The Case for Trump’s Global Strategy

Last year, after it emerged that a private White House chat group about U. S. strikes on Yemen mistakenly included a journalist, the inevitable headlines and media coverage meant someone had to take the fall. Then-National Security Advisor Mike Waltz departed after just 101 days in the job. Waltz, a decorated war hero who had previously represented Florida’s 6th district in Congress, was later named U. S. ambassador to the United Nations. If the role seemed like a relegation to a place U. S. President Donald Trump doesn’t hold in high regard, Waltz himself disagrees: “President Trump is a New Yorker,” he told me in a wide-ranging interview on FP Live. “He appreciates that the entire world—more than 150 prime ministers, presidents, foreign ministers, and CEOs—comes to one place in the world once a year, and it’s New York City.” Waltz has also become an increasingly visible spokesperson for Trump’s foreign policy, defending his decisions on Iran and Venezuela not only at the U. N. but also on the Sunday talk shows. I spoke with Waltz on FP Live on the afternoon of Tuesday, Sept. 29. We began with the conflict with Iran, since Iran’s foreign minister had stayed on in New York after the U. N. General Assembly to conduct indirect talks with the United States. But we also discussed Sudan, a crisis Waltz has personally invested time in and written about for FP, as well as the Trump administration’s policies regarding Ukraine, China, and international law. The full interview is available on the video box atop this page, or on the FP Live podcast on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple. What follows here is a lightly edited transcript. Ravi Agrawal: Let’s start with the Middle East. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left New York on Tuesday. He had been engaged in indirect talks with the United States. Can you give us a sense of how those talks went? Mike Waltz: I didn’t directly participate in the talks, just to be clear. The Iranians came and made an offer, and U. S. President Donald Trump and the team didn’t think it was a very good offer, to be candid with you. Trump has basically said, “Not good enough.” Iran is still, illegally, trying to hold an international waterway hostage, and with it, the world’s economy—mainly Asia’s economies—to serve its ends to pursue a nuclear weapons program. The president doesn’t think it’s acceptable. One hundred forty-six nations—a U. N. record—have joined us in condemning not only their violations of the U. N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), but their attacks on innocent civilian shipping and infrastructure around the Persian Gulf. So the president rightly said we won’t unfreeze all of their assets or lift sanctions based on an Iranian promise that they’ll start to talk seriously about their nuclear program, which is also in violation of numerous U. N. resolutions. RA: I’m curious how you’re thinking about U. S. strategy going forward after the talks this week and after everything we saw at the U. N. General Assembly last week. Critics often point out that so far in this war, many U. S. bases in the region have been damaged. The United States has used up precious munitions, including more than a third of its Patriot missile interceptors. The global price of oil has soared, which means Americans are now forking out about 40 percent more for gas compared to what they were paying before the conflict. The war is deeply unpopular among the American people. So, I’m curious, ambassador, at this point, when you make the case to the American people for staying in the conflict, and for next steps in the conflict, what is that case, and how do you make it? MW: There are a lot of critics out there; that’s easy to do. At the end of the day, President Trump isn’t going to be like his predecessors who have kicked this can down the road. Now, you have an Iranian regime, which is a declared terrorist regime and the largest sponsor of terrorism—which has killed thousands of Americans—in the world. They are progressing aggressively toward acquiring a nuclear weapon and, in the last few years, have literally been building a mountain of drones and ballistic missiles that they’ve clearly demonstrated they are willing to use. They were hitting a J-curve in terms of that production, so that the cost of arresting their illegal nuclear weapons program was so high and insurmountable that their breakout would be a fait accompli. This is the exact playbook North Korea used, except they were hiding behind a wall of artillery, so that no one was willing to sacrifice Seoul in order to militarily arrest their program. The bottom line is, we couldn’t allow the Iranians to repeat the North Korea playbook. We should also believe this regime. There’s Iran the country and Iran the revolution, which says they will use those weapons if they acquire them. Finally—and this is the part that I think gets lost—there’s the question of why this affects everyday Americans. Why is it so important to stop this regime? If Iran tests a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia has already said they will, too. Now you have a nuclear arms race across the Middle East and an absolute breakdown of the nonproliferation that’s been in place since World War II, if not the Cold War. A Middle East awash with nukes is something that should scare every American for the next generation. So yes, this has been difficult. The Iranian regime has fought back. But what they’ve done is attack their neighbors, regional countries, and civilian infrastructure. I remind people that you can’t attack civilian shipping or throw mines in waterways any more than you can start shooting down civilian airliners just because you’re a party to a conflict. So, I think what President Trump has done is quite brave and bold. Good presidents secure this generation; great presidents secure the next generation. All of those critics would criticize him if he didn’t do anything about it, and if Iran had that nuclear breakout that sparked an arms race in the Middle East. RA: Respectfully, ambassador, I don’t want to debate whether it was the right idea to attack Iran or not. But in terms of how it was executed, I guess the question is, don’t the American people deserve a more thorough accounting of U. S. losses so far, and of any mistakes that were made? And crucially, in the coming months, what will now be done differently? MW: I don’t know a country that exposes its military’s mistakes. The military certainly should learn from its mistakes. As you know, I’m a 27-year veteran of the Green Berets. You should always learn from your mistakes and improve. But if you’re arguing that we should publicly expose those mistakes in the midst of a conflict, that would be quite foolish. I haven’t seen any evidence that there is any kind of false accounting on our casualty numbers, if that’s what you’re alleging. So I’m not quite sure where you’re going with that. The Iranians have overplayed their hand. Their leverage over the Strait of Hormuz is declining by the day. We are now receiving almost a prewar level of oil out of our Gulf allies, who are getting the oil out to Asia and elsewhere, while the Iranians are not. Iran’s currency just hit a record low. Their foreign currency reserves are almost gone. Inflation is hitting a record high. And I’ll remind everyone that the terrorist-designated Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls 40 to 50 percent of the Iranian economy. This would be as if Spain and Morocco tried to use the Strait of Gibraltar as leverage on the world because they had a dispute. It’s absolutely wrong and in violation of international law, and neither the president nor the 146 other countries that agree with us should allow it. RA: Ambassador, if I may, international law would, as you’re pointing out, agree with you in that Iran is doing these things illegally. But I’m curious how you juxtapose that with, for example, Trump last week saying, “To the victor belonged the spoils” about Venezuela’s oil; or a senior member of the Trump administration calling international law “international niceties.” How do you juxtapose those statements? MW: I’m sorry, Ravi, who is the senior member of the Trump administration? RA: That would be Stephen Miller. MW: OK. Well, look, as it applies to Venezuela: A Venezuelan company, the current acting government, and the United States have entered into a joint venture. If we really want to spend time and roll back the clock, the prior Venezuelan governments under both Chavez and Maduro seized American assets and nationalized infrastructure. I’m not going to say all of these claims are going to play out. At some point that’ll be handled in an appropriate way. But I think the American taxpayer should realize some type of benefit, or at least some type of restitution, for what’s happened over the years. The president is looking at energy infrastructure and energy security for the United States, and at the end of the day, the Western Hemisphere, led by the United States, has the energy, food, and critical minerals—the supply chains that we collectively need to power our modern economies. RA: I guess, more specifically, the question wasn’t really about Venezuela, it was just about international law—how, on the one hand, you criticize Iran for not following these laws, while President Trump himself has said he doesn’t need to follow international law. But I want to jump to your work at the U. N. now. You’ve coined the term “make the U. N. great again.” We all saw the hats last week at the U. N. General Assembly. I’m curious, what reforms do you think the U. N. actually needs to conduct to be great? MW: It’s a play on words. Everybody calls the U. N. General Assembly “UNGA.” We’ve called it “MUNGA” now, for “make the U. N. great again.” There’s a serious message there. Frankly, many people like you and others in the media were determined that Trump was going to send me here and turn out the lights and walk away, in line with this isolationist narrative that’s out there. It’s quite the opposite. President Trump is a New Yorker. He appreciates that the entire world—more than 150 prime ministers, presidents, foreign ministers, and CEOs—comes to one place in the world once a year, and it’s New York City. We want that to continue. I don’t want to see the U. N. in Beijing or Brussels—or Moscow, for that matter. I tell critics that they have every right to be critical. The U. N. has lost its way. We need to get back to basics. We need to do fewer things better, rather than trying to be everything to everyone. That is the charge that President Trump has given me and my great team here. First, we’re getting the spending that’s out of control, under control. We’ve done that. The U. N. has taken its first budget cut in its history. It’s laying off 3,000 bureaucrats. We believe they shouldn’t be in these expensive cities like New York and Geneva. They should be out in the field, in Africa and Latin America, where people need their expertise. Second, we’re reforming how aid is provided. We will always provide humanitarian aid in a crisis, but development aid needs reform. We’re calling that “trade over aid.” Let’s build jobs, not dependency. Let’s lower barriers to capital. Finally, we’re working on the peacekeeping side. There are 90,000 peacekeepers in conflict zones around the world. Many of these peacekeeping missions—which can cost anywhere from half a billion dollars to $1 billion, per mission, per year—have been in place for 20, 30, 40, even 50 years. They actually freeze conflicts rather than resolving them. We’re putting political processes in place to actually resolve these conflicts, whether that’s between Thailand and Cambodia or Azerbaijan and Armenia. We are working hard on Sudan, as you know. This is why I shake my head at this isolationist narrative. I’m trying to think of a problem the president hasn’t told me and the rest of his team to go try to solve. He is determined to actually try to resolve these issues rather than kick the can down the road on these endless conflicts. I think he should be commended for that. RA: I’ll just say, and then I want to move on from this, that the isolationist narrative that you describe comes from the United States pulling out of more than 30 U. N. entities such as U. N. Women, the U. N. Population Fund, the U. N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, and others. MW: This is an important point. I think you and others are conflating being part of an organization with caring about the issue. The fact that it is an international organization, much less a U. N. organization, doesn’t mean it’s efficient or effective. You often see cents on the dollar actually getting to people in need. It was during President Trump’s first term that the U. S. became the first country to codify the U. N.’s Women, Peace, and Security agenda into [domestic] law under the leadership of Ivanka Trump. So let’s not conflate a poorly performing agency, much less these international ones, with caring about a particular issue. We argue that you don’t need four U. N. agencies focused on women or seven on climate change. Regardless of where you are on the issue, there’s massive duplication. Anybody that you talk to at the U. N. will tell you this and complain about the bureaucracy and duplication that’s in place here. I’d really appreciate everybody making an honest effort and making that distinction. RA: It’s hard to argue with what you’re saying in terms of efficiency, but I guess the critique has always been that there’s a multilateral way of doing things, and then a bilateral way of doing things. But I want to jump to Sudan, because I know you care about this issue a lot. You’ve personally been pushing at the U. N. the idea of expanding the existing arms embargo in Darfur to the whole of Sudan. You wrote about this in Foreign Policy. Partly in response to your proposal, Sudan’s de facto leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, wrote in FP that he rejected all outside influence, which I assume means the United States as well. He also said that proposals like yours make the mistake of treating the de facto government in exactly the same way as its rival, the Rapid Support Forces, which he calls “a paramilitary group that survives on looting, killing, and ethnic cleansing.” I’m curious, when you hear that kind of pushback from the de facto leader of Sudan, how are you thinking about how to resolve what is clearly an awful civil war? MW: I’ll state up front that the humanitarian situation on the ground in Sudan is beyond horrific. It truly is a hellscape. And it’s also worth rewinding the tape a little bit. The leaders of both those organizations were working together, and years ago, we had a coup. Whether you want to call it a civil war or an insurgency, our policy—and the president’s determination—is that the fighting ends, and we’re seeking every lever that we have. Right now, it is easier to get a gun and a bullet than a loaf of bread in Sudan. The entire country is awash with weapons. Our position is that neither side needs additional weapons. What we need is some semblance of stability: humanitarian aid and access to get in. That has often not been the case. As a matter of policy, we’re working toward a humanitarian truce just to get basic lifesaving aid to so many people that are in need, and at the same time, to look to stop those outside actors—perhaps we’re in violent agreement [with Burhan] there—that are flooding weapons into both sides of the conflict. We’re having those conversations. We have the Quad, the Jeddah process, and the Quintet, which includes the European Union and the African Union. We just had a declaration in Berlin where everyone agreed that we would move back toward civilian governance. So those are all the broad pieces that we’re trying to put in place. Frankly, to my earlier point, we’ve had a Security Council resolution that’s placed an embargo on Darfur for 20 years, yet the rest of the country is now awash with weapons. We think that needs to stop. RA: There are so many external players, as you’ve pointed out, in this conflict. I’m curious how you’ve been able to pressure any of them outside of this process of the nationwide embargo, which may or may not actually happen, but you’re pushing it and you should be commended for that. But I am curious, outside of that, have you been able to exert any pressure on some of the external players? For example, the United Arab Emirates is one of them. The United States has close ties with Abu Dhabi. I’m curious if there have been conversations about exerting some pressure for some of these external players to get out of the way. MW: There’s a whole slew of neighbors and regional actors—and we’re friends with almost all of them—that are involved in this conflict in one way or another. When people ask why the U. N. still matters, I’d point to having everyone here during the U. N. General Assembly and being able to have those conversations, and that kind of shuttle diplomacy, in such an effective way. We made progress over the last week. There’s an increasing appetite to de-escalate this conflict and bring it toward civilian governance. Now it’s getting into the details of what that transition would look like. RA: Let me jump to another arena, Ukraine and Russia. You said last week that all sides are losing in this war. It’s hard to disagree with that. You’ve called for trilateral talks. I’m curious where you see Russia at right now. What makes you think that they might be ready to negotiate? Because Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week said that Russia will see the fight “through to the end.” Those are his words, verbatim. MW: The president made it clear, even before his election, that the war has to end. That has been a real shift. Eighteen months ago, everyone was talking about winning, whether on the Ukrainian side or on the Russian side. The president shifted, and brought the international community with him, to the idea that the war has to end before it spreads further and there’s more death and destruction. We haven’t seen 25 to 35,000 casualties per month since World War II. That isn’t sustainable for the Russians from a demographic standpoint. This has clearly turned into a war of attrition. Their economy continues to suffer. Suffering is now spreading out to the global economy, which is why President Trump has called on the Ukrainians to stop hitting that key refining capability that, yes, is affecting the Russian war machine, but is also affecting the global economy. That’s where the rise in the price of diesel is largely coming from. At the same time, we are calling out Russians for targeting grain exports. Together, Russia and Ukraine export about 30 percent of wheat, barley, and grain globally. We’re looking at 400 to 500 million Africans alone going from difficult to even worse situations. So all of these are reasons why this war should end. I won’t get into individual conversations that the president and our negotiators have had with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but we are trying to bring this to a peaceful end where the Ukrainians have security guarantees and Russian issues are addressed. We started this process in Saudi Arabia last year, almost immediately after the administration came in, and we’ll continue to push for an end to this war in a way that is lasting and meaningful. RA: I want to segue to China here, and I promise there’s a connection. Russia is now using these souped-up Iranian Shahed drones that are able to travel at around 400 miles per hour and carry 200 pounds of explosives, and there’s growing evidence that a lot of the tech behind the jet-powered nature of these drones comes from China. And this is crucial as well in the other arena we’ve been discussing, Iran, because these drones could head back to Iran, and Tehran could use them against the United States in the region. And as you ramp up sanctions on Iran, China’s increasingly becoming the main outlet for Iranian exports. I’m curious where you think the Trump administration’s China policy is at, and I ask you this question knowing that you were once one of Congress’s loudest China hawks. When you were in Congress, you even called for a boycott of the [2022] Beijing Olympics. And now this administration is suspending arms delivery to Taiwan. It’s backing down on tariffs. It hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House. How do you square all of that? MW: I’ll start with pushing back on some of the premises behind the question—my opinions as a member of Congress representing the 6th district of Florida are very different from now. I will always express [my opinions] internally, but at the end of the day, the president is the decider-in-chief of our foreign policy, and I’ll certainly support and faithfully execute that. You mentioned a few aspects of the China policy, but you didn’t mention that China was one of Venezuela’s main buyers of energy. They no longer are. They were Iran’s by far, purchasing 80 percent of Iran’s illegal and illicit oil and gas. They no longer are. At the same time, the president and his team are aggressively pulling back our supply chains. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world saw that things that cost just a few cents can become a national security issue. We are focusing on having access to mining, refining, oil and gas, food security, and pharmaceuticals here. The president’s been quite clear that we have a number of issues on the trade front, and that we have to address the massive trade deficit that we’ve suffered from for so long. Those conversations, led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, are ongoing, and they’re going to continue, at least until January, with the agreement that we came to last year. Meanwhile, the president is investing heavily in rebuilding the U. S. military with a $1.5 trillion proposal, from space to cyberspace to shipbuilding. We saw the modernization of our military, and we’re learning from what’s happening on the battlefield in Ukraine with our emphasis on drone and counterdrone warfare. So he’s putting that deterrence in place. I haven’t even mentioned the modernization of our nuclear enterprise, which absolutely needs to be modernized as China looks to triple theirs. So investing in our military, investing in supply chains, and making sure that our great companies and farmers get a fair deal have all been at the crux of his China policy. By the way, he has approved more arms sales in one year to Taiwan than the Biden administration did in four years. So I think it’s important that we get that narrative right as well. RA: There was just one part of my last question that I want to reiterate—if China is indeed helping Russia build the souped-up jet power … MW: In fairness, the president raised that issue in Beijing and Washington; he takes it very seriously. I’ll leave it to him to detail any private conversations with another head of state, but we’ve seen movement in a positive direction as a result of that engagement. RA: That’s good to hear. Given the conflict in Iran, where the United States has expended a lot of its reserves of offensive and defensive munitions, and there have been fears specifically about the depletion of THAAD and Patriot interceptors, I’m curious whether you now see the United States as being ready to be able to protect its interests in other arenas, whether it’s Europe or the Asia-Pacific? MW: The issues with our industrial base didn’t start this year—not even close. How far do we want to go back? This started with sequestration and budget cuts under President Barack Obama’s administration. Just going back to the Biden administration, there were significant reductions in stockpiles for the Ukraine war. There was this notion that we would give them our old stuff and then buy new stuff, except there were massive lags, because our industrial base had atrophied over time for all kinds of reasons. There were huge expenditures with the Houthis under the last administration; they were essentially using our Navy ships as target practice for several years. I was chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and watched this quite closely. That said, we do have the munitions that we need. Our industrial base is expanding. It has been a focus. But there are a lot of demands around the world—it’s all the more reason that we need the investments the president proposed in this defense budget. If the story of the president’s first term was the Abraham Accords (by the way, I just hosted Israel, Morocco, and the United States for a furtherance of that relationship. So the Abraham Accords are moving forward, and we do plan and hope to expand it in this term), if that was the story of the first term, what’s happening in the Western Hemisphere is so far the untold, but most significant story, of his second term. Seven elections in just 18 months have gone our way, in terms of a more Western-aligned, pro-America government in Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Honduras, and Colombia just a few weeks ago. It’s truly incredible, and we haven’t even discussed the Greenland deal, which was quite historic and the subject of a lot of handwringing in the mainstream media just a couple of months ago. The Arctic is secured; our southern border is secured. Key waterways like the Panama Canal are now secured. Securing the critical minerals and energy that we need in our own hemisphere allows us to lead by ending the largest war in Europe since World War II in Ukraine, and by ending the malfeasance of the Iranian regime for the last 50 years (again, this didn’t start this year, this started in 1979), so that we can compete with China. If you take a step back and look at the arc, it’s a positive picture. I’m very optimistic about Lebanon; I’m the most optimistic about Syria, in my lifetime; and Iraq is now moving finally in the right direction. Why? Because Iran is on its back foot. There’s a positive story to tell, but bad headlines get clicks, and it’s quite popular in the mainstream media to throw things at this president. RA: I will say, nothing will make me happier than positive headlines. I want to stay in the Middle East for a minute here. We haven’t talked about Gaza and the West Bank. The United Kingdom, France, and Canada have all recently sanctioned goods coming from West Bank settlements. Your administration has criticized those measures. It also says it opposes annexation and even warned that settler violence could derail President Trump’s Gaza peace plans. I’m just curious: If not sanctions, which is what these European countries are doing, what tool is your administration using to stop annexation? MW: Well, are we talking West Bank, or are we talking Gaza? RA: West Bank. MW: You started your question with Gaza, and let me just address Gaza. A year ago at the U. N. General Assembly, there were Israeli hostages in Hamas tunnels, both alive and, sadly, deceased. No one thought we would get them all out. We did. All of them. For the first time in a decade, there are no Israelis being held by Hamas somewhere in Gaza. (And how they used the remains of the deceased to psychologically torture these families was inhumane of the highest order.) So the hostages are out. The aid is flowing—admittedly not enough, and more needs to go in. We now have a fund for reconstruction. We now have an international stabilization force; Morocco, Kosovo, Albania, and others are contributing to it. We have Palestinian police being vetted and trained, and we have a governance force that will go in and administer when we get Hamas to the point of disarming (and they have signed a 15-point plan). I’ll remind everyone, it was either that the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] would occupy forever, that Hamas would rule Gaza, or that we work together on this Board of Peace concept and all of those things that I just listed—and the U. N. Security Council voted unanimously to do just that. We have a long way to go, but I haven’t heard anyone else present a better plan when it comes to Gaza. As part of that U. N. Security Council resolution, for the first time ever in international law, we also have a document that says no annexation, and says there’s a pathway to a two-state solution with appropriate reforms. That was incredibly significant. And we are having some very candid, tough conversations with the Israeli government—which is in the midst of an election, so we’ll see what the Israeli people decide in terms of the future there—but the president’s position is clear. RA: Ambassador, you’ve mentioned international law several times in this conversation, and I get it. We need international law. But I just want to bring you back again to what President Trump told the New York Times at the start of this year. He said, “I don’t need international law. I’m not looking to hurt people.” And I know you can’t answer for everything the president says, but I’m curious how his words might be making some of the work you’re doing harder to pull off, because to the rest of the world, it does come across as discordant that on the one hand, you’re citing international law in all of your efforts, but on the other hand, the message from the White House often seems to be “this doesn’t matter, international law is not important.” MW: I don’t think I would agree with the term “often.” And I think, if I go back and look, that was in response to allegations that we violated intern [Article truncated]