Ambassador Robert Blackwill

Good to see you.

Thanks for having me.

That is fair.

The consensus of which you speak, Chuck, governed America's approach to the world from the end of World War II to Mr. Trump.

And it was pursued by presidents in both parties.

They did it in certain different ways.

But the essence was...

A foreign policy based on alliances, which every president thought contributed American strength to American values, which every president thought was the foundation of America's power projection into the world.

And finally, avoiding the emergence of a peer competitor, which would dominate a crucial region.

And I believe President Trump has rejected all three of those.

And so that has produced the debate that we're now acutely in.

Well, first, I would distinguish Nixon-Kissinger from the rest.

They opened up China for geopolitical reasons to balance the Soviet Union.

And although out of office later, Richard Nixon hoped that perhaps China would move in a more liberal direction, Henry Kissinger never made that argument and I think never believed it.

But you're right, American leaders, presidents after them, held the hope that over the decades, China would be integrated into this liberal international approach to world order.

And they went on hoping for that up through the mid-2010s.

and far past when it should have been obvious that China had a different set of objectives in mind, which was essentially to replace the United States as the primary power in the Indo-Pacific.

And it wasn't until the late 2010s, after the pivot to Asia had failed, that finally a consensus

emerged that China no longer could be considered a candidate for liberal evolution.

And indeed, Bob Gates makes an argument