Nadia Schadlow appears on China Desk to discuss how US national security policy has shifted as China's influence grows. A transcript of the interview can be found .
Episode Transcript
Federal Newswire
What is the purpose of the National Security Strategy?
Nadia Schadlow
There are lots of arguments among strategists about what a National Security Strategy is, whether or not it has value. What it actually accomplished is, I think fundamentally, it sets forth for the American public the strategic direction of a nation. The White House administration comes in, and in a democracy, we tell the American people here are the things that we think are important and why, here are the assumptions we have about the way the world works, here's why, and here's what we're going to do to protect American interests.
It happens to be required by Congress. I think in the late ‘80’s Congress started to require that an administration produce a national security strategy every year, which I don't think is the right thing. I don't think you need a new national security strategy every year; that would suggest the one you just did is flawed. I mean you can update them periodically or update regarding the implementation, but ideally the one that you start out with is the one that you should be implementing over the next four years.
Federal Newswire
Who works on the National Security Strategy?
Nadia Schadlow
In my experience, it is a National Security Council job. I was brought in to do the National Security Strategy. It involved many components and inputs coming together.
If you have too many people, you get a mishmash alphabet soup with so many government acronyms, verbs, and adjectives flying around. We tried to avoid that.
[Our efforts included] the senior director for Asia, the Russia senior director, and the individuals who were experts in terrorism and homeland security... also soliciting input from the broader parts of the government, the Defense and State Departments, and the Department of Homeland Security.
Don't forget, this is the President's document. If you trace the speeches that President Trump made to the National Security Strategy, you will see consistency, which is what you should see.
Federal Newswire
Was the 2017 NSS the first open acknowledgement that China is a competitor, and that our old assumptions of moving towards global peace and collaboration may be in the past?
Nadia Schadlow
That's very well put. The assumptions of the past–that we were moving toward liberal democracy, that all these countries were moving toward that same objective–just did not hold anymore. There was too much evidence to show that.
I think one of the lines in the strategy said, “the pursuit of power is a central feature of the international environment.” I did get a lot of pushback for that line.
Federal Newswire
Isn’t that a core idea in international relations?
Nadia Schadlow
Right, exactly. It comes down to different schools of thought, how you're trained, and what you think about the world. But it did have a clear point of view about that.
Federal Newswire
How does the NSS get translated into action in administration dealings with Congress?
Nadia Schadlow
Well, that's sort of the problem with national security strategies in our system. The White House has a relatively limited amount of power. The public tends to think of the White House as being enormously powerful, but in terms of the ability to actually implement or operationalize things, it's very limited.
There's a limited budget. It doesn't have the operational arm of a Department of Defense, or State or Energy departments.
I think the White House office that focuses initially on the strategy should switch over to become the oversight office. Even in doing that, your actual power is limited. It depends partly on having good working relationships with your counterparts, [and] the cabinet secretaries being on board to ensure implementation, on budget, and Congress. It's complicated, but I think if you prioritize, you can get some things done.
Federal Newswire
What does the current Administration’s NSS have in common with yours from 2017?
Nadia Schadlow
If you look over the past seven years, you can really see how much of the 2017 strategy was implemented… on defense, on thinking about our platforms differently, and missile defense differently.
One of the terms in the 2017 strategy was to protect the United States from IP theft and other unfair trade practices by China through strengthening CFIUS. Many things were begun in 2017. Many of those policies were continued by the Biden administration.
Federal Newswire
How is the current NSS different?
Nadia Schadlow
The Biden strategy did continue to call China a significant strategic competitor. It said that Beijing uses its economic power to coerce countries, and it repeated and reinforced a lot of the language from the Trump strategy.
[The current NSS] is a little bit more focused on areas where the US and China could cooperate, mainly for reasons related to climate. The Biden administration put climate change first and foremost as an existential threat…It drove the direction of the US-China relationship in many ways, and drove the effort to cooperate more in the hopes that the US could work with China on some of those climate change objectives. Now, I don't think that's been successful, but I think that was a fundamentally different driver between the two strategies.
A second difference is the Biden administration's faith in multilateral institutions. It is central and to the international order and to the shape of that order. The Trump strategy allowed for different kinds of coalitions that could retain the features of the liberal international order, but actually be more effective in advancing the outcomes we want from that order.
Federal Newswire
Do you think we can ever have a policy of reciprocity with China?
Nadia Schadlow
I think reciprocity is one of the most important and elegant concepts to come out of the 2017 strategy. It existed obviously before then. It's not a new concept, but it is beautiful, because it is just so clear. It's very hard to argue against reciprocity. You can't actually have a positive influence in closed societies unless there's an element of reciprocity.
Reciprocity is just a great starting point. I think the EU has come around to it.
I think the conversation should always begin with reciprocity. Then you can push back and understand perhaps why the other side disagrees. It puts the onus on the other partner to say why they're not allowing reciprocity. You end up where you want to be in terms of American interests if you ask for reciprocity most of the time, if not all of the time.
Federal Newswire
Where should people go to track your work?
Nadia Schadlow
The 91 Institute has the best compilation of everything I've written over the past few years. I am getting my own Substack set up.
I had a piece recently in the Wall Street Journal that talked about the difficulty of maintaining a status quo. It is related to Taiwan, but it's a concept, I think, that's relevant to many other areas of the world.
Within the past year I had a longer piece called, “Time as the Forgotten Dimension of Strategy.” It argued for thinking about time as an input into strategy. Without that, we can't achieve what the strategy says we need to achieve.
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