Chatter: President Biden’s Foreign Policy with Alex Ward
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2024
⏱️ 84 minutes
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Summary
Joe Biden took office with a big ambition: To repair America’s reputation abroad and set the country on a new path, where foreign policy would be crafted with the middle class in mind. So writes journalist Alexander Ward, whose new book, The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump, chronicles Biden’s first two years in the White House.
The central players in Ward’s cast as the president’s senior advisers, chief among them National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who, four years earlier, had expected to be serving in the Hillary Clinton administration. Ward joined Shane Harris to talk about the Biden team's early efforts to sketch out a new agenda, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the triumphs of the early days of war in Ukraine. His book offers a detailed, behind-the-scenes look at what may be one of the most experienced teams of foreign policy experts in a generation.
Ward is a national security reporter at Politico. He was part of the reporting team behind one of the biggest scoops in recent memory, the leak of a draft opinion by the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade. Ward was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
Ward’s book, The Internationalists: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/704738/the-internationalists-by-alexander-ward/
An excerpt from the book: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/19/jake-sullivan-globalization-biden-00141697
Ward’s newsletter at Politico: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily
Ward’s scoop on the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473
Ward on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexbward?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
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Transcript
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| 0:55.0 | The open university, the open university, the future is open. I'm acting. This is Chatter. I'm Shane Harris. This is Chatter. I'm Shane Harris. |
| 1:10.3 | This week journalist Alex Ward on President Biden's foreign policy. |
| 1:15.0 | We all generally knew that the Zolensky-Biden relationship was tense, but like it was like a yell-match bad. |
| 1:21.0 | So again, nothing sharpens the mind like having your country being dated and then Zelensky's tone |
| 1:24.8 | changes but it was like really, really bad U.S. Ukraine relations during the first year. The question a lot of people are asking is like, all right, you're welcome to say, |
| 1:35.6 | Beebe's bad, but like, are you actually going to do anything about it? |
| 1:40.3 | And I've seen really no evidence that they will. |
| 1:42.4 | They're trying to literally make everyone happy, |
| 1:44.0 | and we all know that doesn't go well, |
| 1:45.0 | if it doesn't work well in my life, |
| 1:46.0 | and it doesn't work well in foreign policy. |
| 1:48.0 | For 2024, the messaging from both presidents, |
| 1:51.0 | sort of the meta-narrative on the foreign policy is like I won't start |
... |
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