'Leapfrogging' Diplomacy: Dr. Nadia Schadlow

He's leapfrogging years of multilateral processing. I'm host Michael Allen with Beacon Global Strategies. Today I'm joined by Dr. Nadia Shodlow, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and Co-Chair of the Hamilton Commission on Securing America's National Security Innovation Base. She previously served as the Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy. Nadia joins us today for a discussion on the latest from Iran, China and Ukraine and their implications for U.S. grand strategy. Stay with us as we speak with Dr. Nadia Shodlow. Nadia Shodlow, welcome to Natsack Matters. Thanks so much Michael, a pleasure to be here. I thought I would just ask you at the outset to outline for our audience, what is grand strategy generally and does the United States currently have a coherent grand strategic plan? That's a big one. Easy questions Michael. I know. On the first, I mean, grand strategy to me is assembling, is articulating the set of outcomes that you want for your country and assembling the instruments of power, broadly diplomatic, military, economic, to get you there essentially, to drive toward those objectives. To me, that's what grand strategy is. Grand strategy also in the past has been defined by famous scholars like Paul Kennedy. I think pretty much in that way, looking at the strategy of the United States across a range of military, economic and diplomatic landscapes, as opposed to a more narrow military strategy, where in some ways national security strategy, although we don't have to get into an academic debate about the difference between grand strategy and national security strategy, it's probably we're parsing there. So I'll stop there. The second question is, what is our strategy today? I mean, I think the president is responding to fundamental changes in the geopolitical environment, in the nature of American power, and using kind of his traditional disruptive means or iconoclastic means to get to places faster than we might normally get, right? That's sort of how I see it. He's leapfrogging years of multilateral processing. He's leapfrogging years of discussions, and he's getting to an end state much quicker. And I think in the past, one of the best examples of that was the Abraham Accords, right? Yeah, he's moving fast, and he wants to mow down the opposition. But let me ask you about President Trump, because the conventional wisdom sometimes is that he reflects the neo-isolationist strain in the new Republican Party. Of course, it's always been there, but in theory, it's more pronounced after endless wars and hollowing out of the Midwest and the other big issues that we talk about. But what do you... President Trump seems more like to me what some would call a American primacist. It seems like he's interested in every conflict and dispute and interested in the United States playing a muscular role all over the world. So to me, he sort of articulated a primacist view of things rather than a more reserved role for the United States. What do you think about that? I'm not sure on the primacist label and that I think he demands, I guess it depends on how you define that. I think he is demanding consistently that allies and partners do more in their regions of the world, but also maintaining strong U.S. presence in these regions of the world. So I see it almost as a traditional balance of power, regional balance of power kind of strategy where pushing back on Iran in the Middle East, which has been one of his priorities, Trump one and now Trump two, reasserting kind of rebalancing in the Western Hemisphere, reasserting American presence there, but also pushing back on China in that region. And then you're maintaining U.S. presence there, but different charms, right? So yes, probably some troop reductions, but demanding more of the allies, but certainly a sense that the U.S. is still involved in Europe. And I know critics have gone back and forth on Ukraine, but the fact is we're still in the middle of it. We're still working to try to find a resolution that's beneficial to Ukraine, that preserves Ukrainian independence and sovereignty. So I see it as just being consistently involved in these key regions of the world, which is what the 2017 National Security Strategy articulated. And the 2025 one did too, maybe reordered the regions, but it spoke about all of these regions of the world. It had paragraphs about all of those regions of the world, probably longer ones about the Indo-Pacific, but they were all there. Let's begin to talk about what the U.S. interests are and what they should be. First, I think most of us agree that the long term, the short term, medium term issue for the United States is, of course, China. And we in the United States here in Washington seem to be aligning our strategy around how to handle them and what the competition ultimately looks like. And there's a critique going on that the more we're involved in other regions of the world, the less we are paying attention to what China is doing. Do you buy that critique or is it possible, as you say, for the United States to play a traditional regional balance of power approach in all the regions? I'm someone who thinks that these developments in the world are interconnected. And I think the challenges in some of them are slightly different. I mean, of course, there are strains. I mean, there is the issue of being able to provide allies and partners with weapons, let's say, and munitions and shortfalls and then deterring China. Obviously, I understand that. But I think China is watching how developments unfold in Europe and unfold in the Middle East. And I think they're connected to the calculations that China makes. Right now, we need to deter China militarily. We need to figure out, and we are in the middle of figuring out a new kind of economic trade strategy vis-a-vis China, which elements of it are still being debated. I'm someone who thinks that the president realized he needs to sort of buy time because it's clear that we're still quite dependent on China, right, for all of the inputs that we need, whether it's for our military or for reindustrialization. So I think there's a bit of a biding time strategy. So I think we need to be active in all of these regions, but in different ways. It doesn't mean, you know, but in different ways and with allies and partners playing significant roles like the way Japan is, right? Allies are stepping up. I mean, these changes are real. So I think it's a rebalancing, but the regions do matter to us. Nadia, you were one of the first people I saw writing about critical minerals some years ago as a critical national security choke point of the United States. Did we make a huge error in starting so many trade wars at the beginning of the second Trump administration when we should have been more witting that the Chinese were going to be more likely to go for the jugular against the United States in a retaliatory manner? And did we make sort of a big error because now we seem to be in reverse trying to figure out, as you say, how to get critical minerals by ourselves and not have this dependence on China? No, actually, I think it was, I mean, I don't think it was an error. I mean, the dependencies have been there for decades, actually, and a more recent piece I called the crisis of repetition. It went back historically and looked at basically 40 years of the US government articulating its dependence and its vulnerabilities and critical minerals, you know, from 80s, 90s, 2000s. So kind of speeding up to the point I made in the beginning of this conversation and speeding up. This just showed the world, this showed Americans, this showed businesses that China could turn things on and off and would turn things on and off. Maybe they did it tactically in response to tariffs, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have done it strategically. I think they had a huge amount of leverage and I think making people realize, businesses realize, you know, legislators realize that, wow, this is real, we really need to do something about it. In some ways, was a good thing. I mean, I think these, I view the tariffs and I view the tools and sometimes these heavy handed tools as tactical tools to reorient trade in a different way and to call attention, the need to the reorientation of trade. And I think we've seen and now you can use AI to show the ups and downs of now and in many respects, many of the initial tariffs have stabilized to much, much lower levels. But fundamentally with China, this showed people very quickly, again, leapfrogging, like we're not in a good place here. We need to do things differently. And then you see sort of the tools that the Department of War and other agencies are willing to use now to try to kind of really change the way we make investments and work with companies to maybe shift something within the next few years. I mean, it's still a big unknown. It really takes a long time to make these shifts. So we need to really look at where we are in a year or two and what's measurably changed. And it's hard to find that out and always has been. It's not just, you know, this administration, if you go back and actually try to look at what, what, you know, what's actually changed with these big, big programs and how have outputs changed, whether it's the CHIPS Act or the IRA or all of these programs that are pointed to when we say we're doing industrial policy differently. We need to spend some time actually looking at the outputs and making that more transparent. So we know if something's working or not. And so we know if our strategic position is getting better or not. Yeah, right. I want to ask you about our relationship with China and then go to Taiwan and then we'll move over to the Middle East. But I wonder if you think that the president is fundamentally less, less hawkish this go around on China. It seems like there are fewer what people call competitive actions being issued to whatever, blacklist, sanction, otherwise restrict US involvement with the Chinese. Has the president sort of become dovish on China? I don't think he's become dovish on China, but I don't think he's ever been super ideological about China, right? But he's always been very aware of China's kind of economic might and use of unfair trade practices in ways that harm the United States. I don't see evidence that that has changed. I think he's listening to different people. My sense on, you know, there's this difference of do you sell chips to China and force their dependency on the United States? Or do you use export controls not sell the chips to China, which slows them down, right? This is a debate that's going on. Most China hawks think it's a mistake to sell the chips to China because you're buying just a little bit of time and eventually they're going to displace those chips. So it's not that strategy is not going to work. I think the president probably hears from people on both sides, but fundamentally he sees China as, I think, a continuing trade problem over capacity problem, unfair trading practices type of problem. So I think that that has remained pretty consistent, but there are some arguments about the specific tools and there is the overall view of, you know, which I do hold, the biting time view that, again, to go back. We are limited in some aspects of our leverage because we are dependent, you know, to go back to we're dependent on key inputs into many parts of our economy. Still, I don't know what's changed in the pharmaceuticals. You know, the API debate that, again, we've been having for 15 years. I don't know fundamentally what's changed. Yeah, right. I like that, that observation about biting time. It's a good way to describe, I think, the recognition of our dependency more broadly and what we're doing about it. It's a flip side. It's a flip way of saying there's the famous, you know, the famous Chinese phrase about biting time, right? Yeah. So maybe we're finally learning something like, well, unfortunately we're forced to buy, like we're biting time because we've kind of put ourselves into this corner here. Yeah. Taiwan. So I think most people in the national security community, even Democrats, although they would hate it, they would hate that I put it that way, would see as nearly catastrophic if China were to succeed. Let's call it annexing Taiwan. And I believe that and I can articulate reasons about sea lanes and domination of trade and kicking us out of the South China Sea eventually tolling like we're worried that the Iranians are doing in the Strait of Hormuz. I wonder if you might articulate what are the interests of the American people in a free Taiwan and how does it, how does it affect them? Why should they care? I would add a TSMC, right? Chips. I mean, I think for the, you know, the reasons that you said, Michael, I mean, freedom of the seas being a huge, a major nucleus of the United States. A nucleus of economic importance as well as well. Support for democracies around the world as well. So these have been consistent interests at the same time we've, we for many, many years just saw essentially a status quo situation, you know, no change in the status quo. And that has been our, essentially our policy for years and years. And in many ways, the last time I was in Taiwan, which is several years ago, I got a sense and wrote a piece that my sense is also Taiwanese did not want necessarily a change in the status quo, right? I'm not, you've probably been there more recently than I have. But there is a strong sense of from what I'm reading that, you know, China may want a change in the status quo and has essentially driven, driven that over the past few years with increased military exercises with rhetoric with, you know, I mean, for China, Taiwan is, is of, you know, primary importance, right? China sees Taiwan as an existential issue for, for China. I mean, from, you know, not an expert in terms of reading, reading Mandarin and reading sources, but from the people I do read that seems to be pretty consistent. At the same time, I think that we, you know, we've, yeah, my concern is less a less than overt kinetic military action and more over time, you know, political change, support for Taiwanese political parties that are more sympathetic. To Beijing, you know, where, you know, that I think that could present the United States with problems because it's a lot harder. It's just, it's harder than saying, okay, here's a series of kinetic actions that have definitively changed the status quo there, right? The sort of doing things in a slower way, blockades, but that political change and political shift, I think is, is probably the thing that I, that I think could be most problematic because it's a lot harder than to say, well, what do the Taiwanese want? Yeah, I see. Defense budget arguments in Taiwanese internal politics and that's the kind of, those are the developments that, that worry me more because I think it then becomes harder, harder to make arguments to the American people. Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. What do you think? I mean, you're, you're, you're an expert on this. No, well, I think it's in the vital US interests and I don't think the politicians and policy experts have made the case very well. I think we have to directly link it to American prosperity. I mean, sea lanes is sort of vague. I mean, I think people understand it a little bit more now after the Straits of Hormuz controversy, but I, you know, I have a sort of a draft article that I need to get out, but people need to do a better job of articulating what US interests are in Taiwan and why we should care and why we should spend more on deterrence. And, you know, yeah, TSMC is part of it, but we got to link it directly to economic prosperity of the American people. Well, we certainly also need to do better at actually delivering on the military assistance that we've promised, right? Oh, yeah. I don't know. Like it's, that's been, that's just been a disaster. It's, it's, we've had years and years and years of backlogs and it just, frankly, it kind of undermines deterrence. You almost, you're almost undercutting what you're trying to do with the weapons if you're saying, okay, we're making these promises, but not actually delivering on them. Oh, it's embarrassing. Yeah, I'm not sure where we are on that, but that could also lend itself to a really nice sort of graphic. Yeah. You know, in a AI chat, GBT, Google generated graphic of showing, you know, the promises and the lags and where we actually are in delivery. Well, they're great. I don't want to cast dispersions, but, you know, when we go over there and ask them to do certain things about their own defense budget and their own training of their people, they say, well, where the heck are our arms that we bought years ago? So yeah, they're able to sort of claim some moral high ground over us. And this is a national sort of controversy that we've got to get through. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with more of our discussion with Dr. Nadia Shadlow. Beacon Global Strategies is the premier national security advisory firm. Beacon works side by side with leading companies to help them understand national security policy, geopolitical risk, global technology policy and federal procurement trends. Beacon's insight gives business leaders the decision advantage founded in 2013. Beacon develops and supports the execution of bespoke strategies to mitigate business risk, drive growth and navigate a complex geopolitical environment with a bipartisan team in decades of experience. Beacon provides a global perspective to help clients tackle their toughest challenges. All right, let's talk about Iran. I mean, arguably, we satisfied a lot of our interests with the June strikes that destroyed Fordow and the Tons and everything else. And honestly, I didn't really have it on my list for 2026 that we would need to revisit Iran. I knew the Israelis were because it seemed like they were working the president, including down at Mar-a-Lago in Christmastime, that they needed to go back in and degrade the ballistic missile capability of the Iranians because it defeats sort of the Israeli strategic defense doctrine. But again, here we are. We got in the middle of it, maybe because President Trump had promised to do something in the wake of the protests that had broken out in Iran. I wonder how you see this part two of the war with Iran and how do we, you know, eventually I want to get to the Straits of Ormuz here. It seems like we're in a bit of a predicament. We're taking leverage off the table and I'm not sure we know how to get out of this in a good way. So, I mean, I think there are four areas here and they're all proceeding in somewhat different but interlinked ways. There's the status of the Iranian nuclear program and the negotiations, but also the actual technical difficulties of getting to the enriched uranium, right? And where is it? And getting to it and taking it out and not assuming the Iranians let us do that or the how to do that. There's control over the strait or fundamentally creating a different architecture of control over the strait. That to me would be the valuable strategic outcome here. It would be, I think it would be bad if the Iranians exerted more control over the strait and to use your term tolling and like that would be bad, right? Right. There's a nature of the Iranian leadership and whether or not it's weakened or not and there are big debates about that. I'm some of the things that has been weakened but it's still there but it's in different form. And then there's Israel, Lebanon. I think the Iranians have been successful in kind of creating this narrative of linking the Iran, U.S., strait conflict to Lebanon and Israel. I think they've been very smart in doing that, linking the broader ceasefire issues to Hezbollah and what it's doing there. So I think there's these four categories of issues I guess we could add. I'd put military nuclear because then you have ballistic missile program too, which is significant and important because that is a source of leverage that Iran has over the region and eventually over the United States too, depending on the reach of the missiles. But right now, ballistic missiles, as we're seeing, can reach all throughout the Middle East as well as Israel. So I think all are still in play. I don't know the nature of the discussions at the White House. I'm not sure if these different scenarios were played out from the beginning of how they would play out of sources of Iranian leverage. But I think I hope we stand firm so that we get better outcomes across all of those areas. I think we have an opportunity to fundamentally change the dynamics in the Middle East. But I think we need to stand firm. We need to think about our negotiating position vis-à-vis other regional partners, the UAE, bringing the Saudis back in hopefully so that they can play a more constructive role. So I think there's a lot of work to continue to be done, but it's systematic and it's sustained and I don't think it's going to go away or be solved easily. Because even if there's a ceasefire, even if there's a ceasefire, it's literally a ceasefire. But what does the future architecture of all of these areas look like? They're still medium to long-term problems. That a ceasefire is not going to immediately solve. And what is our interest here? I mean, for years, for decades, it was primarily about energy and that was an easy sell to the American people because they understood that energy was coming from the Middle East. Trump, others point out constantly that we're more of an energy, Middle East oil and gas superpower than we've been in decades or years and years and years. What is the, I mean, if you have to explain to someone back home what our interests are in the Middle East and why we're involved here, I mean, is it just a nuclear program? What do you think we should base this on? Well, I mean, the nuclear program is a pretty significant one because the Iranians have been at war with the United States since, I mean, since at least 1979, if not before. So I am someone who listens to and sympathetic to that argument. A 47-year war against the United States and Israel, hundreds of Americans have died on nuclear weapons that are designed to obliterate. The purpose of the program is to obliterate Israel and also to have leverage over the United States. The great Satan, the small Satan, like so I think. And now we are in a situation. You know, historians will go back and make, look at the rationale for the initial strikes. I think at the time the arguments were that, you know, the Iranians were massing that October 7th showed that they, it was October 7th and Iran's support for October 7th. That would create a fundamentally different dynamic in the Middle East, that opportunity that was driven, not opportunity, but that dynamic, that shift was, was driven to a great degree by the Iranians. And at the time, I mean, argue, I know I don't have a way to verify them, but their ballistic missile program was growing and growing and growing. There was evidence that they were moving it underground, which would have been harder and harder to make a difference, you know, to go after. So a set of dynamics had begun to change and those changes were initiated, you know, by Iran. I mean, what Hamas did on October 7th was supported by Iran. And I think that a weaker Iran is in the U.S. interest over time and in the interest of the region. Iran is not a stabilizing force, not to mention, you know, the humanitarian tragedy that it's caused for its own people. There's limits to what we can do about that, you know, fundamentally. Although, you know, it's incredibly sad and devastating to look at what the Iranian regime has done to its people. But we're now in a situation where we have to look at what can we do going forward and what's the best course of action. We can debate and people will debate for many, many years whether or not, you know, what happened over the past year, the why, the timing, all of those things. But right now we're faced with a situation, as I mentioned, with these four categories of its military program. And by that, I mean nuclear ballistic missiles, its control over the strait or the nature of that control, the nature of its leadership and whether or not it continues as a revolutionary regime that exports violence and its use of Hezbollah to continue to destabilize Israel and Lebanon. So those are the things now that hopefully we can get better outcomes in all of those areas. So let me ask you, has the president made an error in seemingly taking the use of force off the table? He keeps saying the ceasefire is going to be perpetual. When we do have kinetic action, it's always declared as quote below the threshold, ceasefire still going. I mean, to me, that message is to the Iranians is that what we want the most is not to return to hostilities. So it seems like that gives them a little bit of freedom. And for the same reasons, he seems like he doesn't want to do an escort mission. It seems like we're silently doing an quote unquote guidance mission, but he doesn't seem like he wants to actively escort ships through the straits. So that leaves us with the blockade, which is great, but maybe pressure on the people is not the same thing as pressure on the regime. So I wonder if you might sort of address our strategic leverage and what I think is the predicament that we're in. Well, I mean, to your question about the president ruling force out, I don't actually agree with that assumption. I think what we're seeing is an uncertainty and uncertainty actually can work to our benefit. We don't actually know what he may or may not do. I mean, there are plenty of examples where the president has changed his mind many, many times. So I think it's various levels of force are probably still on the table in some form. I think he's concerned about, I mean, yeah, we don't want, there is the whole insurance framework as well, right? About how do you ensure these ships? And I'm sure people are concerned that if a ship goes down or is blown up, that will fundamentally create the need for some sort of response, right? So I think they're just trying to balance that out while they work on a negotiated settlement that doesn't give the Iranians more control over the strait than in some ways they had initially or the tolling regime. But at a certain point, you know, this also is a, you're seeing that the energy, I mean, the US is not fundamentally dependent on energy from that region, although global prices obviously are, these oil prices are global, right? So obviously it has an impact, but we're basically energy independent. So I think it's going to be a longer drawn out period of negotiations. I don't think he wants to see loss of life in the strait or ships going down. So I'm not, you know, I'm not sure specifically, I don't agree that he's ruling out military force, but I don't think he's obviously, he obviously wants to avoid it as well, which has been a consistent theme that he's made. But I'm not sure, you know, I think it is a tough problem, as you said, of how do you rest, how do you create a regime that allows for, yeah, allows for shipping to continue to proceed in the strait without giving Iran more control over it than it had in the first place. All right, well, let's, let's move to Europe and NATO and then we'll wrap up. We, in the Republican Party, I think of traditionally welcomed allies around the world, partners, are we, have we taken them for granted, is working with our allies become a dirty word? No, we're asking them to do more and to face up to years of kind of letting us do the bulk of, you know, of doing the bulk of the work in Europe in terms of deterrence. We're asking them to do more and we're asking them to face uncomfortable issues about choices they've made over the past 15 years, whether it's energy choices and, you know, looking the other way, whether it's putting, you know, a climate agenda and had a, had a growth agenda, whether it's uncomfortably kind of looking the other way, the changes that, you know, the, the dis, the dislocations caused by, by immigration in Europe, whether it's, you know, refusing to sort of talk about what western civilization means. So no, I'm, I'm tough on the Europeans because I want the transatlantic alliance to actually last and have meaning, but it's just too easy to kind of call out Trump, who basically, President Trump basically articulated, you know, put the seed, created the opportunity for these conversations and their necessary conversations because we are all going to have to re-argue the value of the, the transatlantic alliance to the next generation of Americans and Europeans. So, no, I mean, they're, you know, I mean, all the issues I'd mentioned and in addition, it's going to still get more and more complicated because we're going in very different directions on AI, which is going to have implications not only for economic growth in Europe, but also for our military capabilities, for the ability to operate together. So it'll, you know, so no, I think we're, and I think we need to, you know, we can't, the transatlantic alliance should be able to kind of withstand ups and downs and it has historically to, you know, create more context. If you go back historically and look at Eisenhower and Kennedy and Nixon and, you know, there was frustration all along about U.S. role, about strategic autonomy, about, you know, back in the days with the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and like, I mean, there have been debates throughout history and the alliance has gotten through them and I think, you know, I think we can get through them today, but I think we also need to meet halfway. And the Europeans have some choices to make too. And I think some of them are tough choices, but they need to take some of them. So, yeah, we have a really strong case against them. I mean, just there's no innovation. There's no emphasis, it seems, on economic growth in Europe. They want to be a regulatory superpower more than anything else. And so, that's even before you get to NATO and are we to congratulate them for pledging to spend more? It really does look like a continent in decline. Which would be bad for the transatlantic alliance, right? I think the Europeans themselves are expressing concern only that they're having big arguments about the solutions, but they're kind of, they are seem to be doubling down on the regulatory state approach. I think the EU, you know, yeah, so those things are in Europe's control and why does it matter to the United States? Because it creates this big differential then between the United States and Europe. So, you want partners that are strong that can bring, you know, bring things to the alliance. So, it matters to us for that reason and it matters to the transatlantic alliance for that reason. And I think they, yeah, they have a say. The transatlantic alliance is not just driven or the contours of it just by what President Trump says. Right. We have a NATO summit, of course, this summer and I think most people are credited President Trump for more or less shaming the Europeans at the beginning of the second term into spending more or pledging to spend up to whatever, you know, 3% of their GDP on defense. I think they cranked it up to five and said that 2% differential could be used on infrastructure. But, you know, I think that's a big win for the United States and sort of an endorsement of their commitments to the alliance. So, are they deserving of praise at least as far as NATO goes and is it unhelpful for the president to always say, you know what, NATO would never be there for us? Yeah, it's, I certainly don't think that that's helpful, right? So, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's great that that the Europeans have made those commitments and looking at, you know, spending more time looking at the capabilities that it can actually buy, right? I'm not just looking at percentage numbers. I think that's great. I don't think it's helpful when those kinds of statements, I don't think they're helpful for the alliance, but at the same time, the focus just seems to be on the statements, right? Everyone needs to kind of move on from some of the statements and just focus on the actual work that needs to be done and can be done in a practical kind of roll up your sleeves way. But I think the media likes to focus on the statements because it's just, you know, it's too easy. Too easy. Yeah, it's easy. They just, it's just going from one outrage to another and that just makes news and we know all of that. So, let's focus in a year or two on the action nuts and bolts improvements that we've made and the progress we've made in different aspects of both, you know, NATO and in other areas. And if we actually focused on that and if the media reported on that, we'd all be a bit better off because at least we'd all be better informed about things as opposed to just listening to the, you know, the sound bites of the outrageous. I mean, without getting too deep, what is the NATO agenda? It's interoperability. It's encouraging them to build the right kind of infrastructure. Like, what is it that we need to work on? I mean, I think NATO's right in the middle of this whole shifting debate about the character of war. So it's what can you produce at scale fast, right? So it's linked to the things that we're talking about in the United States, you know, what are the oper—what are NATO's new operational concepts to deter Russia, right? Right. What is the NATO air land battle back in the old days? What kind of Russia are we deterring? What kind of Russian military are we deterring? And how is NATO changing? You know, is it changing fast enough to adapt to the very fast changes in the character of war that we're seeing in Ukraine and the war there? And how the Ukrainians have really driven and, you know, been actually remarkable in their ability to adapt at scale. So it's producing at scale. It's developing new operational concepts. I think it's staying focused in Europe. I was never someone who believed that NATO should think more broadly. I mean, there's enough to do in Europe. It's defending the Baltics. It's thinking about what new, you know, architectures for troop deployments. What should they look like? Maybe NATO develops into more, maybe NATO looks more, you know, regionally in terms of Baltics, in terms of Southern Europe. What are the different operational challenges there? So I think there's plenty that NATO can work on, and all of those issues are pretty complicated, and they don't just, you know, saying 1%, 2%, 5% doesn't actually get to, you know, the specifics of all of those areas. I think Bridge Colby actually used the term maybe others, but I read a speech of his, you know, in the past few months, the NATO 3.0, right? I like that term. It's a good term. Like, what does NATO 3.0 look like? And I haven't been, you know, not in the middle of the summits and the different statements coming out of them. So where they are on that. But what does NATO 3.0 look like in the next year or two? And how is that different from three, four years ago? Yeah. Okay, that's great. So let's talk about Ukraine. We seem to be in a period where Ukraine's, if not winning, they're at least not losing. And the case for that, of course, is for months now, if not years, they've been killing as many as 35,000 Russian troops per month. And finally, it's become too hard for the Russians to sub in those kind of numbers every month. So in theory, their force strength is going down. Many economists now seem to be converging on Russia's economy will show real signs of strain in the third or fourth quarter of this year. Ukraine is out innovating them, out fighting them. They have their own cruise missile in effect. The flamingo, they've obviously figured out drone warfare in ways that are mind blowing. And the Russians are no longer, they're not even making, quote, incremental progress anymore on the battlefield. And there's actually been a couple of reversals. So I wonder if you would agree that things are almost going Ukraine's way. And then I'm going to ask you, does that mean we ought to change US policy? Things appear to be going Ukraine's way. I mean, we're seeing a strategic shift, but fundamentally, you know, where is, what's the fundamental end state? Is Ukraine going to be able to flip the Donbass? Is Ukraine going to be able to flip Crimea? Right? So we still have many of the enduring issues that have existed. And we've seen, you know, in some sense where this, there's, this strategic strikes militarily into Russian territory, putting strategic assets at risk, both sides doing that. And I think it's interesting with the Zelenskyi letter where kind of I saw that as kind of a strategic shift on the political side, where I think Zelenskyi is very smart to, I almost see the letter which I just read and I urge people to read, you know, we do not want permanent war. And I think it's interesting with the Zelenskyi letter where the Zelenskyi letter which I just read and proposes to end this war as a statement to say politically, where we're trying to create the strategic shift that we've successfully been done militarily, right? I think it makes it, I almost read the letter as a letter to the White House, to our White House. And so I think that was a very smart move. But I mean, US Congress just voted for, you know, continued aid to Ukraine, whether or not the president is going to, where that legislation is going to go, I don't know. I mean, you're probably following it more closely. But I'm not sure, you know, what you mean, we're providing weapons to Ukraine that the Europeans are buying. Okay, so if you mean US troops, no, we're not going to have US troops in Ukraine. You know, the security guarantees are still going to be, you know, European focused as they should be. But so providing Ukraine with the military assistance, it needs in different forms with the Europeans in the lead, I think will remain a consistent US policy. I think we can work with the Ukrainians to look at an end state in which Ukraine becomes, you know, its sovereignty is protected, it, it, it grows economically, it becomes a major center of defense production in Europe. All of those things are wins for Ukraine and all of those things are areas that Washington, you know, can help with and should continue to help with. But you still have these fundamental issues of, of territory and what's going to happen to those, you know, who, what's the Ukrainian position ultimately on those areas? Are they up for negotiation or not? What kind of Ukraine? Where do those lines end up? Right? Lines of contact. Some people have, have discussed that, you know, you're not going to resolve it. We're seeing that these military strikes now are as like the strategic shift in strikes. And, but we also are seeing certain things that haven't fundamentally changed as long as Putin is in power, even as resistance continues to increase to the war. And they're more and more apparently, you know, Russian, even nationalists, hardliners who are frustrated with the way the war is going, not seeing a change. As long as Putin is in power, it's hard to see him saying, okay, forget all of the aims that we started with. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the policy change I had in mind was in Rubio says this isn't our policy, but it feels like I've heard Trump say on numerous occasions that the Iran is Ukrainians are just going to have to give up some territory in order to get a ceasefire. I don't think the Ukrainians previously could do that constitutionally, politically, legally. And now that they're winning, why in the world would they agree to this? But, you know, we'll just have to see. I don't know if you have a comment there or not, but I have one more question on Russia. So there's always these suggestions, you know, that Russia's going to invade the Baltics and their intelligence agencies, Estonia, all of them are always talking about it and worried about it. I guess I'm thinking that there's maybe the intent, but they're exhausted in Ukraine. I don't think they have the military wherewithal to do it. So how do you look at that? They are exhausted in Ukraine, but it hasn't really stopped Putin from, you know, forced conscriptions of North Koreans and finding of, you mean, the forced conscriptions are continuing. Russia could maybe create diversions in other parts of Europe, right, to kind of take pressure off Ukraine or to create real complications for NATO. So I wouldn't rule it off the table. I mean, I think you would, that's sort of the way, in many respects, the way Russians think, right, like in terms of Belarus too, using, creating more complications for NATO helps on both vis-à-vis Ukraine and just is consistent with their sense of disruptive activities in a way that, you know, they're kind of disruptive strategy. So I wouldn't rule it out, unfortunately. And I'm sure, you know, and there are obviously reasons the Baltic been worried for a long time. But yeah, I would not rule it out for those reasons. It could create a lot, put a lot of pressure on NATO, put pressure on the transatlantic alliance, U.S. responses. I don't know how the White House would respond, right? I don't know that. I'm not making those decisions. So I think it, I think it's something that I would be worried about. All right. Just last question or two here. We've talked about the Trump foreign policy, national security strategy in essence. And, you know, if you had to fix a term to it, I've seen you talk about this in other interviews. I wonder if, I've also heard that the president, most of all, wants flexibility in every negotiation and doesn't love being lost. He's locked into a particular position. He's not as concerned as some presidents have been on. Well, I've always got to be consistent. If you had to put a term on it all, what would you, how would you describe the Trump foreign policy? I would still describe it in a sense of an America first form policy, right? The way he's described it and articulated it that way. And then the arguments become, does an America first form policy require the aid or, you know, what kinds of alignments and strategic alignments does it require? Or does it suggest are good for the United States? So allies and partners are a part of that. Yes. I think an America first form policy is consistent with positive strategic alignments, allies and partners being a competitive advantage that we have, a competitive advantage over China and over Russia. An America first form policy acknowledges that, you know, China is a systemic rival and seeks, you know, a growing position in the international system to challenge the United States. So it comes down to defining the components of that. But I'll let him, you know, I'll continue with America first and then the debates come into what is part of that, right? What is good for the United States? And that's where we get into these debates in the Republican Party, but even more broadly about the level of engagement for that America first form policy, the level of economic interdependence that's acceptable or reshoring or the nature of revitalizing our industrial base. The domestic policy issues of sovereign borders and all of those. So it all fits under an America first umbrella. The arguments are just below that about what it constitutes. So we might come up with different, you know, if you're writing up different ideas of three approaches to America first, you could probably come up with three approaches to America first. But that's been his policy since, you know, since Trump won and now Trump too. Well, just last thing, I'm thinking of Hexeth speech, the Reagan National Defense Forum, he seemed to beat up on the old Republican foreign policy ideas more than he was upset about, for example, the Democratic Party and you've got a long view of things. I wonder if Republican national security people are more animated by attacking other Republican perceived camps than we are on making distinctions with the Democrats or we seem to love labeling each other. What do you think of that? I mean, I try to stay out of the pure politics of it, Michael, to be honest, I really do. I mean, I think we're better off coming together as Republicans working on the issues we can agree on and also, you know, disagreeing politely with each other and debating different courses of actions in in civil ways because they're, you know, most most of the reasons of these differences, they're legitimate reasons why there are these differences and debating them and working together on them and getting Congress to function in a less dysfunctional way so we can actually get legislation passed and NDAs passed so that we can, you know, build the type of military we need to build and bolster our other diplomatic and economic tools. So that's how I'd start. I mean, I think it's these kinds of, I think being constructive in our debates is probably the better way to go because it creates less obstacles and I think our ideas still hold. We do, Republicans do have the better ideas about how economies work, you know, and how the how the international system works and all of those things. So we just need to advance some and we could probably do so in a more functional way as opposed to dysfunctional way. Yeah, I got you. Dr. Nadiya Shadlow, thank you so much for being on Natsect Matters. I think we're all smarter having listened to you and I hope you'll come back. Thanks, Michael. Pleasure. That was Dr. Nadiya Shadlow. I'm Michael Allen. Please join us next week for another episode of Natsect Matters. Natsect Matters is produced by Steve Dorsey with assistance from Ashley Berry. Natsect Matters is a production of Beacon Global Strategies.