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The Lawfare Podcast

The Biden Administration's Grand Strategy in Three Documents, with Richard Fontaine

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

History, News, National Security, Law, Terrorism, Current Events, Military, International Law, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, International Relations, Politics, Diplomacy, Rule Of Law, Government, Constitutional Law

4.76.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2022

⏱️ 54 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In recent weeks, the Biden administration has released a trio of long-awaited strategy documents, including the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and the Nuclear Posture Review. But how should we read these documents, and what do they actually tell us about how the Biden administration intends to approach the world?

To answer these questions, Lawfare senior editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with Richard Fontaine, chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security, who is himself also a former National Security Council official and senior congressional adviser. They discussed the role these strategy documents play in U.S. foreign policy, what we can learn from them, and what they say about the state of the world and the United States’ role in it.

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Transcript

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1:09.0

But it's also true that to the degree to which this is a function of the U.S. China competition,

1:15.0

not all regions and not all countries are equally important in that competition.

1:19.0

So if the Chinese, for example, want to establish a naval base in Papua New Guinea or the South Pacific,

1:31.0

that would be of pretty significant concern to the United States because of the way it could have the effect of pushing the U.S. Navy back.

1:39.0

If the Chinese want Huawei to build out the 5G network in Papua New Guinea or an island in the South Pacific,

1:47.0

that doesn't seem to me to rise to the same level of concern.

1:51.0

Overall, there's a secondary point, I think, in what the National Security Service is trying to say,

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