The Foreign Affairs Interview

The Iran Shock Is Not Over: A Conversation With Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan

When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz six months ago, the world seemed on the verge of an energy crisis that would upend economies, governments, and much else. It was, as Meghan O’Sullivan and Jason Bordoff pointed out in Foreign Affairs at the time, the largest disruption of global energy flow in history. The world’s ability to manage that disruption has been surprising—the crisis many expected has not come. But in just the last few years, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the fits and starts of the green transition, and the AI buildout have remade energy markets and the politics undergirding them—and shown energy to be a devastating economic weapon. Bordoff and O’Sullivan have mapped out this new energy order across a series of essays for Foreign Affairs. They warn that the relative stability of recent months cannot be cause for complacency. Bordoff is director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and was senior energy adviser in the Obama administration. O’Sullivan is director of Harvard University’s Belfer Center and was the deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to them on Tuesday, September 8, about the future of the Strait of Hormuz; China’s clean-energy dominance and the Trump administration’s Venezuela oil deal; and how the return of the energy weapon is transforming geopolitics and national security. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

What Does China Want? A Conversation With Jessica Chen Weiss

There has been no shortage of dizzying shifts in American foreign policy since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year. But perhaps none have been as surprising as the shift on China. In his first term, Trump helped create a hard-line consensus centered on fears of a growing threat. Now, he seems much more interested in striking deals—as he presumably will be when Xi Jinping comes to Washington later this month. Many analysts of U.S. China policy have reacted to this reversal with dismay. But Jessica Chen Weiss sees it as an opportunity to forge a more sensible approach. Weiss, a professor and the faculty director of the Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a former State Department official, has warned of the dangers of zero-sum thinking about China in a series of essays for Foreign Affairs. Her most recent essay, in the September/October issue, focuses on the myth and the reality of China’s critical mineral dominance. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Weiss on August 31 about what China wants—which is also the title of her forthcoming book—and what U.S. foreign policy can do to meet those ambitions without resorting to dangerous confrontation. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

• Transcript

Afghanistan After America: A Conversation With Laurel Miller and Graeme Smith

Five years ago this month, the United States ended its war in Afghanistan. Washington’s exit was chaotic; as Taliban forces swept through the country and the U.S.-backed government collapsed, officials scrambled to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans who might fall victim to repression and retribution. In the years since, Afghanistan has practically vanished from American foreign policy discussion. But the situation in the country remains dire, and the collective forgetting of the United States’ longest war carries costs of its own. Laurel Miller and Graeme Smith have each spent many years working on and within Afghanistan. Miller, now president of the Asia Foundation, was a longtime U.S. diplomat who became a top official focused on Afghanistan from 2013 to 2017. Smith worked as a political affairs officer for the United Nations in Afghanistan from 2015 to 2018 before serving as an Afghanistan analyst for the International Crisis Group. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Miller and Smith on Tuesday, August 25, about the lessons and legacy of the American war in Afghanistan, how the country has changed under Taliban rule, and the questions that U.S. policymakers should grapple with moving forward. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

• Transcript

Is a Post-American World Inevitable? A Conversation With Kurt Campbell, Rush Doshi, and Mark Leonard

Ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, a big question has loomed over any discussion of global politics: How much of the change he has brought to U.S. foreign policy, and to the international system, will endure beyond this presidential term? Two essays that open the new issue of Foreign Affairs offer different answers to that question. Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi, two senior officials in the Biden administration, argue that the U.S. alliance system will not just survive Trump but can emerge stronger, even better suited to countering China and its partners. Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, argues that policymakers in allied capitals and beyond must accept that the United States has fundamentally changed—and get ready to survive a more turbulent and contested world. Dan Kurtz-Phelan wanted to bring Campbell, Doshi, and Leonard together in one conversation to lay out and test these contrasting arguments. They spoke on August 12 about possible futures for U.S. foreign policy—and what those paths mean for a global order built by a very different United States. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

From the Archive: How the Past Shadows China's Future: A Conversation With Odd Arne Westad

At the end of last year, editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with the historian Odd Arne Westad about China’s complicated past and how that history shapes the way Chinese leaders see their country’s place in the world today. Policymakers and analysts argue over the implications of China’s rise, the extent of its ambitions, the nature of its economic influence, and the meaning of its growing military strength. Underlying these arguments is a widespread sense that where Beijing once seemed likely to slot comfortably into a U.S.-led international order, China now poses a profound challenge to American interests. And as leaders in Beijing watch Washington struggle against Iran, rankle allies and partners, and retreat from the international system it built, they sense a moment of opportunity—and are looking to their own history for the lessons, or warnings, it might hold. No one brings more perspective to these arguments than Westad. In a series of essays in Foreign Affairs over the past few years, Westad has explored the drivers of China’s foreign policy, its approach to global power, and its fraught ties with the United States. He sees in the long arc of Chinese and global history a stark warning about the potential for greater conflict, including a war between China and the United States. He also, however, sees lessons for policymakers today about how to avert such an outcome. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Cyberwarfare in the AI Age: A Conversation With Jen Easterly

It’s been nearly 15 years since Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned of a “cyber–Pearl Harbor.” Since then, most people have become fairly inured to such a risk. That’s true even as there’s been a steady clip of cyberattacks on the United States and other countries, some of them quite alarming, and even as a new, more powerful AI model is released by an American or Chinese lab seemingly every week. Jen Easterly has spent much of the past 20 years defending U.S. cyberspace against such threats. She has been both a military officer and a top civilian official, most recently running the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Now, she warns, the danger is about to get much worse. For all the talk of AI-enabled cyberattacks, and the attention on scarily powerful models from American labs like Anthropic and OpenAI and from their Chinese counterparts, Easterly worries that the world still fails to appreciate both the magnitude of the threat and the speed with which a true crisis could be approaching. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Easterly on Thursday, July 30. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

The End of Free Trade: A Conversation With Robert E. Lighthizer

Almost no one in the last several decades has done more to change the American approach to trade than Robert Lighthizer. Lighthizer was the U.S. trade representative in President Donald Trump’s first term. In that role, he set out to reverse Washington’s long-standing commitment to a global trading system. It was a crusade—using tariffs, among other tools—that targeted China above all but also any other country that, as he saw it, benefited from that system at the expense of the United States. Lighthizer recently laid out his vision for a new trade order in Foreign Affairs. With Trump levying tariffs and wielding American economic power against both allies and adversaries, Lighthizer argues that the free trade system should be thrown out, replaced with one that is more balanced, sovereign, and transparent. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with Lighthizer on the sidelines of the Aspen Security Forum on Wednesday, July 15. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

• Transcript

The Future of Palestine: A Conversation With Salam Fayyad

In the nine months since a cease-fire ended full-on war in Gaza, the world’s attention has in many ways moved on. That has been especially true since February, with the start of the war in Iran. But the situation in Gaza remains grim and unsettled, and the state of affairs in the West Bank has become increasingly fraught. Meanwhile, the way forward for Palestinian politics is murky, and the prospect of any durable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems more remote than ever. Salam Fayyad served as Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority from 2007 to 2013, after a long career at the International Monetary Fund. In many capitals, including Washington, Fayyad is still considered one of the most effective Palestinian leaders of recent decades. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with him on July 15, on the sidelines of the Aspen Security Forum, about his proposals for building a Palestinian state, delivering humane and effective governance in Gaza, and finding a viable way forward for the Palestinian cause. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

The End of American Military Dominance? A Conversation With Paul Scharre

The war in Iran pitted two of the world’s mightiest militaries against one weakened by years of strikes, sanctions, and sabotage. And yet it was the smaller country that appears to have emerged with the advantage. In Ukraine, similarly, Russia expected an easy victory, only to be repeatedly thwarted by apparently outmatched Ukrainian forces. These outcomes may seem surprising. But Paul Scharre argues that they should not be. The innovations that have in recent years transformed battlefields have also leveled the playing field between powers great and small. And as Scharre wrote in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, the U.S. military is unprepared for a new age of warfare in which drones, AI, and other emerging technologies undercut the dominance it has become used to. Scharre, the executive vice president of the Center for a New American Security, served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan and then went on to craft Pentagon policy on drones and autonomous weapons systems. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with him about what the wars in Iran and Ukraine should tell us about the future of warfare more generally, about what China is learning from those wars, and about what the United States must do to adapt. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

• Transcript

What China Thinks It Can Gain From a Disordered World: A Conversation With Oriana Skylar Mastro

Like the rest of us, China’s leaders are confronting a world in turmoil. They see uncertain American commitments to allies, even as many of those allies ramp up their own defense efforts. They see changing relationships, whether deepening ties between Russia and North Korea or new connections among anxious middle powers. They see American military action in the Middle East and Western Hemisphere, with effects on American power in China’s own region. And yet, as Oriana Skylar Mastro sees it, far from surprising Beijing, such disruptions are being taken as confirmation of what Chinese leader Xi Jinping often refers to as “great change unseen in a century.” Mastro has written a series of essays for Foreign Affairs on how Beijing aims to shape and exploit that change. She joined Dan Kurtz-Phelan to discuss China’s strategy for navigating this turmoil—and what the United States should, and should not, do in response. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

• Transcript

The AI Race Nobody Can Win: A Conversation With Sebastian Mallaby

The breakneck pace of AI progress and the intensity of the competition for AI supremacy has left U.S. policymakers in a difficult position. They must encourage the innovation needed to ensure an advantage over China and to power economic growth; protect against a national security catastrophe; and assuage the concerns of an anxious and skeptical public. Sebastian Mallaby calls this the “AI trilemma” in his most recent essay for Foreign Affairs. And he argues that it requires more than the piecemeal measures currently on offer in Washington—or, for that matter, in Beijing or Brussels. Mallaby is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the host of a new podcast called The Spillover, as well as the author of The Infinity Machine, an excellent new book about the founding of the AI lab DeepMind. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with him on June 24 about the state of AI competition, about the stakes of that competition, and about how its course will reshape societies, economies, and global politics. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

• Transcript

America, Iran, and a World in Turmoil: A Conversation With Ian Bremmer

The war in Iran may have come to an end, but both the course and the conclusion of that war have brought into sharp relief the forces that increasingly define a world of weaponized power and systemic risk: unconstrained leaders willing to gamble with military force; the search for, and use of, economic leverage; technologies destabilizing both decision-making and development models; and old alliances fracturing and new alignments forming. Ian Bremmer is a leading geopolitical analyst and the president and founder of the Eurasia Group. His most recent piece for Foreign Affairs is about the long-term consequences of the Iran war, but he has also written on shifts in global power, the effect of technology on geopolitics, and much else. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Bremmer on Monday, June 22, about how to make sense of today’s global turmoil. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

• Transcript

Is the Iran War Coming to an End? A Conversation With Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr

The Iran war may be coming to an end, as Washington and Tehran prepare to sign a framework agreement later this week. That deal should reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the blockade of Iranian ports, even as it leaves unresolved the issues that brought both sides to war in the first place, including the fate of Iran’s nuclear program. But policymakers in Washington and other capitals are just starting to confront the ways in which the war has transformed Iran—and how it could transform the Middle East moving forward. In a recent essay for Foreign Affairs, Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr argue that members of a new, emboldened generation of Iranian leaders are forging an entirely new approach to their own society, to the United States, and to the region. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Bajoghli and Nasr on June 15 about the potential implications of a deal—and about how the last three and a half months of war will shape both the Middle East’s trajectory and the future of geopolitics more broadly. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

• Transcript

Is Cuba Next? A Conversation With Michael J. Bustamante and Ricardo Zuniga

U.S. President Donald Trump has insisted that he will have the “honor of taking Cuba.” Although the administration has not specified what that might mean, following interventions in Venezuela and Iran over the past six months, there is reason to take seriously the possibility of some kind of forceful U.S. action, including military action. Already, a combination of U.S. pressure and the Cuban government’s own failures has resulted in unrelentingly dire conditions on the island—leading many to expect some kind of break before long. In recent weeks, two of the sharpest observers of Cuba and U.S. policy toward Cuba have written essays in Foreign Affairs on the choices facing policymakers in both Havana and Washington. Michael Bustamante is chair of Cuba and Cuban-American studies at the University of Miami. And Ricardo Zuniga is a longtime U.S. official who served at the embassy in Havana and helped lead the secret talks that brought the Obama administration’s opening to Cuba. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with Bustamante and Zuniga on June 8 about what U.S. policymakers could and should do in the coming weeks and months—and what those decisions will mean for Cuba’s future. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Are America’s Allies Finally Learning to Deal With Trump? A Conversation With Philip H. Gordon and Mara Karlin

Six months ago, Philip Gordon and Mara Karlin wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs about the plight of the United States’ allies in U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term. What was surprising, they argued, was not the administration’s cajoling and threats, or all the ways U.S. policy had called into question the basic principles of these relationships. The surprise was that allies were surprised by these moves in the first place. Almost a year into Trump’s second term, they had done little to develop a plan B. The months since have brought a wave of new challenges to U.S. alliances—the threats to seize Greenland and pull out of NATO, the continued warnings to free-riders, the shifting approach to China, and a war in Iran launched with little consultation even of the Gulf leaders who would be most directly affected. Editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Gordon, who was national security adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, and Karlin, who was assistant secretary of defense in the Biden administration, on June 1. They discussed how the responses of U.S. allies in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East have evolved over the course of Trump’s second term, and how those responses will shape and constrain U.S. power in the years ahead. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

• Transcript

How to Prevent the Next World War: A Conversation With Thant Myint-U

The world today is more dangerous and more violent than it’s been at any time since 1945. States everywhere have jettisoned commitments to cooperation and opted for aggression. The so-called rules-based order seems to have come apart. Yet the international body founded after World War II with the charge of preventing World War III finds itself increasingly on the margins. In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, the historian and former UN official Thant Myint-U considered what it would take for the United Nations to regain a meaningful role in preventing and managing global conflict. That question is particularly relevant as the UN begins the process of picking its next secretary-general. Deputy Editor Kanishk Tharoor spoke with Thant about the past and future of the United Nations, and about how the pillars of global peace can be reinforced before they collapse. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

• Transcript

Does Trump Have a Strategy? A Conversation With A. Wess Mitchell

Both of Donald Trump’s presidential administrations have prompted sharp debates about the direction of U.S. foreign policy. But how to discern a strategic logic behind Washington’s approach, and whether it’s even possible to do so, have been particularly vexing questions since Trump returned to the White House. A. Wess Mitchell helped shape these debates as assistant secretary of state in Trump’s first term, and he has been uniquely interested in shedding light on them since, including in a number of essays for Foreign Affairs. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Mitchell on Monday, May 18, about how he understands the strategy driving Trump’s second-term foreign policy, and where, after Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping and with wars in Iran and Ukraine far from settled, he thinks that strategy should go from here. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

• Transcript

The View From the Front Row of the Trump-Xi Summit: A Conversation With Orville Schell

Orville Schell may be the United States’ greatest chronicler and observer of several decades of U.S.-Chinese relations. Foreign Affairs was extremely lucky to have him in Beijing this week for the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. It was not the first time Schell has had a front-row seat at a meeting of U.S. and Chinese leaders. Editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to him on Friday, May 15, about how he read the interactions between Xi and Trump, what they did—and did not—say about the hardest and most dangerous issues in the U.S.-Chinese relationship, and how this could mark an inflection point for the two countries. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

When Two Superpowers Meet: A Conversation With Nicholas Burns

Not long ago, it was practically a truism to say that a hard line on China was the only real bipartisan position in American foreign policy. To the extent such a consensus ever existed, Donald Trump has upended it in his second term—leaving considerable uncertainty about just what he wants to achieve when he travels to China to meet with Xi Jinping this week, and what Xi hopes to achieve in return. To make sense of how the Chinese are approaching the summit and the options U.S. policymakers have at their disposal, Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Nicholas Burns, a longtime American diplomat who served as ambassador to China until January of 2025. In this special bonus episode recorded on Thursday, May 7, Burns discusses the issues that will take center stage when Trump meets Xi—from trade and technology to Iran, Taiwan, and Ukraine—and the enormous stakes for U.S.-Chinese competition going forward. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

• Transcript

Trump, Putin, and Genghis Khan: A Conversation With Fiona Hill

Fiona Hill has spent her career trying to understand—and, in one case, advise— leaders with grandiose ambitions, high risk tolerance, and an unshakeable sense of themselves as world-historic figures. She has been a close observer of Vladimir Putin for decades, as a scholar and a member of the U.S. intelligence community. In Donald Trump’s first term, she was a senior member of the National Security Council before becoming a household name during Trump’s first impeachment, for testifying about his relationship with Putin and with Volodymyr Zelensky. Now, Hill is watching as Trump and Putin, as well as Xi Jinping and others, upend global order, and policymakers everywhere try to navigate the most turbulent period in recent memory—while the rest of the world tries to discern what might come in its wake. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Hill on the morning of Tuesday, May 5, about the wars in Ukraine and Iran, the predicament faced by American allies, and what Trump’s second-term foreign policy will mean for the future of American power. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

• Transcript