Experts on Foreign Policy Challenges Facing the Trump Administration

TRANSCRIPT

(Excerpt from latter part of program)

Aired April 1, 2018 - 10:11   ET

STEPHANOPOULOS: Those buses contain some of the 153 Russian diplomats expelled (ph) by the west in the wake of that poisoning in Great Britian over former Russian spy. In return, Russia’s expelled 142 western diplomats from Moscow, one sign of the worst relations fee (ph) in Russia and the U.S. since the days of the Cold War.

I want to talk about that and other foreign policy challenges facing President Trump and his team with our panel of experts, Megan O’Sullivan, she served as Deputy National Security Adviser for George W. Bush, now an International Affairs Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, author of the new book Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America’s Power.

Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, she held national security roles in the Obama administration, including Deputy Secretary of Energy, now senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.

And Susan Glasser, soon to be staff writer for the New Yorker. And Susan, let me begin with you, because you are also Moscow bureau chief with your husband Peter Baker for the Washington Post during President Putin’s first term.

I guess first of all, do you agree with that assessment I just made about this being the worst relations between Russia and the west since the Cold War, and do you have a sense of what Putin’s end game is here?

SUSAN GLASSER, EDITOR, POLITICO: Well, you know, first of all, a new Cold War, if you look at that right now, you’ve never heard the term more. In the last 25 years, I think it really is a period of the highest tensions that they (ph) really have been arguably, even since before Gorbachev.

We -- we had better relationships and were talking more frequently in the late 1980’s than we are with Moscow today. President Putin has already become the longest serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin.

He was just re-elected to another six year term, remember President Trump famously was not supposed to congratulate him, but did for this. The question is, what is he going to do with that new six year mandate?

He’s got wars in Ukraine, in Syria, he’s now got this conflict with the west, not just Great Britain, but the United States and other western allies over this poisoning of a former Russian spy.

I think we could be in for a period of additional escalation rather than this scenario of well finally Putin’s going to moderate, I -- I don’t see any sign of that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Ms. Sherwood-Randall, one time (ph) we’ve seen of that, we saw him publicize that ICBM test this week that came in the wake of that diagram he -- he shared just a couple of weeks ago, targeting South Florida, maybe even Mar-a-Lago.

It appears that we could be in for a new arms race with Russia as well.

ELIZABETH SHERWOOD-RANDALL, FORMER SECRETARY OF ENERGY, UNITED STATES: So we need to maintain our nuclear deterrent against all threats, but at the same time, as Susan has just said, we don’t have an interest in escalation into a new Cold War.

And so we do need to maintain channels of communication and we need to be pursuing options that give our president alternatives to resorting to nuclear war.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well you want the alternatives, what (ph) are the things we see (ph), Megan O’Sullivan, is that this sort of disconnect between President Trump’s rhetoric, and what (ph) Susan just mentioned that he congratulated Vladimir Putin, wasn’t supposed to that, and some relatively tough actions by his administration, finally imposing those sanctions, going through with -- with expelling Russian diplomats.

MEGAN O’SULLIVAN, PROFESSOR OF THE PRACTICE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS: Well I think it’s true that the actions of the Trump administration have not been anything like people had expected because of this relationship between Trump and Putin.

But we have to keep in mind that this deterioration in the relationship is not just because President Trump is constrained, President Putin also really doesn’t have much of an interest in diffusing tension with the west because he has some internal dynamics.

He can’t deliver economic growth in this energy -- global energy market scenario. And as a result, he has to deliver psychological benefits. And the best way he’s been able to do that is by having this confrontation with the west and the United States in particular.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Susan, one of the places we see the -- the conflict play out is also in Syria, of course. And -- and -- and the president surprising so many with that announcement on Thursday that he wants to pull out of Syria.

GLASSER: You know, I found in many ways that was an extraordinary and very relevant -- if you’re trying to understand Trump -- foreign policy. What did he say? He said let other people take care of it. People talk about the post-American world. That was the post-American world in action. It’s time for other people to take care of it. Trump always has a feeling, it seems to me, when he talks about foreign policy that America’s getting cheated somehow, that other people aren’t doing the hard work of international relations.

And you know, even this action on Russia, we expelled diplomats, we talked tough, we joined our allies, and yet you never saw President Trump personally take responsibility for that or tweet about it or talk about it. And so I feel like there’s really a sense that America is very reluctantly acting to be what (ph) it is at all.

STEPHANOPOULOS: One place, Liz Sherwood, that the president may not want others to step in so aggressively is the -- is the conflict with North Korea. He seems to want that summit with Kim Jong-un for himself. Yet one of the things we saw this week is that extraordinary meeting between President Xi of China and Kim Jong-un, the first visit for -- by Kim Jong-un outside of North Korea. And the Financial Times reported yesterday that it came after a dramatic tightening of oil exports by China.

It seems like President Xi is trying to get in this game and signal that he’s in charge.

SHERWOOD-RANDALL: So this is very important, George. Because we have many interests in the Asian region that go beyond North Korea. So while we want to be aligned with China in putting pressure on North Korea and pursuing the negotiation that will ultimately lead to the denuclearization of North Korea, we have a long game to play in the region. And the Chinese interests and the American interests are not always aligned there.

So our goal needs to be to be firmly aligned with our -- our allies in the Republic of Korea in the South to develop a negotiating strategy that gives no opportunity for us to be pushed out of the region and no bargaining chip should be put on the table that would reduce the American troop presence, reduce our exercising with our allies there, or in any way push the United States out of the Asian region.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say that’s the greatest danger, getting pushed out of the region, but I want to bring that to Megan O’Sullivan. As we talk about this summit, my understanding that when Kim Jong-un, to the extent he may or may not talk about denuclearization, he means getting the United States out of the region.

O’SULLIVAN: Yes. When he says denuclearization, he’s talking about that only in the context of a peace treaty with the United States and a peace treaty is more than it sounds in the sense that a peace treaty includes, as Liz just mentioned, removal of U.S. forces, certainly from the peninsula, and potentially getting rid of the U.N. resolutions that have been in places since the end of the North -- of the Korean War.

So he’s definitely talking about a diminution (ph) of American presence in -- in Korea and as a result, in the region as a whole. And that relates to Japan, and obviously South Korea as well. So China’s not the only country that’s feeling a little nervous that this bilateral potential meeting could -- could squeeze out some larger interest of regional actors that are used to dealing with North Korea to the extent there was any diplomacy through a multi-party framework.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You said potential meeting. Liz, are you convinced the meeting’s going to happen? And what are the risks?

SHERWOOD-RANDALL: There are lots of risks in this meeting, George. First of all, as I noted, we could be in a situation in which we negotiate away something we need to preserve, and that is the American presence in the region. But I also see opportunities, because we have maximum economic pressure right now in place against North Korea. The North Koreans continue to build their arsenal. And that means the time is ripe for negotiation.

And Trump’s fiery rhetoric, which has the risk of escalating into a nuclear war, has created an incentive for everybody to come to the table. So we have some reason to have hope that this can lead us to a -- a new scenario that would be preferential for United States interest.

STEPHANOPOULOS: This is being prepared now by a new national security team for the president. John Bolton coming in as National Security Advisor, Mike Pompeo coming in as Secretary of State. We saw the first meeting this week between Bolton and Jim Mattis as Pentagon Secretary.