Vital Interests: Can you give us your overview of where things stand in American foreign policy?

Jonathan Stevenson: The first observation I would make is that the Trump administration's gratuitous and willful disruptiveness has done so much damage to the United States’ foreign policy infrastructure and its world influence and standing that returning to the 2016 status quo is not going to be easy or immediate, if it is possible at all.

Just looking to the structural challenges, it is pretty well acknowledged that Trump's team has hollowed out the State Department by draining it of influence. Morale has been severely impacted, inducing many talented and experienced foreign service and civil service officers to leave government. I think Trump’s autocratic approach to foreign policy has also caused the National Security Council, which oversees the interagency process of formulating foreign policy and rendering decisions about national security, to atrophy. The net result is an incoherent foreign policy. Notwithstanding the jingoistic, "America first" slogan often used to characterize Trump foreign policy, there is an absence of any overarching approach or grand strategy.

Any future democratic administration will need to reinvigorate both the National Security Council and the State Department. I think the next Democratic president will also have to recalibrate the relationship between the White House and the intelligence and law enforcement communities, especially the CIA and the FBI. Damage to these vital agencies is linked to Trump’s apparent belief that elements of both are part of a so-called “Deep State” that is embedded within the United States government which is intent on undermining him. Trump's attitude towards them has at times verged on paranoid and has often been adversarial.

In particular, he has openly dismissed the CIA's assessment that Iran had been complying with a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) - that is, the Iran nuclear deal - and sometimes the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. Trump has challenged FBI terrorism assessments and has repeatedly questioned its institutional loyalty. 

In general, Trump's foreign policy is in disarray, so there are some very substantial challenges. By way of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the Pentagon arrived at the defensible conclusion that the United States’ priority has shifted from the transnational non-state political extremism and terrorism to great-power competition. The key powers are China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

At same time, jihadist threats remain salient. Right-wing extremism and terrorism are rising and potentially acquiring a transnational dimension. The United States is giving short shrift to significant foreign policy challenges in Africa and Latin America, not to mention the most pervasive long-term threat facing the world: global climate change.

Broadly speaking, because the Trump administration has prompted the partial disintegration of the rules of the liberal order and weakened important alliances, the present state of affairs is going to be all the harder to manage and ameliorate.

Looking at Iran, the Trump administration has withdrawn the United States from the JCPOA on the pretext of Iran’s ballistic missile program and regional provocations in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. It is attempting to coercively roll back Iran with “maximum pressure” and signaling its willingness to go to war if necessary. The U.S. is fully embracing as a strategic partner a reckless, and indeed presumptively murderous, Saudi Arabia, and an Israel that has moved far to the right and effectively abandoned the peace process with the Palestinians. 

The Trump administration has managed to weaken the pragmatic restraint of Iran’s hardline leadership while turning Iranian moderates into hardliners. I think that it should be a signature aspect of any Democratic candidate’s foreign policy to end this approach and return to a more constructive one that at least leaves open the possibility of a stable relationship with Iran, as it's now constituted, and more or less with its current leadership.

Several talking points occur to me. First, the JCPOA, while limited and imperfect, was the best deal attainable. It made Iranian development of a nuclear weapon considerably more difficult and less likely. Iran was in compliance with it for over a year after the Trump administration pulled out of the agreement.

Second, Iran is at best a regional military power. It poses no serious threat to the American homeland or to American interests outside the Middle East. It has not carried out terrorist attacks against Americans in years. It has reacted with restraint to Israeli attacks on Iranian targets in Syria and has no strategic relationship to speak of with Sunni jihadist groups. Iran is economically beleaguered and within the region is effectively deterred from undertaking major military provocations against Israel, at least directly.

The third point is that Iran's regional activities are either in line with its own strategic priorities or the product of ill-advised U.S. policies. Its intervention in Syria is hardly a surprise, as Iran has long been a close ally and sponsor of the Assad regime and regards Syria as a strategically vital toehold in the middle Middle East proper. The United States’ intervention in Iraq and overthrow of Saddam's Sunni regime in favor of the Shia majority made increased Iranian influence and intrigue there inevitable, though the US still retains considerable clout with the Iraqi government. U.S. support for Saudi Arabia and the UAE in Yemen has merely reinforced Iran's motivation for supporting the Houthis, allowed Iran to bleed Saudi Arabia at relatively little cost, and perpetuated a futile military engagement and humanitarian disaster.

Fourth, a major war in which the US invaded and occupied Iran would involve a protracted and bloody military engagement and a massive outflow of refugees. It would be more costly, destructive, and politically deleterious than the Iraq intervention and result in regional chaos and the United States’ strategic isolation. There would be no coalition of the willing, which makes it politically inferior even to the Iraq intervention.

These considerations together counsel a more realistic approach to Iran. The first step for a democratic administration would be honest diplomatic re-engagement with the Iranian regime. By erasing what trust the JCPOA negotiating process had generated, Trump has made restoring the status quo extremely difficult. Furthermore, the hostile Iranian responses Trump's administration has already provoked - such as the seizure of foreign oil tankers, and possibly attacks on those tankers - will make it harder for Democrats keen on re-establishing better relations to support rejoining the nuclear deal without requiring additional concessions on Iranian missile development and regional activity which Iran, in turn, is less likely to consider.

The Trump administration, then, has not only adopted an inflexible and destabilizing posture with no easy alternatives, it has also limited the options of its successor. Accordingly, Democratic candidates should recognize that the United States could not simply put things back to the way they were, just by rejoining the JCPOA. Arduous negotiations would be necessary, as even a Democratic administration would want to extend the timeline on restricting nuclear activity and address ballistic missile development and regional activity, while Iran would want broader economic relief and would remain disinclined to link any new arrangement to the regional activity. In other words, things are much more difficult than they would have been if the United States had stayed in the agreement.

I think, in coordination with any re-engagement with Iran, Washington would need to downgrade it's strategic relationship with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and set new parameters for relations with Israel. These will be significant diplomatic tasks, given the way in which the Trump administration has hardened alignments and ratcheted up tensions. Even so, a Democratic president should place high on any Middle East agenda reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the two-state solution, which the Trump administration has willfully undermined with moves like the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

Another priority could be to re-engage diplomatically on Syria, something else that's been neglected by Trump's White House, although this is obviously going to be very difficult given Russia’s strong hand there. 

VI: Moving on from the Middle East and Iran, what are other foreign policy challenges you would like to discuss?

Jonathan Stevenson: There are a number of big issues. The first involves Russia and Europe and alliance management as related to those areas. Trump, it’s safe to say, has manifested a kind of a bromantic attraction to Vladimir Putin, minimized Russia's depredations in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea notwithstanding sanctions, and adopted an attitude towards Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election that has modulated between acquiescence and outright denial. This seems to have conditioned his administration's devaluing of the NATO Alliance, hostility to the European Union, and courtship of right-wing European (and other) autocrats akin to Putin.

Meanwhile, seemingly under the radar, important US partners like Egypt and Turkey (a NATO ally no less) and key U.S. adversaries like Iran have gotten closer to Russia. Washington appears to have conceded the diplomatic initiative on Syria to Moscow.

In view of all this, Democratic candidates might stress that the United States must reaffirm its commitment to NATO by consistently supporting it, acknowledge the advantages that accrue to the United States from the alliance in terms of power projection and regional influence, and refrain from publicly hectoring European NATO members about the level of their defense expenditures, which really tend to track national threat perceptions and not to be based mainly on the free-rider mentality that the White House has ascribed to them. 

More broadly, the United States’ trade war with China has crowded out other important aspects of the bilateral relationship, including enlisting Chinese help on North Korea and smoothing differences on maritime security and freedom of navigation issues, especially in the South China Sea, and friction on Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The upshot is that Democratic candidates should emphasize normalizing the United States Asia-Pacific policy and making it less erratic. Important steps would be diminishing the use of tariffs as blunt policy instruments; establishing a systematic, ongoing diplomatic process on Korean peninsula matters that involve mid-level officials, not just Trump grandstanding. Allies and partners, including Australia and India, as well as Japan and South Korea, will have to be reassured about the durability of the U.S. commitment and refining alliance arrangements.

Another point I want to underline is on terrorism and extremism. I think the substantial defeat of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (along the lines that were established by the Obama administration, by the way) appears to have subdued the group’s worldwide operations, and al-Qaeda had already retrenched. But both organizations are likely to be regrouping. And right-wing, anti-immigrant populism, fortified by refugees’ attempts to immigrate, may inspire surges of jihadist activity. 

Beyond that, right-wing populism has fueled right-wing extremism, in particular white supremacism, such that it is blossoming into a networked and potentially transnational threat. In part because many right-wing extremists support the Trump administration, its response to domestic white supremacist terrorist threats has been disingenuous and lethargic. So my final point involves homeland security. A new democratic administration will have to deal with the right-wing extremism and terrorism problems in a more candid, robust, and systematic way. It would logically start with the full-blooded counterterrorism mobilization in the United States. 

VI: What you have described is a complete change of the global landscape in which the United States has to operate. Commitments to alliances have been called into question, relationships with organizations like NATO, the UN, and the WTO, which it has depended on to help manage the world, have been denigrated or threatened with abandonment by the Trump administration.

Since, as you said, there is no going back to the way things used to be, how can an incoming administration most effectively confront these challenges?

Jonathan Stevenson: That's right. I think a new administration will be presented with a diminished United States in terms of its world influence and standing. As you suggest, its overarching task will be to do whatever rebuilding of that influence and standing seems feasible. I think the caveat is that the advent of the Trump administration shows that the US-led rules-based liberal order was perhaps more brittle than anybody realized and that changes in the U.S. administration that occur in a normal course or at least the quasi-normal course of the functioning of American democracy can produce seismic changes that nobody can predict. That realization makes the stewardship of even a respectable and responsible U.S. administration feel all the more perishable.

VI: The United States' position in the world has always been backed up by what we have understood as American power and influence. We know American influence has definitely been degraded but the actual power of the United States economically and militarily to deal with a great power conflict -  does that remain intact? You mentioned Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Are they militarily really great powers capable of challenging the United States or do we still have the military edge in answer any flashpoint incident?

Jonathan Stevenson: The United States is still overwhelmingly the ranking military power in the world. In terms of its power projection and overall capabilities and power, nobody approaches it yet -  although China is making big strides. That said, unless close attention is paid to regional deterrents and to conventional deterrents, provocations in certain areas could produce tense situations that could escalate quickly and become very dangerous.

One example would be a Russian move on one of the Baltic countries, involving the hybrid warfare approach Moscow used in Ukraine. I do think that, despite all of the NATO bashing that's gone on from the White House, the Pentagon has been attentive to reassuring allies on an operational level. Many of the reforms and changes in NATO that got underway during the Obama administration to respond to potential instability on NATO's eastern front are ongoing.

VI: Talk of the Europeans creating their own European military capability not dependent on the United States is then somewhat premature?

Jonathan Stevenson: I think in Europe there still is a lot of talk, and I don't think it's diminished really, about developing what is often called strategic autonomy, which in principle has economic, diplomatic, and military components. Discussion about the European Union establishing its own military capability has been around for a long time, about 20 years. If you're asking whether that could supplant NATO, the answer is no, at least not in the foreseeable future.

VI: To get back to some of the flashpoints, with Iran, for example. there has been a long and fractured history of the United States’ involvement with that country. Is it time for the United States to step back from Iran and let the Europeans or other countries take the lead in trying to get Iran more integrated with the community of nations, to limit their nuclear program, and fulfill the objectives of the JCPOA? 

Jonathan Stevenson: I certainly wouldn't have said that before we pulled out of the JCPOA because I think it was working. Now, insofar as the other signatories to the agreement want it to continue, that burden has already been effectively shifted to the Europeans and, to some extent, even to Russia. They're all attempting to find ways to work around U.S. sanctions in order to provide Iran with economic relief to keep it in compliance with the terms of the nuclear agreement.

I don't think it's a prudent or an advisable course for the United States to simply maintain that position and allow the burden to be shouldered disproportionately and indefinitely by Europe - which would imply a sort of good cop/bad cop dispensation - because the United States has superior resources. The United States is still the ranking outside power in Middle East matters and, despite the historical animosity with Iran, probably still has the greatest capacity to forge constructive change. So a return to some kind of viable U.S. diplomatic arrangement with Iran that involves forbearance on the nuclear program and possibly on ballistic missiles in exchange for economic relief is the way to go.

VI: A new administration would de-emphasize the influence of the Saudis and the Israelis and become more aligned with France and Germany who have long had interests in Iran?

Jonathan Stevenson: Yes, I think that's broadly right.

VI: Is this kind of shifting feasible? The Saudis have a degree of power, but I assume they can be persuaded to play another role?

Jonathan Stevenson: I believe so. We have considerable leverage with them. I think that we have quite a bit of leeway in simultaneously dealing with Iran and maintaining a serviceable relationship with the Saudis because their interests are linked to ours as they have been for decades. The shift to a joined-at-the-hip alignment with the Saudis in a confrontational way against Iran was strictly a matter of choice, and a bad choice at that.

VI: When you consider Iran itself, it is difficult to ascertain who is really in charge. You say that the moderates have now been pushed to being hardliners, and the real hardliners are more in control. There is an elected president, Hassan Rouhani, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and military forces like the Revolutionary Guard. They all operate in their own spheres of influence. Isn’t it difficult to sort out who is really making decisions?

Jonathan Stevenson: It is. For example, right now it's hard to suss out exactly who in Iran had been driving the rumor that the leadership would be receptive to negotiations with the Trump administration. I think there are some parties who genuinely would and others who wouldn't. Then it's a separate question of whether negotiations could ever bear fruit given the ways in which the waters have been poisoned. I do think, generally speaking, the United States’ default on the JCPOA has increased the influence of the hawkish skeptics of diplomacy - particularly the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard - and has probably underlined the standing skepticism of the religious leadership. As we've already noted, the United States withdrawal has, at the very least, weakened the voice of moderates if not actually shifted them over towards the hardliners' position.

VI: Is it the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard,  that is controlling the proxy forces? Are they the people that are really organizing and directing Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthi?

Jonathan Stevenson: Well, managing those relationships and guiding proxy activity would be among the IRGC’s primary responsibilities, though “organizing and directing” may be too strong a characterization in many contexts.

VI: So they have considerable influence?

Jonathan Stevenson: Major influence, particularly over the regional activity as well as within the country.

VI: Within the country and in the neighboring areas - in Syria, in Lebanon, in Yemen. Those are the kinds of intricacies and difficult realities that a new administration would have to understand?

Jonathan Stevenson: Yes. A new administration would have to understand that the reason that the nuclear agreement was very self-consciously decoupled from Iran's regional activity is that the Iranians made it clear that such a linkage was off the table,  that the two couldn't be linked with any hope of the nuclear agreement going forward. I imagine that attitude has, to a large extent, persisted within the Iranian government.

VI: In summary what you have been saying is that any new administration has a lot of challenges and a lot of rebuilding to do, adopting new attitudes and new directions to meet these difficult realities?

Jonathan Stevenson: Yes. I think that a new administration would essentially be faced with wholesale problems that require, perhaps, unlike other US transitions, more change than continuity.

VI: This will require a good deal of expertise and knowledge to make sure that this goes off right and to correct the errors of the past years?

Jonathan Stevenson: Yes, but fortunately the Democratic foreign policy community has a pretty deep bench.

Jonathan Stevenson is the managing editor of Survival; he conducts primary research, publishes and comments on US defence, Middle East security and counter-terrorism; he also consults on and contributes to IISS blogs.” His areas of expertise include the following “US defence strategy, Middle East regional affairs. Terrorism/ counter-terrorism, Homeland security, [and] Political Islam.” “From 2005–2016, Jonathan was professor of strategic studies in the Strategic Research Department at the US Naval War College in Newport, RI. From 2011–2013, he served as National Security Council Director for Political–Military Affairs, Middle East and North Africa, at the White House. Prior to joining the War College faculty, from 1999–2005, he was Senior Fellow for Counter-terrorism and editor of Strategic Survey at the IISS. He has published several books and monographs (including two Adelphi Papers); numerous policy articles on terrorism, political Islam, and Middle Eastern and African security in journals such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the National Interest, and Survival; and many op-eds. During the 1990s, he covered sub-Saharan Africa (mainly Somalia) and Northern Ireland as a journalist for The Economist, Newsweek, New Republic, and other publications. Before turning to international affairs, he practiced law with the New York firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae. Stevenson has a B.A. from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from Boston University School of Law.”