David E. Sanger

And I think one of the big concerns coming out of this is, does he emerge from the Venezuela and Iran experiences emboldened to use the American military as his number one tool of coercion?

And if so, how does that change the way the world views the United States and the way other leaders may copy

What the president views is his own expansive power.

And, you know, for everybody who wonders if we're seeing the collapse of the post-World War II order, this is going to be another piece of the evidence.

Because usually we have thought about Middle East peace by constant negotiations, locking all of the neighbors in.

into agreements that would ultimately result in the Arabs recognizing Israel, in Israel coming up with a two-state solution, and so forth.

President Trump has tried a very different experiment.

It's one in which he shows that by the use of American force and Israeli force, he can shape the future of other nations.

And the question right now is,

Is he shaping their future, or is he opening them up to more chaos?

And in this dramatic moment, we simply can't yet tell.

Natalie, always great to be with you.

So this is the national security strategy.

And administrations don't turn it out because they want to.

They turn it out because they have to.

Congress actually requires every administration to go do it.

But it also ends up becoming a kind of Rorschach test of what an administration's priorities are.

And in this particular case, as you read this document, it's only about 30 pages long, the thing that really strikes you is that it is a retreat

from the post-World War II bipartisan understanding that the role of the United States is to defend liberty, support democracies around the world, support our allies.

And there's an absence in this strategy of a sort of moral mission for the United States to defend human rights, to defend free speech or free press.