The Biden administration's idealistic commitment to multilateralism was exploited by Russia, leading to a flawed UN cybercrime treaty that compromises U.S. commercial interests and human rights.

• Foreign Policy & Security Failures

• "So when the B administration came in, we had this view that we're going to be part of the G77, which was the faction of the UN that was the global south and we were going to break the north south divide and it was aspirational and I support it in theory entirely and it begs the question, what if this north divide is being used and exploited by Russia and China for them to get the upper hand in bodies like the UN, right? And I saw a lot a lot of that, right?"

  47:23 Watch ↗

• "We had met Russia halfway. Russia now could point to international law and say, "Aha, I'm going to arrest that IBM researcher because he's in my country and per international law, he's not abiding by this language and this language that I have deliberately stuck in here. So I can arrest and seize data from your IBM guy." Right? So it's not only a commercial concern for US tech companies but also a human rights concern."

  49:19 Watch ↗

• "I would argue that we need to go in and be really tough and say here's the Americanbased language and we're going to sort of take it or leave it. Otherwise, we're going to the Council of Europe and we're going to build out like-minded on our term. And in my mind, that would have been the creative way to build out the international norm on this and not wait and hold out for the sort of UN blast treaty."

  50:02 Watch ↗

• "I have really real deep concerns that Russia and friends have sort of used us and taken advantage of our desire to be multilateralists."

  50:31 Watch ↗

US foreign policy, including under Democratic administrations, mistakenly applied a simplistic, one-size-fits-all 'procedural democracy' package to diverse regions, failing to adapt to local cultures and histories.

• Foreign Policy & Security Failures

• "You know there was that notion of and this was not you but you know in the glory days of the 1990s you know you know Americans would kind of plop in parachute in with their powerpoints and say you do these six things you'll be a democracy if you're Poland or Russia or whatever. But it's always this balancing, right?"

  19:45 Watch ↗

• "I do think that there was sort of a package put together you know well intended in the 1990s that it was assumed procedural democracy you can go in and kind of export and promote and for a while that seemed to be working."

  20:30 Watch ↗

• "But why would we use the same procedural package that we used for former Soviet Union that were legislated in 1991? That doesn't make a lot of sense, right? It's coming out of two different types of regime types."

  22:00 Watch ↗

The Biden administration failed to effectively use its significant leverage, particularly through the Department of Defense's close partnership with the IDF, to shape the conduct of the war in Gaza and better protect civilians, despite disagreeing with Israel's methods.

• Foreign Policy & Security Failures

• "Once we had this this bear hug essentially after October 7th, how and why and could we have achieved more leverage to affect and shape the course of the war in Gaza? And to me, that's a very important question to study."

  56:38 Watch ↗

• "But we vehemently disagree with the how. So why and how could we not use our leverage to do that? And so human rights are part of that answer, right? Because it's our stick in terms of security. There are US laws on the books about it. But to me, this is a real right question of was DoD too."

  57:48 Watch ↗

• "What could the Pentagon have done operationally strategically tactically in using the leverage afforded by their close close partnership with the Israeli Defense Forces to shape the conduct of the war and the thinking about how you defeat Hamas?"

  57:25 Watch ↗

Democrats and US policymakers have done a 'terrible job' of explaining the long-term strategic and material benefits of foreign aid and international engagement to the American public, allowing public misconceptions to fester and undermining support for these policies.

• Foreign Policy & Security Failures

• "And I think that's where we've fallen on the job in explaining to the American people this long-term play that being altruistic at a very small cost in terms of foreign aid and even in the NATO contributions is a very worthy investment for both the material and more importantly the immaterial benefits in the longer term"

  1:05:42 Watch ↗

• "And I think our challenge as a group is to explain to the American people how that matters to them. And I think we've done a terrible job to address in in actually thinking that through and why that matters to them um at a most basic basic level."

  1:06:45 Watch ↗

• "so Americans wildly overestimate how much foreign aid we give. When pulled, they will often say between 25 and 30%, right? So that's a reflection politically of how much Americans think we're giving and more compared to what we're actually giving."

  1:03:34 Watch ↗

Both Democratic and Republican policymakers failed to understand or adapt to the challenge posed by non-state actors and persistent civil conflicts to the post-WWII 'rules-based international order'.

• Foreign Policy & Security Failures

• "but Republicans and Democrats, I think, in the post 911 moment did not really consider how the rise of non-state actors would really challenge and create inconsistencies."

  31:01 Watch ↗

• "The other thing that has challenged it exponentially is the rise of civil conflicts that don't end. Right? Wars used to end. In the past 20 years, a lot of our wars don't end. There's a lot of research on this and a lot of our friends are working on why, but part of the reason it seems is that the wars that are happening are within states often and they're about the nature of who owns the state."

  32:12 Watch ↗

US foreign policy has been undermined by a lack of 'strategic patience,' prioritizing short-term, top-down solutions over the necessary but slow work of building local governance and rule of law from the ground up.

• Foreign Policy & Security Failures

• "So, if we had had a little more patience in Washington after 911, I think we could have gotten it right and created a new way of looking at the tools that would be appropriate, but but they would be much longer term, right? because they would require starting at the local level."

  23:09 Watch ↗

• "So if we had gone back in time and we had had a little more strategic patience, we could have understood that the procedural package was not the right package that elections are overgrown and we know that and the re research political science has long shown that not long shown that but has subsequently shown that um but that in these particular countries coming out of deep authoritarian structures with very rich local governance structures, you just need a different set of tools."

  24:22 Watch ↗

American diplomacy, under both parties, has a flawed instinct to immediately identify and invest in new top-level leaders in post-conflict zones, while neglecting to engage with broader civil society and local governing structures.

• Foreign Policy & Security Failures

• "But you need to make sure that the power of US diplomacy is touching all the civil society groups, all the different um local governing commission uh councils, there were LCC's during the civil war where a miraculous thing happened which is when the Assad regime basically ignored areas both under his control and not under control. Local governance was set up in a very organized way."

  18:13 Watch ↗

• "and that's really hard for you at the US to do because we have an instinct to go in and figure out who's the new guy or gal in town. In this case, a lot of guys and invest invest invest in relationships. That is our State Department way. That is the diplomatic way. And we just cannot do that here."

  18:49 Watch ↗

The Biden administration's policy on the Gaza conflict created a perception of hypocrisy, which undermined its ability to advocate for human rights globally and gave rhetorical ammunition to adversaries.

• Foreign Policy & Security Failures

• "it's a very fair question and for the last year and a half, I think most people in the Biden administration shied away from talking publicly about human rights promotion as any part of our foreign policy because of the fair concern that there would be um seen as inconsistent or you know hypocritical even and certainly um at places like the UN it was often uh a rhetorically used."

  54:46 Watch ↗

• "So, for example, there was one day last fall where we wanted to have a Sudan resolution at the UN, and it seemed like non-controversial to pass a resolution about the terrible um war in Sudan, the civil war, and the um impediments to international uh humanitarian aid. And there was just an effort to link that to Gaza and to tie the two so that, you know, it was vetoed um and it was used sort of almost as like a threat that um there'd be no action on Sudan if we didn't work on a Gaza resolution."

  55:10 Watch ↗

The US military and policymakers failed to develop an adequate strategic 'playbook' for advising allies on how to conduct dense urban warfare while minimizing civilian casualties and preventing radicalization, representing a critical failure in strategic thinking and preparation.

• Foreign Policy & Security Failures

• "… So we have some lived recent military experiences with this but we have not systematically looked at like what actually works for outcomes especially in such a dense place and that's where I felt or I'm just being really honest with you we should have done more work and thinking in the past year"

  58:39 Watch ↗

Democrats, along with the broader political establishment, have failed to update outdated post-WWII international laws, specifically asylum law, to address modern challenges like mass economic migration, leading to significant domestic political crises.

• Foreign Policy & Security Failures
• Ceding Ground on Crime & Immigration

• "these are principles of the post 1945 assumptions that I think have changed and that we haven't successfully updated. Um, the asylum law that has caused so much trouble in our politics was a post 1945, post World War II understanding of that if there were people in real real desperate need, future people fleeing a future Hitler, how they would be taken in and protected if returning home would cause them to be killed or harmed."

  36:10 Watch ↗

• "It was not intended for economic migration and is this tension right there wasn't as much economic migration 70 30 years ago. the rise of economic migration has been much more recent and so that has put a real strain on this asyl law, right? Because we're countries are trying to use it or trying to preserve it and trying to adhere to it all the while managing those who could be both asles and economic migrants which are two different categories. Um this law needs to be updated."

  36:39 Watch ↗