Nikolas Gvosdev in conversation with Nadia Schadlow.
In the journal’s continuing conversations with government officials and practitioners, our editor reached out to former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy and Assistant to the President of the United States Nadia Schadlow for her perspective on the new administration. This interview was originally published in Volume 65, No. 3, in May 2021.
Nikolas Gvosdev: When he spoke at the Naval War College in 2018, your then-colleague in government, Assistant Secretary of State Wess Mitchell, spoke about the challenge for the Trump/Pence administration to forge new regional and global strategies that took into account the changes in the international system and would be able to lay a bipartisan foundation for US national security. Would you agree with that assessment? To what extent do you see continuity with the national security strategy you helped to formulate in 2017 with the interim guidance issued by the Biden-Harris administration? Where are there points of discontinuity?
Nadia Schadlow: I would agree with the premise that the world has shifted. But I would add a step: Before we could make adjustments to our approach, it was the responsibility of the US government, especially the White House, to provide a correct and accurate diagnosis as to how and why that shift had taken place. In other words, we needed to have clarity about the problem set that the United States was facing. The world has moved beyond the “unipolar moment” of the post-Cold War period and into an age of interdependence and competition that calls for different policies and tools. Facing a seriouscompetitor in China at all levels—security, military, economic, technological— those of us serving in the Trump-Pence national security team needed to make sure that all Americans understood what was at stake given these new conditions. This was especially the case with the US business community, because in many sectors China was using economic tools of statecraft to harm their interests. The damage included: using US capital markets to the advantage of its own companies and firms; compelling Western firms operating in China to transfer technologies; exploiting supply-chain vulnerabilities; and identifying and controlling foundational technology sectors and platforms including in broadband cellular networks like 5G and advanced energy technologies.
Let me give an additional example. In a joint op-ed, my research intern Brayden Helwig and I noted, “Data is arguably the most important strategic asset to emerge in the twenty-first century. Access to data and the ability to protect its integrity are vital to American security and prosperity. As 5G and artificial intelligence transform our societies into highly integrated networks, protecting data will become even more crucial.”[1] During the Cold War, we would never have allowed the Soviet Union to own critical communications assets in the United States, or to allow Soviet firms to obtain contracts to service vital parts of the communications infrastructure. Yet, Chinese companies have sought to be part and parcel of the West’s data and communications systems. The Trump administration successfully made this diagnosis—it explains the world as it is, not as we wish it to be—and to shift the national conversation about the US role in the world, and especially the challenge posed by China. Last year, in Foreign Affairs, I wrote that President Donald Trump had, in terms of his impact on formulating US national security policy, “been a disrupter, and his policies, informed by his heterodox perspective, have set in motion a series of long-overdue corrections . . . [which] will help ensure that the international order remains favorable to US interests and values and to those of other free and open societies.” [2]
We need that foundation to build an enduring bipartisan coalition in order to adopt the policies we need to meet these challenges. This means taking both defensive measures—stopping things such as the theft of intellectual property and taking a much harder look at China’s efforts to acquire American firms. (We have seen how Chinese companies used the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to buy up US firms going bankrupt in order to acquire key technologies.) It also means considering more proactive steps to improve US capabilities and to retain our advantages and enable the United States, if necessary, to weaken or blunt Chinese moves.
Much of the media has done a great disservice to the American people by not covering and explaining the many new policy efforts that began under the Trump administration. There was a lack of coverage of all of the very specific measures taken, across many departments and agencies.
Fast forwarding to the interim national security guidance, released by President Joe Biden this spring, there are several important points in that document and signs of continuity with the diagnosis delivered by the Trump administration. After all, fundamental interests of the United States have not changed simply because of the change of administration.
The first point is that in its interim guidance, the Biden administration reasserted that the United States is in a long-term, strategic competition with China. The interim guidance was not shy in stating this is more than simply an economic competition but that it also has an ideological component. It is a competition between two systems with very different approaches to how society ought to be organized. A second point in the interim guidance was the emphasis on the need to make democracies work, and the importance of showing that democracy can deliver for the people. This too is part of the systemic competition. For the United States, it is important to show the American people how US foreign policies can bring benefits to the average citizen. But if not designed well, they also can bring harm.
Having said that, I do see some flaws in the new guidance, which concern me. The first is the tendency to use the “passive voice” when it comes to a number of threats, as if transnational challenges simply occur without any agency from other states or actors in the international system. Disruptions of cyber networks, theft of digital data—these things do not simply happen: They are driven by states who, by deliberate action (or inaction), allow these threats to grow and develop. Carbon dioxide emissions do not occur in a vacuum; the policies of states permit or facilitate those emissions. Pandemics occur naturally (at least we hope that is the case), but how a state reacts to the crisis—whether it shares information or restricts its citizens from traveling to other countries to reduce the chance of its spread—matters.
I am also concerned that the guidance too readily falls back on old approaches and old institutions that even before 2016 were shown to be ineffective or at least, could be improved If you have articulated that the world has indeed changed over the last several years, returning to old ways of doing business will not get you the positive outcomes you seek.
President Biden’s decision to rejoin the World Health Organization (WHO) is a perfect example. Ever since the pandemics of the early 2000s, especially the SARS epidemic, it is clear that the WHO has not reformed its practices and procedures, nor learned from past mistakes to improve its response to global pandemics. Instead, it continued to expand the scope of its activities beyond its initial mission of preventing the spread of infectious diseases, to take on problems such as air quality or food safety. One reason the organization was unable to respond to the COVID-19 crisis was because its staff and institutions were spread too thin. Another of course, was its politicization. It is questionable whether in the private sector, a fund would reinvest in a company with the WHO’s track record. Will our reinvestment there be better spend in other ways to help improve the global response to pandemics and other health crises—such as the Global Health Security Agenda?
This example points to a larger problem of overpromising on what multilateral institutions can deliver in terms of enhancing American security and prosperity. Indeed, the risk is that we start to prioritize process over outcomes—that engaging in the process itself is the goal, as opposed to t what results from the process—and that remaining part of the process even if it is ineffectual is more important than withdrawing from counterproductive ones.
The Biden administration’s interim strategy recognizes the reality of strategic competition with China but underemphasizes the difficulties of pursuing cooperation in those areas where we may have shared interests. We need to understand clearly how China weaponizes cooperation. One of the comfortable assumptions that the Trump administration challenged, and that the current national security team must continue to challenge, is that our competitors, starting with China, will see the benefits of cooperating with the United States and thus become more accommodating of our preferences. In other words, that cooperation means that they will share our goals and accept our rules. In the past, many people believed that “transnational challenges such as nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and climate change would replace interstate competition.”[3] Too often, we comfort ourselves with the illusion that we will not have to make tough choices.
Is there going to be the political will to make choices, and articulate the rationale for these choices, to the American people, when one set of preferred policy outcomes is at odds with another? This administration, like its predecessor, faces hard choices and cannot avoid the reality that tradeoffs will be necessary. An example was the Biden administration’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline.[4] Despite talking about the importance of strengthening the middle class, sustaining wage growth for American workers, and even improving relations with key partners (e.g., Canada), the Biden administration cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline. This decision will impact negatively the pocketbooks of many Americans and reduce America’s energy independence, not to mention creating problems with Canada right out of the gate.
Finally, I am troubled by hints in the interim guidance that suggest the new national security team believes the American economic and diplomatic power can somehow be “de-linked” from military power. These different tools of statecraft reinforce each other. The guidance goes out of its way to emphasize leading with diplomatic power. Yes, depending on the situation, we will emphasize different tools, at different times. No one wants to employ kinetic force immediately; whenever possible, it is preferrable to lead with diplomacy. But should diplomacy fail, you need a strong and effective military. This military helps to deter—a critical foundation for effective diplomacy. Our military posture enhances our diplomatic efforts. We might consider, for instance, how modernizing our nuclear forces actually could help to bring Russia and China to the negotiating table.
We must make clear how military, economic, and diplomatic power all intersect on a “continuum of competition” with other states like China or Russia. As I argued in the Naval War College Review, we need to give “a broader group of Americans a stake in this competition. In a democracy, a whole-of-government approach requires improving and deploying a set of important activities that fall below the threshold of violence.”5
Gvosdev: Speaking on the Doorstep podcast, George Mason Professor Colin Dueck spoke about the quiet incorporation of some of the Trump administration’s initiatives into the Biden administration’s foreign policy approach, and particularly cited continuity with regards to China. What is your assessment of the extent to which the Trump administration’s understanding of the China challenge has become bipartisan?
Schadlow: To a certain degree, yes, we can speak of an emerging bipartisan consensus on China, but what may be more problematic is the continuing “de-consensus” between the policy community and the business community. This lack of consensus existed during the Trump administration and continues. What I mean is that there is a disconnect between those in the business community who focus on opportunities for short-term profit with China and who often are required to play by China’s rules (its lack of transparency, its unwillingness to abide by principles of reciprocity). A key example of this disconnect was the arguments over the Thrift Savings Plan—a key retirement fund used by many US government (even military) employees. This money was being invested in Chinese companies, many of which were linked to the Chinese military. So, it was quite ironic and upsetting that US military officers were de facto funding potentially the Chinese military.6
Overtime, this disconnect will have a ripple effect on policy, particularly in blunting or minimizing measures taken to counter China. Moreover, as I noted above, the bipartisan consensus is also likely to be challenged by competing priorities within the Biden administration. Already, we are witnessing the tension as to whether concerns with China—over national security matters, or its challenge to democratic values and human rights—ought to be traded for cooperation on matters such as climate. It would not surprise me if the climate team assembled by former Secretary of State John Kerry is likely at odds with the more China-skeptical team at the National Security Council.
The decision to terminate the Keystone XL pipeline was the first manifestation of these tensions within the Biden administration—and in that instance, climate considerations won out over energy and economic security ones. And yet, climate and energy policy cannot be separated from geopolitics. The ambitious proposals of the Biden administration for a major shift away from fossil fuels and especially towards a greater reliance on electric power for the energy and transport sectors) must address the dominance of China in the mining, processing, assembly, and manufacture of the batteries that are critical components of a shift to electrical vehicles or renewables. If, as President Biden has recognized, America’s energy future and America’s efforts to position itself as the global leader for new technologies cannot involve dependence on our most determined competitor, the United States will need an effective strategy to mitigate China’s leverage.7 In other words, we need to safeguard our ability to get what we need—whether raw materials or finished components—when we need them. The current situation is not acceptable regarding the risk posed for the United States—and so we need to reassess that risk.
Gvosdev: Writing in the Spring 2021 issue of Orbis, Parag Khanna notes the importance of increasing US engagement with Asia. This was a theme of the 2017 National Security Strategy. How well is that shift in focus and attention coming along? Can the United States make the transition to giving greater priority to the Indo-Pacific region?
Schadlow: Yes, we can—and we are. In some ways, working with the other countries of the “Quad” (Japan, Australia, and India) is easier today. We do not need to convince them or other partners in the Indo-Pacific region about the China challenge. Sometimes, it seems that getting our European allies to recognize the problem is more difficult. Overall though any shift or increased US engagement in Asia must also consider that many of the countries in region are very closely economically linked dependent upon China.
Another point should be considered here. For two decades, the US national security community believed that the economic drive toward globalization would create conditions favoring the spread of democracies and open societies around the world. The assumption was that countries—to gain the economic benefits of globalization—would bring their systems into greater alignment with democratic norms. What we have discovered is that globalization gave some countries the ability to manipulate the “rules of the game” to their advantage without feeling bound to play by those rules.
Gvosdev: In the previous issue of Orbis, General H.R. McMaster discussed his concept of “strategic empathy.” He defined it as the need to “view complex competitions from the perspective of others, particularly rivals, adversaries, and enemies” and “to comprehend what they see as their preferred outcomes in competitions and understand the ideologies, aspirations, and emotions that drive and constrain their behavior and their actions.”8 To what extent do you think the US national security establishment is capable of incorporating that mindset in assessing the challenges we face in an era of great power competition?
Schadlow: If senior people in the executive branch ask for the type of information required to achieve this empathy—that is, for the interests and motivations behind a country’s decisions- then that would be an important first step. A concrete way to inject this practice is to request that the intelligence community include in their analyses the perspectives derived from that sense of “strategic empathy.” It is not a crazy new, additional bureaucratic requirement. Rather, it is information that could and should be offered to policymakers. Of course, many country and regional subject matter experts and analysts already have strategic empathy: Policymakers ought to want more of it and be sure to ask for analyses that consider it Certainly, nothing is easy in an established bureaucracy, but there are relatively easy, unbureaucratic ways to inject “strategic empathy” into the products of our national security system. Memos in the Office of the Secretary of Defense to State Department cables could ensure that we take into account how others—allies, partners, competitors and adversaries—are thinking and how they are likely to view or react to a particular policy. That would be a first step toward institutionalizing more “strategy empathy” into our bureaucracy.