Preparing for the World After Trump

22:35Rebecca Lissner:Rebecca, I'll kick that to you.

22:37Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:Sure. Well, it's no secret that there has been a long-running debate in democratic foreign policy circles about how best to frame the way that we align and ally with countries around the world. And that debate was definitely active in the early months and years of the Biden administration. And I don't think it will surprise you, given our past work, to learn that I think both Mira and I favored a strategic frame that was somewhat less ideological, less focused on democracy versus autocracy, and more focused on interests, principles, the type of global order we wanted to lead and build. and trying to build a broad coalition that would join the United States in that effort.

23:20Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:Now, President Biden, of course, spoke often about the importance of democracy triumphing, demonstrating that democracy delivers. And my interpretation has always been that for him, he really saw the fight to save American democracy at home as coextensive with a global struggle to show that democracy could triumph around the world and that democracy rather than autocracy was the best answer to the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. So when he spoke about democracy versus autocracy, I don't believe that it was about excluding the possibility of cooperating with autocratic states so much as really the need to provide proof of concept that this form of government really could work even in the modern age.

24:07Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:Going forward, though, as we argue in the piece, American foreign policy really needs to reckon with the challenge of severely diminished moral authority in the wake of this Trump presidency, and frankly, in the wake of challenges that predate this Trump presidency. I think regardless of how any one person may feel about U.S. policy towards Israel and the war in Gaza, in the eyes of the world, there has been a dissonance between the very strong defense of international rules and norms that Mira just discussed in the context of Russia's aggression and brutal invasion of Ukraine versus the optics of our support for Israel in its war in Gaza, which the U.S.

24:50Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:government doesn't believe is violating international law, but there are many countries around the world who feel that it is, and they see those two things as not making a good deal of sense together. So I think that has created a certain sense of global hypocrisy. And then you add on top of that the reality of Donald Trump really attacking democracy, rule of law, due process here in the United States, not to mention anti-corruption policy here and around the world. And it becomes much harder to imagine American foreign policy that is predicated on us having the authority and the standing to go to other countries and tell them that they are not taking the right steps to respect human rights, that they are not taking the right steps to prevent corruption in their countries, that they are not sufficiently democratic in X, Y, Z ways, and also even taking steps that are punitive, like global Magnitsky sanctions, to penalize those countries for not adhering to a certain set of values that perhaps we are not even upholding in our own country.

25:52Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:So that challenge is profound because idealism has always been an important anchor for American foreign policy. I feel that it should be. It is critical that the United States stand for something in the world that isn't just our raw self-interest, not to mention the personal self-interest of our leaders. But I do think we need to have a certain humility going forward in terms of how the world now sees us in a post-Trump reality. And so as we grapple with the post-2029 foreign policy agenda, we need to think really clearly about what is the appropriate role for values in American foreign policy and how can we lead globally in a way that remains very principled but doesn't draw hard lines in a way that can be antithetical to our strategic interests.

26:38Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:So what does that mean in practice? I think it means building a broad coalition of countries that, again, share interests and principles with us even if they don't share all of our values. It means looking for opportunities to do diplomacy that advances U.S. interests, even if it means talking to regimes that we find to be otherwise quite odious. And I think it means laying out a vision for the future of international order that isn't predicated so much on democracy and human rights and a certain set of sort of American-coded values, so much as a vision for the type of world that we want to lead, a set of principles similar to what Mira and I had talked about in our old work that a lot of countries can see themselves in and form the basis of a coalition that we can lead and that will allow us to set the terms for the remainder of the 21st century.

27:27Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:If I may jump in on this one quickly, Dan, I do think the Biden administration was well on its way to this understanding for all that the democracy versus autocracy framing was really important to the president. If you look at the national security strategy, it's clear that we embrace, have a preference for working with democratic allies, but we're very clear in that document, of course, Rebecca had a huge hand in it, that we are willing to and welcome working with any partner who shares in our objectives, right? We're very clear about that. Likewise, in our Indo-Pacific strategy, democracy versus autocracy does not actually feature as a frame.

28:04Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And the reason that it didn't is because it would have worked in Asia, right, where the primary objective was gaining ground in competition with China and restoring the balance of power in Asia. And in Asia, many countries are non-democracies. And even if they are democracies, don't necessarily want to be preached to in a specific way that assumes a specific manifestation of democracy. So if we're trying to advance a strategy, for example, in Southeast Asia, hammering the democracy versus autocracy dichotomy is a particularly ineffective way to gain partners on our side. That's why we chose focusing on phrases like free and open Indo-Pacific, which means an Indo-Pacific that is undominated and which you can make your own choices.

28:52Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And those same set of phrases were repeated back to us by the government of Vietnam as we led up to our conclusion of a comprehensive strategic partnership. They were very clear that we had put together a framework that created space for them to advance their own interests and values alongside of us by choosing words like that. So I do want to acknowledge that I think our leadership was well aware of the fact that we had to create some space. But in the wake of everything that Rebecca has just identified that's now taking place at home, it is going to be all the more incumbent upon us to figure out how to build those coalitions in ways that are efficient and effective and speak to common objectives in the world.

29:36Rebecca Lissner:One element of Trump's wholesale dismantlement of the kind of traditional tools of American foreign policy that the two of you seem to mostly approve of is his willingness to sit down or have his senior officials sit down with almost anyone, whether it's North Korean officials or Iranian officials or Hamas or Venezuelans or the new leader of Syria. You can imagine the Biden administration would have taken much longer to hold that meeting. If you were back in government, Rebecca, would you just kind of do away with this notion that diplomacy should be held out as a prize and just kind of get over the political obstacles to meeting with anyone?

30:13Rebecca Lissner:What's the right lesson of Trump's disruption here?

30:15Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:I think that there is a time and a place for meeting even with regimes that we deeply, deeply dislike. And to say that we should consider it sometimes isn't to say that it is always the right answer. But I do believe that we have often as the United States been too reluctant to speak directly even to countries that we consider adversaries. And that that has been sometimes to our diplomatic detriment. The reason in many cases that I believe we do that is, one, we often see meeting with senior U.S. officials as a reward, and two, because sometimes the political costs of having those meetings become impossible to bear or feel very, very high.

31:02Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:So part of what Trump has been able to do because he's a Republican and because the criticism of that type of diplomacy so often comes from the Republican Party has been to scramble the dynamics around how the policy and the politics come together when it comes to those sorts of conversations. So in their willingness to speak directly to Hamas or speak directly to the Iranians, Trump has done something that I think it would be very hard for almost any other politician to do. But part of what we argue in the piece is that there's a certain opportunity that comes with all this new political space that Trump has created.

31:40Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And I'm not under the illusion that any future president will be able to have the same sort of political Teflon that Trump has been able to manufacture himself and with his real degree of control over the Republican Party. But I do think that we should be eyes open about the places in which he has expanded what we call the Overton window in terms of the bounds of what's acceptable to talk about and to pursue as U.S. foreign policy and think about even for a future administration that disagrees with the way in which Trump has utilized all this flexibility. How can it be put towards a different end?

32:16Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And how can it break down the types of barriers that have sometimes hindered our ability to do foreign policy? So I'm not saying that, you know, any president should just for the sake of it, sit down with Kim Jong-un and begin a dialogue with the North Koreans, but nor should we rule it out as a potentially useful policy lever for the United States to advance our interests, especially in a world in which we may not see the resort to military force as a preferable option and may actually see diplomacy as being a more durable tool to create the kinds of long-term solution sets that we seek.

32:51Rebecca Lissner:We'll be back after a short break.

32:54Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:Did you know that Foreign Affairs editor Dan Kurtz-Valen sends a free newsletter every Saturday? Visit foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight to get the editor spotlight. A weekly email from Dan featuring more of the helpful context and clear analysis that you get here on the podcast. That's foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight. Sign up today.

33:18Rebecca Lissner:And now back to my conversation with Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Huber. So much of the argument that you and others make about not being able to go back to what existed before is about the alliance system, about American alliances. You know, Trump won. There was lots of fear of this as well and lots of speculation that none of these alliances would ever recover. And as you know in the piece, they were in much better shape than I think most people feared as the Biden administration was starting. And you can look at Trump's relationship with allies now and I think be similarly kind of optimistic about where those land if you want to be.

33:54Rebecca Lissner:And the NATO allies have done a pretty good job of using obsequiousness and, you know, some kind of creative math about defense spending to more or less placate Trump on transatlantic issues. I don't imagine that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte likes referring to Trump as daddy, but he's willing to do it to save the alliance. and it seems to be working. Similarly, in Asia, there aren't the kind of fears from the Japanese and South Koreans that we saw. They're not quite as acute, at least this time around. The one area where it does seem to be really different is tariffs, and I imagine that will leave a shadow.

34:25Rebecca Lissner:So, Mira, given your long experience as a policymaker and scholar, how do you kind of think about the evolution of alliances as they contend with these forces projecting forward a bit to the end of this term?

34:37Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:Yeah, and it's another great question, Dan, And I think one that challenges all of our thinking when we think about the ways that alliances form and function. As you're suggesting, I don't think we are currently living in a world, although one can be wrong any time they make predictions about President Trump, where the president is planning to pull an Article 5 guarantee out from under an ally. That was what, you know, NATO's whole push and rally to the supposed 5 % was about, right, was keeping Article 5 in place rhetorically while they kind of sift through the question of what they will do next, right?

35:17Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:But I do think what is happening is something that is pretty fundamental and will probably play out along a number of different dimensions. And that will be allies thinking more and more independently or in subgroups with one another about how they can ensure their defense is provided for in a world where the United States feels less predictable and dependable. Well before Trump recommitted to Article 5 in NATO, we saw almost immediately upon his election, European allies talking about majorly upping their own defense spending, not just because they wanted to placate the United States, but because they were, they couldn't trust us anymore.

35:59Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And a major precipitating event for that was the knowledge, not only that the United States was willing to deal with Russia, but that we had briefly cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine. That was a really significant moment where it seemed like U.S. interests were perhaps no longer aligned with Europe in a way that was so fundamental that suggested to many of our partners they would have to figure out their own way to keep going. And my expectation is that we will see a lot of European investment in indigenous defense capabilities over the course of the next three years or so. But I think that's likely to be true in Asia as well.

36:36Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And even though the waters have not yet gotten choppy, I also think it's much too soon to say that they're calm. I'm watching a number of data points which could play out over the course of the next few months that I think would significantly rattle our allies' perception that the United States is a dependable security guarantor. That includes on the Korean Peninsula, where it's been publicly reported that the Trump administration is thinking of withdrawing a striker brigade, which would bring the U.S. presence down to about 20 ,000 troops, the lowest it's been since the end of the Korean War, and could potentially open up space for some real deterrence challenges or miscalculation by Kim Jong-un.

37:15Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And that could happen in an environment in which there's brand new leadership on the Korean Peninsula and the Trump administration and this new team have not yet established a working relationship. Likewise, there's a possibility that the United States will actually change tax with Japan and argue that it should not reposition several thousand Marines to Guam that are currently in Japan that have been long promised to transition out. So there are security bumps in those relationships that could well be in the offing in the near term. But you also brought off tariffs, Dan, and that's another really important part of this picture.

37:49Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:In the April 2nd tariff announcements, we saw staggering levels of tariffs levied against treaty allies, including South Korea and Japan, both numbers in the mid-20s. And of course, many countries in Europe were hit hard as well. Even though the initial China numbers were also quite staggering, we're now living in a world in which the Trump administration seems keenly focused on getting to yes on a trade deal with China, even while trade negotiations with South Korea and Japan are slowing over some really critical issues like auto tariffs, in which it's very difficult for these allies to compromise for domestic political reasons.

38:28Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:So the signal that is being sent at the same moment that our allies are wondering whether we'll really be there for the long haul in our security commitments is that our economic relationships no longer create pride of place for those allies. And that security commitment and that economic commitment have traditionally traveled together. Allies typically have privileged access to U.S. markets, and that's part of what has helped them all to grow alongside and underneath that security umbrella. So while the basic fundamental foundations may still appear to be intact, there are all these blows being swiped from different directions at the fundamental compact that has held our alliance system together that suggests to us that it may look quite a bit different a few years from now.

39:15Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:The one thing I would add to that is as we see our allies become more capable or at least signal that they intend to become more capable, whether as mere reference with Japan's trajectory on defense investment or the recent NATO 5 % or really 3.5 plus 1.5 % defense spending pledge over the next decade. If those all come to pass and our allies do close the gap in terms of what they're able to do for their own security versus the extent to which they rely on us, there's a lot about that that's good because it frees up the United States to do other things. And it gives these countries a greater stake in their own self-defense, which is something that presidents of both parties have been calling for for quite a long time and should be net beneficial to deterrence, whether of China or Russia or of North Korea.

40:05Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:But we also need to be eyes open about the fact that it will somewhat diminish America's influence over our allies. And so as our allies become more capable, they will also become more autonomous. And that is a part of the mix. And so when we think about the way that the world is changing around us, whether it's coalitions of allies that are coming together to work together in new ways that don't include us or just the sheer capacity issue, I do think that in the world of 2029, 2030 and onwards, we should expect to see allies that are just much more used to working individually and collectively without us.

40:40Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And the United States will have to find a way to assert influence, but also just work with those trends rather than working against them. And that's a major dynamic that post-Trump planners should have in mind.

40:53Rebecca Lissner:Rebecca, let me stick with you for one more key relationship. I mean, if the war in Ukraine was the first big surprise in the administration, the second was the war in Gaza, and it consumed, I imagine, much of your last year, year and a half in government. You note that it's not too early to have a big debate about the future of American foreign policy. I imagine the democratic version of that will be consumed with debates over the U.S.'s relationship and over the war in Gaza. This was, I think, a place where President Biden at least had a fairly traditional view, restorationist impulse. Even anytime he talked about this, go back to his relationship with Golda Meir, who was Prime Minister of Israel in the 1970s.

41:34Rebecca Lissner:As you look at the need to examine American foreign policy across the board, you call for a zero-based review. If you apply that to the U.S.-Israeli relationship, do you see a need for a fundamentally different kind of relationship? What would that look like?

41:48Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:I think you could apply the question to the whole Middle East, where all of the strategic dynamics of that region are so much in flux right now. And in ways that we don't yet quite understand where they are going to net out, although they seem to be stabilizing in a way that really has placed Israel as the dominant player in the region. But if you think about the trajectory of the Middle East over the course of the Biden administration, and others have pointed this out even on the Foreign Affairs website and in the pages of your magazine, in many ways, the trajectory is a sort of stunning triumph in terms of the way in which at the beginning of the administration, you had an Iran that was still quite formidable.

42:34Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:You had Hezbollah. You had Hamas. You had the Assad regime seemingly still very strong in Syria. And then through a series of diplomatic and security moves by sort of sticking close to the Israelis by the end of the Biden administration, the inheritance that Trump received in the region was actually stunningly better, where you had the overflow of the Assad regime, where you had Hezbollah effectively neutered. And, you know, the first shot at a more legitimate democratic Lebanese government than you'd seen in a very long time where you had Iran already then on its back foot and then obviously now has been further set back.

43:14Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:There is an enormous, incredibly consequential caveat to that, which, of course, is Gaza and the plight of Gazans and the Palestinian people who are there and frankly in the West Bank as well. But at a 30 ,000 foot level, the strategic picture is dramatically changed. And I think there we do need to see the opportunity for a region that looks really different than it has in the post-war and post-Cold War era. The opportunities for Israel to cement normalization with other countries in the region is really significant. The possibility of sidelining Iran in a way that is durable and maybe even puts their nuclear program back in a box through diplomacy, we'll see, could be really beneficial.

44:02Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And you really have the dismantlement of the so-called axis of resistance that Iran has been running, which has been firing projectiles and UAVs at U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria for quite a long time. It could also then provide opportunities both for adjustments to our military posture in the region and also new opportunities. For example, investment alongside Gulf partners and building out AI infrastructure and so on. And so all of which is to say when we think about zero basing our policy in the Middle East, there is, of course, a very important debate to be had about the future scope and scale of the United States relationship with Israel.

44:42Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:that has to do with what our policy is towards a Bibi Netanyahu Israeli government, but also has to do with much longer standing and drawing ties that we have with the country and the people of Israel. I'm certainly not in favor of breaking with that tradition wholesale, but of course, a healthy policy debate to be had about what the right balance is. So we'll have that Israel debate, no question, but it does need to be placed in the broader context of what are U.S. interests in the Middle East today? How can we finally move towards realizing that sort of pivot to Asia that you referenced a few minutes ago and the sort of turn away from the post 9-11 approach in the Middle East that we've been attempting for so long?

45:23Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And I actually think that at the end of the Biden administration, we left a legacy that puts us potentially on our way to seeing through some of those actually very longstanding strategic goals. And we should be thinking in a really fresh and interesting way about what will be required to do that going forward.

45:38Rebecca Lissner:One of the key forward-looking prescriptions in the piece is that we should learn lessons from Trump's willingness to change policy in radical and fast-moving ways and not be quite as kind of cautious about some of those changes. Amir, as you look at what Trump has managed to do in under six months and being back in office this time, what does he understand about the tools of American power that you think we should take from him that you would apply to a future administration? And let me just focus in on the process elements of this. I mean, a lot of what, as you know better than anyone, makes policy slow is that you want to have a kind of proper process with the interagency and deputies committee and the NSC.

46:22Rebecca Lissner:And you need to kind of work things through a full set of considerations of risks. You know, it's hard to imagine that you would have had a meeting with Ahmad al-Shahar, the new leader of Syria, so quickly if they'd had to go through that kind of process. How do you kind of balance the right lessons from Trump with the need to be careful and cautious and deliberate about how we do things?

46:42Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:Yeah, perhaps I'll start with the process element first. I think it's an important point, which is to say that U.S. government bureaucracy slows down quick action. It's also U.S. government bureaucracy that ultimately implements action. Right. So while it is strictly true that maybe you lose a couple of days if you need to have a deputies meeting, I think one of our colleagues, John Feiner, you know, mentioned to us at some point the multiple hundreds of deputies meetings that he chaired while he was deputy national security advisor. It is also strictly the case that the United States can move very quickly while also holding deputies meetings.

47:20Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:The fact of holding a lot of meetings did not slow down our support for Ukraine, for example, or our ability to react after the October 7th attacks. It made sure we did so effectively and with a whole government response that meant we were actually putting out into the world the policy support that was necessary to make change. It is strictly true, however, that what Trump has done is demonstrate the extraordinary power of the presidency as a bully pulpit that has the ability to shape and adjust public opinion. We, across the political spectrum, but certainly also as Democrats, see public opinion as endogenous or fixed.

48:01Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:That is, we have a sense of how far the public wants us to go on support for Ukraine or support for Israel, And our objective in our policy is to hew very close to that line so that we can keep our own coalition with us and keep up support for policy. What Trump is demonstrating is that within the bounds of a few clear limits that we know the American people have, they don't want Americans involved in long and bloody wars, for example. There is actually an extraordinary amount of space to move quickly and in dramatic ways and then reset again within the acceptable bounds of American public opinion.

48:40Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:So for a president who is deeply conscious of the fact that his party and in particular his core MAGA base does not want the United States involved in major wars in the Middle East, using massive ordinance penetrators against Iran was a real gamble. It created the possibility that that exchange could have gone on, could have sucked the United States in further, could have been very difficult to extricate ourselves. And in some ways, that's still true. The fact that there is a ceasefire does not mean that violence could not resume. But Trump told a very specific line in which he executed the dramatic, somewhat surprised use of force in this stunning fashion and then immediately pivoted to a ceasefire negotiation.

49:24Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And that tempo, that kind of collection of extremes is something that certainly we are not used to working with, is difficult for anyone who isn't him probably to pull off, but does demonstrate to us that there is a set of permission structures that we have assumed as left and right bounds in foreign policy that may not always hold. That is to say, if you know where the public is and you are functioning inside those parameters and you are messaging to them clearly and in ways that they can understand about why you're taking certain foreign policy steps, you may actually have quite a bit more room than you think.

50:03Rebecca Lissner:Mira, let me take a brief detour into something in the news. One of the elements of the Biden foreign policy that was both innovative and surprising in the way it came about was the AUKUS deal, the nuclear submarine deal among the US, the UK and the Australians. My perception from the outside is that that was done by a small group of people operating in fairly atypical ways just to get it through the system quickly. It's now being reviewed by the Trump administration. Do you think it's under threat?

50:30Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:Look, any new administration has the right to conduct a review of any policy it wishes. I can't remember the last administration that came into office and didn't conduct a North Korea review just because it is such a fraught and high stakes area of policy. So for an expensive, important flagship defense program, it's not entirely surprising that the Trump administration would wish to do the same. And there's probably also a political element to it. AUKUS, like many other multilateral groupings, the Quad, the USROK, Japan partnership, it sort of became Biden's focal point. So not entirely unreasonable that the Trump administration would want to take a look to see if it could leave its own stamp on the partnership.

51:19Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:That said, I think many smart people at the Pentagon, including in its leadership ranks, understand that terminating or doing damage to the AUKUS partnership would be a win for the PRC. It is truly unprecedented in the deterrence that it creates in the Indo-Pacific. And it is not just good for Australia, it's good for the United States. And good for the United States by dint of having both the UK and Australia potentially involved in regional contingencies where we might not have otherwise had support. So from a deterrence, dissuasion, and cost-shaping perspective, damage to this program would be deeply damaging to the United States.

52:01Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And that leads me to believe that AUKUS will be just fine. I also take heart because over the course of the last three or four years since AUKUS was announced, it has developed a huge following and loss of support on Capitol Hill, where there are now multiple senators and members who are deeply invested in the program. And those folks come from both sides of the aisle and want to make sure that this program continues on. Now, there are many steps short of a full-on dismantlement of AUKUS that could be really challenging here. For example, any re-litigation of the decision to sell Australia three Virginia-class submarines to make up its capabilities gap between now and the early 2030s would also be really problematic because there's no clear substitute for those boats at a time when the US, UK, and Australia are just working to stand up the manufacture of SSN AUKUS.

52:58Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:Nevertheless, I come back to where I started. This is a program that is intended to defend against and deter the PRC. And any undermining of AUKUS undermines that goal.

53:10Rebecca Lissner:Rebecca, let me stick with this notion of an Overton window that, as the two of you put in the piece, has been blown wide open. Where do you see new space for policy creativity that didn't exist as you at least understood it in the last term?

53:22Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:Look, as you know, I worked for Vice President Kamala Harris, and every fiber of my being, wishes that she had won the 2024 election. But I think being where we are, we have to recognize that the scope and scale of destruction that Trump has undertaken and will undertake over the course of this term does within it create a certain opportunity, right? The United States, in the wake of the Second World War, created an international system, forge certain grand strategic habits that have proved remarkably durable over time. They've served the United States incredibly well. But here we are in 2025.

54:07Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:We're entering the second quarter of the 21st century. And it just simply cannot be true that a set of policies and a set of institutions and structures that were built for the world of 1945 or the world of 1991 remain perfectly fit for purpose for the world of 2025, 2035, 2045, and beyond. And so where the opportunity lies in a post-Trump world is to really create a new vision for American foreign policy and a new vision for the international order that is fit for the 21st century, which means that we have to ask ourselves some really hard questions. What would it look like to build an American foreign policy that really takes seriously the consequences of the AI revolution?

54:57Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:What would it mean to build an American foreign policy that actually was serious about the economic potential of our hemisphere rather than perennially treating Latin America as an afterthought or even the global South in general as an afterthought when that will be the engine of so much economic growth over the coming decades. What would it mean to build an American foreign policy that was more humble about post-Trump realities in terms of our ability to exert moral authority and promote democracy around the world? And so the zero-based review concept aims to seize on that opportunity, the marriage of the recognition that for a long time we have needed to renovate certain tenets of our foreign policy and certain tenets of the international order with this new political opportunity, this wider Overton window that Trump seemingly has created.

55:51Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And when you put those two things together, it's actually a historic opportunity, something that comes only once in a generation or even two generations to recognize the urgency of the moment that we need to adapt our foreign policy for the world that we face today and the world that's coming at us as the United States of America. And the fact that so many of our national security bureaucratic institutions will be decimated to the point that they will have to be rebuilt. So how do we, to borrow a Biden phrase, build them back better? And our alliances will have evolved. The world will see us differently.

56:26Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And so rather than fight against all of those changes, even the ones that we see as against our interests, how can we leverage them to create an American foreign policy that really advances our interests as we understand them today and advances the will of the American people as we see it today. So that really is the opportunity here. And that's why at the end of the day, we see our piece as a call to action and a very urgent one. Because if we as American foreign policy thinkers and strategists don't seize the opportunity to build creatively from the wreckage of Trump's foreign policy, we may miss a moment that will never come again because the world will move on without us.

57:08Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And the temptation to come in in 2029, whether as a Democrat or a more traditional Republican, and either just try to repair, try to reverse the things that Trump did and try to revert to some kind of more traditional foreign policy, or even to restore us back to some sort of golden age of yore, those are actually really dangerous temptations. Because if we do them, the United States will not have an approach to the world that is geared towards the multipolarity that is coming towards us and that Trump is only accelerating. And so our hope is that over the course of the next few years, we will work together, work with many others to build out and fill in the contours of this vision, beginning with the analytic exercise of a zero-based review, but then also going well beyond that to build a full-fledged foreign policy platform that truly does meet this moment.

58:00Rebecca Lissner:You note in the piece that it's too soon to say exactly what the world will look like in 2029, but I would stress that during World War II, you refer back to Atchison in this piece and the title references the title of his memoir. During World War II, American policymakers were years before the war ended trying to think about the order that came afterwards. So, mirror to close, to the extent that you can say anything about the kind of contours of the order that you would like to see come afterward, what does that look like and how is it different than the rules-based order that existed for decades after that president of the creation moment that Addison writes about?

58:33Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:Well, again, a great question, Dan. And I think important to note that it's a successor to the rules-based order that we have been living in for the past many generations. Exactly as you say, there was this unique moment in time, perhaps the last time we've had, as we call it, such a tabula rasa moment that we'll have in the next few years during World War II, where planners really were thinking about what would come next. But what they built in the immediate post-war period was then embellished, layered upon, renovated in different pieces, and then finally appeared to completely triumph in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed.

59:15Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:And then was kind of an uncontested American-led version of the order that was a new iteration of what had been built in the immediate post-war period. So we haven't had a reckoning that required us to really take about renovating this thing since then, because the last major system change we had at the end of the Cold War was in our favor. And the institutions appeared to be working so well that there was no need to change them. And American power was so unrivaled that there was nothing that we couldn't do within the bounds of this prior system. The reason we are calling in this call to action for changes now that will meet the moment as we are going to find it is because we are no longer completely unrivaled in that power, and changes to the system need to be made so that we can continue to function effectively within it.

1:00:13Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:So we're not calling for an overturning of international law or rethinking of all our memberships in every international institution. Rather, we want to rethink all of these things such that we'll be able to accomplish our goals inside of them. And what that means is really recognizing both the limitations of pieces of the system that have ceased to function because of power transitions. A great example would be the UN Security Council, where Russian and Chinese membership have basically ground the thing to a standstill. Doesn't mean it's not important to be a member of the UN and to participate in the Security Council, but we need to have a really reasonable reckoning with what can be accomplished there by way of agenda items that matter to us in the world.

1:00:58Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:But it also means reconfiguring parts of the system that actually still may be working for us so that we can get more done through those mechanisms with what may nonetheless be relatively diminished power. So one of the things that is still working and that I do believe will be around to be rehabilitated at least one iteration more is our alliance system. Whereas we have discussed, I think it's unlikely that any given treaty commitment will be terminated, but where there will be a ton of change inside of each one of these individual groupings. And whether that is empowering a more autonomous Europe, or whether that is repositioning U.S.

1:01:38resources, military assets to privilege Asia, or whether it is reframing these alliances to center

1:01:45Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:even more economic issues, trade issues, regulatory issues to really bring our alliance compacts into those spaces, we're going to need to do a lot of thinking about how to use a system that continues to promise amplification of American power in a world in which it is increasingly challenged. So this is all to say that an America that is facing a multipolar world can still be extremely strong and extremely successful at achieving its aims in that world. It just has to be much more intentional in the way that it approaches its leadership, plans for the use of its resources, and harnesses institutions and partners to a set of shared objectives.

1:02:31Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:The reason we can't miss this moment is because if we do, if we attempt the restoration that Rebecca has warned us against, we will find ourselves returning to all of these traditional groupings with the world having moved around us, less powerful and less able to use them for the same objectives. But if we undertake this zero-based rethink and really consider what renovation is necessary, we have the ability to return to the world in a way that is still quite impressive, still pretty unprecedented, and able to achieve peace, prosperity, security, and all of the basic fundamental interests that we've been striving for since the end of World War II.

1:03:10Rebecca Lissner:One of the messages that comes through really clearly in your essay is the value of and really a need for a very fervent debate about some of these fundamental issues. So I will look forward to having the two of you take part in that debate in our pages and elsewhere over the next few years, but it will be, I think, part of a much broader set of discussions about questions of American foreign policy that haven't gotten a lot of consideration in the last few years. So thank you for the essay, which really, I think, helped to set that off and we'll look forward to continuing it in the months and years ahead.

1:03:39Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:Thanks so much, Dan. Thanks for a great conversation.

1:03:47Rebecca Lissner:Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show at foreignaffairs.com. The Foreign Affairs interview is produced by Kanesh Tharoor, Molly McEnany, Ben Metzner, Caroline Wilcox, and Ashley Wood. Our audio engineer is Todd Yeager. Our theme music was written and performed 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.

1:04:35Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview. Don't forget to visit foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight to sign up for Dan Kurtz-Valen's free weekly newsletter featuring more of the clear-headed analysis that you enjoy here on the podcast. Sign up today at foreignaffairs.com slash spotlight.