On this week’s episode of Carnegie Connects, Aaron David Miller spoke with former national security adviser Jake Sullivan on his tenure in former president Joe Biden’s administration and how he’s thinking about the first weeks of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Excerpts from their conversation, which have been lightly edited for clarity, are below. Watch their full discussion here.
Aaron David Miller: In this multipolar world with our own domestic house in a fair amount of turmoil, how do you create addition—in terms of people who are willing to associate with you—rather than subtraction?
Jake Sullivan: It’s very difficult to answer that question in a moment of such profound turmoil and upheaval in America’s approach to the world.
But what I can say is the hand we passed on to the Trump administration when we left on January 20 was a hand that involved a growing and dynamic transatlantic alliance, with us adding to NATO two important and capable partners who became allies, Finland and Sweden. It involved a deepening relationship with our Asian allies that we were working with not just on hard security issues, but on technology, on clean energy, on infrastructure, and on so much else. It involved a deepening relationship with India, the world’s largest democracy, if an imperfect democracy. It involved new relationships with countries like Vietnam and Angola.
All of that was built around the basic idea that the United States could bring a value proposition to the world in terms of our capacity to help mobilize countries to solve problems. What I have been struck by is instead of trying to carry forward the momentum of addition, they are pursuing a policy of subtraction, starting with the transatlantic alliance, but also even closer to home, with Canada. That is a source of real concern.
Aaron David Miller: You’ve said repeatedly that you don’t want to be an armchair quarterback. The basic reason is that you understand profoundly—as do I—how unbelievably difficult it is to get anything done in government. You have said that when facing a hard policy decision with imperfect people and imperfect information dealing with imperfect choices, you’re going to get imperfect results. You’re looking now at the new administration from outside and you have a set of core beliefs and values. Would you still apply the same standard and forbearance to this administration?
Jake Sullivan: I think that is a fantastic question, and it’s something I’m grappling with right now. Obviously there’s a difference between people struggling with difficult circumstances and doing their best, and engaging in wildly destructive behavior that is at odds with my view of the national interest and our core national character. I can’t treat those two things alike. But on the other hand it has been less than eight weeks since I walked out of the White House for the last time.
So, yes, I am a little bit tentative about opining in decisive and definitive ways, because I think that somebody who’s just left the job should give a new team the opportunity to pursue their policies and to be careful about when to come in with very sharp critiques. The way I am thinking about that balancing is to try to explain what I think is right and what the concerns I have about the current administration’s approach are without getting into scorecards, fiery rhetoric, or other things like that.
I have to say that what we have seen over these seven weeks, both domestically and on the international stage, is of enormous concern. The arrow seems to be pointing in the wrong direction on fundamental things: how we treat our friends and allies; adopting a zero-sum mindset where winning necessarily means crushing others, including our closest friends; and abandoning the notion that the United States can deliver for the American people but also support the broader common interest. These are things that I do speak out about, but I do so with a sense of caution. We don’t know how the story will be written on Ukraine, China, the Middle East, or other significant issues.
Aaron David Miller: You have said [Afghanistan] is your biggest regret—not the strategic decision to withdraw, but the chaos of [it]. How could that have been avoided?
Jake Sullivan: When you end a twenty-year war—with all of the decisions that had piled up, all of the dependencies and pathologies—there was not going to be a straightforward, smooth way to exit. It was going to almost by definition be beset by challenges.
There was the deep tragedy of the loss of thirteen brave American service members. I’m not saying that there’s nothing we could have done better, but I do think it is important to recognize that when you are faced with the question of continuing a war or ending a war, ending a war is going to have a certain amount of challenge associated with it, and it did. That’s point one.
Point two is that many of the things people said at the time about that withdrawal with great confidence did not come to pass. They said it would crater our alliances and our standing with our friends in the world. Our alliances were at historic highs when we passed things off to the Trump administration, both in Europe and in Asia. They said we would leave American citizens behind. To my knowledge, we did not leave behind American citizens in Afghanistan—anyone who wanted to leave availed themself of an opportunity to leave. They said we wouldn’t get Afghan allies out. We have gotten more than 100,000 Afghan allies out to the United States. And on the strategic decision, it is a good thing that we are not entering the twenty-fifth year of war in Afghanistan today.
The biggest thing that I think we could have done differently is that in the days leading up to the final withdrawal, we very much deferred to the Afghan government, which did not want us to be creating panic or a sense of imminent collapse. That was a lesson that we should not [have done] that. We should have moved earlier to indicate that we were going to have an evacuation and that we were concerned about deteriorating conditions. We were trying to avoid the very thing that came to pass, which was a rapid collapse, so that was based on the best information we had at the time. It was a judgment we made, but in hindsight, we should have made a different judgment.
Aaron David Miller: You’ve said that the president made a strategic decision [after October 7, 2023, that] he was going to support Israel. You’ve said that you will be constantly reflecting on whether there were “particular decisions we could have taken differently.” [I’d like you] to reflect on three basic issues. One, did we do enough for humanity? Two, could we have done more to alter Israel’s calculations with respect to civilian harm, deaths, and injuries? And three, could we have done anything more—I suspect not—to change Netanyahu’s calculation on day-after planning?
Jake Sullivan: On the first issue, on humanitarian assistance and whether we could have done more, the answer has to be yes. Having seen the evidence with respect to the humanitarian situation on the ground in Gaza after the ceasefire came in, one thing that emerged is that there was a projected famine in Gaza. And because we did push and prod to get more humanitarian assistance in—not enough by any stretch—I do believe that we forestalled a massive famine in Gaza. I don’t think that is a small thing.
Our capacity to shape Israeli behavior imperfectly was greater [on humanitarian assistance] than it was on your second question on limiting civilian harm. And here, the real question that I think people rightly ask is: Should you have done more to use the leverage of the provision of weapons to Israel to get them to alter course? We did withhold 2,000-pound bombs because of the unique destructive capacity of those bombs. There’s been very good analysis done on how dropping those bombs in densely populated urban areas caused such catastrophic and massive damage—
Aaron David Miller: Those shipments have now resumed. And if the Israelis do reengage militarily, you’re going to see just what impact they’re going to have.
Jake Sullivan: I agree. We saw it in the early weeks of the war.
Should we have done more on the withholding of weapons? These questions of how to use leverage are so fundamental to so much of foreign policy, and there’s no scientific formula. It’s judgment.
And my judgment is Israel was not just fighting in Gaza. It was being attacked by Hezbollah. It was being attacked by the Houthis. It was being attacked by the militia groups in Iraq and Syria. And it was being attacked by Iran itself directly on multiple fronts. So for me, the idea of saying, “We’re not giving you weapons” in the midst of all of that was very difficult to square. It is difficult when a country—a friend—is under fire from so many fronts, and [you] then say, “We’re going to cut off your supply of the very things you need against all of these different fronts.” So I think that’s where I am.
On the day after planning, you have forgotten more about this than I know, about the challenge of a lasting solution—how difficult it has been to get there over decades, and how much harder it is today for a variety of reasons. I wish that we could have come up with a formula that would have put us in a better position for day after. I still think it is elusive to this administration, and certainly this answer of depopulating Gaza is not, from my point of view, a moral or wise thing to do. But that to me is more a regret of not having developed an effective strategy than it is squeezing Netanyahu more. We were not able to put the puzzle pieces together on that. That has been elusive across multiple administrations. I think it remains elusive under this one.
Aaron David Miller: That point is well taken. The reality is that we’ve rarely used leverage —forget the Israelis—where there’s a clear domestic political cost. We don’t use leverage on many—or any—of our friends. [We’re] watching something over the past six weeks that is quite remarkable in that regard.
I want to get your sense of the challenges facing this republic domestically. Everything that is being done fundamentally runs against everything that I have tried to do, what previous administrations—Republican and Democrat—have tried to do. How are you processing all of this?
Jake Sullivan: I have grave concerns on the foreign policy front. But a lot is yet to be written, and there’s a lot more to try to understand about where this is all going.
When it comes to the effort to degrade America’s democracy and its institutions, that is not a grave concern—that is a five-alarm fire. We all have to speak up and stand and be counted—whether it’s to do with the press, or Congress and the spending of duly appropriated money, or the effort to chill law firms and litigation, or so many other examples. This is an absolutely existential moment from my perspective for the United States not to end up going down a dark path.
What exactly is the end of this project? What are its attributes going to be six months from now, as opposed to just over the course of the first six weeks? I also think we have to continue to watch, adapt, understand, and be prepared to make adjustments to our understanding of what’s happening because this has been such a short time so far.
I don’t know exactly in what way I or others should be using our voices in this moment, but I do know that we have to do so, particularly on these issues of the assault on the foundations of our constitutional republic.
Use the player below to listen to the whole conversation, or watch it on YouTube.
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