Ambassador Robert Blackwill

They did it in certain different ways.

But the essence was...

And they're not going to do it to amplify their risk, but a Europe

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 this is something that the administration seems not to accept.

A Europe which really is separated from the United States is a Europe which will go on its own, not just in dealing with European security issues, but with trade with China or

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.

or treating Israel in the Middle East or whatever, it will have no incentives to care much about what the United States thinks or advises if we separate from them in the way that the president and the vice president seem to want.

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

This curiosity in which the president can say nothing positive about Europe

while he emphasizes his close, quote, close friendships with Xi Jinping, who's trying to displace the United States as the principal power in Asia and beyond, and Vladimir Putin, who is seeking to murder as many innocent Ukrainians as he can, are close friends.

It is unfathomable for me, at least.

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.

Well, in some places it's gotten better, but in some places it's gotten worse.

I do want to point out, and it's not because of American policies, it's because of the IDF and Israel, but that spark is much less likely in the Middle East now than it was before the Hamas attack on Israel.

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