Good morning. Andrew here. Last week, a panel of high-profile guests with different perspectives on geopolitics gathered at the DealBook Summit for a lively debate: Ehud Barak, former prime minister of Israel; Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware; Mark T. Esper, former U.S. secretary of defense; Fareed Zakaria, the host of “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN; Avril Haines, a former U.S. director of national intelligence; Gen. David H. Petraeus, a partner and the chairman of the Global Institute, the chairman of KKR Middle East Global Institute New York and a former director of the C.I.A.; and Samantha Power, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a former administrator to the U.S. Agency for International Development. Moderated by The Times’ Nicholas Kristof, an opinion columnist, the panel discussed how the world is being transformed, including humanitarian crises, China’s rising power, and wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine. You can read highlights from the conversation below. Over the coming days, we’ll be sending you emails with excerpts and takeaways from all of the interviews and task force panels at this year’s DealBook Summit. You can also watch all of them on YouTube or listen to them as podcasts. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
In a tumultuous era, global alliances and practices are upended
America’s friends and allies have been stunned and disappointed by President Trump’s scorn for a rules-based order and by his weaponized tariffs. More troubling is the failure to bolster alliances crucial to countering an aggressive China. That was a shared lament during a task force, “The Global Reorder,” at the DealBook Summit in New York last week. Panelists included a former prime minister of Israel and people involved in or around American foreign policy. WATCH: The Rewiring of Global Power in 2025 LISTEN: The Global Re-Order READ: DealBook: a Special Section China was not part of every discussion, nor of every question raised by the moderator, Nicholas Kristof, an opinion columnist for The New York Times. But its presence lurked behind many of the crises discussed by the experts, with many seeing the United States letting down its guard — and its defensive partners — as China continues to threaten Taiwan, push into the South Sea and pursue trade and other ties that had once been staunchly in the American camp. “I was hoping we’d see a comprehensive strategy working with allies and partners to confront China, principally in the security realm, but in every other space as well,” said Mark Esper, who was Trump’s secretary of defense during his first administration before being fired. He called China “the greatest threat we face this century.”
China is “the first real peer competitor the United States has ever had,” said Fareed Zakaria, a CNN host, citing China’s dominance in the global markets for solar panels, rare earths, penicillin and the many robots in its factories. Esper and David Petraeus, a retired general and a former C.I.A. director under President Obama, agreed a positive element of Trump’s international policy is its focus on trade with China. “That’s the most important relationship in the world, after all,” Petraeus said. But the president has not done nearly enough to counter China, Esper stressed. On chips, artificial intelligence, TikTok and other investment issues, the United States has been “outmaneuvered this year by China repeatedly,” Kristof noted. Most agreed that part of the solution is expanding trade and security agreements with America’s partners in Europe, Asia and the Middle East — and continuing adaptation to the changing alliance structure.
Avril Haines, a former U.S. director of national intelligence, said that world powers for decades had been arranged like spokes around the hub of the United States. That structure is now becoming a “network approach where you’ve got kind of regional and cross-regional mini laterals that are less reliant on the United States as being at the center of that collaboration,” Haines said. Beyond China, the group offered examples of what they see as Trump’s foreign policy missteps. In his quest for peace in Ukraine, for example, Trump has given up leverage to Russia, they said. “The United States has abandoned a democratic ally struggling against an authoritarian regime’s aggressive war of conquest,” said Zakaria. Senator Chris Coons, a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, pointed to the use of airstrikes to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, with little regard for the aftermath. “It reinforces the worst of American gunboat diplomacy in the eyes of Latin America,” he said.
Kristof prodded the panelists: “Are we a little bit too instinctively against something because Trump might do it?” “No, I don’t think so,” said Samantha Power, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Obama. There are many “unhappy chapters in American foreign policy of people of good faith trying to game these things out and getting it wrong.” But with Trump, “is there an effort, actually, to think about the people of Venezuela?” The panelists cited some potential bright spots in Trump’s efforts to end war in Ukraine and Gaza. Such diplomatic ambition can be good, Power said. Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, shared Power’s cautious optimism about the president’s willingness to step into the fray. “Trump is so centrist to everything that will happen in Ukraine, in the Middle East.” And he applauded the Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program this summer, calling it a “formative moment for the Middle East.”
Participants also celebrated the release of Israeli hostages, while acknowledging the fragility of the peace deal and the improbability of reaching agreement on how Gaza will be governed, the details of which Trump is expected to announce before Christmas. “I don’t see any country around the world raising its hand to say they’ll provide the 20,000-strong force” called for to provide security guarantees with Hamas fighters unwilling to put down arms, Petraeus noted. The group described a global order that has lost its bearings in the face of war, humanitarian crises, technological change, economic instability and a mercurial U.S. president. Trump’s embrace of the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, during a recent trip to the White House drew mixed reviews. But Power said the visit had a positive outcome in that it turned the president’s attention to the crisis in Sudan. “This is what life in this complicated multipolar world is like,” she said. “Finding these zones of cooperation.”
Moderator, “The Global Reorder”: Nicholas Kristof, opinion columnist, The New York Times Participants: Ehud Barak, former prime minister of Israel; Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware; Dr. Mark T. Esper, former U.S. secretary of defense; Fareed Zakaria, host of “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN; Avril Haines, former U.S. director of national intelligence; Gen. David H. Petraeus, partner and chairman of the Global Institute, chairman of KKR Middle East Global Institute New York and former director of the C.I.A.; Samantha Power, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and administrator to the U.S. Agency for International Development. Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow. We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.
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