This is John Bachelor, conversation with my colleague Mary Kessel, Executive Vice President

Stephen Incorporated, formerly Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State traveling the world

with Mike Pompeo. Obs observing the end of the Biden administration

the one term that it will have and how it's done as from the State Department of

alliances, relationships, and the challenges.

Mary has very positive things to say, and then there are the doubts about the

aggression of the People's Republic of China towards our ally Taiwan.

What is to be done?

Here's Mary Kessel.

Much more of this tonight.

I think that they are well-meaning.

I think they've done good work in terms of getting new alliances

like Aukis together and continuing the work that we started with the

quad nations of Japan, Australia, India, and the United States.

That's all to the good.

But there isn't an urgency to the decoupling

that we must do. There isn't an urgency to building the US military

that we need because right now all of the urgency of you know building a

force for domination is on the Chinese side and I find that deeply

troubling.