needs to kind of wean itself off USAID so that it has more freedom of action in the future. Now, that's not going to help, you know, some of the issues that you just talked about now in world public opinion where they're going to see more freedom of action. It's just more of what we got now. And that's why you're in popular in the first place. And so if you just do more of that, you're only going to make that problem worse. I think these wars should come to an end. [00:41:37] Speaker 5: And I think what particularly the war in Iran highlighted is the divergence in Israel's interest from the United States is this prime minister has basically talked about wanting to have a forever war with Iran. And he doesn't mind if the Strait of Hormuz is closed because it doesn't affect him, whereas it does matter to the American people. And so I think that the United States should take the position that it is time to see these wars end and that this should have an impact on our relationship with them. [00:42:06] Michael Anton: Well, I don't know that -- not that I'm here to speak for any particular foreign prime minister, but my read on Prime Minister Netanyahu is not that he wants a forever war with Iran. If he could get regime change, he would much prefer that. And I think -- Sure, in the absence of that. I think he genuinely thought in February of this year that that could be achieved quickly. And here we are in October, and it hasn't been. And it may be that it's just beyond the capability of the United States or Israel or the United States and Israel together to affect regime change in Iran. [00:42:36] Speaker 5: That would be my view, and therefore his second best option is just keep the war going indefinitely. And I don't think that's in the United States' national interest. [00:42:44] Amna Nawaz: We are running out of time, and I want to try to hit another few topics, too. And then a reminder, we will come to your questions in a moment. But you mentioned Venezuela earlier, and I have to ask you both about this U.S. Special Forces operation. In January of this year, this was the raid that captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife. The president has called it a perfect scenario. We saw Special Forces go into Caracas, depose Maduro, bring him to New York to face charges. There's still been no democratic transition yet in that country, but his former vice president is now the interim leader and has aligned her administration with U.S. economic and energy demands. The idea that this is a perfect scenario that could be replicable is the implication there, Michael. What do you make of that? And is that how U.S. power should be exerted? [00:43:30] Michael Anton: And let's remember that Nicolas Maduro is -- I forgot exactly. Actually, no. I think I remember. I think it was 2017 and I was in the NSC. He has been designated a terrorist and a narco-terrorist by the United States of America. So we're talking about a bad guy working actively against U.S. interests in league with hostile foreign powers. So to that extent, you know, like this was an effective and justified use of U.S. power to protect the United States and a strategic asset in the West that was at risk. You know, the world's -- Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves. It's not Saudi Arabia. It's Venezuela. At risk of coming into control by a hostile power nearby or a hemispheric hostile power in league with hostile power in ocean away. So that seems to me to be kind of a wise use of power. I know that it's unusual, kind of stunning, kind of shocking. But it was executed extremely well. And it's so far had good effects, at least for our hemispheric security. [00:44:39] Amna Nawaz: Jacob, do you agree? Wise use of power? [00:44:41] Speaker 5: Yeah. One of the things that really struck me about that operation, and I wrote an op-ed at the time about this, is the United States military is operationally remarkable. And they pulled off an absolutely remarkable operation in extracting Maduro from an enemy or a hostile capital with no loss of American life. I mean, that's really quite something. But that can be intoxicating. And what I basically said at the time was this is likely to lead President Trump to draw the wrong conclusion, that we can just go conduct these operations at will. We don't really have to listen to the warnings and the risks. And not a few weeks later, he started -- launched the military operation against Iran. So I think we should be very cautious and careful about exercising power in this way. And then when you connect it to the endpoint, if the endpoint is basically a bunch of deals for a bunch of insiders for Venezuela's oil, which to me seems like the direction we're heading right now, I'm not sure how at the end of the day this application of American power and influence is going to redound to the benefit of the American people. [00:45:49] Michael Anton: Although, to be fair, he didn't do anything like what he did in Venezuela and Iran. And to the best of my knowledge, based just on reading the reporting, nothing like that was even really complicated. [00:46:01] Speaker 5: Well, remember, in the early days they took out the Supreme Leader and then the President came out and said, "We have our guys in Iran who are a lot like Delcy Rodriguez." So very much in his mind was take out the leader and then the pragmatists there somehow will come work with the United States and cut a similar deal. So I think his logic for what happened in Venezuela, he absolutely quite explicitly extended to Iran and then came to learn actually there were no Delcy Rodriguez. [00:46:31] Michael Anton: No, I know. I just mean that your fear, which, reasonable fear, okay, this worked once, let's keep trying it, at least as of now, hasn't panned out. He hasn't kept trying that kind of thing, that kind of operation. And maybe he won't again, I don't know. [00:46:44] Speaker 5: Well, I feel like he did try a large, supersized version of that operation in Iran. [00:46:49] Michael Anton: To the best of my knowledge, we didn't put anybody into Tehran or anywhere into the country. I mean, there may be stuff that I don't know because you never know what you don't know. But I just don't think he did. At least I haven't seen it reported and it doesn't seem likely. [00:47:01] Speaker 5: Oh, sorry. I'm not suggesting he sent Chinooks into Tehran to pull out the Supreme Leader. I'm saying he similarly said, "I'm going to use this amazing American military. We're going to take out the leader. And then what will happen is everything else will just fall into place. And we'll have an Iranian Delce Rodriguez and we'll work the Iranian oil." And days into it, he was saying, "We're talking to people. We're picking our people. We have our Delce's," and so forth. Now here we are, as you said, many months later. And I think this is why we should be cautious about these kinds of exercises. [00:47:32] Amna Nawaz: We're going to move on to China, and I'm embarrassed. I'm saving, like, very few minutes to talk about a huge topic, but there is a lot to cover here. President Trump has clearly shifted his strategy on China away from more aggressive trade wars, ideological confrontation. And we've seen more of an embrace as an equal, as a peer of Xi Jinping working to establish a personal rapport and more strategic stability. Jake, take a look at that approach and assess for us if this is the right approach for China, for the U.S. right now. What specific steps this administration should be taking? [00:48:08] Speaker 5: You know, it's interesting because I think if you look at it from President Xi's perspective, his basic view is that America is in decline and that the key for this period is to mean some degree of basic stability in the relationship with the United States while China surpasses the U.S. So he has this formula, constructive relations of strategic stability, that he asked President Trump to basically endorse. And for us, that might just sound like, you know, Diplo speak. But for China, it's a very important framing because it's about calm in the relationship. And interestingly, President Trump has his own reasons basically right now to similarly want calm. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that he launched a trade war, saw the escalation, saw the pain of the rare earths and said, I want to kind of step back from that. But I think part of it, too, is that he very much personalizes this relationship. And he views success in the U.S.-China relationship fundamentally as, do I have a good rapport with Xi Jinping? Hey, look, yes, I do. Things are going well. I don't think any of that works out particularly well for the longer term U.S. national interest, where I fear that, in effect, much of the strategy over the course of the past year has put China in a much stronger position vis-a-vis. The United States. That's true with respect to China's desire to divide us from our allies. It's true with respect to China's desire to have us bogged down in wars in the Middle East. And it's true in other respects as well. Michael. [00:49:39] Amna Nawaz: I mean, it's true. [00:49:40] Michael Anton: Trump does, I think, want a rapport. But he wants a rapport with every world leader. And I just don't think that that's very unusual for U.S. presidents. You really can't, going back to Roosevelt, Churchill, or even before that, you really can't get a lot of good things done unless you are able to establish that rapport. Now, the fundamental problem the United States has with China is mostly for business interests, but also for geo-strategic reasons, beginning in the Cold War, continuing through the 1990s. The United States let our relationship with China get so out of balance on the theory that welcoming them into the international system, welcoming into the global economy would moderate the regime and send it in a particular direction. And it would sort of join the club of advanced nations as an equal member and see that it had a stake in the system and want to maintain that system. And that didn't pan out. And Donald Trump was the first presidential candidate, really, to see that and talk about it fundamentally in 2015 and then start to -- '16, '15, '16 -- and then start to put it into action in his two terms as president. Now, the rebalance is not complete, to say the least. When you're in a hole that deep, it takes a long time to get out of it. But I think he changed the conversation on China. I would disagree. I've been over -- I've talked to allies in East Asia a couple of times. I'm actually supposed to go to Japan here in February, I guess. You know, they feel like more yoked up with us and like they need us more than ever. [00:51:16] Speaker 5: Do you think that Trump has been different -- President Trump has been different with respect to China in his second term than in his first term? [00:51:23] Michael Anton: In principle, no. In practice, yes. By which I mean I think he sort of hit the gas hard on the same principles that he always had in the first term but felt a little held back by. And some of the reaction came and he took his foot off the gas. But the basic approach, I think, has been -- the fundamental philosophy undermining the approach, I think, has been the same. Oh, I'm sorry. I lost my microphone. The, you know, tactics, implementation, you know, the speed, the relative speed at which he's moved has changed. [00:51:53] Amna Nawaz: I'm going to go ahead and ask anyone who wants to ask a question to start lining up at the microphones. There's two here on the floor, two up in the balcony. While you do that, I'm going to ask one quick question of each of you. I think it's fair to say that your two administrations you've served in couldn't have more different approaches when it comes to how they view alliances and America's role. Or maybe you disagree with it already. I don't know about that. I mean, look, I think as I said -- Well, let me ask my question if you don't mind as people line up. But why don't you let me -- because even, Jake, you've written about the fact that some of the alliances no longer serve America in the same way they used to. What, in your view, for each of you, is one alliance or a multilateral organization that is absolutely core to American central -- national security interests and one that no longer serves us? Jake? [00:52:37] Speaker 5: Well, look, I basically think the broad approach is the broad approach that we have. The broader American alliance system in both transatlantic and transpacific fundamentally serves U.S. interests. The one thing I would say is that while defense remains vital, the Turing Great Power War has to remain a core function of these alliances, our allies have become even more important when it comes to economics and technology. You know, just take the most advanced machine on earth, extreme ultraviolet lithography. This is a high-powered laser that, you know, prints out features that are nanometers across the width of two strands of DNA. That machine is produced in the Netherlands with American components, German components, components from other countries as well. And it is the machine that produces the advanced semiconductors that power AI. So I believe that -- and then you look at what we rely on with respect to Japan and Korea in the same regard for our industrial and innovation power, for their investments in the United States and for the technology that they bring to the table. So I think these alliances have even more relevance today in a way, although the emphasis on the issues within them I think only needs to be elevated to a greater extent. And so for me this is not a question of what alliances aren't relevant anymore. It's about shifting that emphasis in a way that really reflects the challenges as we face them today. Michael, I'll give you the last word here. [00:54:05] Michael Anton: Michael, for me it's more a question of alliances are useful if and to the extent that allies show up. And I think allies got used to kind of being adrift, kind of knowing that they could underinvest, knowing that they could under support, under deploy, just under everything, and that they wouldn't pay a price for it. The U.S. security umbrella would always be there. They'd always get jawboned by presidents and secretaries and national security advisors. But there wouldn't be consequences. And so they could just go about their normal business and keep doing things the way they thought were in their narrow interests and that weren't necessarily in the interest of the alliance. Because part of being in an alliance is you've got to sacrifice a little of what you want for the common good or the greater good of those in the alliance. And I think Trump has turned that around, not fully, but substantially. And he's changed the direction in such a way that this is, you know, some bit of good news. I don't see it turning back. So I would hope that you would actually be encouraged by that thought, too. [00:55:02] Speaker 5: I'll just say one thing on this, maybe as a slightly humorous ending. I don't know, maybe it won't be humorous. So when President Trump left office in his first term, there were nine NATO allies that were at 2% of GDP defense spending. When President Biden left office, there were 23. And the remaining were on track to do so in a year. So I actually felt that the experience of Trump coming in, doing his thing. But President Biden put a lot into the burden sharing and produced an outcome. Then President Trump comes back and he's like, not 2%, 5%. And I was reminded of the scene from There's Something About Mary, where they're like, not seven-minute abs, six-minute abs. No, five-minute abs. I was like, darn it, why didn't we think of the 5% thing we have to say? [00:55:48] Michael Anton: Yeah, okay, but to be fair, he got NATO as an alliance. [00:55:50] Amna Nawaz: I really did not expect something about Mary to come. And the entire-- [00:55:53] Michael Anton: Go ahead. So I agree with you on Burden, Sharon. This is really, okay, Michael, really, you have the last one down that we had to go to a question. I do agree with you on Burden. To be fair, since we're talking about 5%, he did get a formal pledge from the alliance and from every member of the alliance but one, whom I will not name because I don't want to call anybody out, to formally adopt 3.5. That was a real achievement. And they're cruising up to it. And many are-- well, not many, but several. Basically, the closer your border is to Russia, the more likely you are to be over it right now. [00:56:16] Amna Nawaz: Okay, we're going to leave this here. To our first questioner over here, go ahead and identify yourself. And if you wouldn't mind, I'll keep your questions brief. We'll try to get to as many as possible. Please go ahead. [00:56:24] Speaker 6: Thank you for your very intriguing debate. I am Skyler Lee, an MPP student from Taiwan. I'd like to ask what the Indo-Pacific region, in particular Taiwan, factors into your view of the U.S. national security. [00:56:39] Michael Anton: I've written about this, so I'm on the record. I fundamentally am worried. I have a concern that if the United States were to stumble into, for whatever reason, a great power war, as Jake just said, that we would lack the capability to effectively defend Taiwan from China. And so that the best possible outcome for the foreseeable future, and that foreseeable future may be decades, for all I know, is just a preservation of the status quo, which is not a super satisfying answer. But, again, these things are really hard, and sometimes the best outcome is just not that great, and it's what you got. But that seems to me to be the best outcome for everybody right now. Everybody except those members of the Chinese Communist Party who desperately want to reunite the mainland with Taiwan, in which case it's not a great outcome. But for Taiwan, for the United States, for, you know, the global economy that relies on semiconductors, for all of our allies in the so-called first island chain, that's the best possible outcome. [00:57:44] Speaker 5: Yeah. A war over Taiwan would be catastrophic for the people of Taiwan. It would be catastrophic for the entire world. It would be catastrophic for the American people, and it should be a paramount priority of American foreign policy to prevent that war from ever happening. [00:57:59] Amna Nawaz: Thank you for your question. Over to you. [00:58:01] Speaker 7: Hello, my name is Steven. I am from Silver Spring, Maryland. I'm an MPA student here at the Kennedy School. And I want to ask about the drug boat strikes and the expanding military footprint in Latin South America. What do we believe the aims are, and when will the American people kind of get a sense of if we're being successful or not? And what does the post-World War II world order that the U.S. has built, what's in the future of it? Is it all but over, or are we going to have to reimagine it? [00:58:33] Amna Nawaz: Wow. Okay. Let's do the first question first. The boat strikes in the Caribbean. Michael? [00:58:41] Michael Anton: So, when I was in government, without revealing any details, I received, my deputy and I received really extensive briefings on this. And the amount of stuff flowing into the United States from hostile, and some of this is just cartels out to make money. Some of it is aligned with states in the region, and some of it is aligned with states outside the region, as we were talking about. And the amounts were staggering, the amount of destruction it does here were staggering. It's just the kind of thing a serious country that wants to, as you said, protect its people, make their lives better, cannot allow. So, I think this is a completely legitimate use of U.S. power. I hope it's effective. Not being an attorney, you know, the international legal complexities of it elude me, but just as someone who has studied statecraft, to use a 50-cent word, I look at that and I go, if we have a border, if we have people we're trying to protect, and this stuff is being done to hurt us, by regimes that are trying to hurt us, in league with regimes that are trying to hurt us, we've got to find ways to stop it, because it was really bad. Now, as for the World War II order, that's another thing I've written on at length. You can read about it if you want, I don't know. But I am one of those who wonder if aspects of it did not reach the point of diminishing returns some number of years ago, and something's got to change. And I think, inevitably, it's going to have to change, simply because of the shift in great power centers of gravity in the world over the last 10, 25 years, just make the maintenance of that order impractical when you have China being what it is, when you have India, not a military great power, but certainly population culturally and growing economic strength, it just makes that old world order that was built around a reality that no longer exists, it makes it kind of rickety. [01:00:29] Speaker 5: So, just on the second question first, I think a core, almost pulsating principle of the operating system of the post-World War II order, for American foreign policy, was the idea of enlightened self-interest, a positive sum, of the idea that we are better off when others are better off. And I believe that that is fundamentally true today as it was in 1948, and that the more we trend into a pure zero-sum mindset, the worse off we are going to end up. So, the institutions will evolve. The power dynamics will evolve. But some of the core insights that animated American foreign policy through those decades led to the Marshall Plan, led to the formation of NATO, and much else. I think they still have a lot of fresh application in today's world, and we should pursue that. On the boat strikes, I just think the administration has given utterly unsatisfying answers to the actual threat posed by the actual targets. And as a result, I fear that this has -- is no longer some targeted operation against direct threats to the United States, but something that is just quite broad-based and in some ways arbitrary. Some of these boats, for example, are headed to Suriname, which is the jumping-off point for drugs to go to Europe. They're not even coming to the United States. So, I have deep and profound concerns about this, and I don't think answers have been forthcoming as Congress has tried to pursue oversight. [01:01:58] Amna Nawaz: Thank you so much for your question. [01:01:59] Speaker 8: Over to you. Hello. My name is Ibtital Mahmood. I'm called EMI. I'm a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, an MCMPA student, and a survivor for the Darfur Genocide from Philly. Your conversation is very fascinating to me. One thing that concerned me was the idea that we kind of just can make a mess and then walk away. My question to you is, coming from the conflict resolution space and also the investment space, a more stable world is a more secure world, and war is a destabilizing force. Peace is a stabilizing force. But considering what we've been doing the past several years, it seems like the definition of national security has become so narrow and focused on creating wars. And so, part of me wonders how can we broaden that definition of national security to bring us back toward the possibility of promoting more peace in the world? And how do we regain that authority as the peace brokers and peacemakers? Because even working, you know, with the U.S. administration negotiation team for Sudan, we understood that we were losing credibility already because of the U.S.'s role in the world. So how can we essentially regain that credibility if we ourselves are so focused on our internal politics that we're letting the rest of the world do the same thing? Thank you. [01:03:15] Amna Nawaz: Thank you for that. We'd like to take that first. I'll start. [01:03:18] Speaker 5: I mean, I think on the – taking it to the current war against Iran, my view is that we should use diplomacy to cut a deal, even if it's not a great deal for us so that there is something in place that we can then build from that is not an ongoing war that is harming people. I mentioned the United States, but elevated energy and food prices are hurting people all over the world. And the poorer the country is, the more the pain. Look, in the Obama administration, I opened the secret channel with Iran that paved the way for the Iran nuclear deal. I have deep conviction that actually we can solve problems through diplomacy rather than through the use of military force. And I believe that that is when American statecraft is at its best. And it is absolutely the case that for a period of many years after 9/11 through multiple presidents, we fought these major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it was long past time to bring them to an end and to try to turn the page to a different era in which America leads with diplomacy. It doesn't give up on the idea that we need a strong military to deter great power war, including war over Taiwan, but that puts diplomacy at the center. [01:04:32] Michael Anton: Well, I'm on the record in this forum as having said that I thought the definition of U.S. national security had gotten too expansive and needed a correction, a restrictive correction. So maybe you think it's too restricted. I mean, the administration has had some success in brokering deals. For instance, Azerbaijan, Armenia, where they might have gone to war over this little corridor. It's hard to explain without a map. But you can only really do that if both parties, as I said, want it. And as I think the administration has found to its frustration in a couple parts of the world where they are -- I mean, I know we were talking about Steve Wyckoff earlier who was here but got ill and couldn't give his talk. And I worked for Wyckoff for many months last year. And he's -- I'm 100 percent. He's absolutely committed to getting deals and negotiating these things. But it's very hard to be the go-between between parties that are so far apart or -- I'm not naming any names here -- but that some of whom may be negotiating a kind of cynical bad faith. They're talking but they don't really want to sign anywhere or make any concessions. There's not much the person in the middle can do. And I don't think that's necessarily the United States' fault or any administration's fault. It's sometimes just the facts of the situation. [01:05:47] Amna Nawaz: Thank you for your question. Over to you. [01:05:50] Speaker 9: Hi. I'm Alex. I'm a junior at the college. During the Biden administration, I was quite interested by what seemed to be the continuity between Trump one and then Biden. You know, the tariffs remain -- many tariffs remaining in place, the orientation towards industrial policy, all that. And then tonight it seems like you guys at least are keeping disagreements toward the realm of like these kinds of ends-oriented debates. You know, how do we best contain China? How do we best end the war in Ukraine? And I recognize that maybe you don't do this so that too many sparks don't fly. But like, what is the essence of the actual philosophical differences between you two -- [01:06:28] Speaker 5: You're disappointed there hasn't been enough action up here today. Yeah, I am. [01:06:31] Speaker 9: On the American, like, national interest and what that means. I assume that you, Jake Sullivan, do not believe that the condition of the United States in 2016 was akin to that of Flight 94. Three, three, three, 93. Beyond -- Flight 93, excuse me. Thank you. But beyond that, I was wondering if you could sketch that out. Whatever. [01:06:50] Amna Nawaz: Gentlemen, why haven't you fought more? All right. [01:06:54] Michael Anton: If I -- now, for me to answer that question, I have to put words into his mouth, which I always hate doing. So just cut me off and tell me if I'm wrong. If there is a core philosophical disagreement here, I think it is this understanding of what American interests are. So I was at a college -- I was in -- I'll just say it. I was in Berkeley a couple of weeks ago, and I gave a foreign policy talk. And I was kind of speedrunning it and going really fast, walking them through the Cold War. And just to make a quick summary, I said, okay, so you've got to understand the partisan differences during the Cold War. Democrats thought Republicans were crazy warmongers who were going to get us into a nuclear war. And Republicans thought Democrats -- or accused them -- of being soft, naive, and perhaps communists. I mean, if you want to just boil it down, that's what it was. So if I were to just boil it down in the most glib, cynical way, I would say I'm trying to -- he would say of me, okay, if he were being glib and cynical, like, he's just a pure realist who doesn't believe America has any kind of principles that it ought to promote in the world. And I would say he is a little too blind to the harsh, necessary realities of international statecraft, where sometimes interest trumps principle, and that leads one into policy realms that end up either having unintended consequences or wasting a lot of resources that don't accomplish anything. [01:08:15] Speaker 5: I think, you know, if you read the national security strategy of the Trump administration, one pretty radical departure in it, even from the first Trump national security strategy, which was kind of introduced the idea of strategic competition and so forth, is this kind of civilizational overlay that a major focus has to be about protecting kind of Western civilization. And a real, like, frontal assault, I would say, is a fair way of putting it, on Europe for turning its back on its own civilizational heritage and, you know, a cheerleading for what are called patriotic parties, I think, is what's in the document. I think that is a big difference between a worldview that's kind of root -- that is a big departure from a traditional American foreign policy and where I think at least the Trump administration is and where that document is. And I'd be curious your -- [01:09:18] Michael Anton: I mean, I was -- that was the -- I would say the number one, or at least the first prominent criticism that was leveled and that got around. And I admit, in my naivete, I was surprised by that, and I complained to a few friends. I said, "We're being attacked for saying to Europe, 'We love you. Please live.'" Right? Because there is a kind of sense -- if you go to Europe -- I mean, look at what's going on in France right now. There's some really deep things going on in Europe that are troubling, that if you love Europe -- I love Europe, I love Europe on so many levels, I love so many countries -- you need to be worried about, if you want those countries to survive as thriving countries and as allies. I mean, if we're going to talk about NATO, right, the only nominally non -- well, Canada, us -- but every country in it other than those is European except Turkey, right? So if you want to talk about NATO being core, the most fundamental U.S. alliance, then those countries have got to be healthy. And I don't just mean GDP healthy, and I don't just mean spending on defense and that -- although I mean all of that. All of that has to be true. But countries can only do those things effectively when they have a kind of inner confidence in who they are and their history and their contribution to that history and to the alliance, both in the past, in the present, and going forward. And I think if there is an extent to which U.S. policy and/or rhetoric can help restore and bolster some of that confidence, I think that's actually useful to all of us. [01:10:43] Amna Nawaz: Can you be more specific when you talk about the European history that you hope they remain core to? [01:10:48] Michael Anton: Well, I mean, these -- yeah. We could just talk about the 20th century, you know, winning. Obviously, Germany didn't win those two wars. But even then, the German story is sort of miraculous after having, you know, caused so much trouble in Europe. And that's obviously a vast understatement. But you can go all the way back to 1870, right? Germany becoming integrated into the Western alliance, adopting a peaceful constant. Now, is it still in the United States' interest that Germany underinvest as much as it does? Now, everybody knows why we impose that on them in the immediate post-war period. But does it make sense for the U.S. or for NATO or for Europe as a whole that Europe's largest economic power remain -- disarmed is obviously glib and too strong, but underarmed compared to its capabilities, if the alliance is so important and if these threats are growing? I question that. And the reason why -- I've had this conversation with Germans before -- and they'll give you the constitutional reasons and all that, but they will also say that there's something now kind of in the German national character that just really resists doing anything more in this space. [01:11:50] Amna Nawaz: Sorry to overstep my moderator, Bounce. I didn't mean to jump in on your question over here. Jake, unless you wanted to take a minute to respond, can we go on to the next one? [01:11:57] Speaker 10: I'm okay. [01:11:58] Amna Nawaz: Okay. Let's take a couple more minutes here and try to get at least one or two more questions. Please, go ahead. [01:12:02] Speaker 10: Hi. I'm Robert Nguyen from Harvard Business School. I'm really interested in hearing more about how AI is becoming such a central part of geopolitics. How are you guys thinking about, like, AI safety? And more importantly, like, AI is being restricted in some countries like, let's say, China. Should we continue that? Should we spread American AI? And that goes down to also, like, chips, manufacturing. There's a lot of that. [01:12:25] Speaker 5: So, I teach a class called The Geopolitics of AI. So, I should be able to give an okay answer to this question. But that's not a foregone conclusion. Look, I think, fundamentally, the United States should continue to make investments to remain at the cutting edge of AI. But we have to do so. We have to do so in a way that closes the gap between capabilities and safety. And just saying, but China, is an insufficient answer to that. We should not just keep racing pell-mell without guardrails and without governance at the potential great risk to our people and people everywhere because we're in a race with China. That is a race to the bottom where everybody loses. So, fundamentally, my view is that we should keep investing in the sources of our own strength on this core technology. But we should be engaged in intense diplomacy with China to come up with some way to manage the risks of this. And it is incumbent upon the two great AI powers in the world to do that. And I know that can seem hard or far-fetched. But we have done this before in our history with transformative technologies. I think we can do it again. And I think the rest of the world should hold us accountable to doing that. [01:13:41] Michael Anton: So, I do not teach a class called AI and Geopolitics. So, I have essentially nothing intelligent to say, except the following, which is semi-intelligent. I have lived through something like this movie before. If you're above a certain age, you can remember how messianically people were talking about the Internet circa 1997. And the Internet has no doubt transformed the world in many ways, unforeseen. But if you go back and you look at what people were saying it was going to do, 1997, '98, '99. My hero, Tom Wolf, wrote an essay called Digibabble about this, where you just sort of made fun of this talk about. And it hasn't done quite a lot of the things everyone thought it was going to do. And maybe AI will do everything everyone says it's going to do. I hope it, you know, the one thing people are worried about is that it's going to kill us all. I hope it doesn't do that. But, hey, whatever. Or maybe not. Maybe it's overhyped. And then the second point is, this just gets you back to one of those 50/50 calls that's really very hard to navigate. And you can criticize whatever decision is made, right? So, do you allow the, you know, when you have the world's most valuable company making the world's most powerful chips, making a lot of money for a lot of people, it's an American economic powerhouse, okay? Do you allow them to sell those in any market that wants them and make even more money and grow even economically stronger? Even if you know they're going to end up in the hands of adversaries who are going to take them apart and look out and figure out stuff and steal technology and use that against you later. But then you're constraining the economic development of AI. You're hampering one of your greatest economic assets. It's like there's no easy way to answer that question. And so what ends up happening is you do an interagency process with the commerce department, the treasury. Every department gets together. They come up with something. It turns out to be mush, maybe too strong. But inevitably, because 500 pairs of hands from different perspectives work on it, it kind of satisfies no one. But it's probably, at the end of the day, the best you're going to do. And I don't know that we're going to know for quite a while if whatever it is, is the right answer. [01:15:30] Amna Nawaz: That is where we're going to have to leave it for tonight. I'm so sorry. We couldn't get to all of your questions. But please join me in thanking Jake Sullivan and Mark . And I'd like to now welcome Professor Julia Minson to the stage, who will be leading us through the debrief portion of tonight's event. [01:15:51] Speaker ?: Thank you. Thank you.