TRANSCRIPT:

Kahl: You're listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. I'm your host, Colin Kahl. I'm excited to pick up the mantle from Mike McFaul, both as FSI director and as the host of this podcast.

It's hard to believe we're only six weeks into 2026. And yet there's already been a year's worth of foreign policy developments.

In early January, U.S. military forces swooped into Caracas to capture Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, and bring him back to the United States. Then President Trump started making military and tariff threats in an effort to acquire Greenland, causing a major transatlantic crisis and prompting Canada's prime minister to declare that there had been a “rupture: in the international order.

Meanwhile, mass protests have rocked Iran, shaking the pillars of the regime and prompting the deployment of U.S. military assets to the Middle East and renewed threats from President Trump to strike the regime. Just a few days ago, Trump officials traveled to the Middle East to meet with Iranian officials in an attempt to negotiate a new nuclear deal just a day after meeting with representatives from Russia and Ukraine to try to settle that devastating conflict.

In other words, 2026 is off to a breathtaking start with widespread geopolitical consequences.

I can't think of any better guests to help us understand these developments and where things might be headed in the remaining 46 weeks of 2026 than my good friends H.R. McMaster and Jake Sullivan.

H.R. is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General who served as the President's National Security Advisor in the first Trump administration. He joined us here at FSI as the Bernard and Susan Leotaud Visiting Fellow in 2018, and he is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. You can catch him on his podcast, Today's Battleground, on all major platforms.

Jake Sullivan was national security advisor for all four years of the Biden administration. He's now the Kissinger Professor of Practice of Statecraft and World Order at the Harvard Kennedy School and a senior fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. And he also hosts a podcast alongside John Finer called The Long Game.

You'll notice that both Jake and and H.R. have their own podcasts. So if you like what you hear today, please go check them out. And if you don't, you can blame me and you should still go check them out.

H.R., Jake, it's great to have you on the pod.

McMaster: Hey, Colin, great to be here with you and Jake.

Sullivan: Really good to be with you guys.

Kahl: Both of you served as national security advisors. That job is often dominated by crises of the day. But the national security advisor also plays an important role in shaping U.S. grand strategy, including by producing a congressionally mandated document called the National Security Strategy of the United States.

So I wanted to start our discussion by zooming out from current events to look at the big picture captured in these documents. And H.R.I. was hoping to start with you.

You know, when you were national security advisor during the first Trump administration, you and your deputy, Nadia Schadlow, produced a really excellent 2017 National Security Strategy. And I think what was most notable about that 2017 document was that it was really a hard pivot away from the post-9/11 framing of national security.

It recognized that threats that we were focused on after 9/11, like terrorism and rogue states, still mattered, but that actually the biggest challenges to the United States was resurgent great power competition, with China and Russia really challenging America's interest across the board.

It's interesting, at least to me, to note that the Trump administration's in the second term has released a national security strategy back in December of 2025. And it actually has a much different tone on great power politics. It doesn't really describe Russia as a threat. It prioritizes strategic stability. It doesn't even talk about China until page 19 of like a 30-page document and largely frames the China challenge in economic terms, as opposed to a kind of an omnidirectional challenge to the United States.

You're a close observer of these things. Do you think there's been a meaningful shift in how President Trump, in his second term, is thinking about this issue?

McMaster: I think there's a meaningful shift in really the composition of the administration overall and maybe the president's mentality to a certain extent as well.

As you know, the new national security strategy prioritizes more hemispheric defense and the Western Hemisphere—North America in particular in terms of missile defense. This is why President Trump was so fixed on on Greenland as important to to defense and Arctic security Well, you know, want to say hey Canada is pretty important to that too So maybe we should stop kicking them in the ass.

But the other aspect to this is the emphasis on industrial base. A lot of the president's economic agenda is all through it.

But I’d love to hear what both of you guys think about this: I think that Venezuela was a lot about Russia and Chinese and as well as Iranian influence in the hemisphere. Arctic security, well, who's that about? That's about competition with China and Russia. Whose missiles are we worried about coming across the Arctic cap? Well, hey, Russian and Chinese. So I think that in practice, the competition is continuing.

I think this national security strategy fell into the trap that previous ones had fallen into as well, which is describing the world as we might like it to be. It was more aspirational, that maybe we don't have as big of a problem with these two revanchist powers on the Eurasian landmass.

And this is maybe in part to get the big trade deal that the president wants with China. Which, by the way, I don't think he's going to get. So I think that's kind of the big difference is to shift back to more of a document that describes the world as some people in the administration might want it to be.

Kahl: Picking up on that: Jake, you oversaw the writing of the 2022 National Security Strategy. And there are obviously a lot of differences between the first Trump administration and the Biden administration. But actually, I think there's a lot of strategic continuity on the great power competition issue between the document that H.R. oversaw and the document that you oversaw. And I think H.R. is on to something when he notes that there is an element of great power competition in what the president appears to be doing in Venezuela or with Greenland. 

But it really frames the challenges that we face from China or Russia largely in hemispheric terms and homeland defense, as opposed to a kind of omnidirectional challenge that we have to deal with in the Indo-Pacific, in Europe, in the global south.

Can you talk a little bit about how much you think there's divergence here? Do you think it reflects a shift in grand strategy towards maybe a spheres of influence model or some other model? What do you think?

Sullivan: You know, H.R. makes a very good point that implicit in the rationale for both the “Donroe Doctrine,” this hemispheric doctrine, and in the attempt to take Greenland, implicit in that is great power competition with Russia and China. And I do think the Trump administration has kind of tried to retrofit his obsession with actually getting dominion over Greenland through the lens of the threat of Russia and China.

But fundamentally, when you step back from the most recent national security strategy and ask who is the biggest enemy, what is the biggest threat facing the United States, this document seems to say it's immigrants. It's migrants. And it says it not just with respect to the U.S. and a combination, the kind of intersection of migration and drugs. It also says it with respect to our closest allies in Europe.

It says the biggest threat to Europe is not Russia invading Ukraine or looming over the rest of Europe and our NATO allies, it's migrants. It's people coming to engage in what the document calls, quote “civilizational erasure.”

I think this is a huge shift. It's the first time I've seen in the national security strategy in the modern era a thumb on the scale, maybe a whole fist on the scale, with respect to political preferences in allied countries. It specifically calls out “patriotic parties,” i.e. right-wing parties in Europe, needing to be ascendant and come to the fore. And this essentially writes down on paper what J.D. Vance spoke in his speech at Munich last year. So I think that's a huge shift.

And then I think the second really big shift is the strategy that H.R. oversaw and the strategy that we carried forward in the Biden administration really saw the competition with China as a multi-spectrum competition across all domains, military, technological, economic, diplomatic, you name it.

The Trump administration really does seem to telescope the China challenge chiefly down to, as you pointed out, an economic lens. And that we can have a good relationship with them on everything else if we can work things out on the economics.

This leaves huge questions about things like, what is U.S. policy towards Taiwan? What will US policy be towards allies in the region on paper? The Indo-Pacific section looks pretty similar to what our strategy looked like. In practice, President Trump seems to really be saying to Japan and other countries, look, I'm not going to have your back to the same extent vis-a-vis China as previous administrations have.

So I think there's a huge amount of divergence here. I think it's a totally different way of looking at the world. And that chiefly comes back to this question of what they perceive to be the biggest threat to American security. And I think a lot of it has to do with this fusion of migration as both a domestic and foreign policy issue.

McMaster: If I could just comment on that?

Kahl: Go ahead!

McMaster: I just wanted to point out the kind of the geopolitical dimension of the migration problem as well. As Jake is alluding to it, this is a big issue in Europe. And I believe that Putin deliberately weaponized migrants. And of course, we have great evidence of this in specific countries, such as in Finland. And what he did in perpetuating, for example, the serial episodes of mass homicide in the Syrian civil war to create a huge migration crisis in Europe.

And then governments like in Germany—Angela Merkel's government—I don't think they dealt with it very well. And so what that allowed is Putin to accelerate his campaign of political subversion in Europe by supporting both far left and especially far right parties and create these kind of centripetal forces in Europe that diminish European will to stand up to Russian aggression.

And of course, we saw a similar dynamic here in the Western Hemisphere, with the Venezuelans to a certain extent weaponizing migration and illegal immigration in particular.

And the cartels really benefiting from that tremendously as they went in heavy on the business of human trafficking.

So, there is a huge, legitimate national security aspect of migration. But it also traces back to some of these larger geopolitical competitions.

Kahl: I think you've both hit on some really important things. I don't think there's any debate that enormous amounts of irregular migration can be potentially politically destabilizing in any country that's the recipient. And in fact, the rise of populism in the United States and in Europe can be directly traced back to a lot of anxieties about migration flows.

I do think, though, that what's striking to me is that previous national security strategies largely framed democracies as kind of our team and were critical of autocracies. The most recent document doesn't criticize autocracies at all, but does criticize fellow democracies, especially in Europe, largely by externalizing our own cultural and political conversations over wokeness and over what defines Western civilization. And I do think that is a notable shift.

But I want to get back to the China piece, and Jake, maybe start with you.

The national security documents the UNHR oversaw defined China as the most consequential strategic competitor. It's the only country in the world that can challenge the United States across the board—militarily, diplomatically, technologically, economically. Russia can blow up the world, but they can't dominate the world. China can dominate the world.

But as you said, Trump seems to be particularly focused basically through a political economy lens of the China challenge. Last year we saw a high stakes game of chicken between the United States and China over trade. Trump threatened 100 percent tariffs, but then he walked the average back to I think around 47 percent after Beijing choked off the supply of rare earths essential for our defense industrial base.

We've also seen reversals on technology export controls, including ones that started under the Trump administration and escalated under the Biden administration, most recently with Trump greenlighting exports of advanced NVIDIA H200 AI chips.

It looks like Trump and Xi Jinping are going to meet for a summit in April in Beijing. They'll probably meet again at the end of the year at the G20 here in the United States. My sense is that Trump is really angling for a “Big Beautiful Trade Bill” with China and that he may be willing to go even softer on tech and maybe even Taiwan in order to get it.

But I would love to hear where you think things are headed on the U.S.-China front.

Sullivan: Yeah, you're right. I think he would like the big beautiful trade bill with China. I think he's going to get a small, less beautiful trade bill with China. I think there will be some accommodation reached with respect to tariff levels and purchase commitments, all aimed at his objective of reducing the trade deficit. But I don't believe that it is going to address a lot of the underlying structural issues that China presents to the United States and the rest of the world. 

Their industrial overcapacity that is flooding the world with products on a non-commercial basis and undermining the ability of workers and businesses in the West to compete. I don't think that anything he does is going to get at that problem.

I think what you're basically going to see is some incremental and relatively tactical gains. And by the way, on the Chinese side, I think they don't want to put all their chips on President Trump because they recognize he's in his second term. He only has so long to go. He is unpredictable. They can only bet on him so much even within his term. And so I would expect something more modest, more tactical, more incremental this year.

The big question for me—and I alluded to this in my previous answer—I think the Chinese are interested in getting President Trump to say something different about Taiwan than previous presidents have said. Something about peaceful reunification or opposing independence, some formula that moves the needle in their direction in terms of American policy.

And I think President Trump might be tempted to do that, honestly. And I think there would be reverberating impacts from that in terms of the confidence of our partners in Taiwan and the confidence of our allies in the region. So I think that's something for all of us to watch very closely in this meeting.

I should also note that I'm hearing from contacts in China that they actually expect the possibility of up to four meetings this year. There's the the Trump trip to Beijing. A Xi trip to the States that would be disconnected from the G20. Then China is hosting the APEC summit and the United States is hosting the G20.

So there is actually the possibility that we could have four separate leader meetings in 2026 alone. So, a lot of opportunity for everything I just said to be proven totally wrong.

Kahl: Ha! H.R., thoughts?

McMaster: Well, that's exactly what the president wants is really the phase two trade deal he didn't get in Trump I.

If you can picture Xi Jinping as the Peanuts character Lucy and President Trump as Charlie Brown, I think that's what's going to happen again. She's going to, you know, “Xi” is going to move the football.

So, I think what you're going to see ultimately is President Trump backing in to the kind of competitive approach that he adopted in Trump I. And it was an element of continuity between the Trump and Biden administrations.

I think what's different from Trump I to today is that a lot of the people who were actually pretty productive interlocutors for us, like Liu He in Trump I . . . they're gone. And Xi Jinping has really, with these purges you've seen inside of China, has all his people who were very hard-line, and by the way, who I think because of Wang Huning and some of the people around Xi Jinping, really, really believe that the West is in decline, that we are weak, that we're decadent, that we're divided. So I think Xi Jinping's going be feeling it when President Trump goes there in April.

He's going to feel like this is President Trump going to supplicate to the emperor. And the visuals will be designed to do that, which I don't think President Trump's going to like on the back end.

So, anyway, I think a lot could happen with these meetings and in between these meetings. But I think ultimately the president will be disabused of this idea that China will significantly curtail its unfair trade and economic practices and essentially the form of economic warfare it's waging against us.

Sullivan: Colin, if I can just reinforce this really important point I think H.R. just made. The Chinese leadership has this phrase, “the East is rising, the West is declining.” And by the East, they mean China, and by the West, they mean the United States. And they really believe that the U.S. is in secular decline and that a lot of that has to do with our political dysfunction and their view that democracy simply can't succeed in the 21st century.

And it's interesting that last year, In this episode you described of Trump slapping on the tariffs and China responding with the rare earth export controls, the lesson that Xi Jinping took from that is that China holds the high cards. That America has vulnerabilities. That China has a lot of leverage. So, you have both at a tactical and a broad structural and strategic level a real confidence emanating from Beijing right now.

And then you combine that with the fact that they they are uncertain about exactly where Trump is going to go and about this other point H.R. made, which is that Trump could easily shift from more conciliatory to a more competitive position between one meeting and another, between one year and another.

So I think all of that does add up to China feeling it doesn't have to give a lot. It also doesn't want to give too much that kind of puts it on the hook for an unpredictable president. And I think that's the dynamic that's going to really shape the engagements that we see over the course of this year.

Where I'm not sure I agree with H.R. is I'm not sure that Trump wants to move into a really competitive posture here. It seems to me that he's gonna accept something that isn't Phase Two. That short of that, I think he may end up declaring victory on that and saying, I've made peace with Xi and China and the U.S. are good and I'm reducing the trade deficit and so forth. 

So I'm not as convinced that he's going to move to the same kind of competitive strategy that he pursued when H.R. was in the seat.

Kahl: I mean, think one other continuity in the approaches embodied in the two national security strategies you two oversaw was the recognition that in today's day and age, foreign policy is increasingly a team sport and that we need our allies alongside us. It doesn't mean they don't need to be spending more on their own defense. It doesn't mean that there aren't complaints about them not doing enough.

But every single problem we face, we typically do it alongside our closest treaty allies in Europe and Japan. And not the least of which, trying to think through the China challenge, negotiating with China from a position of collective strength. I know that's something both of you have talked about.

It speaks to, what is the health of our alliances right now? We've already talked about Greenland. We've talked about the civilizational erasure issue, maybe starting with you, Jake, and then H.R.

How bad are things right now in U.S. alliances? Is there a meaningful difference between our alliances in Europe and our alliances in Asia on that scorecard? What do think?

Sullivan: It feels pretty bad in the transatlantic alliance, at least at the level of mood and vibe. Whether just at the level of structure, the reality of our shared interests and the reality of our interdependence, it's been shaken so badly that it's irreparable. I'm less convinced of that. I think a lot of damage has been done, but there still just is the reality that we are deeply tied to our European allies.

Asia is an interesting case because as I mentioned, both in words, the description of the strategy towards our Asian allies is similar to Biden and to Trump I. And by and large, what you see from the administration in terms of how it tries to sustain those alliances with Japan, Korea, and Australia in particular, but the Philippines as well, there's more continuity there.

But there was one episode that really stood out to me as concerning. And that was when the Prime Minister of Japan, the Iron Lady, Takaichi, made a comment when she was testifying before the Japanese Parliament about how Taiwan's an existential threat. And I think the technical term is China freaked out about it, imposed a bunch of coercive responses. And rather than President Trump saying—as I think President Biden would have done, or maybe even President Trump in the first term—calling up Japan and saying, we've got your back, President Trump called Xi Jinping and said, hey, what do you make of all this? Xi said to him, hey, you better call the Japanese and tell them to cool it. And Trump did that.

And I think in Japan right now, they read that as some lack of confidence that, in fact, the U.S. will have their back and some concern in quarters in Japan that they're going to have to make their own accommodation with China over time.

I think that is a dynamic for us to watch. That's by no means a foregone conclusion. I think we could end up seeing a quite robust allied strategy under this administration in Asia. But it was a bit of a warning sign for me and something that we should continue to pay close attention to. 

Does he sort of see the whole approach to allies as being China first, allies second, or does he see it the other way around? And I think only time will tell over the course of 2026.

Kahl: H.R., do you think that it's mostly about vibes, or do think there's something deeper and more structural going on here in terms of tensions and fragility within our alliances?

McMaster: Well,I agree with Jake that the structural factors are still in favor of strong alliance. Who's gonna lead Europe without the United States? France? I don't think so. Who's gonna sign up for another European country leading Europe? Nobody will at this moment.

But what you're seeing I think are sub-regional, tighter groups within the alliance emerging. For example between the Nordic and the Baltic states and Poland.

And a lot of that coalescing, as well as increased defense spending—up to five percent and three and half percent on a hard military capabilities—is based on some doubts about U.S. reliability and an associated erosion of trust. I don't think that's good. That's not good.

And the reason it's not good and the reason why not backing up Takaichi-san is not good is that it is the perception of weakness that is provocative to our adversaries. And so I think President Trump was right to demand more defense spending, but in the kind gratuitous insult category or in not backing up Takaichi, or maybe what is going through now, the 20 billion dollar arms sale to Taiwan—that's a really important thing to track and the delivery of those capabilities to Taiwan.

And that’s why Ukraine's important. Ukraine is important because really what Putin wants, what he thinks he can get, is he can get the United States to support terms for a ceasefire that are unacceptable to the Ukrainians and the Europeans and to use that gap to break apart the alliance. This is what Putin's dreaming about. So I don't think we should do anything to encourage him or to encourage Xi Jinping vis-a-vis Taiwan.

I'm an optimist, right? I mean, we could wind up with Europe spending a heck of lot more in defense, taking more responsibility for their defense like Japan is now, like South Korea is now, and then rebuilding that bridge of trust.

So it could be the best of both worlds. I hope, I hope. Maybe even beginning here in North America with a better relationship with the Canadians. I hope that the president will be convinced of this, that he will see that it is the perception of weakness in our alliance here at home with the vitriolic partisan discourse we see and so forth that provokes our adversaries and could transform them into enemies and lead to war.

Sullivan: H.R., before we make peace with Canada, we have to beat them for the Olympic hockey gold.

McMaster: Hey, the women, the women's hockey team did a great job, didn't they?

Sullivan: That’s true! That’s true. They shut them out.

McMaster: I mean, not that I want to rub anything in with my Canadian friends right now. I mean, I don't want to. I'm sorry I even mentioned it! Sorry I mentioned it.

Sullivan: Sure.

Kahl: You know, H.R., you did use that word trust. And, you know, I think for our listeners, at some level, America's extended security commitments to our allies are always . . . it's always been kind of irrational, right? Because it basically it commits the United States to be willing to commit national suicide to defend other countries. And there's a kind of fundamental irrationality at the heart of that. And what solves that problem is trust. in the United States.

And this is actually where I think like the vibe and the mood matters, not just because it erodes trust in the moment, but I do worry a little bit that we're getting into this place where our allies will think that they can't trust the United States for any longer than four to eight year increments based on, who's in power and what their position is.

And that's a really different mindset than the kind of confidence that there was a bipartisan commitment underlying our alliances.

McMaster: Jake, I love to hear what you think about this too. Two things, really. There is this movement toward retrenchment. It actually cuts across both political parties. The frustration among many Americans that President Trump tapped into was the fact that we were covering Europe's defense bills and Europe really accounting for about 19% of the world's GDP and 50% of the world's social spending. So American taxpayers are like, hey, why are we underwriting defense and covering their defense bills and thereby indirectly underwriting their social programs?

And then the other aspect of this are the deep frustrations associated with the unanticipated length and difficulty in the wars in Afghanistan, I would say in particular in Iraq, and the belief that we really can't achieve good outcomes abroad anyway. And therefore, we should just focus on our stuff here at home. We got a lot of stuff to work on ourselves.

And so that sentiment, I don't think is going away. And what is necessary is for American leadership to explain to the American people how problems that develop abroad can only be dealt with at an exorbitant cost once they reach our shores. And how much cheaper it is to prevent a war than have to fight one

I think making those kinds of arguments for investments in active foreign policy, diplomatic efforts, but also sustained commitments to capable U.S. forces abroad operating as part of these alliances, which have prevented great power conflict for 80 years. Why would we want to get rid of that?

But I think we can't take that argument for granted anymore. We have to make that argument as clearly as we can to the engaged American public.

Kahl: You know, H.R., you mentioned American public exhaustion with the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As we speak, Trump is marshaling what he describes as an armada, also known as a single aircraft carrier with a second aircraft carrier on the way and some air defense and strike assets moving into the Middle East to put coercive pressure on Iran to cut a deal.

My own view is there's probably a deal on the table, a narrow nuclear deal, one even that Trump could frame as better than the deal that the Obama administration got.

Do you think there will be a deal? Do you think that there will be a deal on the nuclear file? Something that covers Iran's ballistic missiles, its proxy activities? Bibi Netanyahu was just in Washington this week to try to convince Trump not to buckle and accept a bad deal.

Do you think there's going be a deal with Iran? If so, what type of deal?

McMaster: I don't think there's going to be a deal with Iran. And the reason is that the Trump administration will not accept anything short, in my view, of no enrichment, probably giving up the 60% of enrichment for that they already have. They still have it. It'll have to carry over to missiles for sure. And it will carry over to support for proxies for the terrorist organizations they've been supporting.

And I think the recognition is that the real downside of the 2015 deal was the degree to which that it allowed the IRGC to fill its coffers and to double and in some cases triple its stipends to the terrorist organizations and militias across the region, really build up that ring of fire around Israel so they could light it on October 7th.

I think a lot of people in retrospect look back to the 2015 deal and say, we got Ayatollah Khamenei up off the mat. And I think that that kind of an argument is going to prevail among Trump's advisors.

And as you know, what Trump really tries to do is always try to get a deal first, right? This is what happened before Operation Midnight Hammer. He gave him 60 days, didn't get it, struck. He sent Grinnell to Venezuela. Hey, maybe we can get a deal, but didn't get a deal, and then took action to arrest Maduro. So I think that's the way it's going to play out.

These guys just murdered. I mean, they murdered 30,000 people in 48 hours.

What I would love to see is a hell of a lot more diplomatic effort to isolate those bastards and to kick out every Iranian embassy in the world and show that we cannot tolerate that degree of mass murder and the horrors inflicted on their own people.

So yeah, I think there's gonna be a series of strikes that are probably aimed to diminish the regime's capacity to repress its own people, but also to go after the efforts to reconstitute the missile and the nuclear programs. But then also to maybe preemptively take out what the Iranian regime would use as a response, IRGC Navy, as well as drone locations and factories and that sort of thing. I think the chance of that happening are probably like 80% of a strike that goes in that direction.

Kahl: Jake, you have obviously your own personal experience with diplomacy with the Iranians. What's your view?

Sullivan: I'm more like 60%. I think there's a higher percentage chance that Trump looks at a deal that is going to feel quite a bit like the 2015 deal in many respects and say, hey, that's better than military action that doesn't necessarily have a very clear purpose to it.

What's interesting to me is why are we here even talking about the nuclear program right now in this way? It's because of a chain of events that was set off by President Trump actually going on social media and saying, if Iran kills its own people, I will hit them. And then saying to the protesters who went out in the streets incredibly bravely across every province of Iran and said, help is on the way.

And I talked to a Washington Post journalist yesterday who covers Iran, who made the point that, no, they didn't go in the streets because of Trump, but they definitely saw what he said and thought that America was going to have their back. And then the regime, as H.R. just pointed out, absolutely brutally, on an industrial scale, massacred its own citizens and put it down.

So now we're in this weird situation where the whole impetus behind military action was about supporting the protestors. And it's now kind of shifted to being coercive towards trying to get a nuclear deal, which just goes to show you all of this is a bit kind of mushy.

If we did take military action, you have to ask to what end? We did it last year. President Trump said the nuclear program was, quote, “totally obliterated.” Now we're talking about the nuclear program again six months later. So we could hit them again. Yes, we could degrade them. It's unlikely we're going to cause regime change through the air. So I'm a bit confused about what this military action is going to accomplish other than just continue to create a circumstance where every few months we have to go back with military force again and again.

Whereas if you got a deal, you put the program in a box you get verification and you're not constantly in this position where you have to be lining up to take out enriched material or centrifuges or missiles or what have you.

So I would hope that President Trump would look seriously at the diplomatic option. I think he might. Although if H.R. is 80-20, there'll be strikes, I still think it's more likely than not there'll be strikes, but I'm closer to 60-40.

Kahl: I do think you've hit on a key question, though, which is that I just don't think they've resolved internally—they certainly haven't shared with any of us—what the objective of the strikes would be. Would it be to degrade the missile and nuclear program? Would it be to hit the IRGC? Would it be to destabilize the regime?

Sullivan: Or just punish them, ultimately punish them for the massacres. Just you did that and we're going to  hit you for it. Which emotionally, I understand. I mean, who doesn't wanna hit these guys for something like that? But strategically, I think that's more questionable.

Kahl: So we don't know if regime change is the goal in Iran. We do know that we've had not a regime change, but a government and leadership change in Venezuela because of U.S. military action. Jake, maybe starting with you, any thoughts about what the end game is in Venezuela for the Trump administration?

Sullivan: I'm very interested in what H.R. has to say about this. This is unusual. I'm not sure there is a modern historical analog to replacing a leader, then getting the leader who is the number two to step in and essentially agree to let the United States more or less call the shots from offshore under the threat of further military action if she doesn't do what we ask of her. And it seems like this is not ultimately a long-term sustainable strategy.

But it has worked for a few weeks at least. And I think the reason it's worked is because we pretty much only asked them for one big thing, which is let American oil companies go in there and exploit Venezuela's oil resources. And by the way, that works for the regime in Caracas quite well, because they'll get their cut. And getting their cut will allow them to continue to entrench themselves in power.

The question for me is, at some point, is the Trump administration going to say, hey, actually, we need some kind of democratic transition here. I sort of thought they would head in that direction. Although the way they're kind of pushing putting down Machado, the main opposition leader, suggests that they may just be happy with the status quo. But it's an unusual situation. It is occupation by joystick, occupation by remote control, and so far they have gotten the regime to acquiesce. But I think that's largely because what they're asking of the regime suits the regime just fine and is quite limited. I just don't know if that is a tenable situation to play out over the longer term.

Kahl: I mean, there is this old phrase, “gunboat diplomacy." This is a little bit of gunboat governance. H.R., where is gunboat governance going in Venezuela?

McMaster: Well, it's not really it's it's not gunboat diplomacy as much as it is, think, coercive diplomacy or what the famous and fantastic, late Stanford professor Alexander George called “forceful persuasion.” 

And so I think what we're testing are the limits. You know, he has a great book also called The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy, And Jake, we're asking him to do a heck of lot more than just, you know, let the oil companies back in. It's release political prisoners. It's kick the Cubans and the Russians and the Chinese out. Right?

And to put into place. This is Rubio's four points, a plan for a political transition. Now, will the Chavistas fire themselves? Probably not. So what it really has to be, as you're alluded to as well, is the U.S. and other countries in partnership with the Venezuelan opposition

Which, by the way, I was with members of the opposition last week. They're very optimistic about this. I mean, they really feel like it could work. I think what they're envisioning is kind of a Polish-type transition. Because after the cover of the Soviet Union was pulled back and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, then you had the Solidarity Movement, which had been bolstered and gained strength in partnership with the Catholic Church, who sat down at a round table with the communists. And the communists came up, you know, and they came to a decision on how to transition to a new form of government.

In Venezuela, you have the benefit of the constitution still being there, you know, to be resurrected. And you have a history of democratic governance.

So, you know, I think you're right to be skeptical, Jake, on this, but I think that there's a chance here if we stick to it, if we keep the pressure on, but I think it might take more than we've got on the table now to convince the Chavistas to essentially fire themselves.

Sullivan: First of all H.R., those are good points. I wasn't even really trying to express skepticism. It's just we haven't really tried something like this before. So it's interesting to see how it will play out. And I do think it's somewhat tenuous.

Good point on the political prisoners. And I think there's been positive news on that. Although we have seen that movie before with Venezuela where they do releases and then they round people back up.

McMaster: They've already had that prominent re-arrest, right?

Sullivan: Exactly. They're already doing that. So I'm a bit more skeptical of how much of that is theater and how much that is real.

That's why I kind of zeroed in. I assume this democratic transition has ultimately got to be a part of it. This is where pulling that off, the solidarity analogy is an interesting one, which I want to take a closer look at. Pulling that off, really challenging. And I have been struck by the degree to which they have kind of treated Maria Carina Machado as a nuisance as opposed to an ally in all this. But that may be public posturing and quietly they're doing things that we don't fully understand.

That to me is ultimately the test of how this will all play out. Does it move in that direction or do we lock in a longer term scenario where you essentially have a dictatorship sitting in Caracas essentially doing resource extraction deals with the United States?

I think there's a good possibility that that's where we are a year or two from now, but let's see. I think it's definitely worth watching closely because it is a novel model for the exercise of American power.

McMaster: And hey, we ought to say it's a righteous endeavor based on the nature of Maduro's regime and the Chavistas. I mean hell, they drove 8 million Venezuelans out of the country and destroyed that country. 

Sullivan: Absolutely.

McMaster: So let's hope.

Sullivan: But all of those guys other than the top dog, they're all still there, wetting their beaks and doing their thing.

Kahl: Well, and this is really the dilemma that we'll have to see unfold in 2026, which is: things seem relatively stable by remote control now because essentially the same folks can continue to corruptly acquire rents off of economic activity. And as Jake, as you said, know, oil deals go through, they'll get their cut.

When you're talking about a democratic transition, suddenly some of these guys are going to face the prospect of going to jail. And a lot of these guys have guns. And that's, I think, the dilemma that the administration is going to have to deal with if they do approach this.

Well, listen, there's a bunch of other things we could have talked about. 2026 is going to be a big year, I think, for Ukraine. It's going to be a big year as it relates to the disruptive implications of artificial intelligence on the economy. There are a lot of other things. So I hope to have the two of you back on to talk about those, not to mention whatever else crazy happens in the world between now and the end of the year.

But I wanted to end my first podcast hosting World Class with a bit of an homage to Ezra Klein. Ezra Klein runs a great podcast. He always asks his guests for three book recommendations at the end, which is awesome because I'm an academic. There are books all around me, but I don't have any time to read a single book these days, let alone three. So I'm going to ask you a different question, which is what is one article you would recommend our listeners read to understand the world?

McMaster: Jake, go first, you go first.

Sullivan: All right. I just recently read a piece in The New Yorker called “What is Claude?” which is about how Anthropic is really actually trying to understand the nature of this artificial intelligence capability we are developing and trying to look inside the black box with all of these emergent properties. How do we characterize it? What is happening in there? What do we understand? What don't we understand?

I think it's a pretty accessible way to get at some of the really elemental questions about artificial intelligence and what exactly we are dealing with here. So, I would highly recommend that to everyone and a thousand other articles besides, but that's one.

Kahl: Alright, H.R., how about you?

McMaster: I'd like to recommend an essay by my colleague here at Hoover, Stephen Kotkin, in the December issue of Foreign Affairs called “Weakness of the Strongmen.” And if I could do my Kotkin impersonation, it's basically about strongmen being dependent on five things, five things to stay in power.

And then he talks about the five elements of authoritarian control, but also he explores how exercising those tools of authoritarian control create weaknesses that can be exploited. Great essay.

Kahl: Awesome. Well, I encourage everybody to go check those two articles out. H.R., Jake, thanks so much for joining the podcast. And make sure to check out Jake and H.R.'s podcast too. 

Sullivan: Thank you.

McMaster: Thanks guys.

Kahl: You've been listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. If you like what you're hearing, please leave us a review and be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date on what's happening in the world and why. 

TRANSCRIPT

McFaul: Hey everyone, you're listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanfo rd University. I'm your host, or maybe I should say I'm your co-host, or maybe I should say this is the last time I'll be hosting World Class from Stanford University. Because as listeners and followers of FSI’s news may know, after eleven years, I just stepped down as the director a few weeks ago and I've handed the baton to my guest today, Colin Kahl, who's the brand new director of the Freeman Spogli Institute.

And it is fantastic, Colin, that you agreed to take on this assignment. This is another form, I consider, of public service just like what you've done for the U.S. government and the United States of America.

Colin, as you're going to hear in a few minutes, is the perfect mix of scholar and practitioner that we so value here at FSI. And we are really lucky that you are taking up this assignment.

So Colin, welcome to World Class where everybody will be listening to you forthcoming for, I hope, many, many years.

Kahl: Thanks Mike, it's a real pleasure to be with you and most especially thank you for your tremendous decade plus—eleven years—of service to FSI and the Stanford community. And I look forward to continuing to work with you as you transition to the next thing. And we should talk about that too. But it's great to be on the pod with you.

McFaul: Glad to be here. And just so everybody knows, I stepped down from FSI, but I'm not retiring from Stanford. I still have my various day jobs here. We can come back to that a little bit later.

But Colin, why don't you just tell our listeners and our viewers a little bit about your road to this present position.

Kahl: Yeah, sure. So I grew up in the Bay Area. I grew up in the East Bay in Richmond, California. I applied to Stanford as an undergrad, didn't get in. Applied again as a graduate student, didn't get in. So I got educated elsewhere. I went to the University of Michigan, which is a great school.

McFaul: Very fine institution.

Kahl: And then I went to Columbia University where I got my PhD in political science, focused on international relations and conflict studies. I did my PhD work in the 90s when the field of international relations was trying to figure out what the field even meant after the end of the Cold War.

So it was an exciting and very kind of plastic moment to be doing scholarly work.

I then started my first teaching job at the University of Minnesota in 2000. And of course, a year after that, 9/11 happened. And it was a terrible event for the United States and for the world. For those of us who lived in New York City—I did my graduate work there—it was especially painful.

And it really drove me to want to figure out a way to both do the academic side of understanding the world, but also see if there was a way to engage in public service. So my fifth year at the University of Minnesota, I actually got a fellowship through the Council on Foreign Relations . . .

McFaul: Right.

Kahl: . . . that put me at the Pentagon for a year and a half. This was during the George W. Bush administration. Don Rumsfeld was still the Secretary of Defense. I worked there for a year and a half. I kind of caught the bug, the Washington bug.

McFaul: What was your portfolio back then, Colin? Just remind everybody.

Kahl: So I worked in a small office called the Stability Operations Office. It was only 24 of us. worked within the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. It had historically been called the Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Affairs Office

McFaul: Right, right, I remember that. They changed it, right.

Kahl: But Rumsfeld was not a fan of peacekeeping, so they changed it to ‘stability operations.’

But at the time, most of what our office did was try to help the U.S. military reform itself in the face of the struggles that the U.S. military was facing in Iraq and Afghanistan with the stabilization missions there.

There's a lot of dark humor at the Pentagon, but we sometimes joked that the 24 of us were doing stability operations while the other 24,000 people in the building were doing instability operations.

McFaul: [laughing] Instability operations, yeah, that’s right.

Kahl: But anyway, it was totally exciting. You know, we were there when when U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine was being revised and a bunch of other things.

So that was 2005, 2006. I kind of caught the bug and decided to try to stay in Washington. So I actually took a job at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service where they were kind enough to give me tenure and I taught in the security studies program there for a decade.

McFaul: Let's just . . . hold on, hold on. Let's be clear. They were not ‘kind enough’ to give you tenure; you earned tenure. Nobody gives tenure anywhere. Congratulations that you landed that job.

Kahl: So, I was in the security studies program there for ten years, about a half that time I served in the Obama administration. We served together . . .

McFaul: Together, yes!

Kahl: . . . in the first few years. I was back at the Pentagon as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East during the drawdown of our forces from Iraq during the Arab Spring.

McFaul: Right.

Kahl: During the first flare up of Israel-Iran tensions over Iran's nuclear program. By the way, none of that was my fault, but I was there when all that stuff happened.

And then I went back to Georgetown for a few years and then I got pulled back into the Obama administration at the end to work at the White House as a deputy assistant to the president and as then-vice president Biden's national security advisor. So I was there for Russia's first invasion of Ukraine . . .

McFaul: Right.

Kahl: . . . and the Central American migration crisis and tensions in the South China Sea and the campaign against the Islamic State and the Iran nuclear deal. A lot of interesting things.

And then, when Trump was elected the first time, Mike, you reached out to me with this amazing opportunity at Stanford, the Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow chair that I currently occupy. Applied for the job and got it. It was an opportunity to come back to Stanford. I’ve sat at CISAC, the Center for International Security and Cooperation here at FSI. And I was the co-director of CISAC for a couple of years.

And then last but not least, when Biden was elected president, he asked me to serve as the undersecretary of defense for policy back at DoD, which is essentially the number three civilian and senior policy advisor to the secretary. And I did that for the two first two and a half years of the Biden administration.

Also also very interesting times: fall of Afghanistan . . .

McFaul: Yes.

Kahl: . . . Russia's further invasion of Ukraine, rising tensions with China, dealing with the aftermath of COVID, lot of changes in the world.

So anyway, I'm glad to be back at Stanford. I've been back since the summer of 2023, and I'm excited to try to fill the very big shoes that you've left at FSI after eleven years.

McFaul: Well, let's talk about the future in a minute, but just two follow-up questions on your history. You've had lots of government jobs you just described. I can't think of anybody that's had a more diversified set of experiences in national security. We are lucky to have you here.

Tell us about the best day of any of those jobs and tell us about the worst day and maybe reverse that. Worst day first, best day second.

Kahl: So first of all, I'm fortunate to have had the opportunity to serve my country. I believe in it strongly. I've served in Republican administrations and Democratic administrations. I've worked for two Republican secretaries of defense and two Democratic secretaries of defense. So I think I've demonstrated my nonpartisan bona fides in how I've served my country.

And I just want to mention that because I think it's important.

McFaul: Yes, it is important.

Kahl: Because, of course, FSI is a nonpartisan place.

Worst day and best day: in a sense, it's almost the same. There was no more harrowing experience than the collapse of Kabul.

I was actually at the NIH getting a medical treatment when I got a text message from the secretary's chief of staff that I needed to hurry back to the Pentagon. So I literally pulled an IV out of my arm and raced back to the Pentagon because Kabul fell.

And obviously that was a tremendously terrible event for Afghanistan. It was a particularly harrowing way for the 20-year U.S. involvement in Afghanistan to end. But it also put us on the clock. You know, we had basically 17 days before the deadline for all American forces to be out of Afghanistan, and we suddenly had to do a lot of things.

We had to flood forces back into the country to occupy an airport that was now in hostile Taliban territory when the Taliban took over Kabul. We had to secure that airport. We sent five or six thousand soldiers and Marines to that airfield. We had postured them in the region previously to be able to do that, but we had to get them there.

McFaul: Right.

Kahl: And then we then had to oversee the evacuation of 125,000 human beings in two weeks, which had never happened in human history and no other country in the history of the world would have been capable of doing. And it was pretty horrible.

McFaul: Yeah.

Kahl: A lot of terrible human tragedies. Obviously, we got a lot of people out. A lot of people weren't able to get out. There was the terrible ISIS bombing that killed 13 of our brave service members. Toward the end of the evacuation, there was an errant U.S. strike on what we thought was an ISIS operator that turned out to be an aid worker and his kids. It was horrible.

But I'm also incredibly proud of what we were able to do. I mean, in the macro sense, because we were able to project our power back into Afghanistan, lock down that airfield and get all of those people to safety, including the family members of some Afghans who worked for me. We were able to get a lot of people out.

We were able to bring them to bases and facilities that didn't even exist when the crisis . . . I mean the bases existed, but the facilities to house these people in the Gulf and in Europe and back here in the continental United States . . . the amount of diplomacy that required, the amount of logistics by the U.S. military that it required. It was an unbelievable operation.

And so it was terrible. But it was also an extraordinary demonstration of what the United States was capable of doing even at these dark moments.

McFaul: That's a great way to put it together. I would guess we would not have been able to do that if we did not have NATO allies and bases in that part of the world, or is that incorrect? I don't know the logistics of that part of the world.

Kahl: If anything, it's an understatement. I think one of the things that distinguishes the United States from every other superpower or global power in history is the depth and breadth of our network of allies and partners. At the heart of that are our treaty allies in the NATO alliance, but also in the Indo-Pacific region, so think South Korea, Japan, Australia.

McFaul: All of them, right.

Kahl: But we also have very close security partnerships in the Middle East. And so literally it would not have been possible to fly aircraft into Afghanistan, fly people out from Afghanistan into places like Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia. But then we brought them to Germany and Spain and other U.S. bases in Europe. And then we brought them back to bases here in the United States.

And that network, literally that network made it possible. And had we not had those allies and partners when that happened, we couldn't have done what we did. We couldn't have done any of it. We couldn't have gotten any of our people out.

And so that really is like some of the secret sauce to America's power and influence in the world. And it remains the case that we have more allies and partners than any other country in history.

But it's also the case that those alliances and partnerships are probably more strained than they've been in my lifetime.

McFaul: So, one other historical question about you. Why did you come to Stanford? I mean, you've got this great job at Georgetown. You obviously are connected to the policy community. We're far away out here. Tell us about that decision.

Kahl: Part of it is I grew up in the Bay Area. Part of it is that, mean, Georgetown is a remarkable place, but Stanford's one of the two or three best universities in the world. We had a great community of scholars out here. And a lot of the issues that I'm particularly passionate about now—especially the intersection of technology and geopolitics— I mean, this is ground zero for a lot of that.

And so it was for a mix of kind of lifestyle reasons and professional reasons. And it's been awesome.

McFaul: Well, that's a great segue to what I wanted to ask you next, which is about the big agenda items. I mean, FSI has a lot going on: we have lots of centers here, as our listeners know, because we've had many guests from all, I think all of our centers over the time I've been here.

But you've got some particular things that you want to focus on. I know, because I talked to people that were part of the selection committee, that that was what was most impressive about you, is that you have a big agenda. Tell us about that agenda, Colin.

Kahl: As your longtime listeners undoubtedly know, FSI is an interesting place because FSI Central, where you were the director until three weeks ago, and now I sit, essentially sits over nine main research centers that cover everything from democracy to international security to regions like Asia and Europe to issues like technology and defense innovation, food security, global health.

And the breadth of this place is extraordinary. But it's also a highly decentralized place. Yes, we oversee the centers, but in many respects, the centers are kind of quasi-autonomous nation states.

McFaul: Exactly, exactly.

Kahl: So this isn't about trying to micro-manage our centers; that would be a fool's errand. It is actually, though, trying to look for ways to have the whole of FSI add up to more than the sum of its parts. And to look for synergies across our centers on really big questions.

You took the helm of FSI, I believe, back in 2015?

McFaul: Yes.

Kahl: To state the obvious, the world in 2026 is a lot different than it was in 2015. And so, FSI has to adapt to that world. And I think there are four really big questions of the moment that I think FSI really needs to be impactful on.

One is that we're in this new age of geopolitics. And it's become kind of trite to note that, you know, we have a resurgence of great power politics and competition between the United States and China and Russia and other major powers. But it actually runs deeper than that.

The distribution of power in general across the world is fundamentally different than it was 15, 20 years ago, let alone 50 years ago. The United States remains the world's most consequential actor, but China is nipping at our heels as a global superpower. And while Russia can't dominate the world, Russia can blow up the world. And we also know that countries like China, Russia, North Korea, Iran are working more closely together.

At the same time, the traditional role that the United States has played in the world since World War II or since the end of the Cold War is changing. And our relationship with our traditional allies is changing. And I think anybody who kind of paid attention to the World Economic Forum in Davos over the last few days heard speeches from the Prime Minister of Canada referring to the rupture in the international order.

And there's just the sense that things are fundamentally changing. And some of that may be a direct reaction to some of the policies of President Trump. But frankly, I think a lot of it is structural, that the policies of the current administration are as much an artifact as they are a cause even if they are accelerating some of the structural dynamics.

And then of course, there's big chunks of the world that doesn't want to be on anybody's team.

McFaul: Right.

Kahl: That wants to be non-aligned and multi-aligned. A lot of countries in the so-called ‘global south’ fall in that category. So we should be studying this new era of geopolitics

I would encourage you to say more about how you plan to study it, because I know you have a really fascinating project in this space that brings FSI and Hoover scholars together on some of these questions.

Kahl: So, one issue is the new geopolitics. The other though is what I call the new techno politics. It's actually a term I think Ian Bremmer coined.

But it's not just the notion that technologies like AI, biotech, quantum, space, clean energy are transforming our world, but also that the actors at the heart of these innovations are these multinational corporations that if their market cap was translated into GDP,

they would rank as G20 nations, right? When you're Nvidia and you have $5 trillion

McFaul: That's a great point.

Kahl: Like that would be the top half of the G20. But it's not just that. They have global presence. And for a lot of these companies, they have near sovereign control over the environments through which we live our lives.

McFaul: That's a great point.

Kahl: So, think cloud service providers, social media platforms, but also the infrastructure: undersea cables, low earth orbit constellations. And all of these things are under regulated spaces. So, it's not just that the technology is changing the world, but the companies are international actors. And again, where else should we be studying that but here at Stanford?

McFaul: Right.

Kahl: The third thing is there's a broader category of what people might refer to as existential risk. Nuclear weapons and the salience of nuclear weapons are back with a vengeance. For the first time, we're entering a world in which there are not two but three nuclear peers as China quadruples its nuclear arsenal. India and Pakistan are at loggerheads. They both have nuclear weapons. Israel and Iran are at loggerheads over Iran's quest for nuclear weapons. North Korea is expanding its arsenal. And arms control is breaking down.

So we know that the nuclear age is back with a vengeance. Simultaneously, we're facing the climate crisis. We all lived through COVID. It won't be the last pandemic, unfortunately, I think, in our lifetimes. There are other biosecurity risks emanating from emerging technologies. And then there's also the possibility that technologies like AI will produce their own existential externalities in the form of things like rogue super intelligence or other things.

So we should be studying those things. And then lastly, I think we have to be studying the future of global democracy because democracy is under siege around the world from revisionist authoritarian powers like Russia and China. But it's also eroding in many traditional democracies that are becoming increasingly illiberal.

And advanced democracies no longer agree on what democracy is. A big divide between the United States and Europe at the moment is both laying claim to being democratic, but in fundamentally different ways.

And so the point just is, we have 150 researchers at FSI, 50 of them are tenured faculty, many of them were working at the intersection of these issues. I want to support that and I also want them to do more together.

McFaul: That sounds fantastic. That is the agenda for our moment. And I think you're right that we have some people that work on some of those things, but we have holes to fill. And I wish you success in doing that to compliment what we have here, but also to try to get these different scholars that work on these different pieces to understand how they are intertwined, right?

The future of global democracy is also highly impactful on geopolitics and vice versa. I think that is a great agenda for FSI for the future.

I mean, on my own piece: I would just say in terms of what I want to work on, I have a lot of interests, but the main research one is I just did finish this book, as listeners will know, called Autocrats vs. Democrats, China, Russia . . .

Kahl: Available now!

McFaul: Available now! Available while you're listening on your phone. You can get it, and it's highly discounted now. And I'm going to tell you a little story about that actually, Colin. I don't think we've talked about it. The original title was ‘American Renewal.’ That was like two or three years ago. Then it switched the title to ‘Autocrats vs. Democrats.’ But the subtitle, until just a few months ago was ‘China, Russia and the New Global Order.’ The now title is ‘China, Russia, America and the New Global Disorder,’ reflecting a year ago what I thought was going to be a pretty tumultuous time. And I think I underestimated how tumultuous it is and your agenda is addressing that.

But I would say two things that I want to do here at FSI. One is, when I was working on this book, I knew a lot about the Cold War, so there's a debate, are we in the Cold War or not? And I addressed that. My answer is yes and no.

But I knew a lot about the Cold War. I know quite a bit about Russia. I know a fair bit about America and America's place in the world, both from teaching and being in the government. But I had to learn a lot about China. And I've been going to China for three decades, but I'm not an expert. It took me a long time. That's why it took me eight years to finish this book

But there were two big gaps that I saw at the end of it. One is we have a lot of great people working on capabilities of these various great powers. We have a really great literature on intentions of America, Russia, and China. And big debates, by the way, on the intentions, especially on the China side. I would say comparing the debate in the Russia field to China field, there's a lot more consensus in the Russia field about intentions of Putin's Russia than there is of Xi's China, and that's a good thing. I think that debate is unsettled and we should keep interrogating our hypotheses.

But what I was really struck by is very little examination. And with some exceptions, I'm looking at my shelf. There's some really great books. But there's not that many books that look at impact of this competition on other countries in the world. And when you do find great books—there's a great one on China and Zambia, for instance—it's just China and its impact on Zambia. There's no Europe in that story. There's no Russia in that story. There's no America in that story. So that's the academic kind of research project that I want to do here with Liz Economy from the Hoover Institution, Jim Goldgeier—he's going to cover the European part. And that'll take many, many years because we want to really get into the nitty gritty of these countries. And we want to find country experts to be the main people that write that.

The second part in my book—you know, my book looks at the debate, examines where we're at, and then has these three prescriptive chapters. And even had Vice President Harris won the election last year, the structural things that you identified would have been still a part of our trying to figure out where we're going and the debate about international order and how to manage the decline of democracy, technology and the global order, that would all been there. But to your other point you made earlier, it's been accelerated by President Trump.

And in my public policy life, I want to keep engaging that debate because yes, the old order is broken. We're not going to go back to it. But the idea that we have to just go back to some Hobbesian jungle that Trump seems to want to fight in, I don't accept that as an inevitable consequence. And even if it is analytically, and I'm wrong about that, I want to do everything I can to avoid it, even if it's going to be in failure. In a way, Trump has moved us in a different direction and I want to be part of that debate.

And one of the things I would add to that is part of the reason liberal internationalists like myself have lost that debate is because we lost the American people on it. And we didn't focus enough on trying to explain why being a NATO is in our interest or explain why it's better off to have a foot in even something like the United Nations than to pull out. Why we're better off to support ideas of democracy and freedom rather than just think that it's just all about power.

And so I'm going to be spending a lot of time speaking, not just in Silicon Valley—I'm still doing that—and not just Washington and New York or Brussels and Beijing, but my next stop for my book tour is Boise, Idaho. And I've done this for a while and not everybody agrees with me. I even had a few people walk out before I even said a word because they saw that I'd worked for Barack Obama.

But what I can tell you and report is people are curious. All my talks are sold out. And the agenda you just outlined, Colin, is an agenda I think that when we have things to say with our scholars, we should bring those ideas through things like World Class. I think there's a demand and a thirst for trying to figure out this new world order/disorder that we're in, and FSI has a great role to play in that.

Kahl: Hard agree. And also I'm thrilled that this is going to  be so much of your focus.

I would just say on the alliance piece: my view is that as the distribution of power changes, it's clearer than ever that foreign policy is a team sport.

McFaul: Yes.

Kahl: I used to make this reference: Michael Jordan, probably the best basketball player who ever lived. Although I'm sure there are people who claim it's LeBron or Kobe or somebody else. But if you believe that Michael Jordan was the best basketball player who ever lived, he still needed four other Bulls to win championships.

And as we go around, and address every problem that I've ever encountered as a policymaker, whether it's the rise of the Islamic state or the invasion of Ukraine, we need our team.

McFaul: Exactly.

Kahl: And our allies and partners are our team. So I think we have to tell that story. We also, as we enter this new world, have to figure out a way to re-anchor our alliances in a way that are politically sustainable on all sides, and that actually deliver benefits for the American people.

So it's not just telling a better story. There's an interesting example of this. Recently the Trump administration agreed to help South Korea with their submarine program. But South Korea in exchange is making tens of billions of dollars of investments in American shipyards . . .

McFaul: Right.

Kahl: . . . to build up our capacity. And I do think these ideas about joint industrial capacity across the free world might be a way to generate jobs, to generate political incentives on all sides to keep those alliances intact and give some people confidence on both sides of our alliances that we're not going to have these violent swings every four to eight years.

McFaul: I could not agree more. And that example you gave is a great example. And we have to be more creative about re-anchoring and win-win for everybody. I think that's a great idea.

Colin, I'm going to hand this over to you. We've already gone longer than we should have because you're so interesting. Tell us a few of the guests you have coming up on World Class.

Kahl: First of all, not only big shoes to fill on the FSI director position, but big shoes to fill as the host of World Class. We're going to try to start off with a bang in the near future. So stay tuned. We hope to have a great conversation involving H.R. McMaster, who is at Hoover, but as many of your listeners will know, was President Trump's national security adviser at the beginning of the first Trump administration.

And we're going to pair H.R. with Jake Sullivan, who was Joe Biden's national security advisor.

McFaul: Wow! Both on the same show?

Kahl: On the same show!

McFaul: Oh my God, that's fantastic!

Kahl: And the idea is to ask two of the smartest minds on different parts of the political spectrum to help get us smarter about the state of the world and where things are going for the rest of 2026. I have to say for the rest of 2026, because like we're not even a month in and we had Venezuela and Greenland and Iran, and Iran could come back and like, we're three weeks in.

But people should stay tuned because that's going to be an awesome conversation.

And then without naming names, I'm very hopeful to bring on leaders from the tech community here in Silicon Valley to interface with our scholars about some of these technology trends we talked about earlier.

McFaul: Great, excellent.

Kahl: So it's gonna be great. If you're a geopolitical nerd, you're going to love it. If you're into technology, you're going love it. And we're gonna find ways I think to both highlight the extraordinary work being done here at Stanford, but also Stanford's role in the broader ecosystem. It’s going to be fun.

McFaul: Sounds exciting, Colin. Well, first of all, thank you for taking on the role of leading FSI. We need you because of all the things you just described. Second, thanks for taking on World Class. And third, just with that teaser, I know that World Class is going to get a lot more interesting in the weeks and months to come. So congratulations.

Kahl: Thanks, Mike.

McFaul: You've been listening to World Class from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. If you like what you're hearing, please leave us review and be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to stay tuned, to stay up to date on what's happening in the world and why.

And for the last time, this is Michael McFaul signing off as your host of World Class. Stay tuned for the next episode hosted by Colin Kahl.

The January 3, 2026, U.S. “Operation Absolute Resolve” in Venezuela to capture and remove President Nicolás Maduro has raised urgent questions about its repercussions for the U.S.-China competition, Taiwan Strait security, American strategic priorities in the Indo-Pacific region, and U.S. allies and partners.

In two new episodes of the APARC Briefing series, Stanford scholars Larry Diamond, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and APARC faculty affiliate Oriana Skylar Mastro, a center fellow at FSI, join host Kiyoteru Tsutsui, the director of APARC, to unravel what happened in Venezuela and the implications of the U.S. actions in Latin America for Taiwan, security and alliances in the Indo-Pacific, and U.S. relations with stakeholders in the region.

Both scholars agree that the U.S. mission in Venezuela is a precedent that likely emboldens rather than deters China in its Taiwan calculus, warning that the shift it represents in U.S. national security policy might detract from American capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region at a crucial moment. They also provide sobering advice for U.S. allies struggling to adjust to rapidly shifting geopolitical realities under the second Trump administration.

A Shocking Action in World Affairs

There is no dispute that the Maduro government has been deeply authoritarian, deeply corrupt, and deeply illegitimate, says Diamond, author of Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency. Yet the United States “has probably violated international law to intervene forcibly in the internal affairs of Venezuela and remove its political leader," creating enormous implications for the international community. If it does not pursue a strategy of systemic democratic change in Venezuela, “all of this will have been for naught, and it will have paid a tragic price in terms of international precedent and international legitimacy,” Diamond argues.

Beijing is already using the operation as a "discourse power win," depicting the United States as crushing sovereignty and international law, Mastro notes. Moreover, in addition to Venezuela, President Trump continues to make statements about Greenland, reiterating its importance for U.S. national security and his interest in acquiring the territory, which has alarmed European partners and exacerbated strains with NATO.

“For the first time since WWII, some European countries have declared the United States to be a security threat,” Mastro says. “So I am curious to see if the Chinese try to bring along the Venezuela case as well, to convince U.S. allies and partners to distance themselves from the United States, which would have significant repercussions for the global order and for the United States' role in it.”

A Risky Strategic Reorientation

By unilaterally bypassing international norms to wield power in its own "backyard," the United States may have set a precedent that China can now exploit to justify its own ambitions in Taiwan as a legitimate exercise of regional dominance.

Diamond remarks on this line of thought: “If the United States, as a hegemon, can just do what it wants to arrest and remove a leader, in its kind of declared sphere of influence, what's to stop Xi Jinping from doing the same in his sphere of influence, and with a democratic system in Taiwan, whose sovereignty he does not recognize?” 

On the other hand, many commentators have argued that Operation Absolute Resolve serves as a deterrent to Chinese aggression. Granted, there is no doubt that the operation was a remarkably successful military attack showcasing the capabilities of U.S. special forces, notes Mastro, who, alongside her academic career, also serves in the United States Air Force Reserve, for which she currently works at the Pentagon as deputy director of research for Global China Strategy. Nevertheless, she emphasizes that the United States cannot carry out a similar attack in Asia.

“There is no situation in which we ‘neutralize’ Chinese air defenses and then somehow do some sort of infiltration,” says Mastro, author of Upstart: How China Became a Great Power. The U.S. intervention in Venezuela, therefore, “does not tell us a lot, operationally, about what the United States is capable of in a contingency via China.”

More troubling, Mastro identifies the Venezuela operation as demonstrating a fundamental shift in U.S. strategic priorities, with the raid conducted just weeks after the Trump administration released its 2025 National Security Strategy, which prioritizes restoring “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.” Mastro characterizes it as “the one region where U.S. dominance faces no serious challenge.” Thus, Venezuela suggests “the Trump administration means business about the renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere, and, unfortunately, that makes me concerned that there might be strategic neglect of the Indo-Pacific moving forward,” she points out.

Diamond stresses that, virtually throughout the entire presidency of Xi Jinping, dating back to 2012, China has been rapidly building up its military capabilities, prioritizing those specifically suited for coercing, isolating, or potentially seizing Taiwan. Against this backdrop, “I am much more fearful about the future of Taiwan in the week following U.S. military action on January 3 in Venezuela than I was before that action.” 

Mastro agrees with this assessment about the ripple effects of the operation in Venezuela. “I would say that it probably emboldens China.”

Frank Advice for U.S. Allies

For U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia, as well as allies and partners in Europe, both scholars offer pragmatic counsel for coping with the Trump administration.

Diamond urges U.S. allies to manage Trump diplomatically while staying focused on core interests, namely, prioritizing the preservation of the alliances and strengthening autonomous defense capabilities to demonstrate commitment and hedge against potential U.S. retrenchment.

“It takes constant, energetic, proactive, imaginative, relentless, and in some ways deferential working of the relationship, including the personal relationship between these leaders and Donald Trump [...] The future will be better if the leaders of these countries internalize that fundamental lesson about Trump.”

Mastro is equally direct about the limited alternatives ahead of U.S. allies: "You don't really have an option. That Chinese military – if it gives the United States problems, it definitely gives you problems. There's no hope for a country like Taiwan without the United States. There's no hope for Australia without the United States."

Counterintuitively, U.S. assertiveness may indicate its insecurity about the balance of power with China. “It seems to me that the United States also needs to be reassured that our allies and partners support us [...] And if we had that confidence, maybe the United States would be less aggressive in its use of military force.”

Watch the two APARC Briefing episodes:

🔸 What the U.S. Raid in Venezuela Means for Taiwan and Asia - with Larry Diamond >

🔸 Does Venezuela Provide China a Roadmap for Taiwan? – with Oriana Skylar Mastro >

Authoritarian rebalance 

Maduro served as president of Venezuela for more than 10 years before he was ousted Jan. 3 in a U.S. military operation that brought him to America to face narco-terrorism charges.

Trinkunas, a senior research scholar at FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), discussed the possibility of Venezuela transitioning to democracy, especially given the opposition's overwhelming victory in the 2024 presidential elections. But an authoritarian rebalancing looms large, he noted.

“We have to remember that all the institutions of power and all the electoral offices in Venezuela below the president are held by supporters of the regime,” he said.

Trinkunas recalled political scientist Alexander B. Downs’ book, “Catastrophic Success,” which examined the negative consequences of foreign-imposed regime changes and highlighted that such interventions often lead to civil war and violent removals of leaders.

“About one-third to 40% of all regimes installed by a foreign intervention end up in civil conflict within 10 years,” Trinkunas said. And, almost half of leaders installed by foreign powers withdraw from or are pushed from office before their terms are up.

He foresees a divergence between the interests of the intervening power, the U.S., and Venezuela’s power elites and population under the proposed arrangement. “The people with the guns stay employed.” And they may not be eager to cooperate if it involves sharing Venezuela’s mineral wealth with the United States government.

Díaz-Cayeros said, “Nothing has changed in the basic underlying economic conditions of Venezuela that has forced an exodus of 8 million people.” Days after the arrest of Maduro, the government in office is still the same government that came into office through an electoral fraud, he added.

Status quo interests

Curiel, a research scholar at CDDRL, research manager for the Democracy Action Lab, and a native of Venezuela, described the ecosystem of armed actors in Venezuela and outlined how both state and non-state security forces have the incentives and capabilities to preserve the status quo. 

“They’ve had arrangements that have been important for their survival, up until now. And so, there’s a question that these groups face with the loss of Maduro and [his wife Cilia] Flores,” she said.

To the extent they perceive their arrangements are under threat, they might respond with violence or engage in chaos, Curiel added. This is further complicated by the fact that different armed groups are loyal to different members of the governing coalition, creating competing power centers.

Fuentes, a CDDRL visiting scholar and Venezuelan native, noted that the situation in Venezuela remains extremely fluid and that it is still too early to determine whether Maduro’s removal will lead to authoritarian rebalancing or a genuine democratic transition. He argued that policymakers face a real tension between two objectives: stabilizing the country while accounting for the complexity and fragility of the Venezuelan state, and recognizing that stabilization without a clear commitment to democratic transition as the ultimate goal is not sustainable.

“The stability is not going to happen unless you promise and commit to the final goal of a democratic transition,” said Fuentes, a lawyer and policy expert from Venezuela.

He explained that the regime’s basic instinct is to resist and survive any U.S. involvement in the way its key ally, Cuba, has done through the decades.

Zambrano, a Stanford law professor and CDDRL affiliated faculty member who grew up in Venezuela, said he was guardedly optimistic about a democratic transition and supported the military operation that removed Maduro. As for the legal implications of the capture of Maduro, he cited prior examples of the U.S. taking military action in Kosovo, Libya, and Panama, among others, without Congressional approval and in apparent violation of international law.

The international law prohibition on the use of force “has been violated [maybe] 40 times” in the last few decades, he said. “This is one more violation. Is that good? No, that’s not good, but it’s not a drastic change the way the Russian invasion of Ukraine was,” because the latter implicated the international prohibition on the annexation of territory. Moreover, in Venezuela’s case, the Venezuelan people welcomed the U.S. intervention.

Kronick, an associate professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and Stanford alum, observed that U.S. officials at a January 3 press conference didn’t mention democracy and totally dismissed María Corina Machado, whom she described as “Venezuela's most popular politician and the driving force behind the opposition candidate in last year's presidential election.”

The 2024 Venezuelan presidential election was highly controversial, given that both the opposition showed incontrovertible evidence, widely verified by the international community, that the election was stolen by Maduro and that the opposition actually won by a landslide.

Kronick said the acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, is clearly not a democratic activist and has been a key member of the regime for years. “It’s a little bit hard to be optimistic about the prospects for democratization,” given her current role.

On the other hand, Venezuela has very capable election-vote-counting technology and decades of high-turnout elections, all of which could potentially facilitate re-democratization. 

‘Gangster diplomacy’

In the question-and-answer session, Michael McFaul, former FSI director, described the Trump Administration’s current attempt to take more than $2 billion in oil from Venezuela as “gangster diplomacy” and a “travesty.” 

Díaz-Cayeros said, “This kind of U.S. unilateral action strikes a very deep chord in the Latin American psyche. And it doesn’t really matter if someone is on the left or on the right” in Latin and South America.”

Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of CDDRL, noted that the U.S. arrest of Maduro raises troubling questions about whether Russia would attempt a similar action against Ukraine’s leaders in the future. “What then stops Putin, other than the incompetence of the Russian armed forces, from going in and trying to get (President Volodymyr) Zelensky or any other high leader in Ukraine?”

Kronick suggested audience members read a recent Foreign Affairs essay, “A Grand Bargain With Venezuela,” in which the author argues for a “pacted transition,” a negotiated, power-sharing arrangement, as the most viable path for Venezuela. This would involve an agreement between the current regime and opposition to coexist and gradually democratize, rather than one side seeking total victory.

“Whether you read this and think this is pie in the sky and this is never going to happen, or you think this is what we need to really push for, I think it’s really worth engaging with, so I’ll end with that recommendation,” she said.