MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The Biden administration is winding down and tallying up some wins on the world stage.
JAKE SULLIVAN: If you look at the hand the United States has, it is strong, and I would submit to you that it is stronger than it was when we took office.
KELLY: That is National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. I met him at the White House earlier this afternoon to take stock of how the world looks today versus four years ago. You may recall that back when Sullivan and his boss, President Biden, came to office, U.S. troops were still in Afghanistan. Russia had not yet launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Hamas had not yet carried out its October 7 attack on Israel. Israel had not yet retaliated. Sullivan argues that today, America's adversaries are under pressure.
SULLIVAN: Iran is at its weakest point since the Iranian Revolution. Russia failed to conquer Kyiv, is bogged down in Eastern Ukraine and just lost its main client state, Syria, in the Middle East. Have we kept the United States out of war? We have.
KELLY: Now, Jake Sullivan does allow that the current level of alignment between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea represents, quote, "a very real national security challenge." He also made a bold prediction about where things may go in the Middle East and how soon we might see a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. But we started today with the most recent development to rock the region - the ouster of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. I asked what opportunities that presents.
SULLIVAN: Well, the first and most important opportunity it presents is for the Syrian people - who have suffered for so long, so many of them butchered and massacred by Assad, backed by Iran and Russia - the opportunity for them to have a better future, to build a country that is inclusive, that respects the rights of all communities and that is stable. So that is a big opportunity. There's also an opportunity to capitalize for the rest of the region on the weakened state Iran finds itself in.
KELLY: Is Iran the big loser in all of this, in developments of the last year?
SULLIVAN: Iran certainly is a big loser because it has lost its effectiveness of its main terrorist proxy, Hezbollah. It has lost its main state client, Assad. It has lost a lot of its own military capability. And critically, it has lost the sense that it can really hold Israel at risk with its missiles because the United States and Israel together, through direct military operations, defeated two Iranian missile attacks.
KELLY: Yeah. One more on Iran, which you're describing as considerably weakened - what opportunities does that present?
SULLIVAN: Well, the first - it presents the opportunity for us to drive towards a region of deeper integration and normalization between Israel and all of its Arab neighbors. But it also presents risks. And one thing that we are watching very closely right now is, given the losses Iran has sustained, will it make it more likely that Iran tries to go for a nuclear weapon? We've heard from voices inside the Iranian system, increasing arguments in favor of doing so. And so that is something that we, Israel, our Arab partners and the incoming Trump administration are all going to have to think carefully about in the weeks ahead about how we deter and ensure that Iran never is able to acquire a nuclear weapon.
KELLY: On the war between Israel and Hamas and the efforts to broker a peace deal, which you and other members of this administration have spent so many hours and so many plane flights trying to put in place - realistically, what can you get done in the next four weeks?
SULLIVAN: Well, first, I learned from George Mitchell - who negotiated the peace deal between the IRA and the British government, the Good Friday Accords - diplomacy is a thousand days of failure and one day of success. You have to keep working it tirelessly to ultimately produce a positive outcome. And I do believe a positive outcome is possible, not just before the end of the administration but even before the end of this calendar year. I can't promise that it will happen. I won't predict to you that it will happen, but I will say that there is that potential.
KELLY: Do you think Netanyahu - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would hand that kind of a win to President Biden when he is a very lame duck president at this point?
SULLIVAN: Well, I saw Prime Minister Netanyahu in person a week ago in Israel. I sat with him and with his national security team for a considerable period of time. We went painstakingly through the details of the ceasefire and hostage negotiations and the deal. And I do believe at this moment, Prime Minister Netanyahu is prepared to do this deal and that he's prepared to do it on Joe Biden's watch.
KELLY: One on China, which I saw you have called - and I'll quote you - "the country that has both the desire and the inherent capacity to challenge the U.S. in all dimensions." It makes me wonder, what's the best- and worst-case scenario you can see for where the relationship goes in the next four years, best case first?
SULLIVAN: I think the best case scenario is something that I called long-term managed competition, which sounds pretty bureaucratic...
KELLY: Sounds boring...
SULLIVAN: ...And boring.
KELLY: ...Which sounds pretty great, I guess...
SULLIVAN: But...
KELLY: ...In that relationship.
SULLIVAN: Let me explain what it means. The United States and China are going to compete vigorously in the years ahead. We're going to, obviously, push back against Chinese military aggression in the waters of the Asia Pacific. But we need to manage that competition responsibly so that it doesn't veer into outright conflict, so that we keep lines of communication open and so that we create areas where we can work together where our interests align. That is the best-case scenario.
Then, frankly, I would submit to you, if you look at the last two years after some difficult bumps with China, that is the strategy we put in place, where the U.S. is in a strong competitive position. But the relationship is basically stable, and we are not on the brink of conflict with China. Worst-case scenario is a downward spiral, where the bottom falls out and the risk of conflict rises considerably. That is something...
KELLY: Conflict around Taiwan.
SULLIVAN: It could be conflict around Taiwan. It could be conflict around the South China Sea, or it could be some unexpected contingency. So we have to game out a lot of scenarios where things go quite badly in the U.S.-China relationship, and then we have to work assiduously to try to reduce the risk that those scenarios come to pass while never giving up on our principles or our interests.
KELLY: So let me bring us toward a close by asking - when President Biden came into the White House, he promised America's back, meaning back exerting engagement and leadership on the world stage. Where does that go now?
SULLIVAN: That is a question that only the next occupant of the Oval Office, the president-elect, can answer.
KELLY: And that's a person who's questioned the value of global alliances in multiple arenas, NATO and beyond.
SULLIVAN: What President Biden is giving to President Trump - if you just take NATO as an example, when President Biden took office, nine NATO allies were meeting their commitment of 2% of spending on defense. President Biden is going to hand off a circumstance in which 23 NATO allies are hitting their 2% mark and the rest are on track to do so. So he can say to the incoming president, not only is NATO bigger adding Finland and Sweden, stronger, more unified, but the allies are stepping up and paying their fair share. So I think the case President Biden will make to President Trump is our alliances are strong, and they're working for us. Now, how President Trump takes that forward will be up to him, obviously, but we think that the pathway we've laid is one that could be sustained in the interest of the United States on a bipartisan basis.
KELLY: That's National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Elsewhere on today's program, we ask about the war in Ukraine. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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