Foreign diplomats on America's global future

Foreign diplomats are nervous that the United States’ once solid global leadership is on shaky ground.

What’s at stake if the U.S. cedes its place as a world leader?

Today, On Point: Foreign diplomats on America's global future.

Wolfgang Ischinger, president of the Munich Security Conference Foundation Council. He joined the German Foreign Service in 1975. Former German ambassador to the U.S.

Arturo Sarukhan, career diplomat in the Mexican Foreign Service for 22 years. Former Mexican ambassador to the U.S.

Ivo Daalder, chief executive officer of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Former U.S. ambassador to NATO under President Barack Obama.

Nahal Toosi, senior foreign affairs correspondent for Politico, where she writes a column called “Compass."

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Diplomats are creatures of protocol. It’s those very rules of verbal and political engagement that allow the machinery of international relations to function.

Imagine, then, Nahal Toosi’s surprise at the beginning of this year when she started talking to foreign diplomats about their views on the global impact of U.S. domestic politics.

NAHAL TOOSI: I said, I want you to talk about U.S. partisan politics, which is something that foreign diplomats just don't do as a general rule. I've tried so long for so many years, and oftentimes I've just been brushed off.

CHAKRABARTI: Nahal is a reporter with Politico.

TOOSI: But, this time when I went in, first of all, I was like, "Look, I'm writing this column, do me a favor, you've known me for a while, you know, you can trust me, I won't have to use your name." I had all this stuff, right? But I also found that because of what was happening just in our political system.

And especially the linking of Ukraine aid to border security, that a number of these diplomats, including current diplomats, were kind of letting go of their inhibitions and were ready to talk. It was just fortuitous timing. And, I was astonished at how frank some of them were.

CHAKRABARTI: Frank, in fact, only begins to describe it.

TOOSI: The European ambassador described the U.S. as a fat buffalo that was tired and just wanted to sleep. While hungry wolves ... the argument was the United States has opened itself up, made itself vulnerable to other rising powers, including Russia, including China.

CHAKRABARTI: That “fat buffalo” remark is something, isn’t it? Diplomats don’t often use such undiplomatic language. But that European ambassador, in fact, said even more than that. And Nahal was understandably hesitant to verbalize is full quote on the air with us. Because he drops an F-bomb.

He told her, “I can hear those Champagne bottle corks popping in Moscow – it’s like Christmas every [bleeping] day.”

CHAKRABARTI: This is On Point. I’m Meghna Chakrabarti.

The diplomats were in a protocol breaking mood, they spilled to Nahal. Chief among their concerns: U.S. partisan politics are jeopardizing European stability because of the push-pull between Democrats and Republicans on Ukraine.

TOOSI: Even if the United States comes through on everything with Ukraine at the end, the fact that it took months and months and months and this intense amount of debate and ongoing shenanigans and Congress, that alone has damaged U.S. credibility, like tremendously around the world. It takes time to rebuild that. So, even if the U.S. were to try to go forth and say, "Look, we're reliable. We really, really are." I don't think countries necessarily believe our rhetoric anymore.

CHAKRABARTI: Another diplomat threw up his hands in despair, saying he didn’t know how much longer people of the world would consider the United States as a viable model for democracy.

TOOSI: They have noticed that this issue of polarization in America is not getting better. It's not going away and it's affecting them. And so there's a sense that maybe they should talk a little bit more and try to get a message across to their friends in Capitol Hill, to others in the country and just say, look, guys, this isn't just about you. It's about the whole world.

CHAKRABARTI: That is Nahal Toosi. She is senior affairs correspondent for Politico and author of the new column Compass.

And in her article, another diplomat summed up international alarm like this:

“If all foreign policy debates become domestic political theater, it becomes increasingly challenging for America to effectively play its role on any global issue that requires long-term commitment.”

And that hurts not only the entire world, but the U.S. itself.

So today we're going to hear a lot more from several diplomats with long experience both on the international stage and with dealing with the United States.

And we'll begin in Berlin, German by former Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger. He joined the German Foreign Service in 1975 and from 2001 to 2006 he served as German ambassador to the U.S. He’s president of the Munich Security Conference Foundation Council. And author of "World in Danger: Germany and Europe in an Uncertain Time." Ambassador Ischinger, welcome to On Point.

WOLFGANG ISCHINGER: Hi, great to be on your show.

CHAKRABARTI: I'd actually like to start in the past a little bit to use your first experience as the ambassador to the United States as a counterpoint to what the world seems to be seeing from Washington right now. If I understand correctly, your first day on the job was September 11th, 2001.

Is that correct?

ISCHINGER: That's unfortunately, absolutely correct. My wife and I had arrived on a flight late afternoon September 10th and September 11th was going to be my first working day. So I was up early trying to inspect my new office. The cleaning lady was still there.

My future secretary had not even arrived. And I tried to figure out what the view was from this and that window and how to use the phone, et cetera, et cetera. Then by 9 a.m., as everybody knows in Washington, D.C. or in New York, all hell broke loose. And as a consequence of that, I think I'm one of the very, very few ambassadors anywhere who were never invited for any kind of courtesy call to meet with a senator or a secretary of state or somebody at the White House, because there was just no time for courtesy calls.

There was crisis. There was drama. There was tragedy. And so it was it was not a nice beginning. It was a terrible beginning. But I actually think I benefited from being there at that moment because it allowed me to understand better than many of my countrymen how deeply the American soul, the American people had been affected by this.

The country that thought of itself as being practically invulnerable with oceans on both sides, et cetera. And here we go. And so I understood because I met so many people in the days after 9/11, I understood what kind of horror and what kind of shock, national shock and security shock this created.

CHAKRABARTI: Yes. So ambassador, this is exactly why I wanted to start with that story because it's your first day on the job as the German ambassador to the United States. You're in Washington. And as you said, that very morning, planes fly into the world trade center in New York, into the Pentagon in Washington, one crashes in Pennsylvania.

It is an historic moment for the United States, but not just that, but for the world, because soon thereafter, NATO invoked Article 5, perhaps for the first time. I will check myself on that, but it didn't take --

ISCHINGER: No, I can tell you, I can tell you, I know that. I've worked on NATO for 40 years.

It was, so far, the only time ever that NATO invoked the Article 5 for, in favor, of protect, trying to protect, trying to help protect the United States. That was it.

CHAKRABARTI: So what was from your perspective as a foreign diplomat, what was it about the United States that A) brought that swift action from NATO? And B) basically within a few weeks, this international coalition was formed to try to root out Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan following U.S. leadership. So what was it about America's position as a global leader that allowed that to happen so quickly?

ISCHINGER: Of course, in our collective understanding, for decades, NATO was supposed to be there under U.S. leadership to cover in security terms Europe from, or to protect Europe against an attack from the former Soviet Union. And later on, after the demise of the Soviet Union, against any kind of threat, whether it's from Russia or from Iran or from elsewhere.

And here, of course, we understood in the days following 9/11 that the tables had been turned and that there was our leader country, our protecting country, the United States, was vulnerable and had received such a terrible strike. And that we needed to demonstrate if we could, there wasn't too much that we were able to do, but we thought we need to demonstrate that we take this NATO alliance, protecting each other against any kind of foreign threat, that we take that seriously.

And that's why, I forget who exactly it was, called a NATO meeting, not at the level of ambassadors, but at the level of ministers, secretaries and sure enough, it was an anonymous vote.

CHAKRABARTI: Ambassador, if I can just jump in here for a second, because this leads me to the question that I want to ask you before we run out of time in this first segment, we have about another minute.

What do those same leaders of those NATO countries think now about the United States' commitment to NATO? Do they have the confidence that if there was the necessity to invoke Article 5 again that this quote-unquote leader nation, as you called the U. S., would rise to the moment?

ISCHINGER: I would say so far, so good.

I think most European leaders believe that, thank God we have Joe Biden. He knows where Ukraine is. He knows Europe. He's been around for so long, but there is this cloud of doubt out there. So what if after the November elections a different U.S. policy on NATO might emerge? Are we sure that America will always be there? Question mark. That's the problem.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Today we're talking with a group of foreign diplomats about why there is increasing concern at the highest levels of governments around the world about U.S. domestic partisan politics and how the instability here can produce greater instability around the world.

You've been listening so far to Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger. He was the German ambassador to the United States from 2001 to 2006, and currently he's president of the Munich Security Conference Foundation Council, and he's joining us from Berlin in Germany today. I'd like to bring Arturo Sarukhan into the conversation.

He served as a career diplomat in the Mexican Foreign Service for 22 years, was the Mexican ambassador to the United States from 2007 to 2013. Ambassador Sarukhan, welcome to the show.

ARTURO SARUKHAN: It's a pleasure to be with you.

CHAKRABARTI: I'd also like to bring Ivo Daalder into the conversation. He's Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

He served as the U.S. Ambassador to NATO under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013 and is co-author of "The Empty Throne: America's Abdication of Global Leadership." Ivo Daalder, great to have you on the show.

IVO DAALDER: Meghna, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: Ambassador Sarukhan, let me kick off this segment with you.

You heard Ambassador Ischinger talk about the greater uncertainty that the international community feels about what will U.S. foreign policy be depending on who's in the White House. Perhaps we were just under a 50 year, we've been habituated to 50 years of the Cold War where U.S. foreign policy was stable because of the concern of Soviet power, and that was the animating force in how the United States organized itself when it came to global affairs. Since the end of the Cold War, there are many other issues that have become as important to the United States in terms of how it organizes its foreign policy.

So make the case, though Professor Sarukhan, that this instability, as we call it, is in fact a bad thing when it perhaps, in fact, could be just a reality check of the new sort of shifting nature of international issues.

SARUKHAN: There's certainly a case to be made that what we sowed during the Cold War, may be a historical blip of relative stability given today's fluidity in geopolitics, but also in terms of the domestic debates in the United States about the U.S. footprint around the world. Where traditionally throughout U.S. history, there's always been this sort of isolationist bent or push, which has happened in a recurring way throughout different moments of this country's engagement with the world, starting with President Washington's famous farewell address, when he talked about entangling alliances.

However, I think there is greater concern today, because we've already had a taste of what that new sort of America going it alone entails. We had four years of diplomatic vandalism by former President Donald Trump. And I think that is conditioning in many ways how countries around the world are looking, not only at the U.S. electoral process going forward to November, but also what may happen once we have a winner. And the impact that could have for the rest of the world. And it's not only about geopolitics. Yes, the U.S. was one of the key, if not the key architect of the post war order of a rules-based international system.

But it was also the linchpin of most of the institutions that exist today. And so there's, I think, it's not only manifesting itself in how countries will position themselves vis-a-vis the United States on a host of global security, economic trade issues, but also as to how what happens in the United States has an impact around the world in terms of democracy. I've always said that contrary to the famous dictum about Las Vegas. When it comes to liberal democracy, what happens in the United States doesn't stay in the United States. It has a domino effect in terms of what happens to the erosion and the credibility of democracy elsewhere.

I think there's a double process at play. It's, yes, measuring how the election will impact the U.S. standing and U.S. commitments around the world. But it's also how the further deterioration, the tribalization, the polarization that is going on within the United States today also has an impact for democratic resilience in other parts of the world.

CHAKRABARTI: So with that in mind, Ambassador Daalder, let me ask you, we heard earlier from Nahal Toosi's reporting that a lot of diplomats are basically seeing U.S. foreign policy, every aspect of U.S. foreign policy being turned into domestic political theater. That was the language that people used with her in her article.

Do you agree with that or not?

DAALDER: Yeah, I do agree with that. I think clearly diplomats in Washington looking at what's happening in that city and frankly, diplomats outside and leaders outside of the United States looking at what's happening in the United States have to wonder what is happening to a country that led the effort from day one to marshal the Western, if not the entire world, to stand up against the most flagrant violation of international law you could possibly have.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine, an attempt for the first time really since 1945 to use force to change borders. To lead that effort quite successfully, in fact, and then to falter and to falter not just because there is a disagreement about whether or not we should support Ukraine, but because there's an internal disagreement in one particular party, in one particular house that is the Republican caucus in the House of Congress that is preventing majorities from expressing their opinion. And not just the majorities of the American people who favor and continue to favor aid to Ukraine, but a vast majority of people, of congressmen and representatives in the House, which, if there is a vote, would overwhelmingly vote for aid to Ukraine.

So yes, people are wondering what is happening to the American political system that can make something that is as clear and as necessary and as generally supported by the American people and by their representatives from doing this and that has huge implications.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So this is really important.

And former president Donald Trump has been mentioned a couple of times. We will definitely come back to him and his disdain, to put it lightly, for international organizations like NATO. But in speaking about Ukraine, this is all happening under President Joe Biden's watch. Ambassador Ischinger, let me ask you, do you see some of the same, let's say, unreliability from the United States, even in the way President Biden has handled the United States involvement or assistance to the Ukrainian people? For example, the way that the Biden administration has decided to give weapons to Ukraine. Perhaps President Biden pulled his punches on there, fell short in terms of how much assistance the U.S. could give Ukraine. And was that a mistake?

ISCHINGER: I guess everything, everything is relative. In relative terms, the United States, as one country, has provided more support in terms of military support and other support to Ukraine than essentially all of us together on the European side.

We've improved our track record recently, very substantially. But over these last years, several years, even before the full-scale attack by Russia started two years ago, America has done a lot. That's the first observation. Second observation, of course, we are watching what evil has just referred to.

We are watching with deep concern of the ongoing dispute, the ongoing discussions in the House of Representatives. Let me make a slightly optimistic observation. Paraphrasing Churchill, America has often done every wrong thing until it finally found the right thing to do.

So I remain rather optimistic that at the end of the day, after these many discussions, the U. S. Congress will find a way to finally come up with this aid package which President Biden has requested. And he's right because we on the European side, we have tried to step up.

But I don't think we can, even if we made an additional effort, I don't think we could replace the extent and the technological stuff and the intelligence, et cetera, et cetera that the United States has so far provided. Final remark. If I may, you asked about pulling punches. I learned in Strategy 101.

That in a conflict, one should not explain to your adversary what you're going to not to do and what you're going to do. You want your adversary to remain in doubt about your own plan, your intentions and your actions. And I think collectively we at NATO made a little bit of a mistake. I say this, of course, with hindsight. When Russia started this full-scale attack, we said, okay, we're going to help Ukraine, but we certainly will not in any way get involved in this.

And in hindsight, maybe we shouldn't have said that, maybe we should have left it open, because what I find so interesting currently is that President Putin and his cronies have, of course, not, never left any doubt, including in very recent remarks, which President Putin made, have never left any doubt that they don't exclude anything.

They even continue to hint at the deployment of nuclear weapons in order to scare my fellow Germans who are particularly scared of nuclear weapon threats. To scare the hell out of Europeans, of their neighbors, of Ukrainians, first and foremost. And of course, we tend to continue to say to Russia, don't get too excited.

We're certainly not going to deliver more heavy weapons. And we don't want to provoke you too far. So I think this has, this is stuff for a good review. Hopefully once this conflict has ended, how far we could have gone, whether we did the right thing. And whether, maybe we went just a little bit too far in order to say what we are not going to do.

I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.

CHAKRABARTI: Yes, I do. In fact, and I just need to say, I'm Meghna Chakrabarti. This is On Point. Ambassador Sarukhan. I think what Ambassador Ischinger is saying is quite clear, but the question that comes to mind upon hearing him, is let's say for a moment that NATO was clearer, or let's say left the door open for further involvement in Ukraine versus just military assistance.

SARUKHAN: This, again, gets back to changes in the American body politic, if I can put it that way, because as aggressively opposed as Donald Trump is and was to international agreements and security arrangements, he definitely tapped into a truth about the United States in terms of the people of the United States' exhaustion in being involved in foreign wars.

Granted, the U.S. did start the two foreign wars that I'm referring to here, but If NATO says perhaps greater involvement is on the table, wouldn't that just produce more pushback from here in the United States? A kind of anti-involvement leadership that wouldn't be to NATO's liking.

I think there's certainly, you can sense that there is a reluctance by important sectors of the American public to see further engagement, further potential deployment of military assets, international defense aid to countries Ukraine. That is, I think, clear, and it's been happening, I think, for quite a bit.

I think it was really, it was one of the very relevant reasons that led Barack Obama winning the Democratic primary in 2008. And I think there's some of that out there and there's no doubt that Trump has been tapping into that. But there's also, I think as Ivo said, I think there is a pretty compelling support for aiding Ukraine.

And what is clear is that there is solid number of members of Congress from one party in particular that have been blocking the ability of the United States to come in support of Ukraine and the government in Kyiv. At the end of the day, I think that the largest problem as to how all of this plays out is that it impacts, my sense is that it's already impacting the way other governments position themselves vis-a-vis the United States.

It's clear that many foreign ministries, many governments around the world are hedging their bets. They're sitting tight. They're sitting on the fence. They're waiting to see how the elections play out in November, before they commit to political diplomatic bandwidth.

With the United States on a host of issues, not only in terms of what's happening in Eastern Europe, but whether it's the need to defend critical shipping lanes in the Red Sea, whether it's how to position yourself vis-a-vis growing assertiveness by China in the South China Seas, the tragedy that we're seeing in Gaza and how to push and cajole the current Israeli government to a ceasefire there.

On issues related to transnational migration, which is probably one of the greatest challenges in the America's today. We have never seen the amount of migrants, refugees, internally displaced peoples on the move that we see today in the American continent. And that is an issue that will play a very important role on the road to November.

There are many governments in the hemisphere, in the Western hemisphere that have weaponized, politically and diplomatically weaponized migration flows. Because they think they can extract a price politically, electorally, from the United States, because of President Biden's need to ensure that this issue does not become one of the driving forces of how Americans vote come November.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: Ambassador Daalder, Ambassador Sarukhan said something very interesting, and I just want to use Israel and Gaza as an example.

So I think it's fair to say that President Biden, whether he's tried or not, perhaps hasn't been able to effectively use the entirety of U.S. leverage when it comes to influencing what the Israeli government is deciding to do in Gaza. And now we're on the brink of the Gazan people suffering a famine now.

That was the latest headline I saw just this morning. I wonder, Ambassador Daalder, if you see that as a particular Biden administration regarding Israel now. Or does it give us a window into a future where U.S. leadership is so diminished that it doesn't matter what the United States wants or how it leads, just foreign countries aren't going to respond the way they once did?

DAALDER: It's an interesting question because there's no doubt that the Biden administration has tried to influence the course of action that Israel took after the truly horrendous events of October 7th, the worst day in Jewish history since the Holocaust and President Biden himself, and I think the American people writ large felt to their bones, the need to come to Israel's side on this, but from the very beginning the president and his entire administration has made clear that how Israel responds matters for its ability to both achieve the objectives that it set itself.

The elimination of Hamas as a military threat and as a political entity in Gaza. And hope and establish a more permanent way forward on dealing with the fundamental issues that underlie this conflict. And it's true that the Biden administration has been unable to influence Israel's course as much as it had hoped and wanted to.

And that raises the question, did the U.S. use the leverage that it had? Some have argued that the U.S. had more leverage that the Biden administration could use. For example, it could have refused to veto a number of Security Council resolutions that it did veto. Criticizing Israel or calling for ceasefire, and it could have halted or conditioned the further provision of military aid to Israel and Biden administration decided not to do that.

I do think it is important to understand that it's not clear to me that if the Biden administration had done, that Israel would have changed course or would have done anything differently. The way Israel has responded is in a good part driven by the trauma that the country suffered on October 7th and its aftermath. And has engaged in a response that might've been slightly different with more leverage being used by the United States, but I think at its core, would have been quite similar.

And that raises the larger question, which is even at the height of American power during the Cold War, but certainly even today, when the United States is unquestionably the most powerful country in the world, that doesn't necessarily mean that the United States can dictate how every country in the world acts or responds.

They have their own interests, they have their own needs, and they have their own capabilities that drives them to act in the way that they do. And diplomacy is fundamentally about trying to persuade other countries to follow a different course. But sometimes persuasion and diplomacy doesn't work.

And I think in the case of Israel, it's not clear to me that better diplomacy, more leverage would have fundamentally changed course. And that's the way the world is. Sometimes even the most powerful country can't exact and influence the course of particular countries, even those who are closest and most allied to the United States.

And we need to understand that reality exists in many case, irrespective of what happens domestically at home, which has influenced to some extent how Biden has reacted to this as well. So I want to return to a question that we started with, because I'd love to get a really sharp and succinct answer from all of you, because I imagine that many people listening to this now, really, they're just wondering So what if the United States is in a sort of slight, is in an isolationist trend?

Let's put it that way. Or the United States is less willing, even less able, to be a global leader. Because they would look at criticisms of Europe saying Europe has been far too long reliant upon the guarantee of U.S. assistance in security, even economic trade, et cetera.

Maybe it's time for Europe to stand more on its own. In terms of the Middle East, they're questioning what the U.S. gets out of its various relationships there. Ambassador Sarukhan, you very rightly pointed to migration as a huge issue and a lot of Americans see the way to tackle that migration problem is to just make it much harder to get into the United States, et cetera, et cetera.

So I think what I'm saying is many people see a lot of excellent counter arguments, regarding this concern about a retraction of U.S. global leadership. What does it really matter to the rest of the world if the United States is no longer as involved as it once was?

In various ways in international affairs. And Ambassador Sarukhan, let me hear from you on that.

SARUKHAN: Look --

CHAKRABARTI: I know it sounds like a ridiculous question to ask an ambassador, but I'm asking it because millions of Americans are thinking this way, and they're going to be casting votes in November that will determine who's in the White House in 2025. And so I think they deserve to hear all of your clearest answers about why you're advocating so forcefully for the U.S. to maintain its presence as a leader on the global stage.

I think that in general, when you look at international affairs, there are two ways to go around. You either sit at the table, you're on the menu. And I think the last thing that the United States would want to see is itself on the menu.

And my pitch here is that at the end of the day, a potential U.S. retrenchment from global affairs, a more isolationist attitude to geopolitics and international affairs. That void will not be filled necessarily by China It'll be filled by chaos and volatility.

And that has a profound impact on the wellbeing, the security, prosperity of Americans. The U.S. has always played critical role sometimes some of us have criticized some of those positions for different reasons, but I think that if you look at the history of U.S. engagement, particularly in the aftermath of the Second World War, the U.S. has built a system which has allowed most nations to flourish, we've seen very important changes in economic growth in countries that have been able to bring people out of extreme poverty, global trade to flourish.

And so in many ways, that's the decision that Americans will be making come November. Do you want the United States to continue to be able to at least have the ability to impact that, or do you want it to retreat behind borders and walls and isolate itself from the rest of the world and I, my pitch would be that forget about what happens in the rest of the world.

I think Americans will be worse off if the United States were to take that tack come November.

CHAKRABARTI: Ambassador Ischinger, to you, the same question.

ISCHINGER: I certainly totally agree with that. But let me sharpen it a bit further. Earlier a remark was made about some countries in the Middle East and elsewhere beginning to hedge, hedging because they don't know what the United States might decide going forward.

We in Europe, we don't have an alternative. We have a war ongoing, a war fought, a war of aggression, fought by the only other major nuclear power besides the United States, against a non-nuclear country. The Russian war against and in Ukraine. And I know that there are people out there in America, smart people who worked with the Trump administration or elsewhere, who believe that what is really important for America in foreign affairs is the rivalry with China.

And we need to focus on that, if on anything. My point would be this. It is not true that in the management of international affairs, you can separately deal with the Middle East and with Europe and with China and with Iran. Things happen to be connected, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly.

And let me put it rather bluntly. I believe that the best way for America to deter China from trying some kind of adventurous maneuver on Taiwan, the best way of deterring China from even thinking about that is to hold firm on Ukraine. In Russia, they have observed America's retreat from Afghanistan, and they believe that was a sign of weakness and of a beginning tendency towards isolationism, and that if the United States decides not to go in again, in terms of supporting Ukraine, that will be seen as a sign of weakness.

And I can't agree more. America benefits from global trade, from open sea lanes, from being an importing, a giant importing country, a giant producer of high tech, selling these products all over the world. That kind of international system will go down the drain in chaos and anarchy if no one cares about the larger idea of stability.

And we don't have anyone who would, at this moment, in my humble opinion, be able to jump in and replace and take the place of the United States. We need from a European point of view, we desperately need the United States to be here and to be there and defend freedom. And not to think that making America great again can only happen at home, without regards to the international situation.

CHAKRABARTI: Yes. Those were some very concrete details to undergird what Ambassador Sarukhan was saying about if you're not at the table, you're on the table. Very appreciated. I'd like to round towards the end of our conversation with you, Ambassador Daalder, because one of the clear unifying messages from hearing all three of you is that when it comes to international relations or just global life, that stability, which we all want, requires predictability.

And one of the major problems right now is that the American political system has become pretty unpredictable, because of different decisions made by particularly the Republican Party, in terms of how it wants to handle in the House, as you noted, important matters of foreign affairs.

So that takes the concern beyond whether Donald Trump will return to the White House or not. And just as we opened with Ambassador Ischinger's story about his first day as a German ambassador to the U.S. on 9/11. You actually have a very personal connection to this issue of American leadership, and I'm wondering if we could just close the hour with you sharing that with us, and why American global leadership really does matter keenly to you.

DAALDER: I do have a personal connection. I was born and raised in the Netherlands. My family, both my parents, were survivors of World War II.

In the case of my father, who was not Jewish, fought five years of occupation under occupation. In the case of my mother, who was Jewish, a survivor of the Holocaust who came together and met actually in 1948 at the Congress of Europe which tried to figure out how the Europeans could stop the end of war.

And in a firm belief as most Europeans of that generation, that the United States needed to be an active participant in the world and because they had shown through liberating Europe together with the Canadians and others the Brits, that they were a central factor in how to think about peace and stability in the world. And that was my life lesson. That's why I became interested in moving to United States and ultimately became an American citizen. American engagement, we have proven since 1945, in fact since 1941, is absolutely critical for the peace and security around the world.

And it's that peace and security that is critical to the United States. And if that goes away, everything else goes away too.