Council Special Report Launch: America Revived—A Grand Strategy of Resolute Global Leadership

Panelists discuss the new Council Special Report, America Revived: A Grand Strategy of Resolute Global Leadership, which defines U.S. vital national interests, summarizes the history of American grand strategy, outlines and critiques five grand strategy schools, and advances a new grand strategy—resolute global leadership—which combines military strength with international legitimacy.

To mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. declaration of independence, CFR is dedicating a year-long series of articles, videos, podcasts, events, and special projects that will reflect on two and a half centuries of U.S. foreign policy. Featuring bipartisan voices and expert contributors, the series explores the evolution of America’s role in the world and the strategic challenges that lie ahead.

NOSSEL: Good afternoon. Welcome to today’s Council on Foreign Relations meeting, which is called “America Revived: A Grand Strategy for Resolute Global Leadership.” I’m Suzanne Nossel. I’m the Lester Crown senior fellow on U.S. foreign policy and international order at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, although I live here in New York. And I’m delighted to be presiding over today’s meeting.

I am happy to introduce Ambassador Robert Blackwill. He’s a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, a senior fellow at the Belfer Center on Science and International Affairs at Harvard, and the former Henry Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy here at the Council, as where as well as the author of the report that’s under discussion today. And also Ambassador Tom Shannon, senior international policy advisor at Arnold and Porter and the former U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs.

I want to also make a special tribute to Ambassador Blackwill, who is concluding his tenure here at this Council on Foreign Relations after a distinguished career, during which he made wide-ranging and lasting contributions to the Council’s work. During his time here, he authored seventeen Council special reports, including the one we’ll discuss today, as well as four books, among them, The Lost Decade, The U.S. Pivot to Asia and The Rise of Chinese Power. He’s been a CFR member since 1985, and will continue in that capacity. So welcome Ambassador Blackwill, and congratulations.

So, to kick it off I want to ask if you can share with the audience why you put forward a new grand strategy. And I don’t think we have time in this hour to go through all of the paradigms for grand strategy that you cover in the report, but would be grateful if you could contrast resolute power, which is your own theory that you’re positing, with both Trumpism and liberal internationalism, the foreign policy of the current administration and the one I would, I would suggest, that with which most of us here in the room probably are most familiar, liberal internationalism.

BLACKWILL: Well, thank you. And it’s good to have the opportunity to talk about the report with such a distinguished audience. Let me put the report and grand strategy in this context. It’s hierarchical in this way. First is world order. One has to understand world order, in order to get to what sort of grand strategy would be best implemented—conceptualized and implemented—in order to deal with the current world order. And in that regard, since there’s so much misunderstanding about that, what is world order? It is simply the interaction of states and nonstate actors in the international system. Therefore, it is always evolving. It is not frozen. States go up, states go down. So unlike some headlines we see, world order cannot be dead.

And it’s also probably true that it’s very difficult to irreparably break it. The Canadian prime minister in Davos said it was ruptured. I don’t think that his staff looked up what “rupture” is. Most ruptures heal in six months. But I want, in this context, just to stress, in the absence of war or other global catastrophes, world order changes very slowly. Very slowly. And therefore, the breathless headlines that world order has suddenly pivoted and is completely different aren’t likely to be true. So let’s imagine now we understand world order. The next is to identify what U.S. national interests are with respect to this world order we think we’ve understood, both its current condition and its trends, and then—and those national interests are in the report—and then, what is the grand strategy best suited for the United States to defend and promote those U.S. national interests?

And I will now, with that context, do what you ask. And I will do it like this, first, the pillars of liberal internationalism. Well, our audience will certainly recognize that because they’ve lived under it for most of their lives. Rules-based international order, emphasis on diplomacy to keep the peace, usual hesitant use of military force, especially in recent administrations, usually a static or even reduced defense budget in real terms, a very strong emphasis on alliances, the belief that alliances make the United States stronger, support for democracy, human rights, efforts to slow climate change, strengthening international institutions, and so forth. So that’s very familiar to you.

Well, what happened to it? And I’d like to list what’s happened to liberal internationalism, to some degree to open the field to Trumpism, in the last fifteen years, let’s say. It failed to respond adequately to Chinese power. It failed to halt the Chinese militarization of the South China Sea and its mounting pressure on Taiwan. It failed to adequately punish Russian aggression in Crimea and Donbas, which many experts believe emboldened Moscow’s full-scale invasion. It failed to send quickly the most advanced weapons to Ukraine to defend itself.

It failed to halt Iran’s proxies as they grew ever stronger and capable across the Middle East. It failed to permanently prevent Iran’s enrichment of uranium well above the 3 percent threshold for civilian use. It failed to enforce the red line on Syrian chemical weapons use. It failed to avoid an unwise and disastrous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. It failed to defend the international trading system by abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It failed to safeguard the U.S. border.

Now all administrations make mistakes, but that list, I think, demonstrates that the liberal internationalism of recent years would not be recognized by Harry Truman, by Jack Kennedy, or by Bill Clinton, because it got progressively weaker. As one of its critics said, it was the most powerful country on Earth. It represented the most powerful country on Earth. And it negotiated like Belgium. I will skip, as you asked, American nationalism, although it was the American grand strategy for most of American history up until the First World War. And I’ll move on to Trumpism. And just a word—I’ll just go through epigrammatically. I want to stress it’s revolutionary.

It is a revolutionary world grand strategy, which abandons most of the constants of American grand strategy since the end of the Second World War. And this is based on what the president and his closest supporters have said. There’s no moral framework. There are no rules of international conduct. Naked power prevails. There’s a particular emphasis on bilateral trade, business deal, much less on geopolitics—including toward Russia and China. There is an emphasis on rapid diplomatic successes, threats, ultimatums, and so forth. There is a very strong emphasis in both the strategy documents that have been released, of course, on the Western Hemisphere and our borders. There is a constant questioning of the values of alliances.

There are occasional references to the advantages of regional spheres of influence. The president obviously detests Europe. He made that clear at Davos. He doesn’t detest Messrs Putin and Xi. There’s no increase in the defense budget. That’s worth stressing. His defense budget submitted to the Congress, in real terms, was less than the last budget by President Biden. And, of course, nothing on climate. So my view is—and this will be controversial—most of President Trump’s foreign policies, which I regard as counterproductive, are not structural in character. They can be reversed. And the question is, will they be?

So, to conclude, what do I—and, again, it’s epigrammatic. It’s discussed in detail in the report. But what are my pillars? And they’re a fusion of the military strength of a primacist grand strategy and liberal internationalism. But it’s a much more muscular liberal internationalism. So let me just tick them off to conclude. Preserve and protect the American constitutional order, which is the most important one. Maintain American military superiority and the willingness to use force on behalf of vital U.S. national interests by substantially increasing and reforming the defense budget over the next decade, and winning the high technology race with China, especially in artificial intelligence. Revitalize and reform a rules-based world order through sustained American leadership and intense diplomacy.

Prevent, of course, the use and spread of nuclear weapons, including through force. Stave off China’s hegemonic objectives by pivoting U.S. military forces to Asia. Strengthening U.S. alliances. Leading the collaborative reform of international trading systems and taking seriously the views and needs of the developing world. Demand that U.S. allies and partners in Europe and the Middle East play a more prominent role in their regional security and deterrence, but with continual and comprehensive American military and diplomatic backup. Intensify U.S. diplomacy with China to avoid a war over Taiwan. Increase diplomatic and economic engagement with the Western Hemisphere. Defend vigorously democracy and human rights around the world, without the use of military force except to avert genocide. And treat climate as a profound global threat requiring multilateral cooperation.

So that’s it. I know that’s a mouthful, so I’ll stop there.

NOSSEL: Well, it sounds it sounds great. I always think back to Les Gelb, who I remember being kind of a skeptic of the idea of grand strategy, and constantly reminding us of the ways in which the world and the tradeoffs would intervene. So, Ambassador Shannon, I’m going to bring you in. Briefly, what there do you agree with? And what, if anything, do you question or think is missing in this paradigm?

SHANNON: Well, first, thank you, Suzanne. And thank you to the Council for having me here today. And thank you to all of you for being here. Fighting your way through the snow of New York I think underscores the wisdom of Ambassador Blackwill’s decision to move to Palo Alto. (Laughter.) And so Ambassador Blackwill, thank you for being with us today. I had the pleasure of working with the ambassador in the George W. Bush White House, when I was at the National Security Council. And he has been an important thinker and actor in American national security issues, foreign affairs, and diplomacy across many decades. And his study is a remarkable effort to remind Americans about where we have come from and where we could head to, and to help people understand the meaning of grand strategy.

And if you had—if you’ve had a look—a chance to look at the report, you’ll notice in the introduction he distinguishes between strategy and grand strategy by saying that strategy is a theory of victory and grand strategy is a theory of security. In other words, grand strategy is how can you be safe in the world in which we live in. And that’s a big question, but it’s one that is obviously on the minds not of not only of everyone here, but I think of most Americans. And in fact, I would argue that really since 9/11, and the aftermath of 9/11, the American public has been having a very quiet conversation about America’s purpose in the world and the trajectory of American power, especially as we head deeper into the twenty-first century. And an increasing alienation with national security elites, who they believe have led the United States down a wrong path.

And Ambassador Blackwill notes that the Trumpian approach to the world is revolutionary. I would say that it’s actually counterrevolutionary. I would say that the revolution in American foreign policy happens after World War II, and allows us to build an alliance-based approach to the world, which we as a nation had really rejected for most of our history. But that it produced extraordinary results in terms of the projection of American power, but also the ability to make the United States the reference point in the larger world around democracy, around human rights, around a global trading system, and around the new institutions of global governance that had been built up over time.

But that, as Ambassador Blackwill notes in his report and today, President Trump believes that this is an approach to the world that has run its race, that has run out of gas and requires an investment of time and money that no longer produces the necessary results. And that we’re in a moment of institutional collapse globally and transformative change, in which the purpose of American power at this point is to get in front of everybody else and then think about how you restructure a larger global system. And it requires an aggressive, and sometimes brutal, approach to our friends, to our adversaries, and to those who just are in the neighborhood.

And so we really are at a moment in which how we talk about American purpose in the world, how we talk about the trajectory of American power, becomes important. It becomes controversial. But I think it’s a central part of this larger dialogue that the American people are having, and that American politicians and political leaders are starting to have with the American people. And that is going to be increasingly expressed as we work through our elections. The problem is, in the U.S. system since we have elections every two years, it’s like having a car crash every two years—(laughter)—in which there’s going to be significant shifts in institutional power and structure, and how we then use that to articulate our role in the world.

But as we start this discussion, I just want to thank Ambassador Blackwill for a really extraordinary report, and one that I think is going to be a centerpiece of this larger conversation.

NOSSEL: I want to push back, Ambassador Blackwill, on something you said about Mark Carney’s comments in Davos, and your postulate that he is overstating the rupture to the global order, and that most of what Trump is doing is in the realm of rhetoric rather than actual dismantling. And, you know, I would like to believe you. But I’m worried that it’s not true. And, you know, just a few areas that give rise to that concern, the demise—today, I think, being the first day that we won’t have a nuclear nonproliferation regime in place between the United States and Russia, the movements of so many U.S. allies to diversify their trade away from reliance on the United States, and their deepening of relationships with China. The decision by the EU, or at least movement toward a paradigm of substantially less dependence on the U.S., which inevitably will mean less U.S. control and say over how things are done there.

The divestment of our efforts to fund research and innovation. The exodus—beginning of the exodus of American scientists out of our universities to find better opportunities elsewhere. The attacks on the norm against the use of force, which, you know, didn’t start by the United—in Washington, but Washington has picked up on an approach that Putin’s Russia has piloted, but that now is becoming, you know, more par for the course. The Venezuela capture of Maduro. You know, you sort of knew from the minute it happened that this was going to get a pass. That, you know, the world ultimately was going to accept that incursion. And so I’m wondering what gives you confidence that the “order,” in quotes, as we have known it, is going to survive this moment? Knowing that we’re only one year in, and that your ideas—and particularly the return of parts of liberal internationalism and the reinforcement of that order—is unlikely to manifest for at least another three years.

I think you’re on mute. Go ahead. Go ahead.

BLACKWILL: It is too strong to say that I’m confident it will survive, the liberal internationalist order, in the structure that we’ve seen it—reformed and reinvigorated, as I hope. But the list—the formidable list you mentioned, most of them, perhaps even all of them, can be reversed. And I tried to say at the outset that most of what has traumatized the allies in particular, and I go to Davos for a moment, is what the president has said more than what he has done. For example, Greenland. Well, of course, what he said about using force against Greenland is unacceptable, but he didn’t say he would. He said he would consider it. And he hadn’t done it. So the traumatized elite at Davos were traumatized by a form of words, not of actions. I’m with Ed Meese with President Trump, who are you all—or, some of you will recall said, watch what we do not what we say, and not the 2:00 a.m. tweets.

Then, and this is something of an aside, the capture of Maduro seems to be quite popular in Venezuela and throughout South America. So perhaps we should take that into account. And, speaking of the use of force, I strongly support the attack by the United States following Israel on Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. I also think that his negotiation to produce a ceasefire in Gaza and the return of the Israeli prisoners, hostages, was a substantial diplomatic accomplishment. So we don’t have time to go through that list one by one, but I think what you mentioned—in addition to some of them I disagree with, as I’ve just indicated—they can be reversed.

But. to your final point, sadly, I don’t think President Trump is going to change the fundamental way he addresses the world, which I tried to enumerate quickly and it’s discussed at length in the report. And so you’re absolutely right. We’re in the beginning of the second year of a four-year term. We’ll see where world order is by then, and how much it has changed, even if the change is slow. But I don’t regard any of the lists that you mentioned as fundamentally altering the basics of world order.

NOSSEL: Yeah. There’s one thing you mentioned in the report that I was I was very pleased to see you put an emphasis on, which is U.S. legitimacy. And it’s something I’ve thought about over the years. You know, what reinforces that? What undercuts it? And you talk about how it’s being undercut now. And I wonder—and maybe I’ll go to you, Ambassador Shannon, to comment—but whether you see the loss of legitimacy. I mean particularly two Trump terms that have departed from how the world has understood the United States that are seen as a betrayal of allies. Do you think the world is going to be able to unsee that and, once again, kind of look at the United States the way it did for the better part of the last eighty years? Or, you know, if not, what is it going to take to effectuate that reversal? Is it as simple as changing the policies? Or is there kind of a revival of vibes that’s going to stand in the way of being able to kind of put Humpty Dumpty back together?

SHANNON: A good question. And I would refer to the biblical story of Lot and his family fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah. The only instructions that God gives to Lot and his family is not to look backwards. (Laughter.) And his wife does. And she’s turned into a pillar of salt. (Laughter.) And I would argue that we are in a moment right now where we really can’t look backwards, at least not in the hope of returning to where we were. That if nothing else President Trump has captured the transformative nature of the moment. And so the question is, is he capable, and is his administration capable, of articulating what the future will look like?

And the challenge that I believe he faces, and I believe Ambassador Blackwill captures in the report, is that because of the president’s strategy, or way of kind of attacking on all points at the same time, that he doesn’t build the relationships, the partnerships, and the alliances that are going to be necessary to fashion what comes next in a global order. And that, in fact, we are in this remarkably dynamic moment in which the United States, because of its power and its position in the world, can still act as a catalyst and shape how the world responds to everything from technological and economic change, to social change, to the challenges we’re going to face as we engage with reemerging and rising powers around the world, from China to India to a revanchist Russia.

NOSSEL: Ambassador Blackwill, I mean, how would you say your strategy grapples with the ways in which the world is changing? The rise of AI, the kind of pace of transformation, the return to industrial policy and this, you know, fevered kind of industrial competition and war over critical minerals, energy, water, and the assets that are the underpinnings of the future economy? Because you put a lot of emphasis on defense. You put a lot of emphasis on international cooperation. But does that piece of economic statecraft emerge in a different way than we have known in the past? And, you know, if so, what form does that take? You talk about it briefly, but I’m wondering if you regard that as kind of a third pillar, or something that remains sort of a little bit in the background?

BLACKWILL: No, I don’t think it is in the background, because in the first instance our power depends on our domestic strength. And especially, as the report says at some length, our domestic economic strength. And it’s discussed in some detail. And of course, the most important part of it is maximizing our technological advantages, ingenuity, creativity, and so forth. And I very much believe that’s happening right now. But we’re in a competition, of course, with China in that regard.

I have to say, I am not a fan of state capitalism imported into the United States, and trying to pick winners and losers. I don’t think government is very good at that. But one. again, in the economic domain of an important, important dimension of the revitalization of American power and influence in the world, is the trading system. And Tom mentioned earlier, and it’s worth just saying, the generalization. Liberal internationalism, including its trading dimension, was an enormous success for half a century. The president continually says all of his predecessors were failures. Well, of course, they made mistakes, but the system as a whole produced the greatest prosperity, peace, and improvement in the human condition in the history of the world. So it can’t be reproduced exactly, but at the same time to say this was a failure? Some failure.

NOSSEL: I’m going to turn to the audience in one minute. I just want to follow up on one piece of what you said, and whether United States really can compete effectively with China without government policy that shapes that competition, given how interventionist Beijing is with its own economy and given the intent—there’s a report that came—that was put out by the Council, a taskforce led by former Commerce Secretary Raimondo a few months ago, talking about AI, quantum, and biotech. And making a strenuous argument that without government intervention to enhance U.S. competitiveness in those three industries, that we will fall behind. Which, you know, as you say, that strength is a predicate of the rest of your strategy. So curious sort of how you see handling that trade off.

BLACKWILL: Well, can we, for purposes of analysis, separate government support of the kind that you just described and government choosing which particular company is going to benefit from this support? And of course, the U.S. should use government resources as necessary, but what is the genius of America is startups competing with one another in order to grow into (magna ?) firms. And so I just wouldn’t like the administration, this one or any other one, to begin to be the traffic cop with red lights along the highway of American imagination.

NOSSEL: Thank you. OK, I’m going to open up to our members, both here in the room and on the Zoom.

Maryum, go ahead.

Q: Hi. Maryum Saifee. CFR member and, until very recently, a State Department career Foreign Service officer.

Was sort of caught up in this July 11 purge where, you know, now we have upwards of, you know, thousands of colleagues that have been administratively removed. Which sort of speaks to the politicization of our institutions and a career at the State Department. So in terms of our foreign policy and U.S. grand strategy, how does that relate to our ability to lead? And also, just—not just trust across the world in terms of our institutions. As you know, our relationships are built on trust, as diplomats, and so both internally and externally. To undersecretary—former Undersecretary Shannon.

SHANNON: Thank you very much for the question. Which is really about do we have the institutional structures to implement a grand strategy for the rest of the twenty-first century, and do we have the people and personnel? And I would argue that we’re actually in a dangerous moment because I believe that not only through DOGE but also through reduction in force exercises that the president and his administration have done significant harm—I would call it bureaucratic vandalism, actually—to the structures that have allowed American national security agencies to function well. But that also, by capturing the leadership of the intelligence community, the armed forces, by removing AID, and also the Department of State and Department of Treasury, that the president has positioned himself in order to be able to direct government to move quickly, but he is has marginalized significant expertise and has not found a way to kind of draw it into how he hopes to run the government.

And this is purposeful, because he believes that the deep state exists. And the deep state is not some kind of hidden Star Chamber of bureaucrats who are making decisions that nobody else can vet. It’s really the structure of American presence in the world, which has been built over decades through agreements, alliances., and partnerships, and reflects how the United States responds to the world. And, as Ambassador Blackwill noted, the president wants to change that. Whether it’s revolutionary or counterrevolutionary is really unimportant. It’s just that he is intent on changing that. And one of the ways he’s going to change it is going—is reshaping the internal structures that have allowed the United States to do what it does globally.

And in this sense, President Trump is like Hernan Cortes. When Hernan Cortes unloads his troops and his horses onto the beaches of Mexico and begins his march to Teotihuacan, what does he do? He burns his ships, in order to tell his men there is no going back. It’s me or death. And what the president is doing is burning our ships, not only within our bureaucratic structures but also more broadly. The closing of the Woodrow Wilson Center, the U.S. Institute for Peace, the defunding of many of the infrastructure or the platforms that were built in Washington to help manage how the United States engages with the world outside of the immediacy of the executive and legislative branch. How to create kind of an ecosystem of thinking about the world has also been significantly reduced. And, again, that’s purposeful.

And so whoever comes next is going to have to think about, do we rebuild this? If we do rebuild it, how? To what end? And to what purpose? Thank you for the question.

NOSSEL: Please, in the front.

Q: My name is Larry Bridwell and I teach international business at Pace University.

And I recall President John F. Kennedy saying when he was president that the United States has only 6 percent of the world’s population, it’s now 4 percent, and we Americans cannot automatically expect an American solution for the rest of the world. And when I look at American foreign policy since World War II, we have what was done in Iran, and Guatemala, and Chile, and Vietnam, and Iraq, and Afghanistan. And maybe—as a result of these failures, maybe the United States, with 4 percent of the world’s population, should have a much lower profile and let the other 96 percent of the world manage the world. So I address this to Ambassador Shannon. Thank you.

NOSSEL: Yeah, Ambassador Blackwill addresses, you know, that in his report. His discussion of, I think, restraint, or that’s what it calls to mind. So who would like to begin?

SHANNON: I’m happy to start and then turn to Ambassador Blackwill.

All good points. And I think this is part of the bigger conversation that’s taking place in the United States today. When I mentioned that the American people are having their own conversation about the purpose of American power in the world and what our trajectory should be, this is—these are the things that they’re wrestling with. And many of the things you described were the product of a United States which was in the midst of building a new approach to the world, was involved in an ideological struggle with the Soviet Union and tended to see everything in terms of that struggle. And was prepared to insert the United States in any number of local or national struggles in order to promote a larger global vision. And in the process, made any number of mistakes and any number of errors.

I think what I would argue, and I think what Ambassador Blackwill is arguing, is that if you’re approaching grand strategy as the theory of security your purpose is not necessarily to shape the national politics of individual countries. It’s to create an environment or a structure of relationships that allow us to prosper in relative peace, and to avoid the kinds of threats that we’re going to face, either from terrorism, from revanchist states like Russia, aggressive states in the world, from nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, and any of the other transnational challenges we face whether they be global health or climate change.

And I think this is what the American people is waiting for, quite frankly. I think they’re waiting for a vision of our purpose in the world that is more than just incidental. It’s more than just whack-a-mole. It’s about how we are going to operate in a world of the twenty-first century, in which nation-states, while still fundamental components of the global order, are really going to be driven by economic and technological change, and by the changes that take place within our societies.

NOSSEL: There’s a question from online. Or, Ambassador Blackwill, do you want to jump in?

BLACKWILL: Well, I would just say, and this is, of course, a spark of a much longer conversation, I don’t believe that the world is headed for a multipolar world order. Rather. I think we’re headed toward a world order based on two superpowers, with other nations maneuvering between and among them as their national interest suggests. Some will be more successful than others. But I think the pattern ahead will be very familiar, in many ways, to the one we saw for a half a century after World War II.

I did want to just add one other thing. First, the Foreign Service—former Foreign Service officer, I just want to thank her for her service. And just to follow up on what Ambassador Shannon said, we are going to need quality diplomacy more than ever in this world that is slowly changing. And, as Tom said, the president has systematically sought to destroy the infrastructure of diplomacy in the United States. And that’s because, and I believe that it is apparent from his statements and actions, he does not—he does not support diplomacy in the classic sense that it’s been defined over, indeed, the centuries. And that’s because there’s no moral framework for his actions. And so one of the first—if there is a liberal internationalist elected president, one of the first tasks will be to rebuild American diplomatic capability, And the same is true of the intelligence community.

NOSSEL: A question from our online audience.

OPERATOR: We will take the next question from Dr. Christopher Preble.

Q: Hi. Thank you.

Ambassador Blackwill, in the conversation today there was some question—people raised the issue of legitimacy. And in the report you say that to reap the benefits of legitimacy the United States should be more sensitive in how it exercises power, especially military force. “Force is only acceptable if it represents an inescapable choice to protect vital national interests,” unquote. And yet, in the instances that you cited as failings of liberal internationalism, chiefly President Biden but also President Obama, it included multiple occasions where the United States did not use force, for example, intervening directly in Syria, continuing the war in Afghanistan past twenty years, not intervening more forcefully in Ukraine. So the question really is, sir, which examples of exercises of force in the last quarter-century or so clearly did not fit that criteria? Are we actually not using force often enough, or are we using it too often? Thanks.

BLACKWILL: Well, thanks for the list. First, Ukraine, of course, is not pertinent because we’re not using force in Ukraine. We’re supporting Ukrainians’ attempt to remain a viable democratic state. What I criticized was the speed of arms transfers. With respect to Afghanistan, I believe no one could quarrel with the fiasco of that operation at the end of our twenty-year occupation of Afghanistan. And I could go down the list. But what I believe—let me say one other word. It knits things up.

Whether the U.S. should have intervened in Syria to protect its citizens from chemical attacks by its government is essentially a moral question, and should be seen as such. What I was highlighting was our statement that we would, and that we didn’t. And legitimacy, as has been discussed here already, depends to some degree on trust that—a belief that the United States is going to do what it says it’s going to do. And of course, extended deterrence is largely a matter of trust. So I believe we perforate trust when we say we’re going to do things and we don’t do them. So fewer red lines—or, put it differently, red lines that we’ll actually implement if the offending party does it anyway.

NOSSEL: OK. Thank you. Back in the room. Here on this side, second table. Thanks.

Q: Thank you. Earl Carr, representing CJPA Global Advisors. Thank you for a fascinating discussion.

How can and should the United States engage China and cooperate? Take, for example, the selling of H200 NVIDIA semiconductor chips. Is that a way to enhance strength at home?

BLACKWILL: Well, I can chime in quickly on this. Let me just say that I believe there’s a difference in the administration between President Trump and, at least, Secretary Rubio, and I think even Secretary Hegseth. And it is this: I think that President Trump sees U.S.-China interaction as largely economic and a race for advantage economically. And he does not, I think, see the constant aggressive behavior of China as a particular threat to the United States. I think that the differences in the Defense and State Department in that regard are shown up in the compromise document of National Security Strategy, in which the danger of China is mentioned without ever mentioning the word China.

But finally, and more specifically, I’m against the transfer of those chips to China. Trump’s own Justice Department said it would accelerate Chinese advanced technology development. I also do not support the TikTok business arrangement. So, again, President Trump seems to make decisions on the basis of economic criteria and not geopolitical criteria. And that too separates him from his predecessors.

SHANNON: If I could just add to that, President Trump will be meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing in the not-too-distant future, and continuing a conversation the two of them have had. And as each have looked to gain advantage on the other, and as each has been frustrated in different ways, I think the two of them are going to look for a way of establishing some kind of strategic stability between the United States and China looking forward. And this is going to be very challenging because the aggressive behavior that Ambassador Blackwill has noted elsewhere in the world is going to increase, I believe, because this is always a central feature of strategic stability. It was true with the Soviets also. As we tried to address the consequences of devastating warfare between the two countries, we end up proxyizing our conflict, and pushing it out into other areas.

With the Chinese, though, it will largely be economic and technological. And this is where export controls, looking at both outward-bound and inward-bound investments, all of this is going to become drawn up in this understanding of how we relate to China. And both the United States and China increasingly are going to, I think, come to the realization that our economies, in many ways, are so marbled, so interlaced, that it’s going to—this is going to be very difficult. It’s going to be painful. And obviously I think one of the larger goals of this century is going to be how you try to maintain the peace between the United States and China, even in a period of economic competition, because the tendency is to securitize everything.

NOSSEL: Just to put a finer point on it. I mean, it seems like that’s the line that the last several administrations have tried to straddle. You know, which is pushing back assertively, kind of cooperating where possible, erecting alliances to fortify the U.S. position in the Indo-Pacific. You know, is there really anything different going forward? Or, you know, is that kind of more or less, you know, a continued balancing act that is going to unfold kind of responding to circumstances as they evolve?

SHANNON: You know, that’s a good question. And I guess I would answer it this way: American politicians, in an odd way, are responding to the American public. If you look at American opinion about China, it changes dramatically as we get into the second decade of this century. And it changes because of Hong Kong. It changes because of the way the Chinese are treating Uyghurs. And it changes because of the very aggressive rhetoric of the Chinese as they present themselves to the world as our replacement. And so you end up having this switch. And you see it in the House of Representatives, to a certain extent, and also in the Senate.

As rhetoric about China and a belief in whether or not we can engage and have some kind of positive relationship with China, goes very negative, and it goes negative very quickly. And although it gets expressed in the policies of governments, whether it’s in the Obama administration, in the Biden administration, the first Trump administration, in many ways the political underpinning of this change is not just a recognition that, hey, China’s coming for us. It’s a change in how the American people understand China.

BLACKWILL: Could I just chime in on that and add on? I agree—

NOSSEL: Oh, sure. One moment.

BLACKWILL: Can I just chime in? And I agree with what Tom said. But I want to put it slightly—in a slightly different way, directly answering your question.

Recent administrations have expressed policy to push back against Chinese aggressive behavior. But their pushbacks, in some cases, have been quite feeble. And so we have to push back in a much stronger way because we need to strengthen deterrence. Henry Kissinger was concerned in the last years of his life that we were headed for a war with China on the current trajectory. And I think the same thing. And the best way to avoid that is to strengthen deterrence across the board, including in the vicinity of the first island chain, especially. And to engage intensively in diplomacy, in which we convey to the Chinese what we’re going to do if they continue this aggressive behavior.

And we should never forget, but we often do, that the United States of America, as we speak today, is the most powerful country on Earth, as I said at the outset, in every dimension. And therefore, we do have assets to push back much more strongly than we’re doing. And, of course, it shouldn’t be reckless. And it should be incremental and steady. But it will require a larger defense budget especially. And it will require a reinvigorated liberal internationalism on behalf of the classic pillars of liberal internationalism.

NOSSEL: OK. I had called on this lady in the blazer. Thank you.

Q: Thank you. Asha Castleberry-Hernandez. Army veteran, academic professor.

One critique, one question. One critique: In terms of going back to the economic statecraft, I do believe that there—I read through your strategy, grand strategy. It was great. But one critique I do want to mention is that I think there just needs to be more emphasis on economic strength. I do believe that this country is going to be enduring a national affordability crisis for quite some time. And some of the outcomes that comes out of it is that the American people are going to continue to think more inward and less outward, and become desensitized on what our position is around the world. So I think if we present a grand strategy that shows that where we can benefit economically more, it could resonate more with the American people. And just want to hear your thoughts about that.

And then also too, last but not least, as far as Ambassador Shannon mentioned there’s a lot of discussions going on about what’s our position in America. Well, one thing I will say is that just having a lot of discussions around the country and the world as far as what that looks like, many people I talked to, as far as Americans, don’t know what that looks like because they have no idea about the world. They’re very—they’re unknown about these dynamics, grand strategy, international order. There’s just a big learning curve. You can even see that with some of our elected officials. So what do we do with that in terms of making that part of a priority to address, as part of these national securities that we’re crafting? Thank you.

NOSSEL: Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up, because we haven’t talked at all about sort of the domestic—or, very little about the domestic dimension of what it would take to get the American people behind this kind of strategy.

BLACKWILL: Well, I just want to let Tom take the second part of it. On the first part, I appreciate the comment. I’ll look again at it. But fundamentally, I agree with you. And tried to say in the report that our power projection at its most fundamental is based on the strength of our economy. And so anything that strengthens it is obviously to our power projection advantage. And that’s a point that we have to keep emphasizing to ourselves and to our domestic audience. As for the politics of this, I’ll leave that to Ambassador Shannon. (Laughter.)

SHANNON: And I appreciate your kindness, Ambassador Blackwill. (Laughter.)

But, listen, first of all, your average American might not understand why Kashmir is important to Pakistan and India. He or she might not understand the dynamics that motivate regional politics in Southeast Asia. They might not even be able to describe what Article Five means and what collective security means within a European context. But I’m telling you something, the American people are not fools. And if you look at any of the—whether it’s the Pew surveys that are being done, the kinds of surveys that are done out of the World Affairs Council in Chicago, and beyond, it’s evident that Americans are knowledgeable of the world, about the world, and the forces that are at work in the world. And I think this generates part of the frustration that you see bubbling through our political system, because they don’t believe that political leadership and that national security leaders are engaging with them on these issues that are important.

And, you know, this came home for me recently when my wife and I went to eastern Kentucky to visit a university there, Berea College. And as we drove home, we drove through eastern Kentucky and western Virginia. And, you know, we were driving through areas in which all these people knew that we had spent a trillion dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And all these people had sent their sons and daughters to fight. But there was no investment there. There was no money there. There was no national commitment there. And there was no explanation how that kind of external engagement was meaningful to them. And I think the American people are waiting for this. I think they’re waiting for leaders who are prepared to talk with them about this.

NOSSEL: All right. Well, I’m told that we must conclude, I know the Council is very committed to keeping on time. So I want to thank Ambassadors Blackwill and Shannon. I think, for all of us, the chance to look ahead and think about the future, and what’s next, and how we rebuild the pillars of American power is hopeful, even maybe inspiring, you know, whether we have all the answers today or not. I want to thank you for putting your ideas on the table and allowing us to engage in this conversation, and congratulations on the report.

SHANNON: Thank you. (Applause.)

BLACKWILL: Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.