CFR-Franklin & Marshall College Election 2024 U.S. Foreign Policy Public Forum
Panelists with distinguished careers in government, business, and academia hold an in-depth, nonpartisan conversation on America's role in the word. They discuss the trade-offs presented by different policy options both locally and globally and provide context on the international issues, choices, and challenges facing the next president—including trade and immigration, Russia and Ukraine, U.S.-China relations, and the Middle East.
To learn more about the foreign policy issues at play in the 2024 campaign, explore CFR’s Election 2024 hub for candidates’ stances and expert analysis on international challenges facing the United States.
The CFR Election 2024 initiative is made possible in part by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.
ALTMANN: Good evening, everyone.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Good evening!
ALTMANN: Thank you. My name is Barbara Altmann. I have the privilege of serving as the sixteenth president of Franklin and Marshall College. It’s my great pleasure to welcome you here to this evening’s event.
We are grateful and we are proud that the Council on Foreign Relations team selected F&M as one of only four institutions nationally and the only institution in Pennsylvania to host this event. It promises to be a great evening with a panel of leading experts including—and let me brag here just for a minute—F&M’s very own Evelyn Farkas, class of 1989. (Applause.) She’s listening. (Laughs.) Evelyn will discuss America’s role in the world and the foreign policy issues at stake with her colleagues on the panel—everything at stake in the 2024 election, including trade and immigration, Russia and Ukraine, U.S.-China relations, and of course, the Middle East.
This evening, as we all listen, I’ll be paying attention not only to the expertise of these respected leaders as they discuss such timely and complex topics, but also the manner in which they interact and engage. Here at F&M, where our unlikely mascot is the Diplomat, we are always listening and watching for true diplomacy in action. I know that our panelists will model how they embrace and find strength in their diversity of perspectives; how they speak boldly and at the same time listen actively; how they approach challenging topics with curiosity, the intent to learn from one another, and the desire to bring others into the conversation.
By observing this kind of event and participating, our students and we all understand better that how they learn with and from one another is just as important as what they learn. That is how we all grow as individuals. It’s how we grow as a community. That’s how we shape the world for the better. And that is the best of the Diplomat way.
It is now my honor to introduce our host, Elise Labott, who will moderate this diplomatic discussion. The 2024-25 Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Elise Labott is an award-winning journalist covering U.S. foreign policy, national security, and global affairs. She is currently an adjunct professor at American University’s School of International Service and writes a Substack publication, Cosmopolitics. Labott is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Zivvy News, a nonprofit platform that engages youth in political and global issues. Previously, she was a contributing editor at Politico and a columnist for Foreign Policy. As CNN’s global affairs correspondent until 2018, Labott reported from over eighty countries and covered major global events including the 9/11 attacks, the Arab Spring, the rise of the Islamic State group. Her career includes reporting on conflicts and international crises with notable contributions to CNN’s Freedom Project on human trafficking. Labott has also contributed her expertise to ABC News and Agence France-Presse, and she actively serves as a global ambassador for vital voices. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s degree in media studies from The New School for Social Research.
I now ask you to help me welcome Elise. (Applause.)
LABOTT: Thank you, President Altmann, for those kind words and for introducing our forum tonight. I am Elise Labott, the CFR Edward R. Murrow press fellow, and I’m delighted to welcome you to the Election 2024 U.S. Foreign Policy Forum, cosponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and Franklin and Marshall College.
Tonight’s event is the last of four public nonpartisan forums that the Council on Foreign Relations is hosting with colleges and universities across the country in pivotal states in the leadup to Election Day. We’ll be discussing America’s role in the world and the foreign policy issues at stake in the upcoming election. Our panelists—we’re going to examine the trade-offs presented by different policy options both locally and globally; and provide context on those international issues, choices, and challenges facing the next president. Topics will include trade and immigration, Russia and Ukraine, U.S.-China relations, the Middle East, and more.
Now, these issues, as you know, have deep implications both globally and locally right here in Pennsylvania, where trade supports over 1.5 million jobs and where voters hold diverse views on how the U.S. should engage in global leadership, particularly in the areas of Ukraine, NATO, and the Middle East. Tonight’s discussion will challenge us to think critically about the tradeoffs that different policy options present and how they impact not only our local communities, but also America’s standing on the global stage.
Now, as an independent membership organization, think tank, and publisher, CFR serves as a nonpartisan source of information and analysis to advance understanding of global affairs and the foreign policy choices facing the U.S. and other countries. Now, the goal this evening is to raise awareness of those issues that affect our daily lives and help you make an informed decision before casting your ballot. Now, obviously, there are too many important issues to cover in ninety minutes, so we may not get to everyone. But I really hope you will bring up those most important to you during our question-and-answer program.
Now, we encourage you to also take advantage of CFR’s Election 2024 resources available on CFR.org. It’s really a great array of resources on various issues, including a tracker of the candidates’ positions on issues, podcasts, videos, and explainers that delve into specific issues. And, obviously, you can also find articles by experts in Foreign Affairs, the preeminent journal of international affairs in U.S. foreign policy, published by CFR.
So I’d like to thank Franklin and Marshall College for hosting this event and the Carnegie Corporation of New York for their generous support of our Election 2024 initiative.
Now, I can’t think of a better panel to discuss these issues and how they affect Pennsylvania. My panelists are:
Shannon O’Neil, senior vice president, director of studies, and the Maurice R. Greenberg chair at the Council on Foreign Relations. (Applause.)
Ivan Kanapathy, senior vice president at Beacon Global Strategies. (Applause.)
Evelyn Farkas, executive director of the McCain Institute, Arizona State University, and also a Franklin and Marshall alum who is also with us tonight. (Applause.)
And Steven A. Cook, Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies and director of the International Affairs Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars at the Council on Foreign Relations. (Applause.)
Now, as a reminder, today’s discussion is on the record. It’s being livestreamed. I know we have hundreds of other people watching us tonight, so welcome to our viewers online. You can also watch it after the fact at CFR.org.
Now, we have something interesting for you tonight. F&M Center for Opinion Research conducted a statewide survey in September to gauge Pennsylvania voter priorities for the upcoming election. So we’re now going to do a seven-question live poll to get a sense of how you all in the room feel about a variety of foreign policy related topics, pulling from issues that were highlighted in this Franklin and Marshall survey. So right now I want you to pull out your program and scan the QR code on the inside cover of your program. OK. Now, don’t rush through it all at once. I want you to please read each question as I go, and answer the poll questions on your phone, and we’re going to see the results up there. And then we’re going to recap the results for each question individually. So we’re going to go through it one question at a time; don’t rush though it. OK. I’m going to be voting, too, on my phone.
How important is foreign policy when considering who you will vote for in the next presidential election? Don’t—this question is anonymous, folks, so don’t worry; you can say who you really mean. We’re not coming after you. No names are going to be tracked. OK. How important is foreign policy when you’re considering who you’ll vote for—very important, somewhat important, not important? OK. We’ll give a few more seconds to complete the poll. And now we’re going to close the poll and look at the results. Let’s see here. All right, I’m going to have to look up here. (Laughter.) OK. So very important, 69 percent. That’s really interesting because that’s a higher number than at most of our other colleges, and this is the fourth one tonight. So glad to see that we’re making an impact here. (Laughter.) OK.
Number two: How active should the United States be in global affairs—more active than it is now, maintain current level of activity, less active than it is now, or not at all active in global affairs? OK. So 51 percent say maintain current level of activity, and then 29 percent—so a little less than half—less active than it is now, 16 percent more active than it is now. I’m glad that we’re not at a hundred percent on not active at all. (Laughter.) OK.
Number three: Which of the following do you consider the greatest threat to U.S. national security—AI, China, climate change, domestic challenges, Russia, other? Domestic challenges, 50 percent. OK. Artificial intelligence, not as high as I might have thought. China, 16 percent. And climate change pretty close behind it, 15 percent. Russia, 9 percent. So domestic challenges. And we’re going to be talking about how international affairs really affects domestic challenges tonight, so that’s interesting to know. OK.
Question number four: When it comes to trade with China, how should the United States approach tariffs on Chinese imports given the impact on Chinese businesses and American consumer prices? Should we increase tariffs, should we keep tariff levels about the same, decrease tariffs, don’t know? Don’t know, 35 percent. Keep tariff levels about the same, and increase, and decrease about the same. So, interesting. So a lot of people don’t know, so we’re going to be talking a little bit tonight about those tariffs and we’ll see at the end if—how we feel about it, because we’re going to be voting again on these issues. OK.
Number five: How should the United States approach security along the U.S.-Mexico border—build a physical barrier around the full border, allocate greater resources to border surveillance and enforcement, address causes of migration from Latin America through aid programs and diplomacy, reform the U.S. immigration system to allow more pathways to enter legally, all of the above, none of the above, don’t know? Reform the U.S. information—immigration system to allow more pathways to enter legally and—52 percent—and address causes of migration through aid. So that’s kind of consistent, reforming the immigration system, consistent to some of the other colleges that we had. And I know that’s very important here in Pennsylvania and particularly Lancaster. I hope I said that right, Lancaster. (Laughter.) I practiced a lot today. (Laughter.) OK.
Number six: Do you think the war in Gaza will lead to negotiations toward a two-state solution?
COOK: Elise?
LABOTT: Steven, listen up.
COOK: You have the wrong slide.
FARKAS: Ukraine. It’s Ukraine.
O’NEIL: It’s Russia and Ukraine.
COOK: It’s Russia.
LABOTT: Oh, OK. (Laughter.) OK. Which of the following is closest to your view about the war between Russia and Ukraine? The United States should provide more military support to Ukraine, 63 percent. Maintain its current level of support, provide less support to Ukraine, withdraw all military support, don’t know. Provide more military support to Ukraine. And we’re going to talk about that tonight, and, obviously, that’s a very important issue here in Pennsylvania, where we have an ammunition production plant. We’re going to be talking a lot about that. OK.
Last question, here we go: Do you think the war in Gaza will lead to negotiations toward a two-state solution? Steven, I know how you feel. No, 82 percent. (Laughs.) 10 (percent)—optimists at 9 percent—(laughter)—8 percent; it keeps—it keeps dropping. Don’t know, 11 percent. OK.
We’re going to be talking about all these issues tonight. And the beauty of it is that after we have this discussion we’re going to do this poll again and see if you feel any differently. I was in Arizona a few weeks ago and some people did feel a little bit differently after that poll, and we voted again, and those answers changed. So we’ll see how we do.
OK. So we’ve done our poll. We’ve introduced our panelists. Let’s dive right in.
Let’s talk about supply chains and the resilience needed for a state like Pennsylvania. Shannon, let’s start with you. Supply chains are shifting away towards China. How can Pennsylvania’s businesses, particularly in manufacturing and agriculture, leverage this shift to supply chains—perhaps something like Mexico as a nearshoring partner—to improve that resilience?
O’NEIL: Well, thanks, Elise, and it’s a real pleasure to be here with all of you. So thank you all for coming out tonight to talk about the elections and to talk about foreign policy.
And so, you know, let’s talk about international economics because that’s an important part. And as we think about the issues in the campaign, you know, there’s lots of pocketbook issues that are out there. People are thinking about—you know, they’re thinking about inflation. They’re thinking about housing prices. They’re thinking about jobs. And lots of those, while they depend on local communities, they also depend on the international economy.
And so we think about there’s big changes happening in the globe today, and one of the biggest, I would say, is the movement of supply chains. So these are sort of the pieces and parts and components and the processes that all come together to make a car, or to make a blender, or to make a lovely outfit, or all kinds of other things. And lots of these things cross borders one, two, five, ten times to come together, because what we’ve found over the last thirty or forty years is that by producing something in one place, in one country, in one city, in a number of factories, you get economies of scale and economies of scope that allow you to make it better, faster, and cheaper than anywhere else.
Now, we have for many years depended on China as a big part of this, but also other countries around the world. And what we’ve seen over the last few years is geopolitics begin to affect these supply chains. COVID affected these supply chains, as we all know when we went to the store and tried to find things that we were used to finding every day that weren’t there. But we’ve also seen geopolitics affect them. And right now we’re seeing really a once-in-a-generation fluidity and movement of supply chains around the world, and so people looking to source from other places.
So what does that mean for Pennsylvania? What does that mean for the United States in general? It means on the one side that there’s lots of opportunity to bring some of that manufacturing home, or to create a particular piece or part, or to assemble a product in other places than they’ve been before. So that’s an opportunity. But it also means that places like Pennsylvania need to get involved in a supply chain if they’re not already there. There are a lot of industries here that are already there, right? There’s lots of exports from Pennsylvania in agriculture in electronics, in other kinds of manufacturing. And that creates much better jobs than other kinds of work. In fact, the Commerce Department has done a study and they find that export-oriented jobs pay on average 18 percent more than jobs that are towards domestic economy, so just focused on the domestic economy. So how do you get more of those?
And what I would argue as we see this movement of supply chains around the world, there’s a great opportunity for U.S. states, for U.S. cities, and others to join in in supply chains, but you’re going to need a partner because you’re still going to need economies of scale, economies of scope. So you’re going to need to have lots of customers out there, and many of those customers will be here in the United States but there’s 8 billion people that live in other countries and they buy things too. And so being able to serve those markets is a way to more jobs, to more orders, to more revenue, and to more local prosperity. So that is where, as we think about this, we need to look where we’re headed.
LABOTT: So you write a lot about Mexico, and we have some political changes there. We have a new president. So with those political changes, how should Pennsylvania businesses and trade communities see this kind of potential economic opportunity or risk that might arise from these shifts, especially in agriculture and manufacturing?
O’NEIL: So for U.S. exporters, our neighbors have actually been our biggest buyers. Canada and Mexico are the biggest export markets for the United States, and they buy all kinds of things from the United States, and often pretty high value added, pretty technical and sophisticated products—so, you know, the kinds of manufacturing that we do here. And so I think as we look to create more of those, we need to look at those markets more. And so what’s happening in those countries really affects what’s going on in towns here in Pennsylvania that are looking to export to those markets.
So Mexico today has a new president. She started just over two weeks ago. She’s looking, as well as the United States is looking, in the—in the next year or so to come to revise or renegotiate the free trade agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. It’s called the USMCA; so United States, Mexico, and Canada Free Trade Agreement. And there’s lots of things on the agenda there. There is, you know, how do we make sure all three of the economies grow and do better. There’s lots of questions about where does China fit into all of this and sort of Chinese imports into the three countries—what should be imported, what should not be imported, what sort of tariffs should be put in place not just in the United States but in the other countries that are our partners. And there are going to be real questions about how do we make sure that there is a—as they would say, a level playing field but there’s access for private sector businesses fairly equally across all three economies that are working together, so exporters from Pennsylvania or other states also have access to Mexican customers as well as Canadian customers.
So all of those are on the agenda for the next administration. And we’ll see—we see very different platforms as we look at the campaigns of a Harris administration or a Trump administration in how they might approach our neighbors and these trading partners.
LABOTT: Yeah. And so I think when you go to the polls, I mean, one of the things to consider, really, is how policymakers would ensure, if elected, that Pennsylvania maximizes the benefits of those trade agreements.
Ivan, let’s talk a little bit about China. OK. This was a(n) interesting poll that I saw from the Global Coalition of International Leaders: 54 percent of Pennsylvanians believe U.S. lawmakers pay too little attention to competition with China, and 65 percent think that tensions between China and Taiwan are important to U.S. national security and economic interests. So, with—I mean, with Pennsylvania’s reliance on manufacturing exports, you know, how do states—this state’s industries prepare for further economic tensions between the U.S. and China, especially as we see this tech rivalry intensify? And as U.S.-China relations evolve, how can the manufacturing base position itself?
KANAPATHY: It’s a great question, Elise. I think that, you know, the relations with China have over the last, I don’t know, twenty-plus—twenty, maybe thirty years have been very focused on our trading relationship, which has gone through, you know, tremendous ups and downs. And I think sort of how the American people see it and how they felt it is important. For example, like, I think median household income—so, like, your—you know, I guess your typical American family I think in the Clinton years rose, and they—and I think they felt it. But then across the Bush and Obama administrations, it kind of stagnated. And I think a lot of folks associate that with—at least partially with China entering the WTO, which is—happened, basically, at the end of the Clinton administration. And some of the things that Shannon was talking about, right, the manufacturing jobs, you know, a lot of those kind of moved overseas, again, at least partially because of some of the policies that were enacted during that time period.
And I think now what you’ve seen, I guess, since both the Trump and the Biden administration is quite a different approach, I think, from what we saw before that time. And we’ve heard both candidates talk about how they want to move out and move forward on economic policies to include tariffs, right, and in particular with respect to China. So I think folks have a lot to consider and to think about in those terms.
One thing I’ll say is that, you know, being painfully aware that we’re, you know, a panel of, quote/unquote, “experts” up here, that I think, you know, a few years ago, we got a lot of expert opinions that turned out to be wrong and, I mean, you know, in 2018 the United States raised tariffs, and all the experts said, don’t do it. In 2019, the U.S. raised tariffs on China, and all the experts said, don’t do it, it will hurt us. In 2020, the United States did it again, and those tariffs are still in place today, right? They’re still there. And there’s reasons for that, and some of them maybe you can say are political, but I don’t think the effects that were predicted happened because, for example, median household income actually went up quite a bit between 2016 and 2019. So, again, there’s other reasons that factor into that, but I think it’s important that, you know, folks are looking at all those factors.
LABOTT: Yeah, and you know, particularly in steel and chemicals, you know, these industries are going to be able to position themselves to benefit from those shifts in global supply chains away from China.
Evelyn, let’s talk about Ukraine, and we saw that President Zelensky was here a few weeks ago visiting this ammo production base that produces artillery, which is one of the primary weapons, ammunition. Some people have called Ukraine, you know, the artillery war. And we saw in the poll that a lot of people think we should supporting more to Ukraine, and President Zelensky signed that agreement with Zabornicha (ph), I think.
So, given Pennsylvania’s significant defense and manufacturing industries, how might the state’s economy be affected by continued U.S. support for Ukraine in the war.
FARKAS: Well, thank you for the question, Elise. I have to start, though, by thanking Mike Froman and CFR, thanking Barbara Altmann, Steve Medvic, and F&M.
I am like practically jumping out of my skin I’m so excited to be here. (Laughter.) And most of you know it’s for several reasons: one, I am a graduate of F&M. (Applause.) And I had the pleasure of serving on the board—Barbara’s board—for five years.
Two, my first job out of F&M—and I can talk to all you young people about how to get jobs out of F&M, but it doesn’t really work this way anymore—was with the Council on Foreign Relations through a temp agency in New York City. And at the ripe age of twenty, I said, some day I want to become a member—a CFR member—and I became a CFR member, so that’s another reason why I am very excited because I continue to have the affiliation with CFR.
And then, finally, my in-laws live in Lancaster, and they are here in the audience with my husband. (Applause.) So that is—so that is why I’m excited to be here.
LABOTT: OK, well, I thought nobody was as excited—as excited to be here as I am, but I guess maybe it’s you. (Laughter.)
FARKAS: I think so.
With regard to the impact of the war in Ukraine on Pennsylvania’s economy, clearly it has resulted in a boon for the economy because there is defense production. As you mentioned, there is an artillery—there’s an Army facility that produces 155 artillery ammunition.
Here in Scranton, President Zelensky visited recently, and I believe there was also a Bradley Fighting Vehicle plant in York. I don’t know if it is still manufacturing Bradleys, but in any event, clearly the defense industry is benefitting, and frankly, there is a large swath of U.S. defense industry that is benefitting from—directly—from our support to Ukraine.
But more importantly, I think, what we need to understand is what the war is about. It’s about standing up to Vladimir Putin. Why do we care about Vladimir Putin? I mean, we can sit at home and say, well, we don’t care about Vladimir Putin; let him have his way. But he is a neo-imperial autocrat, and he recognizes this truth: The United States remains the single strongest economic, military, and political power in the world. It’s the only power that can stand up to Russia and China, alone and certainly with our allies and partners. And by allies I mean the NATO alliance, which is the only operational alliance, the strongest operational alliance in the world, and our alliances in Asia.
So the autocrats, whether we like it or not, they view us as the enemy. We can sit at home and eat bonbons on our couch, but they know we’re strong, and they know we can stop us (sic), and so they want to weaken us before we can stop them.
Vladimir Putin decided that it was very important for him to recreate the Soviet Union, kind of a neo-imperial adventure. And I don’t want to go on too long because I can talk about this all night, but suffice it say that, for the United States, there’s a lot at stake. And I’ll kind of wrap it up like this: If Vladimir Putin gets his way in Ukraine, he will then turn—and you can Google Georgia and Moldova because they are right now in the middle of elections. Moldova just finished them, but they have a runoff; and Georgia, they are coming up. Those are two states that used to be part of the Soviet Union that Vladimir Putin would also like to take back. Vladimir Putin would also like to reassert control over Eastern Europe—frankly, the place where my parents came from; they fled communist Hungary.
Vladimir Putin wants to take us back to a sphere of influence system before World War II. So after World War II, we set up the international system—we don’t have time to talk too much about the details of that, but suffice it to say it has kept us out—we can all agree—out of World War III because while there have been lots of wars—and Steven is about to talk about some of them—we have not had a world war since World War II because of the system that we set up.
Vladimir Putin and, frankly, China, are trying to put this in jeopardy. I don’t have time to talk about how China is slightly different from Russia because what China wants to do—and I’m doing it anyway—
LABOTT: We’ll get to that. We’ll get to that.
But anyway, suffice it to say that supporting Ukraine is not only good for Pennsylvania, but it’s good for U.S. national security and it’s good for democracy.
FARKAS: Yeah. Let me get to the last thing. He will challenge the NATO alliance. We’re part of the NATO alliance. If we don’t come to the aid of a NATO country, the alliance will crumble. Russia will then weaken us domestically, more than it already has.
LABOTT: OK, Steven.
COOK: Elise. (Laughter.)
LABOTT: Let’s talk about the Middle East. I mean, even as Steven and I were getting ready to come on stage here tonight, we saw there were some new developments out of the Middle East today. So bring us up to date on what’s going on in the Middle East and whether—I mean, you kind of answered our question for us—whether the—you know, the recent developments, the death of Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, killed by Israel—was it last week? I don’t even remember anymore.
What are we looking at? Are we looking at a truce? Is there an opportunity here? Or is Israel just, you know, not listening to President Biden or anybody looking to end the war?
COOK: Well, thanks very much. I just want to remind everybody that there was a time not long ago people started talking about deemphasizing the Middle East, yet here we are again. But before—
LABOTT: I think the Middle East like just—we always say that, but it’s like the pivot to China. We can never leave the Middle East, and we can never pivot to China.
COOK: Well, the Middle East is genuinely in the middle, but before I get into what’s going on in the Middle East—(laughter)—I do want to say how nice it is to be back in Pennsylvania. I’ve actually spent a fair amount of time in my life in Pennsylvania when I thought about it: ten summers, I did my graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania. And it’s just nice to be in the state that is home to the cheesesteak and the Hershey Kiss. (Laughter, applause.)
And so, I just—you know, there’s not a lot of good news in my portfolio, so to be in the home of the Hershey Kiss is really—is really quite nice.
Look, every day there is—there are developments in the Middle East, and this afternoon the Israelis killed the number two, the successor to Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon. And I think this speaks to what’s happening in the region right now, which is the Israelis, after fighting basically back on their heels for the better part of the last years, now feel that they have a lot of momentum. And way back, after the October 7 attacks in 2023, Israeli officials were very, very clear in stating that they were going to, quote/unquote, “change the rules of the game.”
And I think a lot of people here in the United States didn’t want to listen to that or wanted to interpret that in many different ways, but the Israelis are now going about changing the rules of the game. And so, since—
LABOTT: What does that—what does that mean?
COOK: It’s—well, I’m about to tell you what it means. (Laughter.)
LABOTT: All right.
COOK: Stanashway (ph). She knows what it means. It means one second. What it means is that the Israelis no longer are going to tolerate living next to non-state actors that can threaten their security. So since mid-September, they have been basically dismantling Hezbollah, the best armed, most sophisticated, non-state actor in the world, which has become an expeditionary force and second-strike capability for the Iranian regime.
They have—as Elise mentioned, they killed the leadership of Hamas, and many, many other people, as well, including large numbers of civilians, in order to meet their military goal, which is to render Hamas unable to threaten Israeli security like it did on October 7 again. They seem to believe—and there is evidence that they are getting there—that they are close to achieving their goal, at least in the Gaza Strip.
There is no ceasefire to be had; like, this often happens with the United States in the Middle East. The United States wants something more than the parties themselves. So Yahya Sinwar, who was the leader of Hamas in Gaza, never was interested in a ceasefire. There is ample evidence, there’s ample text messages and other kinds of messages from him to his colleagues in Qatar saying there’s really no need for a ceasefire; we’re winning. And for the Israelis, Prime Minister Netanyahu is dependent upon right-wing parties who have demanded the absolute destruction of Hamas. Why? Because they want to resettle the Gaza Strip and annex the West Bank.
What we have in the war between Israel and Hamas are one-staters against one-staters, and when you have one-staters against one-staters, you have no room for a ceasefire. When it comes to the north—Israel’s north—what they are doing is they are essentially fighting Iran. And we are expecting a very significant Israeli response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack—
LABOTT: Do you think that—
COOK: —on Israel three weeks ago.
LABOTT: Do you think the Israelis will bomb Iran?
COOK: They will—undoubtedly the case. It’s not a question of if; it’s a question of when. And the question is really what the targets they will hit—
LABOTT: Yeah, what do you think—what do you think that’s going to be?
COOK: I think that the Biden administration has been counseling the Israelis against hitting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and Iran’s energy infrastructure. And the Israelis have said—and once again, this is a problem that we have had in listening to everybody in this conflict, whether it’s the Israelis or Hamas. We’ve been wanting to hear things that we want to hear rather than what they are saying. And so what the Israelis have said is we take the advice of the United States very seriously, but we will decide what we will hit, when we will hit, and how we will hit it, based on our own national security.
And that’s where we are. There is no end to this conflict right now.
LABOTT: Well, I want to ask you about this. I’m going to go back to this survey of Pennsylvania voters. Fifty percent of Pennsylvania voters—so half of Pennsylvania voters believe U.S. involvement in the Middle East has worsened our national security. Yet 77 percent think that this Israel-Hamas war is important for U.S. national security.
So is it one point that it’s important to the U.S., but it has also made us less safe?
COOK: Yeah, you know, those polls are super interesting, and I did a big research project over the course of the last few years in which I delved into the kind of historical connection between Israel and the United States. I would say that first one—the first question—please read it again, Elise—sorry—
LABOTT: Seventy-seven—
COOK: No, no, the 50 percent one.
LABOTT: Oh, 50 percent of Pennsylvania voters believe U.S. involvement in the Middle East has worsened our national security.
COOK: I’ll bet if we went back to 1972, 1971, 1974, it would be just about the same. It would be just about the same in Pennsylvania and throughout the country. There has always been this concern about the United States getting pulled into the Middle East, yet at the same time, Americans have also seen it important for the United States to be in the Middle East, and more than about a half—a little bit more than half of Americans have always supported the close relationship between the United States and Israel, at least since the early 1970s.
So the second piece of it, which suggests that Americans are—I think both—which suggest, one, Americans think that we should be involved in the Middle East but are concerned that the current conflict in the Middle East will come back and hurt the United States, whether either bringing us into the conflict directly in a regional conflict, the United States being—you know, the Iranians take retaliatory measures by closing the Strait of Hormuz, where most of the world’s oil comes through—or a good portion of it comes through.
LABOTT: Yeah, that’s another—
COOK: And then the U.S. Navy—
LABOTT: That’s another question.
COOK: And then the U.S. Navy has to open it up, and that means our brothers, and sisters, and cousins, and uncles, and aunts are involved in conflict once again in the Middle East, or another concern—and this is a concern that our allies in the regions—or I should say partners in the region, which worked in the Pentagon; I don’t like that word—that there will be—there has been a radicalization as a result of U.S. policy in the region, and all of those are valid concerns. No one is making that up. And I think the American people—and the people of Pennsylvania are in tune with the dangers of the Middle East by answering those questions in the way that they have.
LABOTT: And also—
COOK: And I’m not just saying that because I’m at beautiful F&M. (Laughter.)
LABOTT: And also, then, Shannon, there’s the issue of, you know, energy security, and that, you know, Pennsylvania’s energy producers have to prepare for potential disruptions here.
O’NEIL: Yeah, well, we’re seeing just changes all over the world and in sort of the energy matrix. It’s like we’re seeing it in—you know, interestingly, as we have, you know, conflict in the Middle East, we have conflict in Ukraine and Russia, and we have other places that we’re worried about, actually, the prices of oil have been falling recently, and I think that attests to the just incredible amount of production happening in the United States, right? We’re the number one producer of energy, now surpassing Saudi Arabia and other places.
It also has to do with, you know, we’re beginning to see—in the United States but in countries of the world—we’re beginning to see a movement toward renewable energy, right? We are seeing kind of a full-scale movement in many nation after nation, moving into other kinds of alternative ways of producing energy, which I should say is a good thing. We’ve had a little bit of gloom and doom up here, so let’s—(laughs)—try to pull back a little bit and find, you know, some of the technological and other changes that are actually, I think, huge advantages for the United States.
And as I look around at the world, you know, which country would you want to be in, there are many reasons to want to be in the United States. You know, you look around the world, and ours is the fastest \growing of the advanced, you know, manufacturing economies. You look around the world, and per capita income here, even with all the challenges we have, is much higher than most European nations and others, you know, that do well.
But you look around the world, and we one of the biggest energy producers and look to be one of the biggest energy producers going forward, to the point where—you know, it’s a tricky word to say, but almost could be self-sufficient or, you know, we are exporting because we have such an abundance there. And that’s really important in today’s world and when you think about a lot of these geopolitical conflicts that we’re talking up here. It’s a strength that the United States has today.
LABOTT: Yeah, go ahead.
KANAPATHY: Yeah, I totally agree with Shannon on that, and I think, you know, the production is one side of it. We’re also at this—to mirror what Elise was talking about—we’re sort of at this leading edge of this AI revolution, right, and one of the things about AI is we’re realizing is that there is a huge energy draw, a huge need, and I think our energy producers and our energy policymakers need to think very deeply about that and what the—not just the future, but the very near future, holds and the stress it’s putting, you know, on our grid.
And to touch on one other thing Elise mentioned about the supply chains and the China question, and this is really—I think she mentioned Taiwan, you know—
LABOTT: Well, yeah, with this critical semiconductor industry affecting, you know, not only U.S.-China relations, but let’s say Pennsylvania’s tech sector—you know, what strategies should policymakers adapt to ensure a stable supply of semiconductors in this rising tension?
KANAPATHY: Yeah, that’s the other—right, another huge, critical input to AI—semiconductors—and I think—you know, I think folks here might, you know, know and understand how critical Taiwan is at some level, but I’ll just throw out there, there’s been estimates that, you know, there are wars in Europe that are critically important to national security, as we’ve talked about. There are wars in the Middle East happening now, obviously, but if a war in the Taiwan Strait happened, the estimates on the first order are about two to three trillion dollars, and if you include second, third order, Bloomberg will tell you it’s about a ten trillion dollar hit to the global economy, which means, you know, for all Americans—including Pennsylvanians—basically a depression, like something we haven’t seen in nearly a century.
LABOTT: Excellent. (Laughter.)
Evelyn, we’re talking about AI and, you know, there is also this—you’ve talked about the idea of AI-driven disinformation in elections. We’ve also talked about just this axis of, you know, kind of—you could call it axis of resistance, axis of—you know, Steven is—we said Steven is going to be chaos, Evelyn is going to be axis of resistance—
FARKAS: Evil. I think evil.
LABOTT: Evil, autocrats, what have you. But, you know, Iran, Russia, China, North Korea all working together to possibly have these AI-driven threats for election integrity.
FARKAS: Yeah, I mean, I think the AI—so I want to maybe channel a little bit of Shannon and not be all doom and gloom because obviously AI—if you’re from the F&M science department, it holds so much promise, you know, in terms of combatting disease and things of that nature.
So there’s a lot of positive that comes with AI, also all the productivity, which will mean maybe a four-day work week, which will mean that we—
LABOTT: I love it.
FARKAS: —use less energy, and then our climate will be better, so—
LABOTT: Shannon, Mike Froman, four-day work week. (Laughter.)
FARKAS: So to offset some of the badness is that, but I do worry about AI and what the, quote/unquote, “bad guys,” what the rogue states, what the autocrats can do with AI. And I worry about because of course I worked a long time in the defense sector as a foreign policy person, and we know that, actually, the Ukraine war is not so much the artillery war—you mentioned that before—it’s the drone war. It’s the autonomous, you know, unmanned weaponry war. (Laughs.) And I think—
LABOTT: That’s going to be—but that even, like, people are using AI for these positions, right?
FARKAS: It’s going to be—yes. And so then I think back to things we don’t talk about enough anymore, although they’re coming back to the fore. The biggest threat, I think, to mankind today still is the nuclear weapon and AI can also allow—you know, AI can also unleash nuclear catastrophe on humans.
So I think it’s important to understand that AI is a catalyst, a force multiplier—a force multiplier for good and evil. But maybe I want to also draw attention to the fact that we still have a nuclear issue. We clearly now have a nuclear arms race. North Korea is, for all intents and purposes, a nuclear state.
I went there in 2008. We were—last time we tried to have them dismantle their nuclear weapons industry, if you will. They are a nuclear weapons state. Iran is on the cusp, as you know. So I think—I also want us to think about the actual weapons themselves.
LABOTT: Steven?
COOK: Yeah, I want to get in on this AI thing for a second and then go back to something about energy security. There is—and I think this is a totally under reported story but it is going to affect us, and it will—it does presage a potential power shift in the global order.
There is an AI arms race going on in the Middle East right now. Israel is a leading AI power. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other countries are competing with each other to invest in and attract AI to their countries and—
LABOTT: Yes, some of the diplomats we’ve spoken to. You try to talk about Israel and they’re, like, we’re only talking about AI now.
COOK: Right. So I think the point is, is that the ability of them to attract AI investment because it requires so much energy and energy is so cheap in this part of the world—
LABOTT: Such a good point.
COOK: —that people are going to move and invest in these places and that’s going to give places like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, others, more power than just being oil producers.
And Shannon—and just to loop that to what we were talking about before, Shannon’s absolutely right. We are the major oil producer in the world and Pennsylvania is like the Kuwait of natural gas—the Kuwait of the United States in gas. But it still is a global market and it still requires the United States to be in the Middle East helping to ensure security and stability particularly in the Persian Gulf.
You know, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians soak up a lot of time and diplomatic effort and emotion but really the prime directive for the United States is stability and security in the Gulf because of the flow of oil and freedom of navigation issues in and around the region.
That’s why President Biden in his 2020 campaign referred to the Saudi leadership as, you know, beyond the pale. He sought to freeze out the Saudi Crown Prince over a variety of transgressions, most notoriously the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, who was a columnist for the Washington Post.
But less than a year after freezing out the prime minister he showed up in Saudi Arabia and fist bumped Mohammed bin Salman because the Saudis remain a swing state in terms of the production of oil, which is critical not only to—
LABOTT: Well, and also back to Pennsylvania.
COOK: One second, Elise. It’s critical not only to, you know, SUV drivers in Pennsylvania but also to the global economy. Our trading partners—Korea, Japan, China—are all dependent upon energy from this part of the world and we are, for better or worse, the providers of security and stability in that part of the region—part of the world, sorry.
LABOTT: Well, I was just going to say and if you remember that, you know, oil—gas prices were very high at that time and it was really all about kind of driving down the gas prices.
COOK: I don’t know. I drive an EV, so what were the gas prices? (Laughter.)
LABOTT: Oh. Well, that’s a precautionary tale to get a—
COOK: I powered up at a Sheetz here. It was awesome.
LABOTT: —to get a(n) EV but it was right before the midterms, if I remember.
Shannon, before we open it up for our audience here I want to talk to you about immigration. You know, there’s a large immigrant workforce contributing to Pennsylvania’s agriculture and service industries. I know here in Lancaster it’s particularly an important issue.
Talk to us about that and how we see potential immigration policies in the next—whether it’s a President Harris or a return of President Trump, impacting labor availability in key sectors of Pennsylvania’s economy.
O’NEIL: Well, let me start that actually. Let me make a case. We’ve had the sort of the gloom and doom here. We’ve had, like, the troubles with China and Taiwan. We’ve had the Russia-Ukraine. We’ve got the turmoil in the Middle East.
Let me make a case for the under discussed but as important to the United States day to day other country out there, and that is Mexico. And it’s tied to immigration, but one second.
So Mexico is a country that affects us, affects all of you every day, right? It affects us, especially in the winter the produce that is on your tables when you go to the grocery store. It is the country that affects lots of the commerce and makes our factories here competitive or not. It buys lots of our products and lots of the components that go into assembly down there.
It is a country that affects our security. You know, we look around and there’s lots of challenges for Americans all over the world but we have last year almost a hundred thousand Americans who died of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. Most of the chemicals came from China and other places but they were mixed together into those drugs in Mexico as well. Some in the United States, but primarily Mexico so it’s a security challenge there.
It is a country that affects us in terms of our environment because we have a 2000-mile border and there’s lots that goes back and forth, and it is a country that affects us because of communities. We have millions of Mexicans who live here and tens of millions of Mexican Americans so there’s a long cultural connection there. And, you know, it was many years ago that salsa started outselling ketchup so, you know, that’s a cultural connection that we have to Mexico.
But Mexico—this is just to give you—you know, I want to put it on the table as we think about countries that are really important to day to day in the United States and to Pennsylvania. But it’s also important because of migration, right, and that is a huge topic today in the campaigns but also in people’s day to day lives in the United States.
We have—you know, we’ve seen growing migration to the United States. We’ve seen growing migration all over the world. There’s over a hundred million people who’ve been displaced forcibly from their homes and from their countries and are moving around the world, and some of them have come here to the United States for all sorts of reasons.
And Mexico is really important to this whole process because many of these individuals—not all of them but many of them come up to the U.S. southern border and present themselves. So that is the border that we share with Mexico.
So Mexico’s migration policies and what it does affects how many people come up to the U.S. southern border and Mexico has actually been working very closely with the United States for many years, first in the Trump administration, now in the Biden administration, to reduce the number of people who come to the border, to keep some of those people within Mexico. And, interestingly, we talk about, here in the United States we have, you know, some 2 million asylum cases that are pending, people waiting to, you know, get their day in court and decide if they can stay.
Mexico has 500,000 asylum cases, people waiting to see if they can stay in Mexico. So they, too, are becoming a receiving country, right—migrants who are integrating into Mexico—just as we are here. So it’s sort of a challenge for that country.
Now, what’s going to happen under the next administration, right? We will see, but I think we have sort of different policy sets up between the two different candidates.
Harris, if I were to characterize her, she kind of comes at migration issues with a law enforcement on one side and sort of more legal channels for people to come in legally on the other side. So a little bit of a—you know, she was a prosecutor in a past life and a little bit of a law approach to it.
So, you know, she’s back. There was a bill that was in front of the Senate last February that would have provided billions of dollars for the border to building up the number of judges there, sort of the—you know, the centers to hold people and the like. So really building up kind of law enforcement at the border as well as creating 250,000 new legal pathways into the United States, sort of work visas and the like.
So I think she’ll approach it in that way, sort of continue down that path. As we look at a Trump administration, at least what he’s said out there and some of his advisors have said out there, is, you know, we’ll see some reduction probably in the number of legal visas or slowing down the process that happened during the first term.
But the real pillar, which will be different than a Harris, is deportation. So the, you know, roughly, 10 (million), 11 million undocumented migrants that are here in the United States the idea is to send many of those back to the countries from which they came.
So this will be an issue, I would say, for local communities where many of those individuals live. It will be an issue for the 5.5 million Americans who are under the age of eighteen who have a parent who is undocumented. So there are 5.5 kids—U.S. citizen kids—that have a parent that is undocumented. There are real challenges and, you know, experts will tell you that it’s impossible to deport that many people and no administration has ever gotten near that number. But there are—it will be real changes for the local economies, the local communities in which they exist.
And the last thing I’ll just say migrants are—have been a net benefit to the U.S. economy, especially when they can come through legal pathways. When they come into areas they tend to not only, you know, work in places that are there but they tend to open up other kinds of businesses. They spend money in the local community, right? They go to the grocery store and they go to the restaurant and the theater and the laundromat and all those places. They increase tax revenues in local places and they bring sort of a general population, and especially as—you know, we see one of the challenges in the United States is our demographics change as native-born Americans have fewer kids, as we age as a society, as Baby Boomers retire and we have fewer people in our workforce.
And the reason our workforce has been growing while China’s workforce has been shrinking, while many European workforces have been shrinking, a big reason has been immigration and the kids of immigrants. And so that has been historically a real economic strength for the United States and I think the real question for us is how do we make sure that when people are coming to the United States they’re doing it through legal pathways and there are legal pathways for them to come through for our labor markets but also for the families that often have mixed status—some who are U.S. citizens and some who are not.
LABOTT: And as we said, obviously, very important here in Pennsylvania and Lancaster.
OK. We’re going to open it up now to audience questions. If you can stand. I’m going to maybe stand up and see if I can see you. Stand, speak into the mic, state your name and affiliation, and let’s keep the questions short so we can take as many questions as we can.
We have some mic runners on either side of the room. If you have a question just hold your hand up high because it’s a little dark over in there.
OK. In the back, right there in the in the red shirt. Yes.
Q: One thing that hasn’t been mentioned—
LABOTT: Can you tell us your name and where you’re from?
Q: Oh, sorry. Dolly Shuster, Lancaster.
Something that hasn’t been mentioned in any of this is BRICS and the impact that that has on any of the topics that have been discussed, the influence that it has with Russia and Russia being not as isolated as we tend to think of with the support that it has and the growing influence with BRICS. And take it whichever way you want for the topics that you’ve had.
LABOTT: Great, great question, ma’am.
Evelyn, do you want to take that one?
FARKAS: I’ll start politically but then over to the other side for economic wisdom.
I think Vladimir Putin has worked very effectively to use the BRICS organization, if you will, to demonstrate to his people that he’s not isolated, that he has partners, and I would say that the—yeah, I don’t really know. That’s probably the shortest answer I can give.
LABOTT: OK. Ivan, you want to—or Shannon?
KANAPATHY: Yeah. I think that, you know, what I think Evelyn mentioned before, we have a greater concern as sort of the four—
LABOTT: Axis.
KANAPATHY: Some people say crank or the axis which, because in BRICS you have folks like India, you have South Africa, who are not—who are—
LABOTT: Saudi Arabia may be joining then.
KANAPATHY: Yeah, the other folks might be joining and it hasn’t—I don’t know that BRICS has actually accomplished much other than sort of the diplomatic. But we do worry, of course, about the four primary that are very clearly now working together in particular right now to support Russia’s, you know, efforts in Ukraine, materially supporting them from China, from North Korea, from Iran, and we see Russia, obviously, helping Iran and things like that.
So there’s a lot of cooperation going on amongst those four and that is something that I think the U.S. is focused on.
LABOTT: Shannon, just very quickly on the economic side, is there any concern that the BRICS could really be a formidable economic alliance to the West?
O’NEIL: So the BRICS and, you know, they originally—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and then they’ve added a host of new members, and then there’s some others like Turkey and others who are applying to join.
And, you know, what they have together is more diplomatic and it is more sort of anti-U.S. dominance or control, you know, sort of wanting to reshape some of the rules. But they don’t have a positive agenda. They don’t have something they want to replace the current world order with. They just don’t like sort of their place in it.
LABOTT: The spoilers.
O’NEIL: What I would say is that, you know, with these new additions what’s interesting is most of the countries don’t have particular economic relations with each other but they do have relations with China. And so, you know, some of the frustrations of the original members—particularly Brazil and India, who are, you know, also more democratic than some of the other members—is that some of this may end up being, especially on the economic side, more of a hub and spoke where China really has relations with all of them. And we see that even more with the Russian war and sort of Russia becoming more dependent on China. And I think there’s a really uneasy territory for some of the democracies that are within there as it becomes—moves towards more autocratic approaches on the politics.
COOK: Just very quickly, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Turkey all want to be part of BRICS. Three of those are strategic partners of the United States in the Middle East and the other one is actually a NATO ally, and I think this interest in being part of the BRICS is a hedge that these countries are undertaking—
LABOTT: That’s a great point.
COOK: —because the United States has talked very seriously about leaving the region in kind of irresponsible ways, and they don’t believe that the United States has staying power and they’re looking for alternatives and they’re getting involved in the BRICS.
LABOTT: OK. Hands. This right here in the white shirt, black tie.
Q: Hi. I’m Carl (sp). I go to F&M.
This kind of—my question kind of bounces off something Steven was saying earlier about “allies,” quote/unquote, in the Middle East. We only have, as you mentioned, partners in the Middle East. To what extent—we talked about a broad range of sort of threats facing America, issues facing the international order.
How will allies play a role in us facing these threats, this diverse array of threats that maybe we can’t manage all ourselves? How can we encourage allies to sort of act in the American national interest while fulfilling their own national interests—that sort of thing?
I think it’s a perennial problem in national security of how can we balance allied interests while still articulating our own interests and managing those relationships?
LABOTT: Great question. Steven?
COOK: Well, I just—and you look, there’s never a perfect partner and there’s never a perfect ally. There’s always going to be those problems. Even among our closest allies there are problems. We have tariffs on Canadian steel. The Canadians are the nicest people in the world. Why would we want to do that to them? (Laughter.)
Mike Froman is here. Maybe he can explain why that should or should not be the case. But, nevertheless, you know, the search for the perfect ally who’s completely aligned with American national interest just doesn’t exist and I think that that’s a tick that we often have in our commentary about it.
But I’ll give you an example of how we can work with a partner—a problematic partner but never a partner—in order to advance our national security interests and that is our ongoing negotiations with Saudi Arabia over a security pact.
Saudi Arabia is a problematic ally in a variety—a problematic partner in a variety of ways but it’s also a very, very important country, and to the extent that we want to outmaneuver the Chinese in the Gulf and they want to outmaneuver the Iranians in the Gulf we have a confluence of interest in getting together and signing a security pact.
Which isn’t just a security pact. It’s a pact about AI. It’s a pact about nuclear technology. It’s a pact about a variety of things that will knit the two countries together, that will satisfy both of our national security interests.
For the Saudis they say, look, we have a relationship with the Chinese that—it’s not going away. But we understand your concerns. You need to understand our concerns about the Iranians, which we haven’t done over the course of the fifteen years. Now we’re starting to get religion on that, no pun intended, and we’re hammering out a security pact as a result.
LABOTT: Yeah. Evelyn, pick up on that point briefly about U.S. foreign policy leadership, about the hedging but also in this multi-polar world. I want to, again, quote from this poll. Fifty-three percent of Pennsylvania voters favor the U.S. playing a shared leadership role. And as the world becomes more multi-polar but with the rise of China and this alliance with Russia and, you know, what we’re talking about how does the U.S. position itself on the global stage?
FARKAS: I mean, I think what we’ve done is really convince our allies, and allies are the countries with which we have a military alliance where we will defend one another and those are the NATO allies. We have our allies in the Asia Pacific and the only one in the Middle East we have is Israel.
So but we have many partners. And we also try to convince our partners to work with us to make the world a safer place for our values and our interests, so for democracy, and for freedom of navigation, for commerce.
LABOTT: Well, and also so that the U.S. doesn’t have to be the world’s policeman, if you will. Like, share the burden. Share the burden.
FARKAS: We share the burden. Right.
So what we’ve done, and I think Ivan can talk to this too, is specifically in the context of NATO if you—for those of you NATO geeks you might have noticed that the last several summits have also had heads of state from Asia Pacific present at the summits.
LABOTT: And the Middle East.
FARKAS: So from Japan—treaty-bound ally—South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and correct me if I’m—the Philippines, I think, showed up at one of the more recent ones, possibly. I’m not sure. So—
LABOTT: I think there were forty NATO partners, something like—
FARKAS: Yeah. No. Well, NATO is thirty-one I think it is.
COOK: OK. You guys are geeking out on the NATO stuff. (Laughter.)
FARKAS: But the point is—the point is—
LABOTT: We’re going deep on NATO right now.
FARKAS: What we did, and I’ll just get to the point—what we did is that we schooled—we made our NATO allies aware of the threat posed by China and how we have to work together to counter China smartly because they had blinders on, much as they did with regard to Russia, which is another story.
LABOTT: Yeah, and I think the U.S. has been good about that. In the beginning, Ivan, they didn’t really—you know, I think the Europeans were maybe a little, like, it’s really Russia, but I think NATO has really come to see China as a threat.
KANAPATHY: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s still a work in progress from the U.S. point of view. But for sure over the last few years and, look, to be honest, China hasn’t helped itself very much, right? I mean, that the exact—we’ve just recently—I think, last week the United States sanctioned two companies in China for making killer drones for Russia. So they are manufacturing and selling weapons to Russia who is using them against Ukraine.
So, yeah, I think the Europeans are definitely coming around.
LABOTT: OK. A question.
FARKAS: And export control is one area where they need to do better.
LABOTT: OK. Right here, right here on the front row. Yes, you, sir. No, right—(laughter)—right here, the gentleman standing right—we can take both of you. Let’s—
Q: Hi. Jerry Strickmanner (ph) from Lancaster.
The big question is we talk about all these things but we’ve had the failure of the U.N., and when you talk about all this cooperation and we have people coming in and defending these terrorist states and walking out on our ally Israel. Talk about that, and how does all the thing you’ve talked about for the last hour fit in with a U.N. that’s been a failure for seventy years.
LABOTT: It’s a great question, sir. Thank you.
Steven, I mean, look, there’s a lot of talk about whether the U.N. is in effect an anti-Semitic organization.
COOK: Look, the U.N. has been ineffective over a long, long, long period of time—
LABOTT: On a multitude of issues.
COOK: —on a multitude of issues. You’re not—I’m not going to defend the U.N. here. I think the U.N. Security Council based on the way it’s structured creates paralysis within the U.N. But the way in which the U.N. has been leveraged for political reasons—and you point out one of the political reasons that has sort of inverted some of the logic in which we can—in which we look at the world—is problematic.
Like, how is it that the Human Rights Council has countries like Iran and North Korea and Libya and countries with notorious human rights violations—Saudi Arabia. So it is an organization that, from my perspective, is because of the way it’s structured is not really redeemable.
Now, that’s not to suggest that everything the U.N. does is terrible. Right before COVID I spent time in Iraq and I spent time not just in Baghdad but among displaced people throughout Iraq.
If it was not for the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, or UNDP, these people would be unable to survive. Unable to survive. Mosul, which was absolutely leveled—absolutely leveled by both the United States and Iraqi forces and the liberation from the Islamic State—is being rebuilt through the U.N.
So there are some good things, but on those kind of big issues that you’re talking about the U.N. has become a caricature of itself.
LABOTT: OK. So let’s take this gentleman right here.
FARKAS: Can I just add one thing, though?
LABOTT: Quickly, yeah.
FARKAS: So U.N. ineffective. You know, genocides, atrocities, all these things happening. But the World Food Programme is in Sudan, the World Food Programme is in Gaza, and their people are getting killed.
But also let’s not forget even though the U.N. itself isn’t solving all the world’s problems it’s still—the U.N. charter is still preventing World War III so long as the states abide by it, which is to say it’s a bargain between sovereignty, respect for borders, and conversely telling states, OK, if you respect one another’s borders then in exchange for the world accepting these borders you must provide basic human rights for the people in your states. It doesn’t work perfectly but it’s kept us out of World War III.
LABOTT: OK. The gentleman with the glasses right here.
Q: You’re not going to mention the Arizona State hoodie? (Laughter.) So my name’s Tony Dastra. Very much a local political guy, not so much the foreign policy issue.
But the lack of solution on this issue comes to local concerns. As I understand it, the last time United States tried a nuclear deposition site was the Yucca Mountain project back a couple decades ago. We mentioned getting rid of nuclear arms, but the reality we’re talking about maybe restarting Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania because of our energy demands despite being the Kuwait of gas.
What’s the global conversation on nuclear waste deposition? Like, what can we as a global society do to ensure that these pieces of infrastructure and also artilleries that we’re making can be properly disposed of so they don’t become a global concern?
LABOTT: Yeah. That’s a good question.
Evelyn?
FARKAS: Well, I’m not sure that I’m the expert on disposing of the materials. Of course, there’s a lot of, you know, politics involved. Most localities don’t want those materials in their backyard, if you will.
But the quest for—we mentioned earlier the need for more energy and so we see companies like Google and others investing—or maybe it was Microsoft. I don’t remember which one. Yes, investing in nuclear power and small—more—smaller nuclear energy production facilities.
I think that in and of itself is fine and we should be able to control it against proliferation. But the bigger thing that I worry about is the proliferation of nuclear arms.
LABOTT: OK. I’m going to take a quick lightning round. We’re going to take three questions. We’re going to ask the panelists to wrap them—answer and with a closing remark. I’m going to take something from the balcony. We have a gentleman, I think, right here.
Q: Hi. My name is Ian. I’m a student here at F&M.
My question is on the Middle East. Just today looking at the news there were reports of Israel potentially bombing Lebanon and some of the panelists mentioned the probability of bombing Iran, and I’m sure that many people are alarmed like I am by how casually we mention the possibility of one nuclear power bombing another nuclear power.
And with that in mind I wonder whether there should be limits to the kind of foreign intervention that the U.S. government is willing to support from its allies and how—and if there are limits how can the U.S. government enforce those limits.
LABOTT: Good question. This woman right here.
Q: Hi. Thank you so much. My name is India (ph). I’m a sophomore here.
I wanted to ask a question revolving around China and the tariffs which were mentioned today, specifically talking about President—former President Trump and how he was saying if he were to come into office again that he would impose a 60 percent tariff increase on China’s exports.
And considering how it will deeply impact the economy and how economists have already spoken about how it will do so I wanted to ask and hope for the panelists to share how this will deeply impact local economies and why Gen Z, who are going to be the prominent group of people who will be the decision makers for this upcoming election, why it’s important for us to consider that policy that former President Trump is trying to impose.
LABOTT: OK. Thanks. We’re going to take one more in the back right here and then I’m going to ask the panelists to kind of choose which one they want and we’ll wrap it up.
Q: Hi. I’m Ben. I’m a sophomore at F&M.
The elephant in the room for many of us is the impending election. My question was about do you have any expert insights about how party coalitions or how candidates who are on the ballot for the national and state elections how will their policies on all these foreign issues that we’ve been talking about—do you have any insights about that?
Anything that is—especially on the more obscure things, like, that aren’t talked about as much, say, how will the Trump versus Harris campaigns handle, say, nuclear powers being in the situation where they’re opposed to each other like that?
LABOTT: Great. OK.
Shannon, I’m going to—we’re going to wrap this up and we’re going to redo our poll but I’m going to ask the panelists to answer these questions in the frame of if you had a piece of advice for the next administration maybe you can offer that. And, Shannon, maybe you can kind of just encapsulate what are the differences here between, you know, the two parties in terms of foreign policy, maybe.
O’NEIL: That’s a small question.
LABOTT: Yeah. (Laughter.)
O’NEIL: You know, if I had to encapsulate, which is a—it’s a dangerous thing to try to do, but you know—but I think we have—historically in the United States, we have sort of different strands of thinking about the rest of the world. And you know, there are many parts of the U.S. public and the different parties who think about reaching out to the rest of the world, embracing the rest of the world, finding opportunity in the rest of the world, and playing this role of being—you know, as the major superpower still, as, you know, the guarantor of security, playing that role, sort of the international policeman or the like. And then we also have historically strands from the beginning of the founding of our country which are that, you know, we should stay within our borders, we should really deal with the problems we have here at home, we shouldn’t be engaged in things far out in the rest of the world. And there’s different nuances to the way different people think about this and sort of lay it out, but I think we are seeing that play out in this election.
You know, there are, you know, strands of different parties who are that, you know what, the United States needs to be out there in the world; the way to make ourselves safer, and richer, and more equal, and provide opportunities at home is to find partners and allies, to deepen the commercial ties, the security ties, the other ties with nations all over the world. That’s one approach. And you know, another approach is that, no, you know, we should put up walls, whether those are commercial walls with tariffs, you know; whether those are, you know, limits on what we’ll do for other countries that are being attacked. And I think we see a bit of that divide. It doesn’t—it doesn’t divide very neatly between one party and the other, but I do think we see differences between what the Harris campaign has been talking about and what the Trump campaign has been talking about. So as I look at that, you know, where you see the United States in the world—whether it is on security issues, on diplomacy issues, on commercial issues, on communities and people issues—there are big choices to be made come November.
LABOTT: Yeah.
Why don’t you pick up on the tariff question?
KANAPATHY: Yeah, yeah. No, I’m happy to.
As this is sort of the closing, certainly thank you to President Froman of the Council for pulling this all together, President Altmann of Franklin and Marshall, and the whole teams here for doing that. So it’s been great for me to get out of Washington, for one, and to see you all, folks. It’s just—it’s wonderful to kind of see the rest of America whenever I can—whenever any of us can, I think.
On the tariff question, I would—I guess, you know, we went to—you mentioned 50, 60 percent is what I think former President Trump is proposing. He went to 25 (percent), not on everything across the board, but let’s say for argument’s sake he went to 25 (percent). And again, this is what I was talking about earlier about the experts, right? It actually wasn’t inflationary. It just wasn’t. Like, that’s a fact, right? That’s sort of undeniable, at least for a couple years. And so I think there are different opinions and there are different experts. And quite frankly, you know, Mike Froman’s successor, Bob Lighthizer, is an expert. He is. And this is what he recommends.
And you know, part of it, as more of a geopolitics guy and a(n) Asia policy guy, the tariffs, whether we want to admit it or not, I think they have been the principal driver pushing supply chains out of China, which is something that both parties in the U.S. think is a very good thing for us and a good thing for, you know, the globe overall, so.
LABOTT: Evelyn.
FARKAS: Well, I want to come to the question about how do we make our allies less willing or less likely to start another war or escalate a war. And I think it comes back to having—keeping America strong, having a strong defense so that we can deter the bad guys, but also use our defense if we have to to threaten bad guys on behalf of our allies and partners so they don’t have to take military action. We also need our economy to provide incentives—so not just sticks, but carrots—to allies, partners, and bad guys. (Laughs.) So our diplomacy, actually, very much depends on us having a strong defense and a strong economy.
LABOTT: And that leads to strong—includes strong manufacturing here in Pennsylvania and other—and other states.
Steven.
COOK: Yeah. I was thinking while everybody was being brilliant here about how to answer the question about allies and redlines. And in fact, our allies don’t have any redlines. We talk about redlines. We say this is a redline; don’t do this.
LABOTT: Well, a lot of times we don’t either.
COOK: Hold on. Well, right.
So, you know, we’ve said—we said to the Israelis: Don’t go into Rafah. They went into Rafah. We told the Saudis: Don’t invade Yemen. They invaded Yemen. We told the Egyptians: Please don’t, you know, engage in the worst human rights atrocities, you know, in recent memory. And they go ahead and do that. And there’s no—there’s no penalty for them. And I think that’s because American policymakers look at the world and they say these are countries, however problematic—they are—help support the United States, help make the United States when—pursue its interests in ways that make it relatively easier and relatively less expensive.
There’s a famous article written well, well, well before you were born called “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” written by Jeane Kirkpatrick, who ended up being the U.S. permanent representative to the U.N. The argument was, basically, they may be bastards, but they’re our bastards; and that they help support—countries that are our partners help support a global order that accrues to our benefit. And it’s morally really, really difficult to accept that some of our partners are violating people’s human rights, or invading other countries, and engaging otherwise atrocities.
But foreign policy is not—is often a choice between worse and even worse. And to the extent that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, and others are part of a regional order that helps the United States do the kinds of things, project its power, achieve its interests in the region in ways that make it easier for us to do it with less money, believe it or not, we’re going to give them a pass on those things. And I don’t think there’s a difference—to wrap it around the current issue—I don’t think there’s a huge difference between either candidate on this issue. Both Republicans and Democrats—and I’m not going to even talk about Trump or Harris—have supported and nurtured this regional order made up of these countries and turned their—turned their eye to some of the less-pleasant aspect(s) of our regional partners.
LABOTT: Thanks, Steven.
OK. Now that you heard all of that, hopefully you had some, you know, food for thought, and we’re going to ask you to answer the same seven questions from the beginning of the session to see if your views have or haven’t changed. Once again, please scan the QR code inside the cover of your program to take the poll once again. Refresh your screen if you don’t see the correct question on your phone. I’m going to stand up here. OK.
How important is foreign policy when considering who you will vote for in the presidential election—very important, somewhat important, not important? OK. Before, it was 69 percent very important; now 78 percent. So it sounds like we changed some minds tonight. Somewhat—OK.
How active should the U.S. be in global affairs—more active than it is now, maintain current level of activity, less active, not at all active, don’t know? OK. Maintain current level of activity, 59 percent. That’s a little bit higher than it was, at 53 percent before our discussion. So it sounds like we again changed some minds. OK.
Number three: Which of the following do you consider the greatest threat to U.S. national security—artificial intelligence, China, climate change, domestic challenges, Russia, other? OK. Before, it was 50 percent; now it’s—domestic challenges is still, you know, pretty consistent, 46 percent. And China, still very important.
When it comes to trade with China, how should the U.S. approach tariffs on Chinese imports—increase, keep about the same, decrease tariffs, don’t know? Let’s see here. OK. Keep tariffs about the same, 51 (percent), higher than it was. It was 32 (percent) before the discussion. And don’t know was 35 (percent). Now keep tariff levels about the same, Ivan—(laughter)—thank you.
COOK: Uniquely influential with this group.
LABOTT: It does. It sounds like we’re uniquely influential.
How should the United States approach security along the U.S.-Mexico border—build a physical barrier, allocate greater resources, address causes of migration, reform the immigration system, all of the above, none of the above, don’t know? Reform the system, 56 (percent), a little bit higher than it was at 51 (percent). So again minds are changing tonight.
All right, two more.
Which of the following is closest to your view about the war between Russia and Ukraine—the U.S. should provide more aid, maintain current levels, provide less military support to Ukraine, withdraw all military support, don’t know? Provide more aid, it’s higher than it was. Before, it was 59 (percent); now we’re at 66 (percent). And maintain current levels, consistent, about 25 (percent). OK.
Last question: Do you think the war in Gaza will lead to negotiations towards a two-state solution? (Laughter.) Steven? Steven, if it was possible, it’s even higher than it was. It was at no at 80 (percent), and now we’re at a solid 95 (percent). (Laughter.) So, obviously, we did change some minds tonight.
I want to thank my panelists. (Applause.)
And now I’m going to introduce our president, Mike Froman, for some closing remarks. (Applause.)
FROMAN: Well, thank you very much.
First of all, I just really want to thank everybody here—Steve, Evelyn, Elise, Ivan, Shannon. Let’s give them a round of applause for a great job. (Applause.)
I want to thank Barbara Altmann and Steve Medvic, and also the whole Franklin and Marshall College family for having us. You’ve been great partners. (Applause.)
As Elise mentioned, this is the last of four of these forums that we’re doing. We did one in Arizona, in Phoenix, at Arizona State University; in Atlanta at Georgia Tech; in Grand Rapids with Grand Valley State University; and this is the fourth. And it’s been a really important trip for us, in part because to get us out of the bubble of Washington and New York and, as Ivan said, to see parts of the rest of the country, we learn a lot.
For example, last night in Grand Rapids we were hosted by the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies. It turns out that Hauenstein was the founder of the Goldfish cracker—(laughter)—and it was the Goldfish cracker fortune which supported our event last night. (Laughter.) So I learned that. I wasn’t aware where the Goldfish came from.
Nor was I aware that your mascot is the Diplomat. (Cheers.)
COOK: All right! (Applause.)
FROMAN: When you go to sports matches, do you, like, cheer for the fighting Diplomat? I mean, it, like, seems a little like a contraction in terms? Or—there you go. All right. Like, peace. (Laughter.) Harmony. Anyway—
COOK: Written proposal. (Laughs.)
FROMAN: I want to thank the Carnegie Corporation of New York for supporting this and so many of our—of our other programs.
You know, for—this has been called the year of the election. Over half of the world’s population went to the polls this year. And we’re coming to near the end of the year, and of course ours is two weeks away from today. And I don’t have to tell Pennsylvanians how important it is to vote. I’m sure you get calls about every three minutes at home—(laughter)—telling you that from one campaign or the other. But I think what is important is that voters are equipped with the best information possible to make an informed decision, and that’s our goal at the Council on Foreign Relations.
So I urge you to look up CFR.org, where there’s a raft of resources, including our Election 2024 hub which talks about the positions of the—of the candidates. I urge you to not only read, but subscribe to our leading magazine, Foreign Affairs magazine, which is the best magazine in the field and really has been shaping the debate on a number of these issues that we’ve talked about here. And lastly but not—certainly not least, I do urge you all who are registered to vote.
And thank you for your attention. Thank you for spending your evening with us. And good luck. (Applause.)
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