The Negotiator

In a fight as important as the one to save American democracy from the grips of would-be autocrats and dictators, we must partner with people who would otherwise be our political opponents. We must welcome them to the cause and put aside other disagreements, at least for the time being. This is a lesson dissidents in unfree places understand well, but not one that comes easy to Americans. It is a lesson I hope to personally demonstrate in today's episode. From that logic, this is Autoprocin America. I am Gari Kasparov. My guest today is Jake Sullivan, the former national security adviser for President Joe Biden. And before that, a top adviser to Hillary Clinton, when she was Secretary of State and when she ran for President. My disagreements with him are too numerous to detail in full, but I will offer this summary. Sullivan and the presidential administrations he has worked for have too often failed to understand and predict the threats facing the world and misjudged what those threats mean for American democracy. There have been flat footed time and again in Afghanistan, in Ukraine, in the Middle East, the least goes on. In 2023, I called for congressional hearings into Sullivan's leadership at the National Security Council. And I even wrote that Biden should fire here to be replaced with someone who understood the meaning of the terms. But even with all those many disagreements, Jake and I still see eye to eye on the threat to American democracy. And that's why I ask him to join me for this conversation. Hello, Jake. Welcome to the show. Gari, thank you for having me. I wanted to first say thank you very much for accepting my invitation to speak, given that you know I was one of the fiercest critics and that I'm about to ask you some very difficult questions. But thank you for your courage, which is so important and necessary now as we face challenges that may feel insurmountable. I of course want to ask you to analyze the war in Ukraine as it stands now, but first let's add some context to the conversation. Let's go back to the early 2000s, Vladimir Putin rose to power and every subsequent U.S. president has had to deal with him. Tell me how you view America's foreign policy, specifically its Russia policy in this quarter century. Well, what's clear is that Vladimir Putin has become an increasing menace to his neighbors, to the world, to his people. And not that the United States, no one else has been able to reverse that trend. And it is certainly the case over the course of the past quarter century that President Putin, Vladimir Putin, has just kept growing his appetite for death and destruction and I think it's fair to say that the some total of U.S. policy from the late 90s through the 2000s and the 2010s was not able to turn that around. Let's go back to the early days of Vladimir Putin's rise. Why does every new administration seem to fall into the same mistake with Putin negotiating with him as though he's someone who would keep his word? Well, it's hard for me to speak. I wasn't in the Clinton administration, the Bush administration. I did serve at the State Department and then for as National Security Advisor to then Vice President Biden during the Obama administration. And of course, the Obama administration had the reset. That was when you had President Medvedev technically leading the country, though, of course, we knew that Vladimir Putin remained the power behind the throne. I was the director of policy planning at the State Department from 2011 to 2013 and thanks actually to some really, really smart Russia experts on my team. I actually produced a memo for Secretary Clinton in 2012 that basically said this is going to go in a very dark direction as President Putin comes back to power and we have to be ready for a very aggressive and assertive Russian. In fact, Secretary Clinton ended up sending her own memo over to the White House essentially making that case at the end of 2012. That was when a watching Putin come back into power that I really saw the threat and challenge that he posed and I put that down on paper and made my views clear at the time. You mentioned Hillary Clinton and the reset policy, failed reset policy. So I was almost wondering, and maybe you can tell us a secret, whose idea was it for Hillary Clinton to give a reset button to a counterpart Russian foreign minister Sergey Oliverov in 2009. Well, that was not mine, but that's not for me to say that's for others to say, all I could say is it was not my idea, but that was a policy that Secretary Clinton was carrying out, of course. The original concept of the reset had emerged in the transition and then was enunciated by the White House and then of course carried forward by the State Department as well. So then you moved to the White House to work with then Vice President Biden and that was the beginning of Russia's Russian war in Ukraine. So I understand that Vice President Biden won't Obama to give at least some leaflet act weapons to Ukraine like the Javolin anti-Tank weapon. What was your advice to Biden? Well, of course, I'm very careful not to share my private advice to principles. I think it's important that I not do that. What I can say is that President Biden was very clear about his view that the United States should step forward and supply that defensive assistance, defensive equipment to Ukraine at the time. And of course, President Obama didn't agree and chose a different course, but that was the advice coming out of the office of the Vice President. Okay. Now, we can miss four years of Trump's presidency. But I still want to ask you, how do you evaluate Trump's foreign policy vis-à-vis Russia and Ukraine at the time? I think basically President Trump was focused on just trying to maintain a decent relationship with President Putin for reasons I don't fully understand. And I think he had people working for him who were very active in wanting to support Ukraine. And I think steps like the provision of Javlins were good, but writ large, I felt that his approach vis-à-vis Putin, as we saw on display in Helsinki, for example, was one that Secretary Clinton had predicted, which is him basically co-zying up to President Putin in ways that I did not think advanced US interests. What's fascinating, though, is that he has been prepared to take very tough action against friends. He's been prepared to take very tough action against competitors, like the 145 percent tariffs on China. But at no point has he been prepared to take tough action against Putin's Russia. Even when he applied tariffs across the board, almost every country in the world, even Ukraine, for goodness sake, he did not impose tariffs on Russia. It is a very strange, consistent feature of his approach to foreign policy that Putin tends to get a pass. Okay. Now, go back to your tenure as the National Security Advisor. So you're on the office, and at what point do you recognize that Putin's invasion of Ukraine would be inevitable? I don't know about inevitable, but we were concerned about the possibility of an invasion of Ukraine in the spring. Spring 2021? Yes, in the spring of 2021, the large build-up of Russian forces. Actually, one of the reasons that President Biden met with President Putin in a summit in Geneva in the summer was because there had been a big build-up of forces on the border of Ukraine that spring, and it certainly didn't look like a drill. So what are the results of this summit? And why you are convinced that Putin would attack Ukraine? Part of the purpose of those was to lay out what the consequences would be with respect to the economic sanctions we would impose, be the support we would provide Ukraine, and see the way in which we would rally the world against Russia. President Biden made no bones about that. He laid all that out for President Putin to let him know that this is what would unfold. So we made an effort, of course, which was not successful to avert to head off, even though we knew it was a long shot. No, it seems that he was not impressed by the consequences. Well, not impressed by the consequences, or simply as many of our Russia experts in the intelligence community noted, determined to invade Ukraine no matter the cost. And of course, as we see today with more than a million Russian dead and wounded and the economy under massive pressure and Russia having more engaged its future, he's still determined because this is something that President Putin has decided is the most important thing for him to do. Jake, I see a little gap in the whole in the story because if you were convinced back in June, July, 2021, that Russian invasion of Ukraine was very likely if not inevitable. And then to consequence. Sorry, no, I didn't say. I didn't say in June, July, we thought an invasion was likely inevitable. I'm not sorry. I'm not making that claim. What I'm saying is that the risks, the concern over what Putin would do with respect to Ukraine was present in March and April because he did a huge buildup. Then we had the summit had no real outcomes on Ukraine. So the concern remained, where's this all going? But it wasn't until we saw the intelligence in the fall that we became convinced that this was going to happen. Okay, fall. But then why the United States decided not to provide Ukraine with any lethal weapons in this period. You still had four or five months to be for Ukraine and defenses. As I recall, we did provide Ukraine with defensive assistance that fall. It's what Javilians and Stingers, I mean, they're not any heavy weapons that could have been very useful facing Russian invasion. Well, I think in fact, the Javilians and Stingers were what helped the incredible and brave Ukrainian defenders save Kiev. And throughout the war, so that's a 2022 year. Ukrainians demonstrating her resume and determinations survived. Disbanded Kiev inflicted huge losses to Russian force attacking Kiev. It was a big victory. Liberated territories near Kiev. And then they had a massive counterattack in August 2022. And then there was the moment in 2023 in June, long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive that unfortunately did not work. So tell us why the United States was always very slow in providing Ukraine with more weapons that as we know were available. You know, Gary, I've heard this critique, obviously many times, including from you. And I'd like to divide between two elements, just so we're at least on the same page with what the argument is. And then we can respectfully disagree or maybe we come to agreement. One is that we were slow generally in supplying weapons. The other is there were certain weapon systems that we were slow in providing. The way you just put the question and made it sound like we just were slow in giving them stuff generally. I don't accept that at all. I think we moved incredibly rapidly to supply at speed and scale a massive amount of military equipment to Ukraine far beyond what anyone would have expected when the war broke out in February. And in fact, we built an efficient pipeline in Poland that not only supplied American military equipment, but was able to draw in military equipment from around the world and supply it so that by the time the counteroffensive started in June, everything that had been agreed between the US military and the Ukrainian military in terms of their needs was provided. So I would just disagree with the premise of the question in that regard. Then we can talk about the particular weapon systems that are the source of criticism, one of which was the A1 Abrams tanks. And they are basically our military said these tanks are not going to be useful. They need Bradley's which we supplied at a great scale. Those are much more effective fighting vehicle than the Abrams. But to this day, Gary, the Abrams have never been a particularly useful or central weapon in this war. So that's the Abrams. Then they're the F-16s. President Biden approved the F-16 transfers in May of 2023. You and I are talking here in September of 2025 more than two years later. There's really only a handful of these planes in Ukraine. And that's because it's very hard to build an Air Force, which was the argument our military was making against doing it. Put the money and the effort towards other systems that you can actually get in because you're not going to be able to build a whole F-16 Air Force in Ukraine. And then of course, there was the issue of the ATACMs. And on the ATACMs, what the Pentagon consistently argued was we have a limited number of these. We need to keep a certain reserve for America's combat and commands. And we just don't have enough to give Ukraine for it to make a material difference on the front line in the battlefield. That was an argument that they consistently made. Eventually we were able to give them. They were used. And they were used to good effect operationally, but obviously they're not a silver bullet for changing the course of the war. So I think there has been an overemphasis on these particular weapon systems at the expense of looking at the full suite of material. Every single dollar Congress gave us. We spent on time and in full to push weapons into Ukraine. And we were, in my view, really resourceful in doing so. And we went way beyond just the kinds of things that were on the front page of the paper on a given month. In fact, from the beginning, we played a critical role in help stand up Ukraine's drone program that now is operating to such good effect. We sourced and developed entirely new capabilities that had never been fielded before to transfer to Ukraine. And I was holding a meeting every single day in my office, basically trying to figure out how we could get more faster, better to Ukraine. And I did that from the first day of the last. Am I satisfied? No, I would have obviously liked to get more money from Congress, give more stuff to Ukraine. But I think that there has been a kind of view among a certain group of critics that somehow we were sitting there holding back, being cautious, not providing. And frankly, I just don't, I don't think the record actually reflects that or the enormous effort that was put into this coordinated from the NSC. Did Russians explicitly threaten to use nukes? Well, you saw them publicly, constantly. I'm talking about conversations. Public stories is one story. It's one level. But was the threat used in the negotiations between your team and the Russian counterparts? Well, we didn't have really negotiations with our Russian counterparts. But yes, we did have engagements with them. I would say they were not saying to us, hey, we're about to use nuclear weapons. What the most senior people at the CIA and the DNI presented to the president was that if there was a catastrophic collapse of Russian lines, it was a coin flip as to whether Russia would use tactical nuclear weapons to respond to that. That was the information given to President Biden. That's what he had to contend with in terms of the risk. And that was based on, well, it was based on things I can't go into in this podcast. Okay. Okay. Now we are, well, we are now September 2025 and the war keeps going on. More people are being killed. So what do you expect? I guess there's a difference between what I hope and what I expect. I'm just not sure what to expect, honestly, from President Trump. I don't know if he'll follow through and finally impose pressure, but there's an obvious roadmap here. And the roadmap is that the Russian economy is very weak and oil markets are pretty permissive. And that means there is room to really squeeze Russian oil revenues in a way that puts a hurt on Putin's pocketbook. And I think if we combine that with a further surge of military assistance to Ukraine, we can create the conditions in which a real negotiation for a real, just and sustainable piece could take place. That's what I would like to see happen. I remember that in August 2023, I was in Denmark. I met Danish Foreign Minister, his team. And I asked them why Denmark was so shy not to shut these two straights, two key straights controlled by Denmark that are vital for Russia's oil export because more than half of Russia oil export goes through the North. And after giving me some nonsense about WTO, they just ended up saying, look, we can't do it because Americans don't want to see oil prices going up. I can tell you, Gary, I don't recall any conversations with the Danes about closing the straights and stopping all Russian ships going through. So I don't know if that happened somewhere else, but I don't remember that. However, I will acknowledge, I have acknowledged publicly before as have others that the reason that we didn't impose all of the sanctions that we could on Russia's oil program was because we had to balance sustaining American support to provide weapons to Ukraine with taking money away from Russia. And if you tell Americans your gas prices are going to go up by two, three, four bucks at the gallon, then our judgment, not my personal judgment, but the administration's judgment was that that would crater US support for the war. Those are the kinds of hard decisions you have to make. If you're president, you're looking at this, you're saying, I'm going to need to continue to ask the Congress and the American people for tens of billions of dollars for Ukraine. And if I'm creating a policy that is hitting Americans hard in their pocketbook, I'm not likely to be able to achieve that. So it wasn't actually until late in 24, when a member in 22, 23 oil prices were really high. The oil market was really tight. By the end of 24, the oil market had become a lot more slack. And so President Biden said, let's go. It's tight-n-oil sanctions because he was trying to put the maximum amount of pressure on Russia without creating the kind of backlash in a democracy in the United States that could leave Ukraine without the support that it would need ongoing. And that's part of the reason I said that it's not just that Russia's economy is weak right now. It's in fact that the oil market is permissive. We could do this without harming the American people. All hurting the Putin war machine. And that's why the moment is ripe for this to happen and I hope it does happen. We'll do right back. Hi, I'm Van Newkirk, senior editor at The Atlantic. When I publish a story, my hope is that it's illuminating enough that you want to share it with others because I know that when I read a great article, I want to get that experience to someone else. That's the spirit behind the Atlantic's new premium plus subscription, which includes unlimited access for you and three other people. Maybe they're family. Maybe they're friends. Whoever they are, you can now share all of our journalism with them for less than $4 a week. For a limited time, you'll also get the beautiful Atlantic scrapbook and a special token. Subscribe to premium plus today at the Atlantic.com slash plus. That's PLUS. If what you're saying is, can we effectively pursue a principled forum policy without putting the US and US men and women directly at war? I do believe there is a way to proceed without ending up in deep and extended military entanglements overseas while discharging our responsibilities to our own people and to the cause of a more just, more free, more prosperous world as well. What I would like to see is investments in the sources of American strength and power, including military power so that we can deter wars, so that we can have strong allies, and so that we can effectively win the competition against our competitors and adversaries so that the world works for us rather than against us. That does require an active engaged America, not an isolated America, not this kind of America alone, America, F everybody approach the President Trump is taking. But a couple of weeks ago, we saw the demonstration of the unity of non-democratic leaders, okay? Authoritarian Colin Brotherhood, dictators ink led by Xi Jinping. So clearly he's calling the mantle of the global leader of this anti-Western alliance. Is it a result of the vacuum created by the United States? To be honest with you, I think in many ways it's the result of the United States pulling together the free world. Why did Xi start going down this road? It's because he saw President Biden, rally NATO, grown NATO, ad Finland and Sweden, rally Japan and South Korea, an unprecedented level of military and other forms of cooperation, and link Europe and Asia, and then of course, deep in the relationship with India. We look at all of that and says, I need an answer to this to a certain extent. So do I think that there is a real competition underway? I do. Do I believe that if we stick with our strategy of rallying like-minded democracies across every dimension, defense, technology, economics, supply chains, you name it, that we have the winning hand, I really do believe that. And I think the hand we passed on to Trump alliances at all time high in Europe and Asia, what he's chosen to do with that in the last eight months is a whole other deal. And I think it has made the Chinese in particular look and say, holy cow, he's doing our work for us. And I think that that's a shame because I think that works really strongly to America's strategic disadvantage. Now I want to shift from foreign policy back to domestic issues because all the issues we argue about, all the disagreements that they pale in comparison to the challenge of the threat to American democracy. And one question I can't avoid asking, was it a mistake for President Biden to declare that he would run again instead of looking for a more viable candidate to oppose Donald Trump? I think it's important to divide between two issues that I think have gotten very much conflated. One is should President Biden have run again. I mean, he left the race. So obviously no, he shouldn't have run again. The other is, did I have concerns about him actually doing the job of President while he was President? No, I did not. But the way things played out, obviously he left the race. And... That was too late. Yes, and I think that answers your question. Okay, so it was too late. Just to move in the administration, I mean, it's just how the team, you and others surrounding President Biden, evaluated the chance of Donald Trump coming back and causing these tremendous damage, both American democracy and to global stability. Look, we were extremely concerned about it. And just to take one example, what it would mean for the war in Ukraine, when President Trump was elected, we had 78 days to surge equipment into Ukraine as rapidly and fully as we possibly could. But as soon as President Trump was reelected, I was deeply concerned because they had laid out a playbook in Project 2025 and beyond, saying the kinds of things they were going to do to chip away, not just at the institutions of democracy in America, but at many of the things that are America's fundamental enduring strengths and qualities, our ability to attract talent, our innovation ecosystem, even our manufacturing base where we've actually lost manufacturing jobs of the course of the past several months. Okay, Jake, you were the NSA. You know, much more about the global threats to America than almost anyone. Do you agree that the greatest threat to American security now comes from within? I do. Yes. So, tell me about the threats as you see them. Look, we faced real threats and challenges from abroad. Deep long-term strategic competition with China, the threat that Russia poses, the threat that North Korea poses, and then there are threats like the climate crisis and nuclear proliferation, pandemics and the like. But we ourselves are our greatest threat. That is, you know, us turning on the things that made our country great. And that starts with the foundational principle of the rule of law. When that gets challenged, everything's up for grabs. And all of the elements that have made America the most dynamic, the most prosperous, the most innovative, the most free nation in the world, each of the pillars that built that are being chipped away at systematically. And that is so much greater a threat to the long-term health and vitality of the American way of life than anything that emanates from abroad. I believe that people around Donald Trump are openly preparing to seize power in the midterm elections. It may not be free and fair elections first-time in American history. So how do you see this challenge of the 2026 election season where I'm afraid that FBI and DOJ could play a crucial role in securing the result Donald Trump wants to see? I think that it is imperative on everyone, whatever your platform, whatever your voice, to speak out on the essential principle of a free and fair election in 2026 and to call out every step that is taken that goes in the wrong direction as far as that's concerned. And I think we should be collectively pushing back against any effort to stack the deck or unlevel the playing field or do even more extreme things. And that's not just the candidates or the party that needs to do that. That is everyone. And I think especially it's important to pin down people in the president's own party to say, what's too far? I think we've already gone too far in many respects, but there has not been pushback from their Republican party. And so I think there should be a constant question to members of Congress senators, governors who are Republican, to draw some line, say, no, you will not allow it to go beyond this. And I think that work has to start now. Do you think the Democratic party is properly quipped to the joke? I think the jury is out right now. We don't know. Do I think that there are a sufficient number of really smart, dedicated, competent people who could, if they were, you know, empowered and stepped up? Do we have it within ourselves? Not just the Democratic party, but all of those folks who are concerned about what might come to pass. Do we have the tools? Do we have the capacity? We do. We just need to make sure that we exercise it effectively in pushing back against the backsliding, the Democratic backsliding that we're seeing. Are you optimistic? You know, I've said this before, but I'm Sullivan, I'm Irish. It is said of Irish people that we have an abiding sense of tragedy that sustains us through temporary periods of joy. So I'm never very optimistic about anything, but my abiding sense of tragedy on the one hand, I'm my concern about what I'm seeing is to a certain extent offset by a genuinely deep belief in the American people that they're not going to tolerate a dramatic effort to abend our democracy. They're just not going to tolerate it and that that will ultimately be a break. It's not good enough just to assert that everyone's got to do the work. Now, back to Trump. Trump doesn't have a vision in my view. It's just it's all transactional, but Trumpism as a concept offers a vision, a wrong one, but it's a vision. So what is your vision? What to do with Europe, with China, with Russia? Say you come back in 2028. What's the right cause for America to recover from all the failures and all mistakes made in the end of the Cold War? So made the case for how do we better than it was when Biden was president or Obama was president or, of course, much better when it's Trump was president. So I think that there are a few basic elements and it's all about the execution. Number one, we need to invest in the sources of our own strength. We need to make sure that we fully rebuild our industrial capacity and we made strides in the Biden administration, real strides that we hadn't seen in a long time, but it wasn't enough. Because we faced all kinds of bureaucratic and technical obstacles to really finish the job. Number two, we got to overhaul our defense industrial base, drag it into the 21st century in a real way. Again, we made some progress in the Biden administration. I think we arrested the decline, but we didn't build up everything we needed to and that's a long term project. We need to rebuild our innovation ecosystem, which Trump is destroying by going at universities and science funding and the like so that we continue to have the most dynamic and innovative economy in the world. If the United States is tending to the sources of its own strength at home, we are going to be a very powerful nation in the world. So that's one, two, we need to get back in the game when it comes to strong, robust, diversified alliances. And I think if we do that, then we're playing with a hand that is much stronger than our authoritarian competitors and adversaries are. And so for me, it's executing those elements in a full-throated, robust and effective way. And then finally, the U.S. has to get back in the game of mobilizing collective action across a range of countries to get after these underlying dynamics like the climate crisis, like AI risk, like the possibility of a future pandemic that's even worse than COVID-19. And we got to be at the head of the table in organizing a collective effort to make those risks, to reduce them so they don't come to bite Americans down the road. That's how I see an effective foreign policy. And from my perspective, a piece of that is making sure that we are, we have built up our deterrent and defensive capabilities in Europe and Asia, but that we've asked our allies to step up to do their part. And part of it is that we've built a technology ecosystem among like-minded countries so that technology works for us rather than against us and that China is not writing the rules of technology for the rest of this century and beyond. So that's what I would argue for. And I think that that is within our grasp. And I actually think it's what most Americans want at the end of the day. Something rooted in their interests, but in light and self-interest. And we all do better if we all do better working in common cause with other countries who share our values. And that's exactly what Trump has torn up out of the playbook. And I think that we have to put back together. Just a couple of, you know, just the questions to clarify it. So would you demand the reform of the United Nations? In my view, it's our data institution that has to be reformed. That's a complicated question. It operates on consensus and some cases on veto and other cases. But no, I'm not going to say that the UN is currently constructed is fit for purpose. And it could use an update and overall. And what about NATO? Well, one thing I think that NATO has to do, which we took a lot of strides forward on in my view, is think about security in a very holistic way. So we really introduced cyber as a critical component of NATO. It hadn't been there very much before President Biden came in. We thinking about issues like defense industrial base coordination. How are we all collectively going to have the magazine depth so that we can credibly fight and win a war. And because we can credibly fight and win a war, we can deter a war. We need NATO to think about broader supply chain resilience and everything from critical minerals to semiconductors so that we're not exposed to being squeezed by China or anybody else. So I think NATO needs to have a more holistic picture of security and a greater degree of resilience against the type of hybrid warfare and gray zone activities that we see from the Russians and increasingly from other adversaries as well. All of that I think we took steps on, but we didn't get far enough and there's a lot more to do. Will you take Ukraine to the NATO? Well, we said at the end of the Biden administration, of course the Trump administration has essentially taken that off the table that Ukraine's future is in NATO and I stand by that. And will you offer iron-quad guarantees to say Baltic nations that they will be protected by all American military might if Russia crosses the border? That's what Article 5 says and the article pipe is still a piece of paper. It needs to mean that. It needs to mean that without any question whatsoever coming and going, absolute sacred obligation to follow through on Article 5. So the new administration, new democratic administration in 2028, very likely will bring America back and with all the commitments and will not be shy of using force if necessary. Correct? I cannot predict what a new democratic administration will do by any stretch. No, no, no, I just think you are. We're talking about the vision of Jake Sullivan. So and I believe he will play a role in in formulating these new concepts, probably one of the one of the most renowned experts in the party. So would you suggest that America will play this leading role and will not be shy of using force if necessary to protect the allies and the global stability? I think that we need to send a clear message that when we make a security guarantee to a country through Article 5, whether in the NATO context or our allies in Asia, that we will follow through on it coming and going and that we mean business. And I think the most important thing in that is not the assertion. It's having the capacity through our defense industrial base, through our technology and through the strength and robustness and burden sharing of our alliances that we can make that a very credible and real deterrent. I think we should close with reflection about how people who find themselves at odds was one another politically. We should still find common ground in supporting the values that will preserve our democracy. And it would seem that you and I found ourselves in this particular situation. Thank you very much for joining the show Jake and good luck. Thank you Gary and thank you for everything that you're doing day and day out to fight for the values you love and this country that we both love. This episode of Photocracy in America was produced by Arlene O'Revallor. Our editor is Dave Shaw, original music and mix by Rob Smircia, fact-checking by Inna Alvarada, special thanks to Polina Kasparov and Mick Gringo. Claudio Nebet is executive producer of Atlantic Audio. Andrei Valdes is our managing editor. Next time on Photocracy in America. We've moved from a world where the difference is between liberal and conservative to a world where the difference is between liberal and illiberal. Because I think the Republican Party to a great extent has become an illiberal party, not a conservative party. There's an important distinction. I'm Gary Kasparov. See you back here next week. Hi, I'm Van Nukeurk, senior editor at The Atlantic. When I publish a story in my hope is that it's illuminating enough that you want to share it with others. Because I know that when I read a great article, I want to give that experience to someone else. That's the spirit behind The Atlantic's new premium plus subscription, which includes unlimited access for you and three other people. Maybe they're family. Maybe they're friends. Whoever they are, you can now share all of our journalism with them for less than $4 a week. For a limited time, you'll also get the beautiful Atlantic scrapbook and a special tote bag. Subscribe to premium plus today at the Atlantic.com slash plus. That's PLUS.