Does Trump Have a Strategy? A Conversation With A. Wess Mitchell

21:09A. Wess Mitchell:And that logic seems very clear and coherent. It doesn't always line up with Trump's rhetoric and certainly the way the Israelis seem to have set an objective for their part of this. Do you write off the regime change talk and the supporting protesters and all of that as posturing from a, you know, kind of a president who does not exactly have discipline when it comes to the way he talks about things? Or do you think that the objectives have narrowed over time as the Iranians have responded.

21:39Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Yeah, I think if you looked at Trump's statements about Iran over time, I see a fair degree of consistency in viewing the potential for regime change as a positive externality that could come out of the action. I've viewed it as scoped and limited in purpose from the beginning. To me, it boils down to this window in which, after Fordow, the air defenses were so debased and we had, you know, the proxies had been pared back by earlier Israeli moves. And there really was a window there for us.

22:11A. Wess Mitchell:This is referring to the war last June, the U.S. and the Israelis' rights last June.

22:16Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Yeah, I think that was the central strategic logic. At least that's how I see it, is that we've got a moment here, an opportunity. We're not going to get it again. And, you know, you could, you may like or not like, but I think the strategic logic was basically that. And then as I've read statements by President Trump and other senior administration officials, I think it's consistently viewed the potential for regime change as a possible positive externality, but not the central purpose of the effort. And I think that's further supported by the fact that, again, rather than doubling down and trying to go in with a more maximalist type of moves that you would need to effectuate regime change.

22:57Dan Kurtz-Phelan:We've stepped back and pursued the blockade. Who knows what the economic pressure may yield and changes to Iranian diplomatic objectives and behavior, but that's how I viewed it from the beginning.

23:10A. Wess Mitchell:We'll return to my conversation with Wes Mitchell after a short break.

23:21Dan Kurtz-Phelan:What if you could explore places in the news like a reporter does? I'm Nicholas Wood, a former journalist with the New York Times and BBC. And 16 years ago, I created the travel company Political Tours. Our small groups are led by top correspondents around the world. In the next few months, we're off to Mexico, followed by South Africa, Japan and the French presidential elections. Come and join us.

23:46A. Wess Mitchell:Go to politicaltours.com. That's politicaltours.com. This September, Independent 20th Century presents more than 130 artists at the legendary Broyu building at 945 Madison Avenue. The show will fill four floors of the modernist landmark on Museum Mile. See why Art News Magazine calls Independent 20th Century a staple of the season and experience historic modern art from around the world and one of New York's most iconic spaces, September 24th to 27th. To learn more, visit independenthq.com. This July, save$10 on an all-access subscription to Foreign Affairs. Get exclusive access to thought-provoking analysis by the world's leading policymakers, scholars, and thinkers.

24:31A. Wess Mitchell:Join the global conversation on the issues that matter most. Visit foreignaffairs.com slash July to subscribe.

24:38Dan Kurtz-Phelan:That's foreignaffairs.com slash J-U-L-Y.

24:48A. Wess Mitchell:Let's go to Ukraine. and you were assistant secretary for Europe in the State Department and the first Trump administration, and you've followed this war extremely closely. How do you assess the military balance there as you look at where the war stands?

25:02Dan Kurtz-Phelan:It certainly looks like from the outside that both parties are kind of reaching this point that we weren't able to find over the last few years, where Russia in particular is beginning to draw the conclusion that there are limits to what it can achieve militarily. I think Ukraine has been there for some time. They're in the defensive position, and they're trying to get their country back. But for there to be a diplomatic resolution, both parties have to reach a point where they believe that there's no alternative but diplomacy, because they can't reach their objectives by military means. And up to now, the story has been that the Russians certainly weren't in that state of mind.

25:40Dan Kurtz-Phelan:It's always hard to tell with the Russians, but it sure looks like from their behavior and their public noise and the slowness of their advances so far in this warm season have been a lot lower than commensurate gains over last year, I think because of Ukrainian advances in military strategy and drone technology. But from a U.S. perspective, I think the administration's approach is broadly right, and that is to try to veer this towards a negotiated settlement of some kind over time. I think that makes sense for us in a strategic perspective globally. Again, it fits with my consolidation argument because you're trying to mark time with rivals.

26:19Dan Kurtz-Phelan:But also specifically because we do need over time to have more focus on the Indo-Pacific, it'll take pressure and patience. I think it took Ike and Truman two years plus to end the fighting in Korea. And I think Trump's approach has been to engage with Russia on kind of the contours of a deal while working in tandem to tighten the constraints on the Russian position. And I think that's been been broadly the right approach. And, you know, you usually need mutual exhaustion in a war to kind of get to a point where diplomacy makes sense to both parties. But I think we're rapidly approaching that point.

26:59A. Wess Mitchell:Your former colleague in the first Trump administration, Fiona Hill, was on the podcast a couple weeks ago, and she has focused more on Trump's interactions with the Ukrainian side, and she argues that that has prolonged the war and made Russia less likely to deal. We can go back to the Oval Office meeting between Trump and Zelensky last February and the kind of much diminished U.S. support. A lot of that's been picked up by the Europeans, but not all of it. How would you respond to Fiona's argument there?

27:26Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Yeah, I just disagree. I think we know from a lot of evidence in American diplomatic history back through the Cold War that you very often do have to find ways to bring pressure to bear on both parties in a conflict, including your friend or your partner or ally. And I'm thinking of the Korean War, for example, where the U.S. actually took very draconian measures. I mean, it was definitely not on the same page with, you know, the Eisenhower administration was not on the same page with South Korea to the point that there was like open hostility. And we were conducting negotiations with the North Koreans and the Chinese without the support of the South Koreans.

28:03Dan Kurtz-Phelan:But think of Henry Kissinger in the Yom Kippur War, where we took steps to rein in the Israelis, I mean, you know, stopping military aid in order to get them to a point where they were as amenable to a diplomatic process as their opponents. So I think it's similar in the Ukraine war that you had to reach a point at which it was clear in the mind of not only the adversary, but the smaller nation in this fight, that there was a limit to how far the United States could go in providing material military support. You can debate what is the best way to go about that. How do you message that? but uh i think prior to trump's coming into office in his second term the message to the ukrainians had consistently been there's limitless will and limitless military support we're going to do whatever it takes and it's important to be honest you know even with your friends or maybe especially with your friends that it would be you know imprudent from a position of u.s statecraft to continue that position at a moment when we don't have the military munitions to fight a war in the Formosa Strait concurrent with helping Ukrainians, maybe fighting in the Baltic and also fighting in the Middle East.

29:23Dan Kurtz-Phelan:So there had to be a moment at which we signaled that. And that's how I read the administration's message to the Ukrainians.

29:30A. Wess Mitchell:If you were back in your old job, say, what would you be doing to bring this war to an end in a way that would allow us to both rebuild munition stocks and also turn folks to the Indo-Pacific? And how likely do you think that is over the next year, say, that we'd get to a real end of the war?

29:47Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Well, I think the general approach is right. And the general approach is you develop a framework. There's a lot of shuttle diplomacy, but you're doing a couple of things in tandem. One, you're supporting Ukrainians where you can. Um, two, you are bringing pressure to bear on the Russian position to try to get them to a point where an exit ramp seems more desirable. Um, so, you know, the sanctions that targeted Luke oil and Rosneft, the closing the Biden energy loopholes, that made sense to me, you know, coordinating with Arabs on increasing oil supply, all that was pre-Iran war. But I think, you know, the domestic deregulation and pumping up our energy resources and exports, getting NATO defense capabilities up, all of that is good.

30:34Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Even engaging diplomatic with the Chinese. I think those are all various forms of ways that we can put constraints on the Russian position and kind of, you know, increase the pressure on Putin and squeeze Russian state revenue. Iran has the Iran situation has complicated that. And I think that's one of many reasons that we, you know, it's actually increasing Russian state revenue through oil, I mean, indirectly. So I think, you know, the conditions aren't completely ripe. They may be soon. I think you do need a kind of mutual recognition of a necessity of diplomacy. I think, though, what, you know, just a close and continuing contact with both parties that, you know, some some framework that's broadly consistent with one of the later versions of the Whitcoff plan, which is a de facto kind of freeze of the conflict in certain places, demilitarized buffer zones, conditional sanctions relief.

31:28Dan Kurtz-Phelan:But one thing I would add, I mean, it seems right to me in the Ukraine context, is I would tend to de-link the diplomacy on ending the fighting and freezing the war, kind of like in a Korea war type setting, focused on the now, just getting that process underway, and have a completely separate track on the larger political settlement or the negotiations for an eventual settlement where there's an agreement on the new status quo. And again, I'm thinking of the Korean War model where if we hadn't separated those two, I don't know that we ever would have reached the very tenuous ceasefire that we eventually did arrive at.

32:11A. Wess Mitchell:In the wake of a ceasefire in Ukraine or some kind of end to the war in Ukraine, do you see opportunities to peel Russia away from China? This is often called the reverse Kissinger, but finding some ways to split a relationship that has gotten much closer in military terms, diplomatic terms and economic terms over the last several years. And that really complicates our own position in great power competition if it is sustained.

32:36Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Well, I think we should always be watchful for that kind of opportunity. It's hard to see a near-term rupture between the two, but their interests are not identical. And as the Ukraine war winds down, I see a couple of things that may be worth monitoring or pursuing with the Russians. One is in arms control. I think after the Ukraine war, the Russians will have a very pressing need to recapitalize their conventional forces. And that's going to be expensive. They've learned a lot from the war. I mean, their pre-war military was not ready for this. And remember up to this point, the Russian approach has been, they have much more limited resources financially than the Soviet Union.

33:20Dan Kurtz-Phelan:So up to this point, they've really prioritized their strategic assets, their nuclear arsenal, their navy etc at the expense of conventional land forces so suddenly they're going to face this real trade-off where they're going to be more reliant on nuclear weapons for security they're going to probably double down on their escalate to de-escalate type postures and policy but the reality is they're going to have to shift resources from the nuclear arsenal to recapitalizing conventional forces and i think that is a classic condition classic setting for arms control in this case, arms control that we would use, kind of a miniature version of what Reagan did when the Soviets faced a bigger version of that fiscal dilemma.

34:04Dan Kurtz-Phelan:And that is to pursue maybe, you know, a new form of START, new form of INF that utilized the Russian budgetary predicament to our advantage. You know, so a new START that raised the central limits and had a sort of freedom to mix provision. So, you know, because the Russians have so many of these shorter range kind of tactical weapons that would immediately apply, whereas it would give us the ability to upload a lot more and that would help us in the balance vis-a-vis China. And similar on INF, you know, a new arrangement that the Russians may look more favorably on because of their straightened budgetary circumstances that, you know, it restricts limits to sort of like, you know, west of the Urals or something like this.

34:50Dan Kurtz-Phelan:So I think there's an opportunity there. I guess more broadly, just one other thought on that, a lot of the current U.S., like the furniture of U.S. policy towards Russia is appropriately built around the situation in Ukraine. But as that conflict winds down, I think there could come an opening for what Shinzo Abe was advocating near the end of his life, former Japanese prime minister. And it was this idea that you can create economic incentives indirectly for Russia to divert more effort and attention to its eastern territories. And I think that's right for the U.S. strategically. We want Russia to be more of an Asian power and less of a European power.

35:38Dan Kurtz-Phelan:And specifically what he was advocating at that time is if you could ever create the political conditions, you could soften secondary sanctions on U.S. allies in the Asia Pacific who could offer investment alternatives to Russia in the Russian Far East. But right now, the Russians are becoming completely dependent on Chinese capital and infrastructure. That's about as far as I would go. I mean, I do think that the diplomacy, like the Beijing summit, I think that helps us with Moscow to a point and vice versa. But I think the conditions are just so different than they were at the time of Nixon-Kissinger that I don't think conditions are ripe for us really wedging the two.

36:17Dan Kurtz-Phelan:But I think we should persistently, it should be a long-term game of really fortifying our position in Europe, resisting a general settlement in Europe with the Russians, but looking for opportunities as they arrive like those two.

36:31A. Wess Mitchell:On the Chinese side, I want to talk about the summit that wrapped up a few days before we're having this conversation. But I also want to get your understanding, get a sense of your understanding of the Trump to China policy. I think for a lot of outside observers, it's been a bit confounding. Trump, of course, was so critical to really solidifying this, I think, consensus around a relatively hardline view towards China in his first term. And by most appearances, I think there are different ways of reading this, but by most appearances, he does seem to be much more focused on the quality of his relation with Xi Jinping on a much less hardline focus in that relationship.

37:10A. Wess Mitchell:And there were some signs outside of the summit. Even leaving aside what we saw in recent days, how do you understand or how would you characterize the Trump-China policy in this term?

37:20Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Yeah, I think my view of Trump's approach on China overall is it's kind of two parallel tracks. It's engaging with the Chinese commercially and diplomatically, aiming for maybe something like a geoeconomic detente of sorts, but at the same time working to kind of shore up our position in ways that, again, going back to my consolidation argument, give us greater leverage over time, strengthen our position. So beef up the defense industrial base, deregulate the economy, tap into LNG, et cetera, so that we're in a better position for long-term competition. I think that second plank has included moves by Trump over the last year and a half to kind of enhance his leverage before going into the meeting with Xi.

38:04And I looked at the moves in Venezuela, Nigeria, Iran, in various

38:10Dan Kurtz-Phelan:ways as kind of pursuing, at least in part, that logic. I mean, those are three of China's biggest energy export sources. I think the secondary sanctions on Russian oil to China did the same. In a way, Xi Jinping seems to be doing the same thing. He's betting on dual circulation. He's betting on de-tolarization. He's building up leverage in rare earths to get in a position. You know, he's not looking to, doesn't appear to be wanting to challenge us immediately over Taiwan. So the fundamental thing that the two sides seem to share is a need for time. And they're using diplomacy to do that. They're both steering the relationship towards some kind of plateau or like a temporary way station.

38:52Dan Kurtz-Phelan:And then, you know, saving the harder stuff for later, building up strength for home, you know, could that expand into something more ambitious over time, like, you know, a full-blown economic and security detente? I'm really skeptical about that. I think Xi is positioning for self-sufficiency, and then China's behavior will really start to change. But I think right now he wants stability. I think it's a time-based strategy that he's running. So I think the U.S. should be using, you know, we should be using time wisely. We should use diplomacy to create breathing space, but like we should be straining every nerve at home to get our military and energy and economic situation better.

39:29Dan Kurtz-Phelan:And I think that's broadly what the administration, I think that's been their broad approach. But the final thing I'll say on that is I think a lot of people who look at the second Trump administration and say, wait, you're not as aggressive vis-a-vis China on whatever export controls or semiconductors or as you were in the first term, does that mean that you're no longer thinking about great power competition? I think that's the wrong read. I think that's very simplistic. As I said a moment ago, I think if your frame is great power competition and you've got your eye on your main rival and their power relative to your own, I think how you calibrate your policies, economic, military, et cetera, I think it's a prudential matter that should be geared towards getting you in an overall better position.

40:19Dan Kurtz-Phelan:So a policy along those lines that maybe marks time with the Chinese, and you don't want to go too far. You don't want to signal that you're like leaving Asia or abandoning Taiwan. But if you can mark time, you're betting that our system, the free market system, the free society system will tend to produce more capital and better outcomes over time than the, that makes a lot of sense to me. So I don't see the deceleration of punitive U.S. actions and more of a detente-minded move. I don't see that as uncompetitive. It may be like Kissinger later said of our detente with the Soviets. He said, you know, mine and Nixon's goal was to compete harder.

41:01Dan Kurtz-Phelan:And I think there's a similar logic here.

41:03A. Wess Mitchell:Do you think detente is the right term for the U.S.-China relationship at this moment?

41:08Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Yeah, I think it works broadly. it's not a strategic military detente of the kind that we saw with Brezhnev. It's more of a geoeconomic detente or an attempt at kind of a wary cohabitation, like you would see with the Venetians and the Ottomans or two trading powers, two economic giants that have decided not to step up. If you looked at Beijing, for example, we'll see the framework that comes out of it in trade. But it definitely shows that neither side right now really wants to escalate economically. Both sides are using their leverage to try to steer towards at least a temporary coexistence.

41:53Dan Kurtz-Phelan:And I think it is temporary. I don't think we're going back to the 1990s in U.S. policy. And I don't think that Xi Jinping has suddenly decided to put economic liberalization over geopolitics. But clearly, you know, both sides are signaling at all levels that they want a period of time in which they're not escalating and they're not reverting to the past. So, yeah, I think detente works. It's a kind of modus vivendi.

42:22A. Wess Mitchell:I'm struck in reading both your recent essay and also earlier work you've done for us and others that you have a focus on alliances and coalitions and diplomacy that is not always central to the rhetoric of people in the Trump orbit. You write in a piece you wrote for Foreign Affairs last year in 2025, that the goal of U.S. diplomacy should be to build the biggest coalitions possible against Beijing. I think there are different ways of reading the effects on different alliances in different regions over the last year, but it does not seem like this is a moment where those alliances are in particularly good shape and to the extent that European allies especially are developing new capabilities, they are much more focused on reducing dependence on the U.S.

43:03A. Wess Mitchell:and building up their own military industries and everything else. How do you see the state of that effort to build a coalition against Beijing?

43:11Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Well, I think you have to assess these kinds of things across a period of several years. You have to kind of gain altitude on it and say, what is it that America needs to do with our alliances right now and how are we doing that? And I think the answer to the first question is we have to revise the bargain with our allies. And the bargain since World War II has basically been, we open our markets to you in a non-reciprocal basis. And you recycle U.S. surpluses back into the dollar as a reserve currency, and that fuels our consumption. And I think that basic bargain made a lot of sense in the Cold War, especially the early Cold War.

43:47Dan Kurtz-Phelan:It was revised at various points along the way. I mean, Nixon, for example, with the Smithsonian Agreement, and then Reagan with the Plaza Accords. So I think what we have to do right now is a grand version of those earlier adjustments. We have to say these alliances, both in Asia and Europe, have to work fundamentally differently. There has to be reciprocity in trade or we can't re-industrialize and there's no hope of competing with China industrially, full stop. And they have to bear more of the defense and security burden. So really what we're talking about over a period of many years is first jolting allies into a willingness to renegotiate that basic bargain in a way that's more sustainable for us, not throwing it away, but fundamentally revising it.

44:30Dan Kurtz-Phelan:And then on that basis, looking for that next plateau where we are trying to integrate more of the defense industrial base, I don't know that both of those two things can be done simultaneously. Like if you could wave a magic wand from about the mid 2000s onward, you would have started this process of these adjustments. But that's not how democracies work. And I think we're waking up late and kind of this in the world crisis. But I think what what the second Trump administration has done, the way I viewed it, is they are jolting allies into this awareness of the need for a revised bargain. And then the goal has to be steering that – you're creating kind of a creative disruption.

45:14Dan Kurtz-Phelan:And so steering that energy towards constructive outlets over time is the logical next step. And I think that's what the administration is doing. I mean, I could point to several examples, but Bridge Colby's concept that he unveiled in a speech to Brussels earlier this year of a NATO 3.0, kind of going back to the earlier template of NATO, there's a constructive vision there that it makes sense to the Europeans because their survival is at stake. It makes sense to us. We have to focus on Asia. So I think, you know, steering it towards these outlets. And the prize over a period of many years, though, has to be we get to this point where these allies that we spent 80 years building up, and they have been a blessing.

46:01Dan Kurtz-Phelan:It's an asset to us to have these allies. But we reach a point where the return on that almost century-long investment is not just an EU that has like trade barriers against our pickup trucks and, you know, chicken exports or whatever. There is a degree of regulatory and industrial policy convergence where in defense production, for example, we, Japan and Germany, just to use those two allies as the main examples, are able to find economies of scale in producing basically mass attrition weapons in both theaters that's going to be needed for deterrence. We're not going to do that on our own. So we've got to reach a point where these alliances really help us narrow the gaps between the means and ends at our disposal and our grand strategy in a much more material way than they were in the past.

46:53Dan Kurtz-Phelan:And I think for all of the news and reporting over kind of the atmospherics in these relationships, deep down, I think there's an understanding, you know, when I talk to allied officials in both of those regions, that this is desirable, that we are moving this in a direction where our allies will do more. We're still committed, but, you know, I think that's widely understood.

47:16A. Wess Mitchell:So the bet, if we look forward 10 years and obviously how these forces balance out over time, we'll see. The bet would be that you'll have much more capable allies who are spending significant amounts of defense and are producing lots of their own weapon systems and munitions and everything else. and that things like the threats over Greenland and tariffs and everything else happening that seems to be eroding trust right now will be more or less forgotten. Is that a fair way of just characterizing the bet? Obviously, we don't know how it turns out, but that's the thinking.

47:50Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Yeah, I think, I mean, my view of it is that within a few years' time, we reach this point where something like what you're describing is true. That there's a deeper degree of economic integration, particularly in certain strategic and military areas between the United States and allies in both of these regions, Europe and Asia, that there is a greater burden acceptance by the Europeans in particular, kind of a revised Atlantic bargain that does look more like the 1950s, the original idea of NATO. And they're kind of the primary defenders of their home area, but we're still present and backing them.

48:28Dan Kurtz-Phelan:We have maybe not a full convergence in regulatory terms, But we've managed to hack back some of the more damaging EU regulations that really target our ability to produce innovation. And similarly, on the Asian side, that we've reached a moment where, you know, a military co-production in coordination of commercial policy vis-a-vis China, which I think is going to be really key given the scale of the Chinese surpluses right now that threaten both us and our allies. But yeah, that's the vision, that there would be a convergence. It's almost like the political and policy substance would, after a lag, follow the clear convergence of our interests.

49:09Dan Kurtz-Phelan:There will always be disagreement with allies over all kinds of things. And that's been true since the very earliest days of the Cold War. And the storms are always going to be there. But the glue is the shared interests, and the goal is structures and incentives and behavior that better matches the shared interests than what we've seen over the last several years. Well, not last several years, since the Cold War, basically, where people just – it was easy to assume that kind of war and geopolitics was gone.

49:37A. Wess Mitchell:And when you watch Greenland to take a relatively recent dust up here, you think that just gets forgotten. That doesn't have a long-term effect on trust and a willingness of allies to embrace that kind of convergence.

49:51Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Well, I think one of the things that we'll see from the Europeans is an acceleration of this strand that already existed in Europe that kind of wants an equidistancing. You know, they want to pursue a European pole of power in the world that is kind of detached from the United States. And there will always be voices like that in the debate. And they may look to spats that we've had over things like Greenland. They may look back at that as, you know, a salient reason for their approach. But the reality is that preexisted a lot of the disputes recently. I think Greenland, you know, I think Trump is right with respect to the goal that Greenland needs to be brought more fully into the under the U.S.

50:35Dan Kurtz-Phelan:aegis in some fashion. And that's been a consistent goal of numerous presidents. They've stated it in various ways. But I think it shouldn't get the takeaway from all of this shouldn't just be the main thing is that there was a dust up or there was a difference. There's actually something vital in the U.S. interest that needs to be achieved. And I think it's becoming more important to us as the ice lanes melt. Russian and Chinese pressure there is very real. And also bear in mind, we get our satellite feeds overwhelmingly through the polar region. So really, the space race, the space element of geopolitics, which is very hot right now and is going to get hotter, a lot of that is a function of pieces of real estate on Earth that the telemetry and the angle of the Earth favors satellite downloads and launches from that area.

51:23Dan Kurtz-Phelan:And we can't do everything we need from Alaska. So I can go on and on about that. But the point is, there's a vital US interest there. I think that's why past presidents have advocated for greater U.S. possession or control of Greenland. And then I'd also say, like, I think Trump's shock tactics succeeded in moving the issue forward. And I sometimes hear people say, we could have gotten the Danes to negotiate by just asking nicely. But the truth is we tried that and it didn't work. In Trump's first term, when he first raised the desire to acquire Greenland, the Danes categorically rejected it.

51:58Dan Kurtz-Phelan:the Danish prime minister at that time, she called it absurd. And, you know, the Danish government continued that line in Trump's second term. The point on Greenland is kind of analogous to my overall point on alliances, that to get these outcomes where we need them to be in the performance of our alliances and kind of, you know, strategic outcomes more generally, it may take a jolt. And I think that those jolts are moving things along. There's collateral that comes along, and there always is in politics and that has to be managed. But the trans-alarm relationship has been through real storms in the past.

52:32Dan Kurtz-Phelan:And what always brings us back is we have deeply shared interests. We're, you know, United States and Europe are children of the West. And so we have a lot in common in our deeper DNA and the organizing principles of our democracies. So I'm confident when I look to the future of the alliance with Europe. And I think some of these storms may actually help in getting us to a better place than we would have gotten if we had just kept kind of, you know, drifting lazily down the river and saying it's all about NATO cohesion and congratulating each other.

53:06A. Wess Mitchell:And is it your view, based on that first term experience, that the U.S. does need to acquire Greenland in order to secure those interests or simply to get a better deal and better access and better guarantees from the Danes?

53:18Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Well, I haven't thought a lot about the final form that it can take, but if you looked at it through the lens of what we need, I think it's a couple of things. One, we need a lot more access that's predictable and regular and on a wider scale. I think, you know, some of what's being negotiated right now could allow for that. But secondly, you know, one part of this is also the rare earths. And I think that requires something more than just basing rights. So I can see it evolving in a direction over time where it's maybe like some of the U.S. protectorates that they're self-governing except for in certain strategic areas.

54:02Dan Kurtz-Phelan:A lot also depends on what the Greenlanders want. I mean, up to this point, I've read the Greenland political discourse or debate vis-a-vis Denmark as tending over time towards greater autonomy. And if we assume that that continues, then the danger for the U.S. becomes, unless we have something more formal or explicit, an autonomous territory of that size and location with those kinds of resources that's so critical, the potential for that falling under the sway of either China or Russia is just an intolerable problem for us. So all of which is to say, I think the outcome would need to be one that was guided by those considerations rather than starting out with kind of an artificial endpoint and saying we want X.

54:50Dan Kurtz-Phelan:I think, you know, prudentially, you'd say we need we need an outcome over a period of years that has the following characteristics for our interests. And if you can check those boxes in a creative way, great. And you clearly need to engage with your allies and you want to do it in a way that strengthens NATO over time. But, you know, I remember in the first Trump term, we had a hard time getting a lot of the European, the northern European states, including Denmark, really serious about a military component to our strategy in the Arctic. There were constantly concerns about the militarization of the Arctic.

55:24Dan Kurtz-Phelan:And I think, you know, breaking through that barrier and getting a consensus at NATO that this has got to be a no-nonsense component of our approach, I think that's been one of the positive side effects of the dispute.

55:40A. Wess Mitchell:I want to, before we close, go back to the essay and your thinking in the essay. One of the things I really appreciate about your analysis and your work is that you do not propose that all good things come together. You're very clear about trade-offs and downsides to various strategies. You write in the most recent piece that a strategy of consolidation requires, quote, a willingness to accept obvious near-term risks for long-term gain. How would you characterize those risks? So as you look at the landscape now, what are the risks that you think we need to be most attuned to?

56:10Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Yeah, I think the biggest risk, and it kind of extends across several examples, it's kind of the organizing theme of risk for us, is that we need a period of time in which there's not a big war and where our external efforts are not zero, but they're minimalized in terms of conflict. um and so the big risk to us would be that in pursuing this approach i mean our opponents our main opponents russia and china they see the same logic that we do uh and they get a vote and so you you could imagine a situation where either or both of those actors judged the inverse of you know their interests are the inverse of ours that they say look we both we being russia and china we undertook military buildups from you know starting with the ukraine war forward we've used time wisely.

57:01Dan Kurtz-Phelan:The United States and its allies have not. And they're just now kind of, they're waking up now. So the differential between where the Chinese are at military terms right now, versus we're more in a trough. And our allies are certainly in a trough. You fast forward a few years. And if like, let's say the Germans are really delivering, and I think they will on their increased pledges from the Hague summit. And you've got a German military establishment that increasingly outpaces, like Germany alone outpaces Russia, well, that's going to change the military balance of power in the European theater in a huge way that benefits us.

57:36Dan Kurtz-Phelan:The big investments that the Pentagon is making in defense industrial-based reform, the bigger military budget, with time, that's going to bear fruit. So if you're the Chinese and the Russians, I mean, the risk for us is they look at that and say, wait a second, you're in a trough, but you're waking up, and maybe we're not exactly where we want to be in military terms, but relative to you, it's about as good as it's going to get before you really get into a full sprint. You know, big wars have started in history over assessments by leaders about those kinds of gaps. And so I think that's the biggest risk to us.

58:08Dan Kurtz-Phelan:And I think what it means in practice is that while we should be pursuing a geoeconomic detente with the Chinese, I think that's in our interest for now, and we should be open to more of a traditional arms control type detente with the Russians when the circumstances are right with Ukraine, et cetera. I think at all times you have to be keeping in mind that if there is that incentive for our opponents, that the signaling in our diplomacy becomes hugely important. So, you know, your deterrence moves in the Indo-Pacific matter more. Getting bogged down in an Iran war is not something that you want to do in those circumstances, and I hope we don't, because it could tilt the calculus in your adversary's minds more towards action in the near term rather than the long term.

58:52Dan Kurtz-Phelan:So I think that's the biggest risk, and I think that's the one that bears monitoring the most. And one way to look at some of the things that Trump has done, Maduro, Fordow, even the current Iran situation, which I think is more complicated, I think you can go too far in saying that those kinds of things deter our adversaries. It's like I've never fully computed, you know, I wouldn't take it so far as to say that they see those moves and it scares them. But I do think that when we can find low-cost demonstrations of U.S. military efficacy, it is good. And the key now, and this is kind of the heart of my consolidation argument, is that, yes, mark time with your rivals, but plus up, you know, consolidate your base.

59:41Dan Kurtz-Phelan:um you know the deregulation in your economy that needs to be sustained utilization of your energy resources you know making really targeted plus ups in the american kind of the foundation of our strength now is really the time to do that and i think the hour is late and so you know the faster

59:57A. Wess Mitchell:we ramp that stuff up the better yeah so so the risk in the near term if i understand you correctly is essentially that consolidation is misread as retrenchment and as a result we have a deterrence failure.

1:00:10Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Yes, I think that's an inherent risk to all consolidations.

1:00:14A. Wess Mitchell:The other thing I really appreciate about your work is the way you bring in really rich historical examples and look across history over the century and millennia and across geographies to try to make sense of our own strategic challenges. Now, as you look at consolidation in other cases that you've studied, what determines and what are some of those cases where it's gone well and where there's a kind of useful model for us? And where have you seen it fail if we go back to those risks?

1:00:43Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Yeah. You know, in the article, I mentioned a couple of really big successes, and I just love history. And so I think if you study it closely, you know, they're not exactly like ours. It's never the case. But these are age-old problems that great powers have faced. Edwardian Britain, I would kind of underscore as a successful case where the Brits really understood, I think, that, you know, they're the only other power in history to really operate a global maritime position like ours, like roughly analogous to ours. And I think that consolidation of the Edwardian period, the early 1900s, overall has to be judged as success.

1:01:18Dan Kurtz-Phelan:You know, the difference from them to us is that long term for the Brits, you know, when you're a small island off the coast of Europe, and you've got a Rimland empire with kind of holdings all over the place, and these big continental powers are congealing, there's only so far you can go with that strategy. And I think it's different for us. We're not a little island off the coast of Europe. And so that's actually why I think consolidation is an even better bet for us. But can I press you on that example?

1:01:42A. Wess Mitchell:Can I press you on Edward and Britain? You know, when you look at the next subsequent decades for British power, you saw both World War I and then the decimation of the British Empire. That seems like a worrying example to me in most ways.

1:01:56Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Yeah, again, I hasten to add the qualifier that we don't have as weak a hand overall as the Brits had economically and size of their landmass. But just kind of parking on that example for a moment, everything's always clear in retrospect. But if you judged it according to the problems that the British had at that time, the alternative path would have hastened British decline so much faster. So I think the diplomatic recalibrations that Lansdowne and Salisbury and others made a succession of governments right at the start of the 1900s. It was not only aimed at a controlled reduction of effort abroad, and, you know, Jackie Fisher, who in the article I compared to Bridge Colby, I think, you know, this targeted reallocation of naval resources to the primary theater, that all made sense.

1:02:42Dan Kurtz-Phelan:There could have, you know, World War might have happened sooner, and you could argue that it strengthened deterrence for the British in the vital theater. Um, and even at home, the British, you know, Joseph Chamberlain was really pushing for kind of a revamped industrial set of policies and, um, new trade policies vis-a-vis the empire. So it's hard to critique the, you know, just conceptually and then an execution. And I guess the ultimate validator is that when the great crisis came, the British were facing one adversary. Uh, they had effectively handled their simultaneity problem. They didn't have great options.

1:03:19Dan Kurtz-Phelan:They didn't have infinite resources. Nobody does. But given what they had, they concentrated on the thing that mattered the most. And World War I was horrible. The Brits made a lot of mistake. But their ability to concentrate on Germany rather than be spread out across all these different places, they had a concentrated fleet. They had better technology. Their industry was in better shape. I think that has to be judged as success. Longer term, of course, if you're the Brits and you're playing their hand, by the time you get to the 20s and 30s, their relative power position was so weak vis-a-vis the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan was rising.

1:03:51Dan Kurtz-Phelan:So longer term, the structure wasn't good for them. Actually, one thing that I, you know, one reason I argue for consolidation for the United States is that long term, we're, you know, we're not in that position. A good consolidation now, like the Edwardians do, there could be a lot of tread on those tires for us because we have deep reservoirs of power. We have allies that are strengthening their defenses. We've got, you know, energy abundance at home that our, you know, our main adversary, China, doesn't have. And we've got a very innovative private sector. And so I could go on and on. But our hand of cards is better, I think, long term than the Chinese and certainly than the Russians.

1:04:26Dan Kurtz-Phelan:But near term, these structural problems and kind of self-forced errors of the post-Cold War period, we just need a period of time, in my view. And it's not a small thing, but I think it's wise and right to say we need a period of time in which we're really clearing the decks and getting on getting things on a level for the long haul. Because once we do get into the long haul, as long as we've got our act together at home, I think we have a lot better prospect vis-a-vis China than Britain had vis-a-vis, you know, Imperial Germany, the United States, Soviet Union, etc. etc.

1:04:57A. Wess Mitchell:I wonder if you're pointing us towards a new bipartisan consensus here, the way that great power competition was and Trump won, because I do think in the Biden national security strategy, there was a sense of this decisive decade that there was this kind of dangerous short term, but the long term position was good. Obviously, the means would differ across Trump and Biden, but there does seem to be a kind of interesting parallel there.

1:05:19Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Yeah, I hope so. I'm skeptical of anything that's a bipartisan consensus these days. But, you know, if you want to be optimistic, you could point to a couple things. One, I think there's a consensus about China. We can debate the right tactic and trade, but I think everybody gets it that China's a different kind of adversary than we've ever had. I think that's bipartisan. Secondly, I think there's a broad bipartisan consensus that we have to have an industrial policy. And again, you can debate the details, what you, you know, I think the Trump approach is right, which is more deregulation. And, you know, you could add to that maybe an AI point that if you look at the size of our debt, you could say one way to, you know, one way to view the massive U.S.

1:06:02Dan Kurtz-Phelan:investment right now in AI is that it's an attempt at a one time productivity gain to kind of outgrow your debt problem. And that's a wager. But I think it's a wager that, you know, with some caveats on the far left, I think is broadly shared. The execution of that is going to bring new political trade-offs. The one thing that we are betting on in the U.S. system that would make consolidation work is meritocracy.

1:06:26A. Wess Mitchell:I think we could get into a longer argument about whether we're seeing a move towards meritocracy or something else, but let's leave that for another day. Wes, thank you for a really powerful piece in our new issue called The Grand Strategy of Consolidation, and thanks so much for doing this today.

1:06:40Dan Kurtz-Phelan:Dan, thanks for taking time to talk to me. This was fun.

1:06:49A. Wess Mitchell:Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show at foreignaffairs.com. This episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Ben Metzner and Kanesh Klerur. Our audio engineer is Christopher Cook. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Irina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.

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