Remarks by APNSA Jake Sullivan at the 2024 Reagan National Defense Forum
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
Simi Valley, California
MS. BREAM: And thank you, Jake. I’m glad you made it here this year. I know you’ve had to cancel in the past, and it’s a very busy time, so we appreciate your time that you were able to make it here today.
MR. SULLIVAN: Well, thank you for having me.
MS. BREAM: Okay, so let’s start with the headlines. Obviously, minute by minute, there are new advances by rebel forces in Syria. Did the administration see this coming? Assad doesn’t seem to have the support he would have 10 years ago from the likes of Russia and Hezbollah and Iran, who have been weakened. What’s your take on the current state?
MR. SULLIVAN: Well, it’s important to start by observing why this is happening, and it’s really happening for two reasons.
First, Assad has been brutal and repressive to his own people and totally intransigent in terms of actually trying to provide a better life or better future for the people of Syria, and so the people of Syria are fed up.
Second, Assad’s backers — Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah — have all been weakened and distracted, and so he has not had the support from those three actors that he expected to be able to count on, and has been left basically naked. His forces are hollowed out.
And so, while we saw preparations for a rebel offensive, the speed and scale of it and the fact that it’s moving so rapidly through the country, this is a feature of having lost the support of these backers, because each of them — Iran having been exposed and weakened; Hezbollah having been badly degraded by Israel; and Russia being ground down in a war of attrition in the east in Ukraine — none of them are prepared to provide the kind of support to Assad that they provided in the past. So here we are.
MS. BREAM: So the primary group leading the insurgence has been classified as a terrorist group by the U.S. How worried are you about what comes next?
MR. SULLIVAN: Well, it is a source of concern. I mean, this is a group, HTS, that has been designated by terrorist — as a terrorist organization by the United States, that has had elements affiliated with groups that have American blood on their hands.
We really think that there are three things we have to be particularly focused on.
One, that the fighting in Syria not lead to the resurgence of ISIS. And we are going to take steps ourselves directly, and working with the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurds, to ensure that does not happen.
Two, that our friends in the region — Israel, Jordan, Iraq, others who border Syria, or who would potentially face spillover effects from Syria — are strong and secure, and we’re in touch with them every day.
And three, that this not lead to a humanitarian catastrophe, both in terms of civilians’ access to lifesaving necessities and in terms of the protection of religious and ethnic minorities in Syria.
And we’re going to work with all the players in the region to try to make sure that we are accomplishing those three goals which are in the interests and consistent with the values of the United States.
MS. BREAM: Of course there’s a lot of instability in the region, so how worried are you about this spilling over the borders? You mentioned those bordering countries there.
MR. SULLIVAN: It is a concern. I mean, we’ve seen, obviously over the course of the Syrian civil war, spillovers and refugee flows. And at its worst, we saw the explosion of ISIS onto the scene, which not only led to the fall of cities in Syria, but the fall of cities in Iraq and pressure on some of our closest partners in the region.
So, whether it’s from the border with Jordan to the Golan Heights, to trying to maintain a fragile ceasefire in Lebanon, to that long border between Syria and Iraq, these are all areas that we have to pay close attention to, that we have to coordinate closely with our friends on, and stay vigilant to try to ensure that we contain the potential violence and instability, that we protect our friends, and that we ensure that ISIS not get new oxygen out of this that could lead them to become a greater threat to the United States or our friends.
MS. BREAM: What about our troops in the region, the impact on them?
MR. SULLIVAN: So, we have a presence, both in Iraq and in Syria. That presence in Syria is there to work hand in hand with local partners, to continue to suppress the threat that ISIS has posed, going back many years now. And we’ve had significant progress in that fight, just even in the last few months. Major players taken off the battlefield. Large-scale degradation of those ISIS forces.
But of course, an event like this happens, and ISIS immediately looks to take advantage. And we have seen reports of ISIS trying, out in the Syrian Badiya, the desert, to try to reconstitute to a certain extent.
So we will continue to take action against that. And we will continue to make sure that force protection, the protection of our service members who are serving at a range of bases in eastern Syria, is the paramount concern from the President on down.
Now, the threat to those service members is not just from ISIS or from this violence; it is also from Iranian-backed Shia militia groups who themselves could try to take advantage of this.
And so, we are also doing what we believe we need to do to prepare for, deter, and protect against any potential attacks from that group of actors, which, of course, we have seen over the course of the past few years, and which we, under the Biden administration, have responded to at several points with direct strikes against those forces, both in Syria and in Iraq.
MS. BREAM: So, a lot of the conversation this week is about the transition to a new administration, a second Trump administration. He’s weighed in on social media, as he often likes to do. I’ll get you to the all-caps part of this post in which he says, “THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!”
So, you’ve referenced ways that we could be aware and preparing for the situation, responding as we can. But what is our role, or isn’t our role, with regard to Syria?
MR. SULLIVAN: Well, first I would note — and I was a little bit struck by it — earlier in the post, he said part of the reason this is happening is because of Russia’s war against Ukraine. And I think he even referenced the sheer scale of the casualties that Russia has suffered in Ukraine, and for that reason, they’re not in a position to defend their client, Assad. And on that point, we’re in vigorous agreement.
Equally, the United States is not going to dive into the middle — militarily dive into the middle of a Syrian civil war. What we are going to do is focus on the American national security priorities and interests. And I name the three of them that I see.
The first, critically, is: Do not let this allow for the resurgence of ISIS. And we are going to take steps to make sure that that happens. That’s not about the move down the highway from Hama to Homs to Damascus. That’s about what’s happening out in the east, and we will remain critically focused on it.
Second, we do have a profound interest in shoring up the security of our partners, and we’ll — in the region: Israel, Jordan, Iraq, others. We’ll do that.
And third, we will attend to the humanitarian situation because we believe that we have an obligation to do that. And frankly, attending to the humanitarian situation, defending religious and ethnic minorities, that was a feature of the Obama policy in Syria, the Trump policy in Syria, the Biden policy in Syria, and I would expect that to continue as well.
MS. BREAM: So, it’s a very long post, but you mentioned his wording here about the loss of 600,000 soldiers for Russia and how they’re stretched very thin and tied up in other areas.
He also, though, in this post, not in all caps, says, “This is where former President Obama refused to honor his commitment of protecting the RED LINE IN THE SAND, and all hell broke out,” and that’s when Russia stepped in. You were part of that administration. So how do you respond to that?
MR. SULLIVAN: Well, first, I think, you know, going back to the entire set of events that unfolded in Syria, from the outbreak of the civil war through to the Russian involvement, an incredibly complex set of factors came into play. No one thing led from point A to point B.
Equally, President Obama made clear he did not want to see the United States directly militarily involved in the middle of the civil war. That is precisely what President Trump is saying at the end of his post today. So it seems to me that on that point they agree.
Ultimately, the future of Syria should be up to the Syrian people. That has been true from the moment this civil war broke out. It’s been true across multiple administrations.
What is amazing about the moment we find ourselves in right now, though, is that Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia are all in a position of relative weakness in the Middle East. And our core security partner in the region, Israel, is in a position of relative strength in the region. And we believe that the United States has taken steps over the course of the past year, through military deployments, through diplomacy, and through engagement with all of our partners that have helped to bring about this set of conditions.
Now, there are positives in that, and there are risks in that, and we’ve just talked about some of those risks. So what we have to do is try to take advantage of those positives and manage those risks as best as we can through a handoff back to the Trump administration in just a few weeks’ time that’s got to be as seamless as possible. And for that reason, I’m in contact with my successor. Our Middle East team is in contact with their successors to make sure that we have transparency, coordination, and that the baton gets passed smoothly, because we don’t want to miss anything between January 19th and January 21st.
MS. BREAM: How is that going, the coordination between incoming and outgoing?
MR. SULLIVAN: It has been professional, it has been substantive, and frankly, it has been good. Obviously, we don’t see eye to eye on every issue, and that’s no secret to anybody. But there is a deep conviction on the part of the incoming national security team that we are dealing with — including my successor, and, on our part, directed from President Biden — that it is our job, on behalf of the American people, to make sure this is a smooth transition. And we are committed to discharging that duty as relentlessly and faithfully as we possibly can.
That’s true in every transition, but I think it’s more true in this transition because you have a war in Ukraine that requires a very smooth handoff, you have the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East that require a very smooth handoff, and then, frankly, you have the continuing pacing challenge of China and events unfolding there on a day-to-day basis that requires smooth handoff.
So, the nature of the world we find ourselves in today only elevates our responsibility to be engaged, to talk regularly, to meet regularly, to be transparent, to share, and to make sure it’s an effective transition. And we are doing all we can to live up to that responsibility.
MS. BREAM: So, you know, Reagan does a national defense survey every year where they ask people about a lot of these really pressing topics. In one of them, they were asked about the increased economic and military cooperation between Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China. Eighty-six percent of Americans have significant concerns about that.
So how do you answer critics who say this alliance of bad guys has actually gotten tighter and, you know, in a way, more solidified under this administration?
MR. SULLIVAN: Well, look, I think there is no doubt that there is increasing alignment among these four actors. That is true. And it’s something actually I’ve spoken about, we’ve pointed out. We have a national security memorandum that we are in the closing phases of pulling together that is memorializing the work we have done within the U.S. government over the course of the past four years, across defense, diplomacy, development, all aspects of American power, to deal with what is an emerging reality.
But why has this happened? It has not happened because these countries are so strong. It has happened out of necessity because these countries are under pressure.
Russia, under pressure in Ukraine, had to turn to Iran for munitions and North Korea for personnel.
Iran, under pressure, tried to turn to Russia to get help because its attacks against Israel were defeated and its own air defenses were badly degraded.
And so — and if you look at China, when we came into this administration, the prevailing storyline was: China will surpass the United States in economic strength by the end of this decade. Now there’s a lot of people who say it will never happen. When we came into this administration, serious people said China is going to dominate the future of AI. Now that script has been flipped.
So, you look at these countries and the relative challenges that they are facing, all four of them, and then you look on the other side of the ledger at America’s alliances, and they have never been stronger. NATO is bigger, more unified, more purposeful than ever before, and NATO Allies are paying their fair share. When we came into office, nine NATO Allies were paying 2 percent; now it’s 23. And the remaining nine have all committed to get to 2 percent and have a path to do it.
You look at the Indo-Pacific. We’ve started AUKUS. We’ve elevated and institutionalized the Indo-Pacific Quad. Our alliances with Japan and Korea are at an all-time high, and our trilateral cooperation with Japan and Korea is at an all-time high. And you just saw the resilience of South Korean democracy after this declaration of martial law and its retraction by President Yoon.
India, the Philippines, Vietnam — we have new partnerships that are dynamic and effective.
So, on the one hand, you’ve got the American alliance system and the free world strong, vibrant, coordinated, organized. On the other hand, you do have this increase in convergence, but among a group of actors that is facing serious challenges, serious pressures, and serious strategic dilemmas. And even within that group, this Russia-North Korea cooperation is not something that sits very well in Beijing. So there are internal contradictions that are problematic on their side of the ledger that we will continue to look at and see how we can deal with from a strategic perspective going forward.
The final point I will make: If you look at the hand we are passing off in terms of just the basic foundation of American power at home, our economic and technological engine, arresting the slide in our defense industrial base, diversifying and making more resilient our supply chains — these are steps where we feel that the United States has a foundation of national power domestically that is healthy and strong at a time when the Russian economy, the Chinese economy, and the Iranian economy are all in various states of disrepair.
So, for all of these reasons, it’s a challenging world. It’s a complex world. The post-Cold War era is over. A strategic competition is underway to determine what comes next. But America has a good hand to play, and it is a hand that we believe we have made stronger when we pass it off to the next administration.
MS. BREAM: I want to go back to Iran, since there’s some news this week. An intelligence report out from the DNI office this week says that they now have enough fissile material to make more than a dozen nuclear weapons. And so, when you talk about them being worsened, there are critics who will say sanctions waivers, unfreezing assets and giving them access to that. It was a top Treasury Department official, Wally Adeyemo, who himself said that if they get their hands on cash, they’re going to use it for nefarious reasons, admitting things are fungible. And that — you know, the Reagan Defense Survey also shows Americans think it is time for us to actually get tougher with Iran and that this administration hasn’t been tough enough.
MR. SULLIVAN: What I find odd about that argument is Iran’s major proxy in the region, Hezbollah, is absolutely weakened, shattered. Iran’s own capacity to project conventional military capacity in the region has been exposed and defeated directly by the United States, working with Israel and other countries. Iran’s economy is in absolute shambles, and Iran is nowhere to be found in defending its main client state, Assad, as rebels take city after city on the way to Damascus.
So, is Iran in good shape? I would say they are not. Has American policy over the course of the past four years and over the course of the past year contributed to the circumstances Iran finds itself in? I would submit to you that it has.
Now, the nuclear program in Iran remains a source of immense concern. President Biden made the same commitment President Trump made and President Obama made, that we will never allow to get Iran a nuclear weapon. That is a promise we intend to keep till every last day in our administration, and I presume the incoming administration will also do what is necessary.
They have advanced their nuclear program. They’ve done so because the nuclear deal that was in place that put enormous restraint on the program was removed by the last administration, and because we haven’t been willing to just lift sanctions to get back into it. In fact, we have not lifted sanctions. We’ve imposed more sanctions on Iran over the course of the past four years.
The Middle East right now is in a period of considerable transformation. But one thing is for sure: Iran is in a weaker state today than they were when we took office, and that creates both opportunities, but it also does create risks, including the need for us to continue to constrain and deter their move should they choose to make it as a matter of policy towards a nuclear
weapon.
MS. BREAM: But to be clear, there were some sanctions waivers.
MR. SULLIVAN: Well, for example, we did authorize the movement of $6 billion for humanitarian purchases, which was a policy of the previous administration that money in certain bank accounts could be spent down by Iran for food, medicine, and other approved humanitarian transactions. We used that same mechanism that Secretary Pompeo put into place as part of a deal to get American citizens who had been held for years — predating our own administration — in Iran, in part because some of those Americans were getting — were facing significant health challenges. After October 7th, we froze that. So those $6 billion were frozen in Qatar; have not, in fact, been used.
But this President has shown a willingness to take tough decisions to get Americans home. He stands by those decisions. And in this case, we actually ended up freezing the $6 billion in place in Qatar.
MS. BREAM: I want to give you a chance to respond to a critic from within your own party. This comes from Senator Chris Van Hollen. He says, in an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, “Nothing will haunt President Joe Biden’s foreign policy legacy as much as his failed policies in the Middle East. For too long, President Biden has been unwilling to uphold our values and enforce our interests in the Middle East.” What do you say to him?
MR. SULLIVAN: Well, the main point that he was making in that op-ed was that we should have cut off weapons from Israel because of what they were doing in Gaza. That’s his view. I would guess that there are many people in this audience who would take the exact opposite view and say, “Actually, the problem with the Biden administration was you paused the 2,000-pound bombs because you were worried about their use in densely populated civilian areas. You shouldn’t have done that.”
So we have critics on one side saying you should have cut off weapons — the Van Hollen argument; critics on the other side who said — or you should have cut off all offensive weapons. Critics on the other side who say you shouldn’t have cut off or paused any shipments of any particular munition. And this is faced with a very difficult situation where we are going to back our partner to the hill to take out a murderous terrorist organization like Hamas, but we also care about protecting civilians and the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
We chose a course of making sure Israel had what it needed to beat its enemies, backed up by American power, including American aircraft carriers, fighter squadrons, and other capabilities in the region. But we were going to take certain steps, like saying, “You do not need to drop 2,000-pound bombs in densely populated areas because you are going to kill too many civilians, and you can take out the terrorists without them,” which Israel has.
That’s the position we’ve taken. That’s going to draw criticism. We’re willing to take that criticism because we believe that we have alighted on a course that has stood up for our ally, has stood against our common enemies, and at the same time has done our best to alleviate the humanitarian suffering in Gaza.
MS. BREAM: What’s the latest on negotiations over a ceasefire and getting the hostages out? Are you hopeful that will help — that will happen on the Biden administration watch, before January 20th?
MR. SULLIVAN: I have now learned not to use the word “hopeful” and “Middle East” in the same sentence. (Laughter.) So, I will not do that.
There are ongoing talks. We are going to use every day we have an office to try to get a ceasefire and hostage deal in place. I meet regularly with the families of the American hostages, both those still living and those who have tragically — either were killed on October 7th or, like Hersh, were murdered, gunned down in tunnels during the conflict in Gaza.
It is just a paramount priority of ours to make this happen, to get this in place. We’re coordinating with the incoming team on it. We’re coordinating with the Israelis on it. I can’t make any predictions about whether it will or won’t happen. I can only tell you that we’re going to use every ounce of effort and every last hour to see — to try to push this across the finish line.
MS. BREAM: So when people were asked here in the survey, Reagan Defense Survey, what’s the biggest threat to the U.S., they far and away had China as the number one on that list, followed by Russia, North Korea, and then Iran. How would you assess that? Does that line up with what the Biden administration thinks the current threat assessment is?
MR. SULLIVAN: Well — and I think you heard this from Secretary Austin — China is the pacing challenge and threat to the United States for a very simple reason: It’s the only power with the capacity and, frankly, the aim of displacing the United States as the world’s leading military, economic, technological, and diplomatic power. And we are determined to make sure that never happens.
And I think if you rack and stack where we are today from where we were four years ago, the picture looks strong from the point of view of the United States’ leadership position in the world, the health of our alliance systems, the health of our economy, the health of our technological advantage, and increasingly, the health of our military capacity, including in areas like the submarine industrial base, which we’ve invested heavily in after decades of decline in that capability, and also bringing new concepts to the fore, like AUKUS.
So, I think China is the challenge of the next quarter century. It is a challenge we are prepared for and a challenge that I will be proud to hand off to the next team a strategy that we have been executing against, I think quite effectively, so that America is in a position to succeed in that competition.
MS. BREAM: Second on the list was Russia. And of course, with Ukraine, there’s a lot of polling information, too, from the survey about that. How people think this will end: The largest group said that Russia is going to take some territory from Ukraine, and that’s going to be part of wrapping it up. What do you think? How does it come together to an end?
MR. SULLIVAN: Well, President Zelenskyy himself has said that this war has to end at the negotiating table, and our job has been to try to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position on the battlefield so that it’s in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table. And that has required us to mobilize the largest effort of security assistance since the Second World War and flow massive quantities of munitions to Ukraine.
And they are taking that fighting courageously, innovating themselves, particularly in the drone space. I cannot predict exactly how the war will end, nor can I dictate to President Zelenskyy or the Ukrainians how it should end. Our job is to take that 50-nation coalition of countries that we built from scratch and continue to surge capability until we’re out of here.
And President Biden has directed me, and I have directed all of our agencies in our national security enterprise, to do a massive surge of assistance and to up the economic pressure on Russia. And if you look at Russia’s economy right now, just in the last few weeks, you’ve seen the warning bells begin ringing much more strongly, and Russia really has mortgaged its economic future. All of this can help build the kind of pressure that can be put to bear at the negotiating table to generate an outcome consistent with Ukraine’s future as a sovereign, free, independent state that can deter future aggression, backed by its partners like the United States.
MS. BREAM: Okay. And one last chance to answer some critics — again, from your own party — with respect to Ukraine.
Top Democrats like Senators Coons and Blumenthal, Congressman Gregory Meeks over on the House side, they disagreed with hesitation, they say, from the White House, first to provide equipment or materials, but then to limit the use of it. They say it’s been too little too late with respect to Ukraine. How do you answer that critique?
MR. SULLIVAN: Well, first, I very much respect the bipartisan support from the Congress. But we have spent every dollar that Congress has given to us, and we’ve been waiting for Congress to give us more money, not the other way around.
So the idea of too little too late, we have surged everything that we’ve had forward. Now, there are certain capabilities that people have —
MS. BREAM: The limitations on weapons.
MR. SULLIVAN: — have mentioned. I’d identify two that our military raised questions about whether the limited dollars that we had should be spent on them. One was Abrams tanks. The other was F-16s.
When it comes to Abrams tanks, we have sent Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Those Abram tanks units are actually undermanned because it’s not the most useful piece of equipment for them in this fight, exactly as our military said. When it comes to F-16s, President Biden authorized the sending of F-16s to Ukraine last May. It’s now December of 2024, and we’ve had a limited number of pilots train not because we’re not prepared to train them — we are, as many as possible — but because the Ukrainians do not have the pilots to be able to build a full F-16 capability in time.
So I think this focus on these types of capabilities misses the point, which is this war is about munitions. And we have surged munitions to an unbelievable degree, as fast as humanly possible. Air defense capabilities. And we have gone so far as to take the extraordinary step of asking everyone who buys air defense from the United States: Wait in line; we’re sending it all to Ukraine.
These were not things that Congress or critics asked of us. These are things we developed and we did.
Third was making sure they had cluster munitions and now land mines so they could defend their territory effectively. Again, critical capabilities they need that we generated; not something that we were being told by critics or Congress or anyone else to do, but stuff we went and did, with some controversy.
And then finally, on the question of ATACMS long-range strike: The issue there has always been both the size of the U.S. arsenal, the shot volume capable, and here too, when we were able to develop a sufficient number of these to send, we sent them for their use. And then, when the Russians took certain actions, we authorized their use inside Russian territory, which has happened now.
But I would just say to everyone: Anyone who thinks that is a silver bullet for this war does not understand what is happening in this war. It is not a silver bullet. It’s one additional capability. But where this war is really being fought is on basic munitions and then the question of manpower, which is something Ukraine has been trying to surge over the course of the past few months.
At the end of the day, I think when history actually records what we have done predating the war, building the supply line and capacity; what Secretary Austin has done, building the UDCG, 50 nations flowing munitions in; and how we have been able to execute that over the last two and a half years, it is an extraordinary feat of logistics, production capacity, and delivery capability from the United States.
And first reason Ukraine is where it is is because of the bravery of the Ukrainians. Second reason is because of the munitions provided by the United States of America. And I’m damn proud of what we have done to help Ukraine stand up for its freedom.
MS. BREAM: Well, in the midst of all of that — (applause) — yes — thank you for taking a break from all of that. You’re never really taking a break — for giving us a few minutes. So I’ll leave you with one last question. What are you looking forward to most as a semi-retired — I don’t know — a congressional spouse?
MR. SULLIVAN: (Laughs.) I think I get a pin, actually.
MS. BREAM: Oh, okay.
MR. SULLIVAN: Which would be cool if that’s true. I’m not actually sure if that’s true or not.
But mainly I’m looking forward to sleeping. (Laughter.) MS. BREAM: That’s true. Well, thank you for taking a break from all of that, and your nap, for us. Thank you. (Applause.)
