Can America lead the West?

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Greetings, welcome to Chatham House. I’m Leslie Vinjamuri, Director of the US and Americas Programme here at Chatham House. It is lovely to see so many of you here. I know we also have a large number of people dialled in for this evening’s conversation, betwee – bef – between two of the true greats, and I’m going to say a brief word about them and this is, before I quickly turn it over.

The first thing I wanted to say is, I was just thinking, I think per capita, in the United Kingdom and I would hesitate to say in Europe, this is a data-free analysis based on a huge amount of anecdotal evidence, per capita in the United Kingdom and in Europe, we have a higher level of emotional intensity, drama and deep concern about the future of the United States and the landmark election of November 5th than I think we do per capita in the United States of America. That means that our work here at Chatham House, and across Europe, and across the UK, ‘cause there are many people now in this very important ecosystem, is more important than ever.

And the willingness of people, like we have on stage tonight, both of them, to spend an hour with us talking about the United States, from the vantage point of literally decades of extraordinary experience, firsthand experience, in Washington, across the world, and I mean, really, both of these two gentleman, is remarkable. And from my point of view, as somebody who leads our work on the US here at Chatham House, I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I’m also very, very grateful for the people who turn up and who speak with us, so thank you.

Let me just say, before I turn it over to Sir David Manning, who will tell you about David Sanger, Chief Washington Correspondent, who’s been with The New York Times since 1982, I want to say a very few brief words about Sir David Manning. David Manning is one of the most gentle, thoughtful and remarkable people ever to have crossed through Chatham House. He spends a huge amount of time with us. He is Distinguished Fellow in the Director’s Office at Chatham House. He has been the Chair of the North America Atla – Advisory Council since before I was at Chatham House, through to 2024. And he has, to me, provided ongoing, thoughtful, remarkable insights and he’s just been a tremendous source of support and intelligence and eloquence and grace, in a way that – I think there are many people like that across the United Kingdom, but he really, in a crowd of giants, stands out in the most remarkable of way.

He’s, as you know, a retired Foreign Officer, Foreign Service Officer. He was, as you know, the – Britain’s Ambassador to the United States, 2003 to 2007, was once Britain’s Ambassador to Israel. As I was reading your bio, I noticed you were first KCMG, and then you were GCMG, which my in-laws used to always say to me is “God Calls Me God,” and if you know Sir David, you know that he never, ever has an air that matches the level of experience and the gift that he’s given to the UK and to the world. But I can just tell you that, don’t take him for granted, because it really is remarkable, David, it’s remarkable to have you at Chatham House.

So, I just wanted to thank you before the two of you begin. 1972, 1982, when you both began the main part of your respective careers, so we have decades of experience on the stage, and I am really looking forward to this event, which is on the record. Thank you so much. Please join me in thanking both of them [applause].

Sir David Manning

Well, ladies and gentlemen, please hold your applause for the other David, who’s actually the great one here. I can’t possibly follow that, but please don’t leave, because you will get the real deal over here on my left. Leslie’s touched on David’s extraordinary career, and we are extremely lucky to have him here this afternoon to address this question that we are going to discuss, “Can America lead the West?” David is currently the White House and National Security Correspondent, and he has been reporting on the Biden administration with a focus on foreign policy, and very interestingly, I think, its intersection with technology, as well as politics and superpower conflict. And we will get to that, I hope.

I should add that David has been the winner of three Pulitzer Prizes, not on his own, I believe, but in teams, and most recently, one which is certainly relevant to us this afternoon, on the uncovering Russia’s role and interference in the 2016 US election. Now, he’s the author of three books, and the most recent one, which is a magisterial survey, is here and it’s called “New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West.” And within that context, we are going to explore each of those propositions, I hope, with David this afternoon.

It will be a useful guide, I hope, to this massive subject. It will be the thread, David, that we will follow, and I thought I would just set the scene a little bit by reflecting on this title, “New Cold Wars.” You make a point in your book of insisting on the plural. As an old Cold War warrior, as Leslie has pointed out from my career, I am so old I remember living through, professionally, the first Cold War, or the old Cold War, if I may call it that. And when I was reading your book, I was reflecting on the similarities and differences, and thinking about the fact that that Cold War, from just after the Second World War to the collapse of the USSR, was essentially a confrontation between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its satellites. And it did have global implications, of course it did, but those were the principal actors.

This now feels very different, and asking you to reflect on why there are more than one, as it were, Cold War to confront is certainly part of the crux of this discussion. Now the United States has to face Russia, but it also has to face a China unimaginably different from the China that certainly you and I knew at the early parts of our careers. And it also has to contend with a Global South, if that’s the term we’re going to use, that is much more important in what is emerging as a multipolar system than certainly, the old, what we called “Third World” in the first Cold War. So, how does America cope with that?

There’s also, I mean, an enormous difference in that when we had the old Cold War, it was basically, ideological, it was military, it was political. It wasn’t really economic, certainly not as it is now. They – the two, as it were, great contenders, were not economically intermeshed in the same way. Today, China and United States may confront one another, but they’re enormously interconnected economically. So, what does that mean for these new cold wars, even if that’s not true to anything like the same degree with Russia and United States now?

And the other thing that I would like you to reflect on is how American society has changed. During the post-Cold – post-Second World War period until the end of the Cold War, of course America had divisions, it had arguments with itself. We had the whole question of the Vietnam War, there was Watergate. So, it’s – it would be completely wrong to say that the polarisation that we see in America now is new. But it feels to me much more profound. It feels to me American politics is now the politics of confrontation internally, that you’re not looking for compromise, you’re looking for reasons not to compromise. And how does that affect the way that the current US administration, or any US administration, must confront this much more complicated world of new cold wars?

So, David, would you just begin, for a few minutes, reflecting on why you have chosen to pluralise this, what is similar, and what, actually, is profoundly different?

David E. Sanger

Well, thank you, David, and before I start, I want to thank all of you for coming, Leslie for a nice introduction, and David for spending your time doing this. When I first heard that you were going to moderate this discussion, I thought, this is fabulous. David Manning has agreed to come out and ask the questions on this. And then I thought, wait a minute, this could be payback. What was it that I went to go see him at around – and during the Iraq War, during your time at – more than one time when The New York Times was getting ready to go publish something that I’m sure the British Government did not care for us to publish.

So, whatever it is, I want to pre-emptively apologise, especially now that we have reversed the roles here, and you’re – so, this is a book, David, of reporting. It is – it’s not a academic essay on the question of new cold wars, how to define them and so forth. Although I hope along the way, we take that up. And it really comes – the first 150 pages of it, come out of the first nearly 40 years I was at The New York Times, as I started covering a world that was still in the old Cold War.

But mostly, when I got back to Washington, after a happy life as a Foreign Correspondent in Japan for six years, and I got back exactly 30 years ago, it was 1994, and the Washington that I arrived in was working from an extraordinarily undisputed theory of the case of how the world was going to lay out for the next generation. And it was that Russia and China, each in their own way, each for their own reasons, would fundamentally join the institutions of the West. That we would slowly bring them in, China into the WTO. Russia, you may recall, I think while you were Ambassador, had the Russia-NATO Council. You’d go into the NATO, the old NATO headquarters, which none of us miss, right, and immediately to the left as you came through the gate, there was this office for the Russia-NATO Council.

And the book opens, in its first, sort of, substantive chapter after the outbreak of the Ukraine War, but when we wind you back in time, to a river trip down the Neva River, at probably exactly this week in June, or maybe a few days earlier, in 2002. And it was George Bush and his wife, Putin and his then wife. They had just been to a performance of The Nutcracker that had been written by a former Soviet dissident who had been in – she had been invited back in, and had done a reinterpretation of The Nutcracker, which George Bush later told me was the weirdest Nutcracker he had ever been to.

And as they were floating down the river, it was night-time, the sun stays up ‘til 11 o’clock at that time in St. Petersburg, there’s this hulking guy in the background who’s serving dinner, puts everybody on the stage. No surprise who he is. This was my first view of Prigozhin. I didn’t know who Prigozhin was at the time. And as I reconstructed the conversation, with the help of Condi Rice and others who were there at the time, they were discussing Russia joining the EU. They were discussing whether Russia might make the leap to actually join NATO, and you probably remember these discussions taking place while you were Ambassador at the time.

When we look back at that era, the reason I wrote the book was to say, how did we get this so wrong? Was this an intelligence failure? Was it a awful case of incredibly optimistic thinking, basically, hope getting out beyond reality? Was it a very American tendency to assume that other societies are driven by the same thing we’re driven by? And so that Russia’s desire to keep its oil flowing into Europe, that China’s desire to open up new markets in the US and elsewhere would mean that they would put aside, they would subjugate for a while, all of their territorial concerns, all of their concerns about subjugating certain ethnic minorities, particularly Muslim minorities. That, yes, it would be rocky, these were not going to become Jeffersonian Democrats, but that, fundamentally, they had every single incentive to join the Western institutions.

Today, they have gathered together in a bit of an partnership, I wouldn’t call it an alliance, that is unified by one thought, which is, there needs to be an alternative to this Western system, and they are doing everything they can to build it. I remind people that seven years ago, when I spent a year of my life covering the Iran nuclear negotiations, a year I will never get back, it was the Russians and the Chinese who were sitting on our side of the table. If those negotiations got started again tomorrow, and they will not, they would be at the table, but not on our side.

Sir David Manning

Yeah.

David E. Sanger

Right? Tomorrow, Vladimir Putin is going to North Korea. We have rarely seen a world leader go to the North, but it was Russia and China who were helping contain the North Korean nuclear programme. They weren’t doing it super-actively. They’ve always shipped them some missile material and all that. But today, they are so dependent on them and that is what makes the new cold wars so different, that and one other element that you alluded to, the technology interchange.

I would say that particularly with China, while there is an economic, a political and a military competition underway, there is fundamentally, a technological competition underway that underlies the military, the economic and the political. That is the primary arena where we are coming to head. And Biden’s decisions, which we can go into later, to cut off some of the most advanced technology, particularly to make semiconductors, but not only semiconductors, is the first thing the United States has done to China in the longest time that has made Chinese leaders scream at the US. Because the pain it’s causing is real, and I think the reaction it’s causing may take us to places we don’t want to go.

One last thought on the title, ‘cause we debated a lot. There are a lot of Academics who are uncomfortable with the concept of “New Cold Wars,” because they say, “No, no, no, this is so different than the old one.” And my answer to that is, “That’s why the word ‘new’ is here, and it’s the first word in the title. And ‘cold’ is the only thing that is common to them, but the great thing about the Cold War is because of people like you, we worked really hard for a long time to keep it cold, and the question of this book is, can we still do that?”

And that’s at the end, on ‘Wars’, is not only about the fact that we are now confronting two major adversaries, Russia and China, but that they are working together, increasingly, in a way that we nev – not only have not seen before, but that that was exactly the mission that Kissinger and Nixon were out to interfere with, actually, the years that you started, just as you were starting in the British Foreign Service. And this worried Kissinger in his last months. I was the author of The New York Times 10,000 word obituary of Henry Kissinger, and I spent a lot of time with him in his last few years, working on that. It’s always a little bit difficult to sit down somebody and work on their obituary but, you know, it’s got to be done, in The New York Times. You just say, “I’m writing about your life.” And the thing that worried him the most was that the grand accomplishment of his time was becoming undone.

Sir David Manning

Yeah. David, I’d like to come back to that in due course, this question of partnership without limits, which you’ve alluded to between Russia and China, which is new and, as you say, is exactly the opposite of what Kissinger advocated, and, also, whether there is such a things as an axis of resistance. But before we turn to that, can I take you back, please, to China? Because China is an extraordinary phenomenon over the last 50 years, and has become a superpower from where it – we all know it was under Mao Tse-tung. Who would have guessed that now it would be the main rival to the United States? And I’d like you to reflect a little bit on how this happened, because certainly, when I was in Washington, and now it’s a long time ago, Bob Zoellick used to tell me, “What we want is a China that is a responsible stakeholder in our…

David E. Sanger

That was a great…

Sir David Manning

…system.”

David E. Sanger

…phrase, yeah.

Sir David Manning

And it didn’t seem unreasonable, and it looked as though we were perhaps witnessing the ‘peaceful rise’, as it was known, and that with the sorts of initiatives that United States took, and you mentioned the WTO for Russia, but this is also true for China, maybe China was going to be integrated into the post-World War II system that we all were used to, and it hasn’t happened. And is that down, essentially, to, in your view, the arrival of Xi Jinping? I mean, in Xi Jinping we suddenly have a complete turning away, an apparent belief that, in his words, “The East is going to rise inexorably and the decadent West is going to fall inexorably,” and that is it only a matter of time before China becomes dominant. And Kevin Rudd has talked about the wish the Chinese have to establish an Eastern Hemisphere which belongs to them, essentially.

Is it because he is assertive, he is nationalistic? Is he – is it because he is a convinced Marxist? Does he believe his own propaganda? And do you see any sign that, recently, with the setback that China’s had over COVID, the stuttering economy now, the, I would argue, relative success of the Biden administration in constructing a, sort of, network of alliances to contain China, and perhaps, some recognition in the Global South that borrowing money from the Chinese isn’t all a good idea, are we seeing some, kind of, bottom put underneath…

David E. Sanger

Yeah.

Sir David Manning

…this risk of moving from co-operation to confrontation and possible conflict? Or is Graham Allison going to be right, is, as he calls it, “the Thucydides’s Trap,” you know, unavoidable? Do you think there’s going to be a war over Taiwan, over the South China Sea?

David E. Sanger

So, we’ll start at the end of your question. There’s a lot in there. Graham and I teach the main national security case study course at Harvard, so we spend a semester trying to argue that out, and then the students have to go figure out which one of us they believed. I think our views are coming increasingly into accord, unfortunately for the students.

I would say this. First of all, it wasn’t a terrible bet with China that it would sign up to the American institutions, back when Bob Zoellick was talking about ‘responsible stakeholder’. The problem is, we went with the bet for too long when the evidence began to arg – come the other way. So, let’s start with when China came into the WTO. The economy was still very – their economy was still very small.

Sir David Manning

Yeah.

David E. Sanger

There’s a story in here where I go with Bob Rubin on what was just the second Treasury Secretary – American Trea – Sec – Treasury Secretary’s trip to China. And on the flight over, I said to him, “Bob, you must have been to China a lot when you were Chairman of – CEO of Goldman Sachs.” He said, “No,” he said, “I’ve actually never been.” I said, “How could that be?” He said, “Their economy wasn’t big enough for us to look at.”

Sir David Manning

Yeah, hmmm.

David E. Sanger

Okay, so, this was 1995/…

Sir David Manning

Right.

David E. Sanger

…1996, so that tells you how far we’ve come. That basically, they were such a rounding error that Goldman Sachs couldn’t be bothered.

Sir David Manning

Yeah.

David E. Sanger

Okay, just to level set everybody here for a moment, okay. So, then, as a result, Bob, Charlene Barshefsky, who was the Trade Representative who ushered them in, did the negotiations on their entry into the WTO, all told me and my Co-Author and Researcher, Mary Brooks, in the course of our interviews, that there was never a discussion of China’s military – future military capability during that time, which seems just astounding to us today.

So, what did we miss? What we missed was that on the one hand, they had two Presidents in a row who talked about joining Western institutions, and moved in that direction, which is when Zoellick did the responsible stakeholder, without looking at the evidence that the Chinese military and the technological side of the country were moving off in a very different direction, because we wanted to believe the first story. Then Xi Jinping was coming along and everybody was nervous about suddenly, whether – where they – he could take the country. And so, they assigned somebody in the Obama administration to go get to know him, travel around the world with him and really understand what makes him tick. And because Xi was essentially the Vice-President at the time, they gave this job to a guy named Joe Biden.

Sir David Manning

Yeah.

David E. Sanger

And they travelled the world together. Xi came, they took him to Iowa, back to a family that he had visited when he was an Agricultural Bureaucrat and had lived in their teenager’s room in this little town in Iowa, something Xi still talks about. They had these long conversations. I describe some of them that took place in the Observatory, the Vice President’s residence. And Xi gave off no indication, I am told by everybody, Biden included, at the time, that he had this, sort of, secret agenda. But we now know that within weeks of coming into office, he gathered his military together and said, “We are going to abandon Mao’s minimum nuclear deterrent and begin to build up, so that when the Americans and the Russians come after us to go talk about nuclear arms control, we have, basically, the same numbers that they do.”

He began the very aggressive activity in the South China Sea, even though he had stood in the Rose Garden session I was at, with Obama, and said, “We will never militarise it.” And then, a year later, here we are at The New York Times, publishing satellite photographs of fighter jets landing on newly created landing strips in the South China Sea. So, that was the biggest intelligence failure of modern times, to my mind. We talk about Iraq, you remember this well, and bitterly, I’m sure. We talk about Pakistan and India.

My own view is that getting Xi Jinping wrong was probably, in many ways, the most consequential of these steps. I don’t think he’s interested in communism, even briefly. I think he is an avowed nationalist. I think he believes, and his leadership believes, profoundly, that we are a cracking apart society, that our own internal divisions will chop us up. Every time he turns on CNN, he probably has that decision…

Sir David Manning

Yeah.

David E. Sanger

…reinforced. When January 6th happened, it was really interesting. The Russians took that video and they broadcast it out to the world and said, “Look, at America, right? This is corrupt, right?” The Chinese took the video and they broadcast it internally to their own people, say, “Still interested in democracy? Here’s what it looks like.”

Sir David Manning

David, let me take you back to the Kissinger point. As America looks at this effective alliance, partnership, whatever you want to call it, that has now emerged, and emerged in public just before Putin invaded Ukraine, this ‘partnership without limits’, is it possible to work to divide these two while Putin is still there? Is that American policy, or is Washington now resigned to the fact that over the next ten/15 years, however long Putin lasts and Xi Jinping lasts, it’s faced with this double threat?

David E. Sanger

It’s fascinating you ask that, David, because in the beginning of the Biden administration, and I walk you through this in the book, there was division of opinion, internally, about whether or not the Russia-China relationship was real. And one day, with a group of other Reporters, I sat down with Colin Kahl, who you may remember was the number three in the Pentagon. He’s a Stanford Professor, really smart, with-it guy, and he was the first one to say, on the record, to us, many had mumbled it in background conversations and so forth, “There’s something real going on here, and it’s deeper than you really think.” And Xi and Putin have now met 50 times. As President, do you know how many time Joe Biden has met Putin?

Sir David Manning

Twice?

David E. Sanger

Once, it was three years ago yesterday. It was the Geneva meeting…

Sir David Manning

Right.

David E. Sanger

…over the colonial pipeline hack. They mentioned Ukraine briefly, but only briefly, in the course of that. The relationship between Putin and Xi is real. The question is how deep it is. Right now, they have such a merging of interests, that I don’t think they need to attack the question of how it is. It can’t be easy for Putin. When Soviet leaders used to go deal with Mao, they had all the money, they had all the influence, and while Mao drove them crazy and many of them – Khrushchev wrote about this in his memoirs, they were definitely in the superior position. Putin is clearly not.

But something has changed in this relationship, even in the past six months to a year, and I actually think most Americans and many Europeans may have missed this. At the outbreak of the war, the weekend before the war happened, when only the British and the Americans were walking around the Munich Security Conference saying, “This guy’s going to invade,” all the rest of the Europeans said, “Yeah, it’s all bluff,” right? It’s a opening story in the book. Wang Yi, the leading Chinese Diplomat, appeared via video, still COVID days, and said, “We Chinese believe in the sovereignty of all nations, including Ukraine.” He would not say that today.

Sir David Manning

No.

David E. Sanger

And what’s happened and what’s changed in the past six to eight months, is that the amount, the pace, of Chinese export of high technology goods that the Russians need to rebuild their military has just soared. And they’re being very careful, they’re not providing full weapons, they are providing everything the Chinese need to make the full weapons. All of them are dual-use goods. They can make an argument, “This is normal trade,” and that they are helping the Russians get around an unfair embargo set up by the United States, Britain and its – their European allies. One Senior Administration Official in Washington said to me over dinner two weeks ago that “The Chinese are systemically rebuilding the Russian military.” That was not the case even a year ago.

To your question, what’s the plan to interrupt it? I can’t get anybody in Washington to give me a straight answer on this. We have this little debate coming up next week between Trump and Biden, and I’m a CNN contributor, and a colleague of mine at CNN said to me last week, “If you had one foreign policy question to go ask these two,” which is probably about as much foreign policy they’ll have to – as they will have time for in the debate, “what would it be?” And I would say my answer to that would be, “You each have said nothing about the coming together of China and Russia. Describe to me in brief what your strategy would be, starting on January 20th, to divide these two.” I don’t even know if Former President Trump is interested in dividing the two. I know Biden is interested in dividing the two, but I’m not sure he’s got ideas beyond what he has done so far, which I agree with you, have been quite innovative, to make that happen.

Sir David Manning

And, David, as an extension, I want to move onto Russia, but just one more question on this. Obviously, as you have said, they have now prayed in aid the support of North Korea and of Iran, but is there an axis of resistance? Is this sup – is it superficial, or is this going to be an organising principle of international relations?

David E. Sanger

The title of the book would make you think that I came out of the reporting from this thinking it will be the organising principle for the next 20 or 30 years. What’s interesting is how long it took Washington to come to that conclusion. It wasn’t until President Trump’s second National Security Advisor came in and began to work on the National Security Strategy that the US got to a National Security Strategy that didn’t place terrorism as the organising principle of American foreign policy…

Sir David Manning

Yeah.

David E. Sanger

…and said, “superpower conflict is back.” And that was I think McMaster’s great contribution as National Security Advisor. You may argue with specifics that were in it. He got the document written to, sort of, guide the government that way. Unfortunately, he never convinced his boss, who presented the document by going out into the Rose Garden and describing why terrorism should be the central organising principle, but we’ll set that aside for a moment. Biden has accelerated that, and it has now permeated The Pentagon in a way that it had not when I even started the reporting in the book. What struck me at the G7 last week is that while that is certainly, I think, the accepted wisdom here in Britain, I am not sure that it is accepted wisdom among most of the members of the G7.

Sir David Manning

Right. Well, I would love to continue this, but I’m not going to, because I want to go onto the next element in your title, which is about Russia’s invasion, David. And here we are, and I remember the period that you were talking about in your introduction so vividly, when first of all, I was Ambassador in NATO, and we had meetings of the Russia-NATO Council. And then I was involved with those talks that Prime Minister Blair had with Putin, trying to discuss how far it might be possible to bring Russia closer into European and Transatlantic institutions, and certainly at the time, it felt like a very real effort. All that feels unimaginable now.

So, how do we live with a revanchist, imperialist Putin, who has launched the biggest war in Europe since 1945? First of all, our response, do sanctions work, and what is the right position to be taking with Ukraine? There are those who think – admire what Biden has done, he’s been very staunch. There are those who say, “Yes, but all he does is it’s enough that they don’t lose but they’re never going to win.” How much is that because the Biden administration, you touch about this in your book, is worried about the nuclear threat? What do we do to manage this very dangerous relationship with Putin? And do you think that we should, at the same time as confronting Putin now, be thinking about what offer we should make to a post-Putin Russia, we’ve no idea, it could be worse, but it might be better, so that out there, there is a vision that Russians can have that isn’t this one of military confrontation over Ukraine?

David E. Sanger

Let me start with the vision of post-Putin Russia, and we’ll back up into the other. We only had about 12 hours where we could imagine a post-Putin Russia, and it was those 12 hours that Prigozhin…

Sir David Manning

Yeah.

David E. Sanger

…had moved from standing in the back, on that yacht I was describing, to marching toward Moscow. And there’s a scene in the book that opens with – it was a Saturday morning, I’m sure many of you remember this, and the Situation Room was under reconstruction. And so, Biden and all of his aides met down in the Ward Room of the White House, which is right at the base of the stairs for the Situation Room, sort of, a crowded in room. And they’ve got this CNN feed, or TV feed, coming in, and they’re watching, and they can’t figure out where the Russian military is. And while they’re watching this, a debate breaks out among them that says, “What would be worse, a Russia run by Putin or a Russia run by Prigozhin?”

Sir David Manning

Yeah.

David E. Sanger

And they started arguing with each other, and at some point, Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, who’s one of the most interesting and driving forces in the administration today, basically, steps in and says, “We’re better with Putin.” And I would say that the vote that day, from the best I could, kind of, put it out, was roughly 60/40. Now the debate ended pretty quickly, ‘cause Prigozhin gave up, got these assurances from Belarus. Everything was fine ‘til he stopped on the wrong airplane. But that was the last time that we could imagine what a post-Putin Russia might look like, and you don’t hear it discussed today.

To your question of how they fought the war, Joe Biden is incredibly cautious, and he is incredibly cautious because he grew up in that old Cold War period that you referred to, and he believed, and I think was right to believe, that the possibilities of nuclear escalation were real. And if you’re looking for one moment that crystalised this, and I devote nearly an entire chapter to it, it was October of 2022, on the week that was the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And US intelligence had picked up conversations among Russian Generals, in which for the first time they were discussing removing tactical nuclear weapons from storage and preparing them for use against Ukrainian targets.

Now, it’s possible they were holding this conversation for our benefit. You’ve seen that happen before. They knew from the runup to the war that the US and Britain were pretty plugged into their communication systems. But it seemed real, and everyone from Jake Sullivan to Tony Blinken to the President himself thought that there was a 50/50 chance of a nuclear detonation in the next few weeks. And one evening in the middle of this, Biden goes up to New York for a fundraiser, kind of like, the one that he ran this weekend in Hollywood. And he shows up in the living room of James Murdoch, the black sheep son Democrat of the Murdoch family. And there were all these nice New Yorkers who were walking around with glasses of white wine looking at the art collection, and Biden comes in and says, “We are as close today to a nuclear detonation as we have been at any moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis.” And he didn’t mean, like, in the next few months, or the next few years, he meant in the next few weeks. There were people in that room thinking, how quickly do I get the kids out to The Hamptons?

You know, and it was the first revelation that we had that he actually thought this was going to happen, and he wasn’t wrong. And I think if you consider the downside of being wrong there, right? The – of having to prevent that, you understand differently why he was so slow to give them attack guns, why he resisted giving them tanks, why he resisted giving them F-16s, which they promised a year ago and still are not flying with, and why, most importantly, he said, until three weeks ago, “Thou shalt not fire American weapons into Russian territory.”

And that only changed after Tony Blinken came back from a trip to Ukraine a few weeks ago and went to him on a Friday night. And you read about this in The New York Times, I hope, and said, “The war has changed. The Russians are using the President’s reluctance to fire – American weapons to be fired in to their advantage. So, they are firing on the Ukrainians from Russian territory, and we’ve got to change that rule.” And reluctantly, Biden did it, and here we are, two weeks out, and we haven’t started a nuclear war yet, I’m pleased to say.

But there is a red line out there someplace, David. I don’t know where it is. There is some point at which you would push Putin…

Sir David Manning

Yeah.

David E. Sanger

…that he would, I think…

Sir David Manning

Invading Crimea? Re-invasion of Crimea? Retaking of Crimea?

David E. Sanger

That has certainly been one that is most discussed.

Sir David Manning

Yeah.

David E. Sanger

Now, he may not feel pressure to do it right now, because until a week ago, he had the momentum. Now that the arms are beginning to flow, he does not have quite as much. But to your broader point about the divisions we have here, what’s the difference between now and the beginning of the war three years ago? Three years ago, it was hard to find many Republicans who were saying, “We don’t want any part of this.”

Sir David Manning

Hmmm, yeah.

David E. Sanger

A majority of the Republican Party in the House voted against that bill to give the $61 billion. Even if Joe Biden gets elected, re-elected, in November, it’s going to be really hard to push another…

Sir David Manning

Yeah.

David E. Sanger

…one through. If you’re Putin, what’s your – your best bet is to sit back and wait and see who wins that election.

Sir David Manning

And David, we’ll come onto that in a moment. I’m very conscious of this…

David E. Sanger

Sure.

Sir David Manning

…the tyranny clock in front of me, because I know that there are lots and lots of questions. But there are two more areas I want to just get your views on, before we go to questions. The first is to come back to this point about the American approach to – the Western approach to, if we use the old terminology, the so-called ‘Global South’. Because the world is much more complicated than it was in terms of power centres when certainly, I was a Diplomat, and we have got the rise of the BRICS, and it’s very interesting. We see at this conference over the weekend on peace for Ukraine that the BRICS refused to endorse the communique that says…

David E. Sanger

But we’re…

Sir David Manning

…“We must base it on territorial integrity.” So, we see…

David E. Sanger

India voted no, South Africa…

Sir David Manning

Sou…

David E. Sanger

…voted no.

Sir David Manning

Exactly.

David E. Sanger

I’m trying to remember who else was…

Sir David Manning

And China didn’t turn up, of course.

David E. Sanger

China never showed and Brazil…

Sir David Manning

And Brazil, India and South Africa did not…

David E. Sanger

Yeah, that’s right.

Sir David Manning

…endorse it. So, why have we reached the point where it is so difficult, do you think, for America and most of its partners to, as it were, impress upon what we’ll call the Global South, the need for such a ringing endorsement? After all, it’s in the UN Security Council – UN Security Charter. And how far is there a serious problem of double standards? One of the issues, certainly, that you hear is, “Well, you guys are willing to do whatever it takes for Ukraine, but you won’t do anything for Palestine.”

David E. Sanger

That’s right.

Sir David Manning

What is the – is there a way through for the United States to improve its position with the Global South?

David E. Sanger

This is what I think we have done the worst in our diplomacy on. Part of what you’re seeing comes from a strong desire among each of these countries to avoid doing what – as I characterise in a chapter of the book, one South East Asian Diplomat put it to me one day over dinner, he said, “Don’t make us choose.” They’re constantly feeling as if they are being made to choose between being in the Chinese camp or the China-Russia camp, and being in the American camp.

Sir David Manning

Yeah.

David E. Sanger

And that what they were able to go do during the old Cold War, which is have the non-aligned movement be respected for staying non-aligned, isn’t working right now. And in part, David, I would argue that goes back to the technology competition, because that is the area where we are really making countries make a choice. “You want to use Huawei? Great. Don’t expect to be doing anything in the national security sphere with us, because that data’s going right back to Beijing.” You – in the semiconductor arena. or in AI, you’ve got to decide which you’re going to be in.

The most interesting investment the United States – I think an American company has made this year was hatched not in a boardroom, but in the Situation Room. It was the Microsoft billion and a half dollars in a company called G42 in the United Arab Emirates, AI company. Won’t go into detail about what they do. What motivated the investment was the American fear that China was going to invest in them and have a back door to our AI technology.

And so, I called Gina Raimondo, you and I were discussing earlier, who’s the Commerce Secretary and one of the most interesting members of the administration, former Governor of Rhode Island, and she’s the one who’s designed the China sanctions. And said to her, “I understand you guys cooked up this arrangement.” And she said, “That’s right, David,” she said, “because when it comes to emerging technology, you cannot be in the China camp and the American camp. You have to make a choice.”

And that’s what we’re seeing happen time and time again. Whether it is on Israel-Gaza, whether it is on Ukraine, they feel – the Indians feel, the Brazilians feel, others, that they are constantly being made to say, “You’re either going to be on A Team or B Team,” and the world isn’t like that. And that’s what worries me about the hardening of iron curtains, because we are definitely pushing in that direction. We would say publicly, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, you don’t have to make a choice,” but at the end of the day, we are making countries say, “You’re going to align yourself with a certain set of institutions and a certain set of technologies that bind us together.”

Sir David Manning

Yeah.

David E. Sanger

Remember what happened when Italy was thinking about using Huawei? The US, this was during the Trump administration, said, “Terrific, I’m not quite sure you become a former member of NATO, but that’s one way.”

Sir David Manning

Which is a great segue, David, for me, because I must have two minutes and then open the floor. But I can’t end this discussion with you, or this session with you, without asking you to reflect on the mood among America’s partners and allies, and their view of the United States. Leslie alluded to this at the beginning and said…

David E. Sanger

Hmmm hmm.

Sir David Manning

…with what fascination and trepidation, perhaps, we are following American political developments, arguably, at least as closely, perhaps, as our own, at the moment. What is it, do you think, that is at the root of this? We’ve had the disconcerting, let’s put it, experience of a Trump administration. We’ve had the uncertainty around the Biden foreign policy with staunch support for Ukraine, but apparently, pulling out with very little notice from Afghanistan. There is the worry in Europe about what will happen if Trump comes back. There is the whole question of, how protectionist is America going to be? How possible is it – how can we co-operate? What is going – what are going to be the – and there is, essentially, I think, at the root of this, a worry about something I spoke about at the beginning, what is happening to American society and American politics? So, putting that together, and asking you to do this in a horribly…

David E. Sanger

Sure.

Sir David Manning

…quick time, what is it, do you think, that we should take away from our impression of United States at the moment? I mean, can America lead, to come back to this question, and on top of that, does it want to lead?

David E. Sanger

So, I think the last question gets to the heart of it, which is that during the Cold War, there was no doubt that the two parties, while they may differ on strategy, both felt like the US was the indispensable nation and did have to lead. And the argument was, are we spending enough? Are we putting our priorities in the right place? And the thing I would urge you to do before that debate happens on – next Thursday – a week from Thursday, is go back and download on YouTube the Nixon and Kennedy debates.

Turn the video off, so that you are not focused on who was sweating, who looked young and vigorous. Just listen to the discussion. It was an incredibly high-level conversation about mostly nuclear deterrents, but basically, how do you stop what they thought at the time was an expansion of the Soviet Union? And ask yourself two questions, could the America of today sit still for that conversation, at that level? No. Did we get dumber over the ensuing 63 years since we’ve done that, 64 years, or did we instead, lose the confidence that it was in our – to our advantage to engage with the US?

By virtue of the fact that you are sitting in Chatham House today, you are probably in the engagement camp. You are probably in the camp that believes that alliances are our great force multiplier. You spent your career doing that. I used it as an assumption in my journalism, and that assumption is not shared by a huge swath of Americans, and it would look from the early results in Europe, by many Europeans, as well. Any country that rejected Brexit got a good early dose of that, and I would argue that Brexit itself, or I should say accepted Brexit – that Brexit itself should have been an early indicator to us of where our own country’s politics were headed. Because the roots of the Brexit argument are the roots of the, “We can just build high walls and if anybody comes after us, we’ll deal with them, but for the rest of it, we’re not going to spend our time and money to go do it.” And that’s the core of the Donald Trump thinking, and that’s the core of America First.

And I have to conclude with a confession to you. You – some of you have read and unfortunately, it’s true, that the first time that Donald Trump heard or used ‘America First’ came when Maggie Haberman and I were interviewing him in 2016, and we had a foreign policy interview with him. And he was all over the map on, “I don’t care if the Japanese and the South Koreans get nuclear weapons,” and all kinds of stuff on immigra – and it was a Friday afternoon. And all I could think about was, how are we going to write this thematically for the Sunday paper? Because if you ever sat and talked to Donald Trump, getting a single theme out of the whole thing, it doesn’t really work, okay.

So, I turned to him, and I said, “You know, Mr Trump, what you’re – the totality of what you have talked to us about sounds a lot like the old ‘America First’ calls,” thinking that he would say to me, “I’m no Lindbergh, I’m not – I’m no isolationist.” But of course, he had never heard of Lindbergh as running the America First programme, as he later on admitted to me, he said, “I had no idea,” right? And then I thought – and then he said, “You know, David, I, kind of, like the sound of that.” Now, I think he would’ve gotten there anyway, let me go put that aside.

But that Sunday, we wrote our story, we mentioned the America First stuff and the “I like the sound of that.” And that Sunday, he was giving a rally, I think it was in Dallas, and he started shouting, ‘America First’. And I didn’t know this, and the next morning I come down and I make my coffee, and my wife comes down and I pour her a cup, and we had, I don’t know, CNN or Morning Joe or something on TV, and you – he – they have the tapes of him saying, “America First, America First.” And with that dripping, putting the knife in, thing that only a spouse can give you, she looked at me, took a sip on her coffee and said, “I hope you’re really proud of yourself.”

Sir David Manning

So, we owe it all to you, David.

David E. Sanger

There we are, and I think that the America First that we got in the first term was never really executed on, and I think the second term would be true believers.

Sir David Manning

Now, I’m going to take two questions from the hall and then, one from my iPad here. So, can I have the lady over there, please, and then a gentleman here in the blue jacket? But let’s start at the back there, please. Could you tell people who you are and could you be as succinct as possible, since I’ve chaired this so loosely?

Dr Patricia Lewis

I’ll do my best. I – this is Patricia Lewis, from Chatham House. I’m the Research Director for International Security here. So, first of all, I think big part of our problem is that politics is now having to entertain us, right?

David E. Sanger

Right.

Dr Patricia Lewis

But I wanted to go back to your discussion about when the fears rose about the stored nuclear weapons being moved. I won’t call them ‘tactical nuclear weapons’, ‘cause I think that that’s now a misnomer, I think that’s an old term from the Cold War, and it’s changed a lot since then. But it’s also why President Xi stepped in and spoke to Putin about not using nuclear weapons, right? And now we’ve got an embryonic process of US-China arms control, in which I understand that it is possible for them both to talk about things like the taboo of nuclear use, maybe having confidence building measures about no first use, etc., etc. So, what advice would you give to the Negotiators that are going from the United States, and what they might to do to make something real from that?

Sir David Manning

Okay, let’s now go here, please.

Samuel Gussans

Samuel Gussans, member of Chatham House. The question is in relation to the G7 conclusion last week. At the conclusion, Meloni said as follows. “If Putin does not withdraw from Ukraine, we will force him.” What is your comment on that?

Sir David Manning

And, David, a question here that I’ve got on my screen…

David E. Sanger

Hmmm hmm.

Sir David Manning

…a third one from Mohammed Haider Ali, “What are the most concerning impacts of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its stronger ties with the nations of South Asia and Africa?”

David E. Sanger

Great, three great questions. So, first, on your – the tactical nukes part. It is true that President Biden, Jake Sullivan, others, got to Xi Jinping, they got Chancellor Scholz to do go this, in part because he was visiting China, and got to India and Prime Minister Modi, and got them to say, “There is no place for the use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict.” That was good, but I wouldn’t rely on it, and I wouldn’t rely on it because, at the end of the day, I think the Chinese may well think that Putin has been able to wave the nuclear card so successfully in keeping the US and others within some limits, that it may be a tactic that they could learn from in a Taiwan crisis. So, I would not count on it.

When you said there was “an embryonic process on US arms control,” that is, let’s say, a generous way of using the word ‘embryonic’. There was one discussion that didn’t go very far, on artificial intelligence, where the thought was that you could get the Chinese and the Americans to agree that putting autonomous decision systems together for nuclear weapons was a bad idea. I think everybody in the room would probably sign up to that one, and they didn’t get very far with that. I think the Chinese view is, “We are happy to engage in these conversations when we have the same number of weapons that you do,” which means check back with us in 2035. That – you know, we can have a lot go wrong between now and then. There is no discussion that I’m aware of on no first use between China and the US.

On the G7, the with – you know, must withdraw, that’s also the US official position. The unofficial position is, what does Ukraine need? And at the end of the book, I argue it does not necessarily need the exact borders that it had in early February of 2022. What it needs are three things: a secure Kyiv so that the government cannot be overthrown, enough of their industrial cities free from war that they can get the economy going again, a pathway to the sea to get the wheat out again. Is it worth going after every single inch when, of course, the borders of Ukraine have moved over the course of the years?

And all I can do is say go back to what the North Koreans and the South Koreans had to work out in 1953, where there was an armistice that left it unclear where the border was, and many South Koreans were deeply unhappy with that at the time. Had we been able to say to the South Koreans, “I know it’s really hard to give up land, but if you fast forward by 70 years, you will have the world’s tenth or 11th largest economy, you will be one of the great makers of semiconductors and software in the world, you’ll have K-pop, and the North will not. What would you like more, the economic development and social development and political role that comes from that, or every inch of the land you argued with at the DMC?” And I think the vote today would be different than it was in 1953.

The last one was, what’s the most – what was that last…?

Sir David Manning

The question is, “What are the most concerning impacts of China’s Belt and Road Initiative…

David E. Sanger

Oh, China…

Sir David Manning

…and its stronger ties with the nations of South Asia and Africa?”

David E. Sanger

So, parts of this worry me. I discuss, you know, the Solomon Islands, the Pacific Islands, all of which were, sort of, key areas for commerce and influence and all that. Other parts don’t worry me, where the Chinese have overplayed their hand deeply, and you know, called in loans and suddenly said, “Oh, now, we own that port because you haven’t paid it back.” And I think they’ve – they’re beginning to realise that they’ve created a lot of bad will along the way, and what I don’t understand is why we have not taken the opportunity to go in and compete with that in a big way, in our own way.

Sir David Manning

I was very struck by the statistic in your book, David, that in nine – in 2021, eight countries owed the equivalent of 25% of their GDP to China.

David E. Sanger

That’s right.

Sir David Manning

I’m going to take two more. Can I pretend that we’re doing Brussels Time and stop the clock. Will you take…

David E. Sanger

Sure.

Sir David Manning

…two or three more questions?

David E. Sanger

I’ll take whatever you say.

Sir David Manning

So, can we – so, I’ll have this gentleman here, please, this gentleman here, and I only – furthest over this side, the gentleman in the front here. And then I’m afraid – David has very kindly said he will stay for a little while and talk, so there’s a chance to talk to him at the end, but I think we will have to stop the questions there.

Jonathan Paris

Hi, Jonathan Paris, former Middle East Fellow at the CFR. I’ll have to be elliptical here…

Sir David Manning

Sure.

Jonathan Paris

…to be brief, but Israel-Iran. You and I have had numbers of discussions since Clinton, especially during Stuxnet. Seems to me there was – you convinced me there was an equilibrium between the two, but until now I think it’s changed, and that is, I think that the strategic momentum in Iran has started to show in their decision-making. So, do you think that if there is an eruption in the North that Nasrallah provokes by bombing a civilian city, say Haifa, and killing a number of civilians, Israel will use that as an opportunity to degrade the nuclear installations in Tehran and Fordow?

Sir David Manning

Okay, second que – please. I can’t remember who I offered the second question to, I think here.

Saman Omar

Yes.

Sir David Manning

And the gentleman at the front here, please.

Saman Omar

Okay, I’m Saman Omar from Kurdistan, region of Iraq, University of Duhok – 66:33]. By chance, I’m visiting the London, so I said let try with Chatham House. My question please, Your Honour, I address it, “Can America Lead the West?” So, which America, under which Administration, Republic or Democratic? Second, which West, before Brexit, before Brexit or after Brexit? And in case not anymore can help or lead the West, so what wou – what your advice will be to the West to prepare for, like, doing or, like, keeping their national, I mean, interest safe, I mean, in the era of, like, Russian innovation and so forth? Thank you.

Sir David Manning

Okay, and here, please.

Andy Pica

Hello, my name’s Andy Pica, I’m from Columbia University in New York. Elbridge Colby was speaking earlier today in London, and obviously, perhaps a contender for National Security Advisor under a Trump administration. He obviously really reiterated the America First policy, and it was obviously, quite jarring, because obviously, there was an insinuation that alliances under a Trump administration perhaps wouldn’t hold the value that we’re seeing in – under the current administration. So, my question is, under the theme of today, if America under a Trump administration is unwilling to lead the West, or that is the global order, who will take the place of the US? Will it be geopolitical swing stages, the – in – the likes of Saudi Arabia, Indonesia? The list goes on. Thank you.

Sir David Manning

Right, David?

David E. Sanger

Sure. So, for the first question on would Israel move to degrade the nuclear installations? The Biden administration has been spending the past seven months doing everything they can to try to keep this from turning into a regional war. I think they would probably conclude this would be the fastest way to get to a regional war, because the US would be sucked in immediately. You can see what would happen. The Israelis would go after much practiced efforts to go at Natanz, and Fordow, it’s no accident that the Iranians told the IAEA last Friday that they were going to build their new centrifuges in Fordow. It’s the one that’s the hardest to bomb. It’s the one that’s deep down in.

And could it happen? It definitely could. What would happen when President Biden got on the phone to Netanyahu and said, “We can’t back you on this if you do this”? I mean, their relationship has been less than wonderful in recent times, and I think that would be the real push point. I could see Netanyahu deciding to go ahead and do it anyway.

On the second question, which was – I’m sorry, it came from you, right? So, if I understood correctly what you’re saying, what is it that countries would end up going off to do if you had a Republican come in, versus if you had a Democrat come in? And I think the answer to that is countries are all beginning to have Plan Bs under which they need their own defensive capabilities, that would make up for the American nuclear umbrella, the American non-nuclear umbrella. The problem is that the pace at which they are working on this is out of line with the urgency of the problem.

So, I spent a few months at the be – end of last year/the beginning of this year, working out of The Times office in Berlin, and it gave me a little bit of time to go off and talk to their defence establishment. And they’ve got a pretty good plan for building up the capabilities of the German military. But to do it, they would have to as – if they’re going to match their plans to budget, they would probably have to roughly double the current budget, and I’m not even sure that would take it, which would take us to 4% of German D – GDP. I’m not sure I have seen any country in Europe, with the possible exception of Britain itself, willing to go entertain that possibility.

And that takes us to Bridge Colby’s comments. He’s an interesting case, because he talks the line of America First, and I can understand why he does that, but he also believes that we have to be building up Taiwan dramatically and that we can’t do that and Ukraine at the same moment. And that’s a really interesting question. Can an American superpower defend two – one – two locations at once? And obviously, in Taiwan’s case, we’ve got more lengthy and detailed obligations to go do so than we do in Ukraine. And my answer to that is, that’s what being a superpower is all about, right? I mean, if you don’t think you can, like, sustain two different parts of the world at the same time, you are then just a regional power. That’s how you go and define them.

Sir David Manning

And David, there was one leading question which we will end on just there, asking are we going to have a Republican administration or are we going to have a Democrat?

David E. Sanger

Boy, I wish I could…

Sir David Manning

The really easy question?

David E. Sanger

I wish I could tell you that. I notice that The Economist this past week gave about a two-thirds likelihood that Trump would win.

Sir David Manning

Yeah.

David E. Sanger

Based on my – that – so, you know, this is like asking a Dentist about a heart surgery problem you had, okay. I do not cover domestic politics for The New York Times, right? I cover foreign affairs and national security for The New York Times, so I can’t tell you anything here that gives you any particular insight. Just my reading of the electoral map is that Biden, basically, has to be able to do a sweep now in which he gets every state that he got last time and makes up for some that he may well lose, like Arizona, for example, and so forth. He – it strikes me that if you were holding the election today, he has a somewhat harder path than Former President Trump does.

But we haven’t seen the first debate, we don’t know how that will work. I don’t think Trump came out of the last debates terribly well. You may remember he melted down in one of them, and I think that probably made a significant difference. We don’t know for either of them what would happen if there was a health episode between now and November 5th. We’ve all taken care of 78-year-olds, 81-year-olds. If my family experience is anything like what I suspect yours was, things go wrong at a relatively rapid pace at that time. Little things, big things, little things that you think are big, big things that present themselves first as little, and that could happen.

And then comes the third concern I have, and as somebody whose last book was “The Perfect Weapon,” the book about cyber, what’s my biggest worry about the election as it comes? It’s not purely an information warfare thing, although we’re seeing a lot of that happen. I think we’re all so on edge right now about information warfare and stuff that we will be relatively quick to go identify them. It is what happens when you combine a not terribly sophisticated cyber or ransomware attack that locks up a couple of key states. A few of you may have noticed the city of Cleveland has been, like, down for the – their operations, for the past week and a half, with what was – it’s pretty, like, standard run of the mill ransomware.

Supposing that happens in an election registration system, and then is followed by a sophisticated information operation that basically, says, “This is evidence that the system is being rigged.” Because to make an information operation work, you need to have just enough kernel of truth that the conspiracy theory takes off by itself, and that’s my, actually, biggest concern between now and then.

Sir David Manning

Right. Well, very reluctantly, I have to bring this to a close. You allowed us, very generously, to steal another 15 minutes. My apologies to those of you whose questions I didn’t reach. I can only tell you there is one way to solve this, read the book. David, thank you very much…

David E. Sanger

Thank you.

Sir David Manning

…indeed, [applause] for coming, it’s been wonderful to speak to you [applause].

David E. Sanger

Thank you very much.