Meghan. Really happy to have alex natasha here tonight. I talk about the book, the internationalists. Alex is a National Security reporter at politico and the first anchor of National Security daily. Previously, alex was the white house and National Security reporter at vox. Hes an associate director at the Atlantic CouncilsScowcroft Center on interNational Security, where he worked on military issues and u. S. Foreign policy. Hes won multiple prestigious awards for his reporting in form part of the team that was recognized as, a finalist for the pulitzer prize. He lives here in washington, d. C. , just over the border, washington, d. C. And were also delighted to have in conversation with alex tonight, natasha bertrand, whos a National Security correspondent for ccn, then based in washington, d. C. As well. So lets give it up for alex. Natasha, thanks so much for being here. Thank you, guys. Should i use this migration . Okay. Thank you guys for coming. Im super excited to be talking to alex about his great new book, the internationalists. It really does chart the rise. Bidens Foreign Policy team as such that he has around them currently around him, currently. And it does a great job of going through his first couple of years in the many crises in the Foreign Policy world that that they have faced. So i kind of want to start there and you dedicate really the beginning of your book to talking a lot about it how this team kind of came together before biden was even really considered the front runner as the democratic nominee and how they all kind of knew each other and they were kind of disillusioned or shouldnt even say kind of theyre extremely disillusioned by the 2016 election. And the fact that trump won. And they thought there was a real for a kind of new for Foreign Policy, one that connected with the american middle class, something that Jake Sullivan, the National Security adviser, talks a lot about. So kind of start there. Just like what was their vision coming into the Administration Given this and how did everything kind of get turned upside down with what they wanted to do . Well, first, thank you to peoples book for hosting. Thank to you for doing this and for your coming out on National Hangover day. I really appreciate it. I wore green on purpose. It gets a day late. So to your question, look, the team was you dont get bidens Foreign Policy without the loss of trump. It is born out of the trauma of that in Jake Sullivan, as you mentioned, was right next to Hillary Clinton when she and as shes conceding to him and this guy. Right. Hes. Hes a rhodes scholar, went to yale law school. But he grew up with five siblings in minnesota. And he felt like he got out populist, did by a new York Real Estate magnate, billionaire. So what he and the democratic establishment miss and he worked at this he founded and helped worked at this Organization CalledNational Security action and their whole reason for being was set up. Whoever the next democratic nominee would be with a set of Foreign Policy ideas and infrastructure because felt that that had been lacking with the express goal, of course, of defeating trump in 2020. And what they basically come out to, generally speaking, and this is also jakes own work as he goes around the country talking to people, is this idea that you alluded to of a Foreign Policy for the middle class, quite literally, meaning any action the u. S. Takes in the world has be able to be explained, get some buy in from the American People that without that, no policy would work. Now, thats basically a liberal reinterpretation of trump stuff, right, of america first. And in fact, there has to be a populist notion of a Foreign Policy, which is why. And the white house is not happy with me when i say stuff like this. But theres a lot more trumpism in biden in a biden Foreign Policy than i think they they even expected to have. So when you have, jake, as National Security adviser, when you have a lot of the people that were in National Security action scattered throughout the administration, some pretty spots at the state department, white house, u. N. And elsewhere, this idea of foreign for the middle class, this idea of adopting elements of trump ism and making it part of a biden Foreign Policy, all of that permeates pretty much Decision Making that comes about. Of course, you know, you can be mugged by reality, as weve seen in recent days, but that is sort of how they go into every problem set. So you mentioned, you know, all of these advisers, including Jake Sullivan, tony blinken, a lot of the people in that circle, they came up in kind of the same space. They worked for the Obama Administration. They worked together afterwards, the think tanks. There has been a lot of among some that you know that makes them a little bit insular and that perhaps, you know, their worldview is a little bit elitist or not connected with the realities of what is going. For example, when they tried to do a reset with the russians, for example. So like that, i mean, that there is a certain kind of naivete attached to kind of Foreign Policy that they have practiced. And so i just wonder what you learned about how they were able to overcome that, if at all, and whether and how relationships with each other kind of have informed theyve approached Foreign Policy. Theres no question that groupthink plagues, the administration now, not always in bad ways. Its just they as you mentioned, theyve known each other in past administrations. They live in general area together. They work together. They know each other. They know how each other think in case it doesnt lead to too much diversity of thought. They kind of all know where theyre coming from, whether its whether it leads to problems. Depends, right. I mean, on the russia angle, they had the idea of, lets put russia in a box. Right . Even the Great Power Competition matters. And, you know, theres tons of stuff to worry about. Lets put the russia issue in a box. Lets let lets meet putin in geneva. Lets talk to him. Lets tell them, hey, that solarwinds hack, no more of that. No more election interference, no more pretty much everything else. And we are successful there. Then we can start to focus on the bigger issues like Climate Change and china etc. , etc. No one in the team really kind of disputed that notion and geneva, they basically all left literally and figured oddly high fiving. They were like, we did it. We got him. He understands everything. Redlines wont be crossed. And of course, a couple of months and a few months later, we have ukraine. But you can also ask this about the afghanistan decision. I dont know. Well get to that in a second. But there are a of moments that i found in reporting this book that i felt there been a few more questions. There could have been a little bit more red teaming of. Thats not to say theyre not doing it. I mean, jake is by virtue of being a collegiate debater, cares very deeply in kind of socratic method and and constantly probing and asking questions. And this always leads to interesting reports of just like, oh, Jake Sullivan believes or john finer, his deputy believes that. But part of that stems from they ask a lot of weird questions that are sort of anathema to their own thinking, but just to sort of get policy apparatus moving, but still sort of at the when the decision time comes, theyre not really thinking outside the box. Theyre usually within their own biases and part again, thats just part of it that they dont really have anyone from outside that obama, biden, nexis, even though that they would argue that they are far more progressive and far more different from the obama years and theyve learned a lot in this time. And there are definitely examples of that, and well get to that, especially within the ukraine. But i wanted to ask you, so a big theme of your book also is just how powerful Jake Sullivan is within the National Security apparatus that biden has created. And i remember i spoke to him just before they came into office, and he told me, you know, i dont want my nsc to be micromanage. I dont want it to be too big. And that has all just completely been tossed out the window. I mean, this is one of the most powerful National Security councils that in recent memory, theyre extremely influential. People like me who cover the pentagon are always that everything has to go through the everything needs approval from jake before goes out and so can you talk a bit about how he gained that very powerful, influential position and that trust of biden. Yeah. Well, one of the stems from biden like part of it is that biden is the way his management style is, particularly in Foreign Policy. But most things it is a very much a four corners guy like i want you to operate within this general context. Like here are my three main things and then its up to jake and the team to go do it. Now, thats kind of how works, right . The president s too busy to get into the and by the time something arrives at his level, its mostly Decision Making time, but still the interesting thing is jake has purposed it well part of it is the competence jake allows him to maneuver. He has a lot of room to play within those four corners. Theres some person mentioned to me, its a sandbox where he can play a lot within that square. And so the other thing is hes extremely on. He wants to know the minutia of everything. He wants to be in all the meetings. He wants to know every to things. Now, again, thats his job. But also has a large team that can him with that kind of information and that he should mostly not mostly stay strong, but he should have a he should spend a lot more time, a wave tops. But he wants to know like real deep on the brief, like a director level. Then to your point about centralization, i mean, i had one person i dont think i think it made the cutting room floor. Unfortunately. But one person basically told me that this. Nsc is even more centralized in trumps nsc. And weve basically seen that from, you know, from each one going forward. So theres a complete centralization in this white house, jake. And for my money, i know its not a popular opinion, but i think hes probably the most powerful, best or anything but most powerful National Security advisor since kissinger extra. And, you know, maybe influential scowcroft but but just in terms of the power and the relationships he has, of course, with the president , how much the president trusts him, either you know, presented with the right options. I mean, this is all Foreign Policy is basically through the just operationally, jake, strategically on the president decision early. Thats the word. Yeah. No, absolutely. Jake is extremely influential. So shifting to what i would consider the the administrations major crisis in office, which was the afghanistan withdrawal, you know, you write that bidens was pretty much made up to withdraw from afghanistan back in 2009 when he returned from there on a trip as v. P. But even though his mind was pretty much made up, he still wanted to go through this very fulsome interagency process to determine whether it was the right move to actually withdraw. So im just wondering, like, what youre reporting is about how even despite this very fulsome interagency process about withdrawing, about what it would mean, how did they get it . So wrong in terms of their assessment that they had so much more time figure this out, because you write that they were thinking that it was going to be 18 to 24 months before the was ultimately able to take over the entire country and particularly kabul. So so what did your reporting tell you about how this how this mess happened . Yeah, well, first it was very clear from the beginning they did through a rigorous process. But they every biden knew everyone knew what biden wanted to. Yes, he gave them. And, you know, you cover the pentagon, you did it very well of, you know, he gave the military space to give their opinions and their views, know whether to keep 2500 3500 troops. But at the end of the day, everyone sort of knew where biden was. And so even though there was a thorough, you know, inclusive whole of government review process, everyone knew what was to come at the time of decision the showed, as you alluded, that it would take 18 to 24 months for the taliban to take over kabul and ergo the country. Now, im a bad reporter because. I spent 8000 hours maybe trying to figure out why no one pushed back on that. It goes back to our question about insularity and groupthink. It was amazing to me that with everything we knew about the state of Afghan Forces was everything we knew about how poorly they had trained with how afghanistan was barely nation. Right wed created a helped create a military and a government but not a nation. How is it possible that and what we knew what the strength of the taliban and how they were there were there were news stories. There was open source material showing the taliban was perched all these cities. How did no one in these sort of late march april timeframe and this 2021 say hey, that seems a little rosy a little panglossian and as i ask this question to everybody and no one had a good answer, no one was able to say, oh, well, you know, no, you know that or that. But they pushed back on the intelligence or that they believed or anything. There was like really . It was just taken at face value. My, my best answer is, goes back to what we were talking, which is like everyone what biden wanted. So regardless of what the intel, theres really no reason to question it because they were going to leave. Now, of course, that timeline shrunk as the taliban swept across the country. But at the time decision that was the belief of the administration and i dont want to say they dilly dally when they were trying work on many other things leading up to the withdrawal that they would need to do. Whether thats a drawdown, the embassy, or whether they would keep one. What are you going to do about afghan allies in afghanistan . How are you going to get them, etc. , etc. , etc. . Again, its not that they slow walked. It just felt they had more time. And as afghanistan collapsed on the around them, they had to improvise a bunch of stuff, ignore a bunch of things, which is why we still have thousands of afghan allies. So afghanistan is still you know, they closed embassy without any real preparation, just all of that basically had to be done on the fly. And i document in the book a lot of conversations that the administration held with progressive groups and veterans groups and activists. And in those conversations, it becomes exceedingly clear that these activists are, of course, asking for the moon theyre asking for, but they also asking for some pretty specific things like if you move americans out or afghan allies, where are they going to go . And then like the july ish timeframe, remember afghanistan basically collapses in august and the junejuly timeframe, theyre still like, oh, we got time. Well still figure it out. So like, thats kind what happened . I just want to add, you have this really anecdote in the book. I thought where Jake Sullivan is sitting with different of the interagency, basically begging them to tell him that it was time to start the evacuation process being like, okay, now is the time and this was mid, early, early mid august. And he was saying really are you sure were not were not going to start the evacuation now . And they said, no, no, we have time. And this was literally days before kabul fell. So it was just its a really remarkable insight into just how delayed the whole process. Can you also talk a little bit about the dynamic between the white house, the pentagon, the state department during this process . Because you also have another anecdote in there about how a state Department Official made some pentagon officials very, very angry with something that he with a remark that he made. Yeah. So this is a guy named brian mccune. He was the very top level at the state department. Theres had theyre having a meeting inside the pentagon, basically talking about a whole bunch of things. Its a three hour meeting, part of which is, you know, planning for withdrawal. Part of it is just regular updates about things. And theres a moment in which the pentagon is talking about how tough its going to be to get out of afghanistan and what just crisis that will unfold around them and what that would mean for americans staff and the dangers and the risk that they would face. And. Mccune it goes on this fairly face thats too. But he starts talking about, you know, weve got to do this in the middle east before war. And, you know, weve diplomats are do this. And and he says, you know, we the state Department Must just have a higher risk tolerance. And for a bunch of generals, thats not a particularly nice thing to say in house. Right. Mark milley, then the chairman of the joint chiefs, was was offended. Secretary of defense lloyd austin was offended. I know. I know because i talked to a bunch of people and they didnt take that kindly. And tha