CFR Luncheon Discussion at ISA: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Second Trump Administration

The CFR luncheon event held in conjunction with the International Studies Association featured a discussion on U.S. Foreign Policy and the Second Trump Administration on Monday, March 3, in Chicago.

The conversation featured Tamar L. Gutner, associate professor of politics, governance, and economics at American University; Mary Beth Long, the Reynolds family fellow for global security at the Wilson Center; and Zeenat Rahman, executive director at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. The conversation was moderated by Alberto R. Coll, the Vincent de Paul professor of law and U.S. foreign relations and director of global engagement at DePaul University College of Law.

Transcript

FASKIANOS: Good afternoon, everybody. We are going to get started. You can continue eating, but if you can turn your attention this way. I am Irina Faskianos. I’m the vice president of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. It’s great to be here with all of you at the 2025 ISA Convention.

The Council on Foreign Relations is dedicated to being a resource for all of you in what you’re doing, the work you’re doing, and for your students. We have events, we provide teaching and learning materials, and have lots of analysis on our website, CFR.org.

We’re really happy to have this panel today on U.S. foreign policy and the second Trump administration. I’m going to turn it over to the distinguished panel. Alberto, you can introduce yourself and introduce the panel.

So, again, thank you all. Continue eating. The first thirty minutes will be a conversation amongst our panel, or twenty minutes, and then we’ll take questions from all of you. So think about your questions.

Alberto, over to you.

COLL: Good afternoon. It’s wonderful to be here with all of you and to have the opportunity to chair a panel on the second Trump administration and American foreign policy. And I feel deeply honored that we have three amazingly distinguished women with us this afternoon to offer us—(laughter)—their thoughts and to share their insights, all of which come not just from study but also, very importantly, from lots of practical work.

So to my left here I have Mary Beth Long. She started her career as a very young woman, as she was telling me earlier, in the CIA’s Clandestine Service, and she served all over the world and gained tremendous amounts of experience in intelligence work. From there she went on—she went on to the Pentagon, where she became the first woman to serve as an assistant secretary of defense. And she occupied the role of assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, which is the key policy shop within the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. After that she became also the first woman to serve in the High Level Group of NATO, where she was involved in discussions with the president and with various NATO leaders involving the use of nuclear weapons and NATO strategy. And following her government service she has been amazingly successful in the business world, where she has founded several private companies that have been quite successful. She continues her involvement in the academic world through her teaching and her public service.

We have—next to Mary Beth we have Zeenat Rahman. And Zeenat is the executive director of the Institute for Politics at the University of Chicago. She has very long experience working in the State Department. She advised both Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of State Kerry on global youth issues. And she has focused over the last few decades on youth issues, and also on issues of international development and questions that have to do also with gender equity, the role of women, advancing women in different parts of the world, and using American foreign policy as an instrument for not just hard power but for soft power. And she currently is doing a fantastic job at the University of Chicago working with our young people to help them understand how they must prepare themselves for government careers and to serve our country in different roles.

And then we have Tamar Gutner, currently at American University. And she brings a tremendous deal of expertise in the practical world as well as academic knowledge in the area of international organizations. One of her specialties in that area has been international financial institutions. Think of—think of her as a great expert on the international economic architecture—institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank. And she has devoted much of her career not just to understanding these institutions, but also to trying to promote ways of strengthening these institutions to serve better the United States and the broader international community. As part of her experience, she has served on numerous boards and numerous projects to strengthen the international economic security architecture, and in those boards she continues to be a tireless advocate for the idea that the United States is best served when we are active in international organizations working with others.

So I think that we’re very, very fortunate to have this panel, and I hope that you will be prepared to—you know, to understand that all of our panelists have not just academic knowledge but, perhaps more important, in the area of foreign policy very practical experience in very complex areas.

I want to start out the conversation by turning to Mary Beth and asking her: In light of what happened at the White House Oval Office on Friday, what kinds of lessons or insights do you think those events shed on the Trump administration’s overall approach to foreign policy and very specifically on our relations to both Europe—our European allies—and very specifically also Ukraine?

LONG: Well, first of all, thank you, and I’m really honored to be on the stage with these really illustrious ladies. So thank you very much for the kind introduction.

Just, really, four quick points on what happened on Friday, I think, that might be useful.

The first is what—the clip that you see on television is really about the last ten minutes of an almost hourlong conversation, and the beginning of that conversation was—if you watch it; it’s available on YouTube—a normal back and forth that a president and his staff would have with a visiting high-level official. And it’s really the last ten or so minutes, the last clip that you saw, where things fell apart.

And why did they fall apart? And I think the central reason and the big point to take away from everything that Trump is doing right now is he is determined at almost any cost to get Putin to the table. It is odd, at least in my experience. I don’t—I can’t remember a war or even a conflict in which there wasn’t either track-two negotiations—and those are semi-official, government-sanctioned, but plausible-deniability conversations between the sides. And there is none of that going on, really, with the Russians at any level at this point, and it’s strange that there’s really no ongoing negotiation process or even preliminary lower-layer negotiation process. And this president has decided that he’s going to bring the parties to the table, and he’s going to do anything to make that happen.

And what you saw on Friday was, as the meeting went on, the president saw the possibility of that, getting Putin to come to the table ready to negotiate and deal, dissipating as Zelenskyy basically started to criticize Putin, started to talk and focus on the losses, started to go back and relitigate the war itself. That was not going to be something that played well in Russia. And it was counter-narrative to what the president was trying to send Putin, was: This is your opportunity to save face. This is your opportunity to save yourself. Because right now, domestically, it’s very difficult for Putin to come home with nothing given the treasure and the blood that Russia has spilt on this endeavor.

And thirdly, the open issues. What about the Donbas? What about the other frozen conflicts? So as Zelenskyy went on, Trump saw his ability to get Putin to the table to get some kind of meaningful negotiation going becoming less and less because soundbites kept coming out.

So number-one point is anything that gets in the way of this president bringing to the table the relevant parties—basically, the Russians and the Ukraine—on the Ukraine conflict is not going to be tolerated. And what’s where you ended up with that catastrophe at the end. He wants people to the table. He wants peace. He wants to move on. He does not want to engender further arguments, particularly over things that are historic. And I think you’re going to hold his feet to the fire.

I think he was—second point—slightly surprised at how well what happened in the White House and in the Oval Office played in Europe, because Europe was really forced to step up in meaningful ways. I thought the Brits were magnificent. They stood with the Americans. They stood with the Ukrainians. They kept the door open to Putin. And they herded not only the British government itself, but the rest of Europe to really double, triple, quadruple down: OK, well, the Americans have stumbled; we’re going to step in. So that was an added benefit, frankly, of what happened on Friday.

And then my final point is you never want to go into the Oval Office and have an argument. You go in—everybody knows this, perhaps, except Zelenskyy. You go in with your best suit and tie, you go over, and you say thank you very much. Sometimes it’s awkward. Particularly with Biden, it was sometimes very awkward because everybody would just sort of be getting their pictures taken and then shuffled off. But that’s what the Oval Office is for. And one of the big fouls of what happened was an argument. You don’t start an argument and you don’t argue with certain individuals in that room. So I don’t anticipate that Zelenskyy will be invited back any time soon.

COLL: Will there be a minerals deal?

LONG: Yeah. In fact, a lot of people forget the minerals deal was actually broached by Zelenskyy at the end of the Biden administration and it’s been sitting on the table. He made a decision to hold it for Trump so that Trump could have the victory. So that was actually a Ukraine initiative, not the U.S. forcing. And there will be a mineral deal. It’ll be minerals. It’ll be economics. It’ll be defense industrial. It’ll be comprehensive. And that, in the president’s mind, is the security guarantee, not some kind of treaty.

COLL: Zeenat.

RAHMAN: Can I just off two small—

COLL: Yes.

RAHMAN: —kind of subtexts to that?

One is that with this president, personality matters, and his personal relationships matter, and he does not like Zelenskyy. I mean, he never did like Zelenskyy. So you could kind of see in that press conference when he gets triggered and J.D. Vance is kind of going at it. But I think that is important.

I think the second thing is this idea of territorial expansion, you know, which I don’t think our president thinks is a big deal. And so I think, with respect to Russia’s territorial expansion, he doesn’t see it in the egregious manner by which our allies in Europe do.

So I just wanted to offer those.

COLL: Tamar.

GUTNER: Nothing to add on this question. (Laughter.)

COLL: OK.

So, moving a little bit more broadly towards the Trump administration’s foreign policy, you know, following your wonderful insights into that meeting, Zeenat, how about these massive cuts to USAID that the Trump administration is implementing, including of course moving the agency back to the State Department, where it was actually—to be fair about it—for many decades? And a lot of people are saying these massive cuts are doing great harm to American foreign policy. Is there a possibility that eventually the—some of the administration officials, including Rubio himself, will see that, if not all, a number of USAID programs are actually valuable for American interests, and that they will be—those cuts will be restored, and that the agency even under the State Department will continue its work?

RAHMAN: Short answer on Senator—or, you know, Secretary Rubio is that, no, I don’t think—even if he thinks that those things are useful that they will be introduced, because Senator Rubio had a long history of supporting USAID in a bipartisan manner; that person, I believe, is gone.

But I want to kind of zoom out and think of—and have a conversation about what Trump doctrine is emerging when you look at the actions of the administration and then President Trump’s leadership style.

And so, Alberto, obviously, a deemphasis on soft power. You know, one of the first actions I think they took was decimating USAID. I guess—I am guessing that we’re going to see further cuts at the State Department around Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. They’ve already kind of forecasted that that’s coming. And so a total deemphasis on soft power and initiatives that build up civil society, which tend to sit in all in soft power.

And then you had J.D. Vance go to Munich and, you know, a criticism of—and criticize our allies overtly. And when he talked about the biggest threat to—on the global stage, it wasn’t Russia, it wasn’t China; it was how democracies in Europe are doing their elections and are governing.

And then, point number three, tariffs as a huge stick—(laughs)—as opposed to a carrot in diplomatic negotiations, spread, you know, to our allies and enemies alike. And I would say on this point of tariffs, I mean, we’ve seen it, you know, work with—work with Mexico both on the fentanyl thing—you know, we’ve gotten some people that they’ve sent back to the United States who had, you know, been pivotal in the fentanyl trade those things like that—and of course the border, which is going to be his number-one issue.

Obviously, a desire to have a better relationship with Russia; you pointed that out.

And then I think the Gaza/Ukraine stuff kind of also points to this new worldview that our values as Americans are the values of power now, and that the most powerful get to write the rules—and so if you look at, you know, the United States, Israel, Putin—and it’s less about shared values. And so I think we’re in a state where we are moving, you know, to a different place than we were, and maybe that’s what America first means.

A couple things just about—that I’ve noticed about Trump’s leadership style.

Number one, he really prides himself on the art of the deal. We saw that on Friday, but we’ve seen that a lot of different times. You know, he made a deal on the ceasefire in Gaza. He, I think, derives a lot of pride from that. I think he sees foreign policy—he might be the first president to see foreign policy primarily through the lens of commerce and economics, and I think this goes to him being a businessman. And that’s different. I mean, I think when you think of the post-World War II order and America’s leadership, which we’ll talk about, that’s not his lens on this.

And then—I think this is really important—he sees our allies as extractive, right, that they’re taking something from us. And there’s a quote from him where he says, “The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That’s the purpose of it, and they’ve done a good job of it, but now I’m president.” I’ll leave it at that. (Laughs.)

Over to you.

COLL: So let’s turn the focus on the economic issues. And I wanted to ask Tamar, how do you see the Trump administration’s international economic policy? And again, you know, there’s the issue of tariffs, including tariffs on our allies, close strategic partners. I mean, does it really make sense to impose tariffs on Japan, on—(laughs)—and a number of other close allies? And then more broadly, is the Trump administration really shortchanging the benefits to American foreign policy that American influence in these international organizations can exert, especially in dealing with nations in the developing world where these institutions can actually be very valuable to strengthen American influence over different players?

GUTNER: Right. Thank you so much, and it’s good to see all of you here.

Yes, I mean, we know in the issue of tariffs that there is remarkable consensus among economists that using tariffs as a kind of foreign policy tool for a lot of different reasons is not—it may have some short-term benefits, but there are more long-term consequences on the economy. We’re going to see prices going up. More importantly, business confidence is shaken, and that can have an impact on the economy and on economic growth.

The tariffs, we’re not really sure what’s going to happen. I mean, there’s some sense that this could be a negotiating tool, and maybe the additional tariffs on Canada and Mexico and China, something will happen between today and tomorrow, when they’re supposed to kick in.

But there are other, deeper implications as well, and one of them is this aggressive U.S. turn toward protectionism further undermines, of course, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement and the WTO. And these were examples of multilateralism that the U.S. was deeply engaged in—and before the WTO, the GATT—and the whole idea was to create a more open and fair trading system that would benefit everyone. And it’s a reminder that the GATT, and the IMF, and the World Bank, and the UN, they were negotiated and created toward the end of World War II basically to prevent World War III. There was the idea that if we have a more stable world, a more peaceful world, we can try to deter aggression, we can have more economic prosperity and monetary stability, that that benefits everyone. And so I think there—we are a room full of people who understand the history of these things and the policy implications of these things, and some of that is just not of interest to the current administration—you know, the norms and goals and strategic interests that drove the U.S.

The other—going back to the tariffs, the other issue is going to be retaliation, so more uncertainty. And this kind of beggar-thy-neighbor policy is one of the factors that led to World War II. So we have to remember—I feel like we need to be more cognizant of the ripple effects of some of the decisions and to be able to analyze them.

And finally, some of these moves, especially with trade, they kind of take our attention away from important questions like: If the trade regime isn’t working the way we’d like it to work, what’s the solution? And we can ask the same question of all the international organizations. Those of us who study IOs, we know they’re imperfect. Dag Hammarskjöld famously said that they were—the UN was created to—not to take us to heaven, but to keep us out of hell. So they’re all imperfect. They could all use reform. And it’s the—the analysis we always need to make is: What are the problems, and then what are the correct solutions? And in my opinion, the solution isn’t to leave, to, you know, ignore the value, but to be more thoughtful in how you can actually fix the problems that these organizations face.

COLL: Thank you for that great quote from Hammarskjöld. I want to throw out a quote that I saw by Winston Churchill which I think is relevant to some of these issues of unilateralism. Churchill once said, “There’s only one thing worse than having to work with allies, and that is not having them.” (Laughs.) Not having any.

Mary Beth, let me—let me turn to you on this issue of Trump’s very strong focus on repairing relations with Russia, OK? It seems to me that Trump is not the only American president or the first one to have this fascination with the idea that maybe he can be the one to work with a particular Russian leader and bring that leader to reason. You know, we saw George W. Bush try to do that with Putin when Putin was a much younger man, saying, you know, I have looked into the man’s eyes and I saw his soul, and Bush really believed that he could bring Putin to a—into a partnership with America. And then, of course, the most famous example was Franklin Roosevelt, brilliant man who nevertheless thought that he could manipulate Stalin and get Stalin to agree to American-shaped world order. How is this different? And could this lead to a better place than what many experts think it might lead to?

LONG: Well, let me take a quick detour back into it. I want to respond or at least—or at least encapsulate some of what my colleagues talked about just a moment ago, the international organizations and soft power.

I don’t think it’s that Trump or this administration underappreciate soft power. Frankly, if you look at the way war is conducted in the economic, financial, and the kinetic world, hybrid warfare has become the warfare of choice—cyberwarfare, space warfare. It’s moved into multi-domains. I think the criticism is that a lot of the bureaucracies have not served to enhance either the economic standing or the war footing or the overall health of the nation where they’re situated. I’m a huge fan of USAID going back to State, but I’m also a huge fan of USAID and some of its programs that have been critical particularly to the Defense Department in that it drived and was able to deliver soft power, and to help shape what they call the zero status—helped shape the messaging of the U.S. to avoid kinetics. And I think what Trump is trying to do is in that world where everything, frankly, that we used to sort of deal with separately—economics, and trade, and tariffs and all used to be a separate category—I think it’s not a lack of understanding what happened after World War II, and it’s not a lack of understanding the role of multinational or a multilateral organization; I think it’s a difference of opinion as to whether that has inured to the benefit of the American people. And stronger than that, I think there’s an opinion—and you know, the Global South actually raises some very good arguments that the post-World War II constructs have left a whole lot of people behind, entire populations behind, including a lot of very poor, very underutilized Americans, number one, so that we need to take a look at that construct and maybe reexamine who it’s serving and how.

Secondly, that there are organizations like the WTO that have benefited the Chinese tremendously at the expense of Americans. And Americans—you know, a lot of people are aghast when the administration complains about the EU, but I can tell you, I was—I was chair of NATO’s nuclear program, and the EU was a real problem because it did really hurt the U.S., because every dollar that the EU took away from defense and policing and parallel constructs of what NATO was trying to do was money that were basically not delivered to NATO. And the U.S. taxpayer filled in that gap repeatedly and over decades. So—and one of the reasons why you don’t have a lot of really good European defense equipment being built is the EU’s construct really keeps those countries from working together to build robust military infrastructure as well as mechanisms.

So, enter a rising Russia or a Russia that is very bent upon relitigating the near afar—in Russian terms—or the previous Soviet republics and its claim to much of that territory, in particular Ukraine. And I think from Trump’s perspective it’s not about Putin; it’s about the fact that literally every president, including during the Cold War—President Kennedy, President Reagan, when we were literally teaching children in grade schools to hide underneath their desks, that’s how serious that threat was—met and negotiated with their Russian counterparts. So the idea that we now have three presidential terms, certainly, where there was no serious discussion with Putin is sort of ridiculous. No one’s really sat down with Putin, other than Erdoğan, in quite some time about figuring out what it is that Putin ultimately wants. Does it stop at Ukraine? Frankly, I think not. He’s been very clear about returning to the near afar. What is it that Putin wants? And what is it that the world needs to do to either dissuade him from that, defeat him from that, or assuage him to the extent possible so that we are not living with Estonia, with the—Moldova, with other countries being nervous—Finland—about they being the next on the—on the Russian territorial aspiration list.

Number two, how do you secure Putin—actually, Erdoğan and I had a long conversation about six or seven months ago in which, as the Turkish leader, he said, look, you guys have not given space for Putin to go back to his people with anything other than conscripts, death, crying mothers, and defeat on the battlefield. He can’t go back with only that in hand. It’s not just that Russia won’t survive; he won’t survive. And then what you’re going to get to follow up on him is going to be basically filling really big shoes. So what is that Russian going to look like? He’s going to have to be harder, tougher, more successful on the battlefield, and more Putin than Putin. You’re designing a recipe for a problem that is going to last a generation. You need to give this guy room to deliver something to the Russian people. He’s not going to wake up one day—he’s an old KGB officer—and say he changed his mind. Now, is that room tangible? Who knows? But it has to start with negotiation. And I think that’s what you see this president doing, getting that man to the table—Putin—and seeing what happens.

COLL: OK.

Any comments? Any comments on Russia—on how to handle Russia?

LONG: Please.

COLL: Yes.

GUTNER: I’d like to make a comment on the first part kind of gently pushing back to this issue of international organizations is not a lack of understanding but a difference of opinion. And I just—I just would like to push back on that, because we know in the academic world that there’s value in reciprocity, and it’s a lot easier to negotiate in a place where you can have iterative cooperation, than bilateral negotiations with 192 different countries. 

And I think we all know Trump has animosity toward multilateralism and international organizations. And some of the reasons are stronger than others, but you always have to think about does the solution fix the problem or create new problems? And what are the implications of some of these actions? So with the early February executive order on reviewing U.S. participation in all international organizations and treaties to see how they benefit America, the question is: How do you define benefit? Is it a short-term benefit? Is it a long-term benefit? Is it a one-deal benefit? Is it an overtime benefit? 

And I think I do have colleagues who think the U.S. wouldn’t go so far as pulling out of the IMF and World Bank, because they have such clear benefits. For example, the U.S. has the single-largest share. They’ve been able to pursue so many strategic interests in these organizations. And the cost is pretty minimal. You know, with the paid-in capital of the U.S. at $3 billion between the birth of the World Bank and 2020, it’s just, like, a drop in the bucket. But the Project 2025, which we need to be cognizant of, calls for pulling out of these organizations as they’re expensive middlemen. 

And I do think that’s a kind of lack of understanding. I do think we need more depth of analysis to be more precise about what exactly the benefits are and what are the implications. And if we just move to a world of bilateral, you know, one-on-one negotiations, we know that creates a more dangerous world. Like, we know that, right? And it moves us into more of a Thucydidean-Melian dialogue situation, where the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. So all of this, I think, is beyond just a difference of opinion. And it’s truly about the future of our world order and the extent to which we’re heading into a more dangerous world.

COLL: Thank you. Zeenat, you want to?

RAHMAN: Yeah, so I’ll jump in with the international development. I was thinking, as Mary Beth was speaking, that when I worked for Hillary Clinton, she would often say, you know, that there’s a stool of foreign policy, the three Ds, which is diplomacy, defense, and development. And that those things are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they work better—we have a strong, robust foreign policy when they work well together. And so I think this administration, thinking about integrating it back into State, that’s not the end of the world, you know, for sure. But I do think that there is something about—it’s not a cost saving or efficiency measure. I mean, this is a decimation of the development industrial complex. 

I mean, international development as we know, with USAID and USG spending going away, is going to level that whole, you know, playing field. And, you know, you saw the UK, I think, collapsed DFID (Department for International Development) into their own Foreign Commonwealth a few years ago. I think Netherlands is doing it next. But we really do fund so much of that. And I think, just as we maybe have not communicated to the U.S. public or the world, you know, the benefit of multilateral institutions and our seat there, we haven’t with international development either, right? The fact that it is less than 1 percent of the federal budget and it has real gains for American workers, like, I don’t think that that’s understood or commonplace. 

I mean, I think most people are, like, what is USAID, and what does it do, and why are we helping other people with no benefit to us? And so we haven’t articulated that well, I think, to our own citizenry, with respect to, like, what the benefit of international development is. And, of course, development dollars go further than, you know, defense dollars, in terms of mitigating conflicts, I mean, before a conflict starts. And I do wonder what the field and the sector is going to look like now in the next—you know, certainly during this administration, but I don’t think it’s one that comes back. And so it’s going to be a new frontier. And is that something where, you know, corporations and consultancies are the ones that are, you know, leading the charge, because it’s no longer going to be the U.S. government? And I think that’s something that we have not really wrapped our heads around because it’s come so fast.

COLL: OK. It’s most unfortunate that now we can continue the conversation. We could sit here for two more hours, you know, wonderful. But we will turn to you. And I know you all have questions. So let me remind you, once you’re chosen please make sure that you wait till you get the microphone and then you identify yourself by name and also by institution. All right? Yes, right here. The lady here at the table, right? Yes, you. Yes, please. 

Q: Hi, everyone. I’m Eleanor Shiori Hughes. I work at a think tank in Washington, DC called the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, as well as a think tank called EconVue based in Chicago. 

I think this is a very timely event for the many reasons you all talked about. But tomorrow happens to be the State of the Union. I’m assuming that many, if not most, of us will be watching it tomorrow. I’d love to hear any thoughts that you have on what Trump’s messaging will be when it comes to foreign policy, whether it be what just happened in the Oval Office, as well as any other domestic related issues. Thank you very much.

COLL: Any of you, take a crack at that? Just a couple of observations. What do you expect from the State of the Union that’s relevant to American foreign policy? 

GUTNER: I’ll take a quick crack. I think, of course, he’ll reiterate the desire to bring peace in Ukraine and to strengthen European defense, with the Europeans taking the lead. Hopefully, he’ll—there’s been a distraction. China is on the march. It has invaded Australian, Philippine, Taiwan airspace, sea space, in extremely provocative ways in the last couple of weeks, cutting cables. I’m sure he’s going to touch upon China being on the march. I think he will also speak a bit about ISIS in Syria. Syria is very much in play. He will certainly talk about Israel and the tragedy of the return of the Bibas family and the way that they were returned, and a quick brush at where negotiations are going with Hamas and the ceasefire, and where that will progress. 

I think he will likely talk for a moment about multilaterals. He will remind—or, I think I saw that he’s looking to remind people that he actually, in his first administration, tried to send more capital to the World Bank, by a fairly significant amount. But his provisos in doing so—and I don’t think he’s against multilaterals. What he says is that they need to work by putting the money forward to projects, not administrative, number one. They need to treat countries fairly. And China gets more than their fair share. And that’s not working for the Global South and other places. We need to have some equity here. And we need to be more efficient, yada, yada, yada. I think that’s where he’s going to go on foreign policy.

RAHMAN: Yeah, just a quick two cents. I mean, I think he’ll take a victory lap on brokering the ceasefire, and the first stage of that, and Israel and Gaza. And he often uses, you know, when he has the bully pulpit, as a way to make a provocation. So I think he’ll probably put some sort of ultimatum on the table, maybe to Hamas there. I think they’ll take a victory lap on USAID and around efficiency—you know, the term that they really like to use. And I think it’s curious that he’s really done and said very little about China. And I will be looking to see what he says on that.

COLL: It’s a big issue. It’s a big issue.

RAHMAN: It’s a huge issue. And we didn’t really touch on it. 

COLL: Big issue, yes.

GUTNER: I think he’s doing it sub rosa.

COLL: Yes.

LONG: I don’t think he’ll talk about the price of eggs. I think that will be left out of the State of the Union. (Laughter.) I think he’ll be focused primarily on the domestic audience and find ways of showing how he’s fulfilled his campaign promises. He might use the DOGE number of how much waste and fraud’s been cut from the government but, you know, we know that those numbers are not accurate, and also there’s a lot of harm being caused by this kind of—not an audit-based true analysis of where the waste and fraud is, but something much more dramatic. And I think he’ll—if he does talk about foreign policy, he’ll—you know, the message will be that we’re stopping America from being taken advantage of. And, you know, the kind of justifications that have been used to show how he’s met his campaign promises.

COLL: Thank you. The lady in the blue back there has been very patiently waiting. Mmm hmm.

Q: Thank you. Carol Gray, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. I’m an assistant professor of public law and I’m a lawyer. 

I am very concerned. I think the foreign policy house is on fire, and the Trump administration is setting it on fire, and I don’t see any outrage in this room. I’m very concerned about—the first speaker seemed to imply that Zelenskyy went into that meeting to pick a fight. I think that is a complete rewriting of history. (Applause.) I think it’s absolutely shocking how our president treated another president, who’s a hero in the whole world and whose nation is being attacked. To say that we have to capitulate to Putin and give in to him because something might—worse might be coming is equally shocking. That’s like saying give away Czechoslovakia. We’ve learned that’s a bad idea. To say that—to the to the person asking questions, to say that while other presidents have tried to—

COLL: I’m sorry to interrupt you. We would prefer if you had questions as opposed to a presentation.

Q: OK. I’ll ask a question as soon as I finish this point. 

COLL: What is your question, please? What is your question for the panel? 

Q: My question—well, my question is, why—considering that we have said that Canada should be the fifty-first state, we’re eradicating USAID, we’re trying to make Gaza a resort and evicting all the people who have a legal right to be there—why, considering all this, isn’t the panel alarmed? And if we as academics, who know this is all wrong, aren’t speaking in very loud voices, where are we going to be in four years? (Applause.)

COLL: All right. Thank you. Thank you for your question. Mary Beth, let’s go with you first. 

LONG: OK. Actually, you should speak in loud voices. All voices should be heard. It’s critical. That’s one of the foundations of our republic. And it’s one of the foundations of making a government, whoever it is, accountable. If you—I’m equally shocked. I think if you look at the tape of the first forty minutes, it was a conversation, and then it went bad. It went bad because of Zelenskyy’s bad behavior. There is decorum that is required. Regardless of your opinion about what was said, there is decorum that is required in the Oval Office. That said, the proof will be in the pudding. And I will stake my claim right here, Zelenskyy will come back and there will be a deal. I think if you want to hear a fair assessment of it, you can listen to any of the UK commentators about what happened and why it fell apart. And I look forward to academia and students coming up with even better ideas, because I think the president is listening.

COLL: Thank you, Mary Beth. Anybody else, please? Yes.

GUTNER: I’m alarmed. Yeah, I’m alarmed that we’re in a situation where we’re treating our allies very poorly, and throwing out the window decades of trust and relationships, and we’re treating an adversary like an ally. I’m alarmed what this might lead to. You know, the U.S. has been called an unreliable ally now, but maybe we’re not an ally. And that’s a problem in foreign affairs and world politics. And I think we, as academics, whatever our viewpoints are, we should be open to respectfully disagreeing with each other and getting our ideas out there. And I think now is a real time where we have to speak truth to power. (Applause.)

COLL: Zeenat?

RAHMAN: I have nothing to add.

COLL: OK. The gentleman all the way back there, please.

Q: Thank you very much to the panel. My name is Paolo Farah, a full professor of public policy at West Virginia University. 

I have a question for everyone, making—acknowledging that I enjoyed the fact one of the speaker refer about history and the importance of history to shape the current event and the current interpretation of the events. In particular, would be happy to hear from the speaker what they think about the Budapest Memorandum. What exactly was, at that time, the agreement, from your perspective. That might be different among the speakers. In my perspective, in that moment, Ukraine was the third nuclear power in the world, and decided to give up for an agreement with Russia, U.S., and United Kingdom. That’s, in my opinion, partially justified the request of Ukraine and Zelenskyy to us, to U.S. and Europe: ammunition instead of a ride, as he said. So I believe that that has to be considered.

The second—and it’s connected, and then I will stop there—is the use of history by President Putin exactly to turn around the facts, because some of these elements of Budapest Memorandum is often forgotten by Putin. And when Putin put the clock back in the history, put it that not only Ukraine but—(inaudible)—or entirely Central and Eastern Europe is part of it. So when I see President Trump making certain declaration, like telling Theresa May of being happy of the Brexit because you can join United States in the agreement, but then having a strong disagreement of a former Foreign Minister Di Maio, signing the Belt and Road Initiative with Italy, it seems that—

COLL: Can you—can you, please—

Q: I will stop there, yeah.

COLL: Can we try to condense the questions? Thank you.

Q: Yeah, Sorry. I want to have your opinion in this dual behavior of looking to UK as agreeing to join U.S. leaving Brexit,but not permitting Italy to have an agreement with the Belt and Road in Italy. And that’s sovereignty. So those where the two questions, about history on the Budapest Memorandum, and about this dual behavior about the relations of European countries and their sovereignty. Thank you. 

COLL: Thank you. Yes. Please, Mary Beth. Thank you.

LONG: I’ll start. I get to sit at the table with the Russians on nuclear weapons, on missile defense. I was a member of the Budapest committee, also the Minsk deals. You’re exactly right. And that was the deal in Bucharest. And, in fact, there were guarantee—there are security guarantees, so to speak. If you—but that’s one side’s interpretation, not the others. Just like Putin maintains—and I think the president even has reiterated the Russian position—whether or not certain representatives in the United States at the time told Russia that there would be no further NATO expansion. And then you can go into the Minsk deals. The point is, if you sit across the table from the Chinese and the Iranians, you can go through both sides’ history, ad nauseam. If you sit with the Israelis and the Palestinian, the same way. It’s a tit for tat—a tit for tat. These have gone on for, in many cases, years, decades, and centuries. 

We can continue to do that, I think, is what the president is saying. We can have a big debate about whether NATO expansion, whether the third—the third missile sites in Poland were fair and negotiated, yada, yada, yada. His goal is different, which is why what Zelenskyy did by returning to history and one side’s facts versus the other is not productive to the one thing that we need right now. And that is a ceasefire, and both sides at least in the same room. So what he is doing is saying—and you may disagree with the tactic—I am not going to say anything that keeps Putin and gives him an excuse for not showing up in the room and sitting at the table. 

He says very inflammatory things about a lot of things. You know, we’re not going to make Canada the fifty-first state anytime soon, et cetera, et cetera. It has its own impact. It brings people to the table, or not. Some of it is, not even arguably, pretty effective. But at the end of the day, he doesn’t want to relitigate history. He wants Putin in the chair, and he wants Zelenskyy in the chair, and he wants Europe united around them to drive this to a conversation. And this is probably the first time in history where we’ve gone almost ten years with both sides not even talking to one another. 

We have a conniption as soon as the Israelis say they don’t want to meet with the Palestinians, or can’t meet with the Palestinians, or won’t meet with the Palestinians. And we revisit that every couple years. We have two, arguably, nuclear-capable countries who can’t even get on the same continent with each other to have conversations. And that’s this president’s goal. And I think it’s the right one. Get them in the room. Sort it out.

COLL: Zeenat, or Tamar? Do you want to jump in? OK. The lady in the blue, please, right here at this table.

Q: Thank you so much for a great panel so far. My name is Faith Okpotor. I’m an associate professor at Moravian University. 

My question is for you, Mary Beth.

LONG: Surprise. (Laughter.)

Q: I promise, I’ll be kind. Everything you said about the importance of reputation and Putin having something to go back to Russia with, where does the idea of negotiating from a point of strength come in? And what is the utility of undermining Zelenskyy before those negotiations start? Because that seems to be what has happened so far.

COLL: Mary Beth.

LONG: Undermine Zelenskyy, not undermine Zelenskyy—you’re Putin. Put yourself in Putin’s shoes. Here’s Zelenskyy, who gets more weaponry, more billions of dollars, more secret support from Europe and the United States than any European leader since World War II. So, yeah, you had a little tit in the office, or little exchange, but no one’s reduced funding to Zelinskyy. No one’s pulled back resources. In fact, it’s flowing as fast as ever. So, yeah, there was a little bit of embarrassment, but at the end of the day, nobody has said one dime gets pulled from Zelenskyy because of it. On the contrary, Zelenskyy went and twelve hours later had all of Europe gel. 

So from Russia’s point of view, I don’t think—I actually think it’s a net negative from Putin. Yeah, the U.S. got a little tiffed and they sent him away without a mineral deal. Everybody knows it was—the mineral deal was Zelenskyy’s idea anyway. The U.S. is probably going to get it. The U.S. has not pulled any of its economic or military strength from Zelenskyy. And Zelenskyy got all kinds of things from Europe as a consequence. So from Putin’s point of view, that was a net negative on him. This is master politics and master negotiations at a scale. You may disagree with that, but I guarantee you that’s what the Russians are thinking. And the Russians are thinking this president is going to give me a fair shake to get into the room. That’s what was happening in that room. Zelenskyy didn’t lose one weapon, one bullet, one anything. In fact, he gained net from the Europeans stepping up.

RAHMAN: Did the Europeans make commitments other than the meetings that—I mean, rhetorically, we saw, of course, you know, the cascade of support. 

LONG: They did. 

RAHMAN: But did they actually commit? 

LONG: They did. I think the Brits substantially expedited some of theirs.

GUTNER: But Zelenskyy could lose any lingering whiff of support from Republicans in Congress, who had been for Ukraine in the past. So there’s a domestic audience angle to that.

COLL: Yes, the lady here at this table on the front, please.

Q: Hi. My name is Asiya Daud. I’m a professor at the Claremont Colleges, Pitzer College.

And my question is directed towards Mary Beth, or anybody else who would like to comment. I just returned from Germany. I actually spent quite some time in Germany. We know that Germans are the powerhouse of the EU. And I had many interesting conversations at the coming of the Trump administration and about the war in Ukraine. The Germans are directly affected, I think more than any other European country, by the mass migration from all of the calamities in Ukraine and Syria. And I’m very interested in the domestic—how the Trump administration is changing the domestic politics, particularly in Europe and particularly in Germany, with the recent election of—well, the increase in the AfD and the realignment of the parties.

And the Germans spoke their mind to me. And they were talking about, well, they may have made comments about one of the reasons that they had—why they were concerned about the Trump administration coming in, and then, you know, sort of getting their act together and re-shifting, and thinking about different policies. How do you think the Trump administration, looking forward, how do you think with the new shift in domestic politics in Germany, how will that affect the relationship between Germany and America? And I know the recent AfD leader—I forget her name. I’m sorry. Allison?

COLL: Alice Weidel. Could you—could you—

Q: Yeah. She had said that she wants a stronger relationship with the United States. So if you could comment on that, and maybe, you know, what you foresee. 

COLL: Thank you. Thank you. 

LONG: I’ll dive in just with a real quick and dirty—

COLL: Germany, a big player. 

LONG: Germany, the biggest player, as you point out. And I think, for this administration, as the previous two administrations, it’s not so much the immigration policy that puts Germany on the hot seat, so to speak, it’s their energy policy, and has been their energy policy for quite some time. Which marries, of course, Germany to Russia, despite—and I was in the room probably for six years in which the Brits, the French, the Americans begged Germany to not tie itself so exclusively to Russia and basically endanger its own national security as well as Europe. Because at the same time Germany was doing well and writing checks for Greece and several others as fast as they could to keep those European nations afloat. 

So I think Germany’s stepping up lately this administration has encouraged. The immigration policy, I’ll be honest with you, I really don’t think this administration cares that much about European internal immigration policies. I think it uses it as the example, in many cases—Germany is one, but not the largest one—in which, you know, if you’re creating no-go zones in your own country and your own population is upset with the balance of the immigrants, you know, we’re dealing with that and it’s going to be tough. We encourage you to do the same. 

But Germany, like most of European countries, have weak coalitions. The Greens—Germany is going through a shift—that have really shaped Germany’s and European countries’ ability to step up and pay for their own defense. It’s not because these countries don’t want to. It’s because they have an incredible entitlement, retirement, and other programs that just leave very, very little for defense. And I think Germany, for one, and others, are finally recognizing that maybe there needs to be more room there for their own defense. 

COLL: Comments? Tamar.

GUTNER: Sure. Your question prompted me to think more broadly about Europe and global governance. As the U.S. is pulling back from leadership many people are wondering if Europe is going to step in and do more. And we did see a little bit of that over the weekend with this—with this meeting on how to address Ukraine. But it’s also important that we watch the rise of these right-wing parties that are becoming more prominent in Germany, and France, or elsewhere, because they’re also critical of the EU, some of them are pro-Russia. And so it makes it more challenging for major European countries to kind of work together to keep multilateralism together. 

COLL: Yes, the lady back there at that center table with her hand still up. Please stand up, yes.

Q: Thank you. I’m Karen Alter. I’m a professor at Northwestern University. 

We hear, in response to Trump’s initiatives, that it’s either going to be great and transformative, all smooth sailing, or that it’s going to be a total disaster that’s going to set us back forever. I would like each panelist—that’s really not the choice set. In some areas it’s going to be creative destruction, and maybe we’ll end up in a better place. And I think I can guess where you’re going to say there’s creative destruction. In some areas, he’s not going to—the areas that he has said he wants to do things, I mean, the needle is not going to move because institutions have a lot of stickiness. And in some areas we’re going to really be set back in bad ways—the end of the post-war consensus. I would like you guys to just pick your areas of those three and tell us which one is it? Pick one that’s going to be creative destruction and go in a good direction, one that’s not going to change despite everything he’s saying and doing, and one that you’re really, really worried about the future of the international order or multilateralism.

COLL: Zeenat, creative destruction, stickiness, or major damage. 

RAHMAN: Yeah. So creative destruction. I think seeing the European countries scramble and move as quickly as they have to action is something that I think could be good, and it’s not something that I—generally, you know, they move—the multilateral system, but Europeans move more slowly in their iterative, consultative process. And so I think this has really shocked them to the system that, you know, the post-World War II liberal order is—you know, we cannot—they cannot count on the United States as an ally. But maybe some good will come of this with respect to Europeans seeking leadership on certain things. And the Trump administration maybe is not all wrong about changes needing to be made in some of these places. 

What was the second one? Oh, not moving the needle. This is your area of expertise, but I think the Department of Defense and our defense contracts will be hard—it’s hard to move DOD. So even the changes that they’re saying they’re going to make to, you know, workforce, vis-à-vis civilians and things like that, I just—I think that is not going to maybe be—it’s not a nimble organization. And so I don’t think it’s going to move as quickly as they want. 

And where I’m really concerned about the future of the international order? I mean, I think the blunt force instrument way in which USAID was completely decimated, and it’s not going to come back to State, as I said, in any meaningful way. Because even when they say we’re going to keep humanitarian assistance, that’s not actually been true. And there’s been many kind of reports about that. And so—and when you look at all of the work that the State Department has done in the last ten, or twenty years, fifteen years, to reach civil society, to reach populations, civil society populations directly across the world, I really worry about the soft power piece of all of this and how we—he’s all about—this president’s about short-term wins, and not so much the details, you know? 

And so I worry that we’re going to—we’re going to bear the consequences of those for Gen Z right now, who I talk to every day, who are very enthusiastic about wanting to change the world, you know, as the world is changing so quickly in front of them, and then for generations to come. And so I think it’s, like, I’m saying workforce development, like, there’s just a whole bunch of range of issues as this international order is changing. So that’s the thing I think I worry about the most.

COLL: Tamar.

GUTNER: I really like this question because I think we all have to think about what’s between the greatness and the disaster. And just thinking about trade, for example, any tariffs could benefit import competing industries, right? Like Florida tomato growers might be really happy. So we always—you know, there are winners and losers to all of these policies. I’ll highlight the World Bank and the IMF as an example of sticky, because it’s not that easy to disengage with them. At the World Bank, you know, you can’t leave until the set of loans that you’ve been involved in with your capital guarantee and your paid-in capital are gone. 

And actually, if the U.S. pulled out of the IMF and World Bank, the Articles of Agreement say that the country with the greatest share has the headquarters, so would they move to Tokyo or Beijing? You know what would happen? All that renegotiation. They could—and they could realize that these institutions benefit them. The Trump administration. They will fight against the climate finance, the great emphasis on climate finance at the World Bank. But, again, it’s sticky because loans are underway, projects are being implemented. Some people argue that some of the goals, the objectives of climate finance was pouring old wine into new bottles because everything’s about climate now. So we just changed the—so maybe the categories will be changed back again. But I think that’s a good example of sticky behavior.

COLL: Mary Beth.

LONG: I actually have to say that I agree with several of my colleagues’ points. I think the place where the president—I’m going in a slightly different order—is going to bend his pick with the least amount of effect, is DOD and our military industrial complex. There’s a reason why Eisenhower talked about it when he did. I mean, you really have to know how that works. And there are major—you know, we’re down to from thirty-some to literally five to seven primes that do all our big systems and all our big defense. And that would take an enormous amount of time and pressure to change that. And we also—within the building, the services really, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, they drive the budget decisions. Taking that power away and shifting even commercially, but taking that power away from the services, I think there would be many, many picks bending on that. So I put that in the many have tried, you know, I wish you well, good luck. 

The other place I think we’ll fail is we don’t appreciate how our messaging—we do a crappy job messaging. This president isn’t interested in traditional messaging, soft power. I think that’s going to fall off and cause a lot of angst for a lot of people. I think the place where we’re actually doing better than at least this room would see, I spend a lot of time in the Middle East, a lot of time in Southeast Asia, and in South American countries. They’re psyched. They’ve got a guy. You may disagree with them, but they know exactly where he stands. And they know that if he makes a promise he’s going to deliver. And that’s very reassuring to a lot of confused, weak leaders out there. And on trade, I defer to these ladies. I went into government because there would be no math. I’m sticking with it. (Laughter.)

COLL: Well, on that note, it’s—again, it’s most unfortunate that we have to end the conversation because of the rules. So it’s 1:35 now. But I want to thank each of our distinguished panelists. I want to thank them for joining us. (Applause.) And I want to thank all of you for joining us. And I will be bold and say that I suspect this probably turned out to be the most interesting panel at this hour. (Laughter.) Thank you, again. Thank you. (Applause.) 

(END)