‘The core engines of American power are humming’

When Jake Sullivan enters the private room at Rasika West End, I joke with the former US national security adviser that I would have dressed down had I known he would be casual. “Smart casual,” he corrects me with a smile. 

Sullivan has picked a modern Indian restaurant just blocks from where he has lived in Washington for the past four years with his wife Maggie Goodlander, the newly elected congresswoman from New Hampshire. “This was kind of a date place,” he says, making me feel slightly like an imposter. 

Judging by the lack of commotion, you would not realise my guest had just spent four years at the heart of the White House, dealing with a Chinese spy balloon, nuclear threats from Russian president Vladimir Putin and conflicts across the Middle East. The 48-year-old was also the lead architect of what he described as a “new Washington consensus” that fused economic and national security policies, driven by his view that America needed a “foreign policy for the middle class”.  

Before we pivot to more serious issues, I have a sensitive question. Who is more Irish, Jake Sullivan or Joe Biden?

“If we’re going on number of times asserting Irishness in life, Joe Biden beats me,” he says playfully, before noting that Biden, who generally only touts his Irish background, also has French and English roots. “I am mostly, if not entirely, Irish,” he continues, before delivering the killer blow: “[The name] Biden, I think, is English.” 

Our waitress is hovering. “I’m just gonna get the chicken tikka masala,” he says. I order tandoori duck makani. 

The wallpaper in the room depicts monkeys smoking cigars and drinking vodka, which makes his pitch for sparkling water disappointing. I twist his arm — with minimal effort. “Day drinking,” he laughs, and orders an Italian Valpolicella Ripasso.

I want to ask about November 5, when Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump but Sullivan’s wife was elected to Congress. How did he feel about losing the White House? “Honestly, that night, it didn’t fully sink in. I was so excited for Maggie,” he says. “It was a wonderful night, and then a harder morning.”

Months earlier, there was another difficult moment when Biden had a catastrophic debate against Trump. Was Sullivan, a former university champion debater, surprised, or had there been signs that Biden was slipping? “I had not seen that coming, flat out had not seen it,” he says. “I thought it was going to be a seismic event in the campaign.”

Critics argue that Biden’s closest aides must have realised that he was slowing mentally. But Sullivan insists that he was taken by complete surprise. “It was not at all consistent with my experience.”

As our wine arrives, I ask if he has started to think about why the Democrats lost the White House. “I’ve started to, but not nearly as much as I did in 2016. On November 9 2016, I was unemployed on my couch and could just sit and think about it indefinitely,” he says. 

He thinks the outcome of the 2016 election was “deeply structural” and marked a “delayed reckoning of the 2008 financial crisis and a deep wellspring of anger among the American people that the system had failed them”. “[2024] may just be one of those elections where you have a Democrat running against a Republican at a time of high prices and anti-incumbent global sentiment and the Republican narrowly beat the Democrat and it’s not really about something existential,” he says. “Or maybe it will bear out that it’s something more existential.”

It felt like, in living colour, the risk of a downward spiral in the US-China relationship was not merely abstract. This could go bad

Switching to his time in the White House, I ask what he regards as his biggest accomplishment. He says he is proud to have helped create a situation where the “core engines of American power are humming”. 

“Our alliances are stronger than they’ve been in a very long time. Our competitors and adversaries are weaker too in ways that have defied expectations, certainly with China. And we’ve produced that very strong American hand without getting entangled in war overseas,” he argues.

He continues by saying that the domestic investment in chips and export controls on AI-related chips, coupled with efforts to boost the defence industrial base and diversify supply chains, marked a new approach to policy. But he stresses that it is a “generational project” that he hopes the Trump administration will adopt and build on. 

China policy, he adds, was another achievement. “America is in a demonstrably better position in the long-term competition with China than we were, and yet we did it while stabilising the relationship and finding areas to work together.”

He says the US and China are in a “decisive decade” that will determine which comes out ahead in key areas such as artificial intelligence and the transition to a clean energy economy. “Four out of those 10 years in the decisive decade . . . [have] turned in America’s favour in a really significant way,” says Sullivan, adding that the export controls the US imposed on high-end chips and manufacturing equipment have had a “demonstrable impact”. 

Days after our lunch, a Chinese company called DeepSeek stunned Silicon Valley by unveiling an AI model that appears to rival US models. After the news broke, I emailed Sullivan to get his reaction. He says it shows that the US needs to “stay on our game” but he is “still confident in the American lead” in AI. He stresses that it “only reinforces” his view on the importance of export controls.

Another critical area in the decisive decade is US deterrence in the face of what Sullivan describes as the “largest peacetime military build-up in human history” being undertaken by China. The US boosted deterrence by bolstering its alliances and urging allies to work more closely with each other, Sullivan says. He adds that Aukus — the US-UK-Australia agreement to enable Canberra to procure nuclear-powered submarines — was a “huge deal”.

“It’s a strategic marriage between the United States and Australia for half a century,” he says. 

As our dishes arrive, Sullivan says his biggest regret is how the US handled its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, which led to the deaths of 13 members of the American military. He says the administration had decided that pulling out too rapidly could destroy morale in Kabul and lead to the collapse of the Afghan government — but it ended up falling anyway. 

“A lesson learned from that is, if there are risks associated with an evacuation, just move out early, even if it comes with some friction with the host government,” says Sullivan. 

Over four years, he dealt with multiple crises involving China, including its 2021 hypersonic missile test, its huge military exercises in response to then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan in 2022, and the Chinese spy balloon that flew over the US in 2023. Which stands out in his mind? 

He cites the spy balloon saga, which followed the “extreme tensions” sparked by Pelosi’s Taiwan visit. “It felt like we were in a very deep hole, but something more than that. It felt like, in living colour, the risk of a downward spiral in the US-China relationship was not merely abstract. This could go bad.”

I am still puzzled as to whether China intentionally flew the balloon over the US, or if it was blown off course by weather. He says it is hard to say without veering into classified areas, but drops a hint. “You can find Biden comments publicly . . . where his personal opinion was that this was not intentional,” he says. “That’s what I’ll say.” 

A more recent espionage case is a months-long Chinese hacking attack against US telecoms networks called “Salt Typhoon”. “What makes Salt Typhoon unique is the sheer scale of access,” he says about the ongoing attack. “They weren’t just going into a senior government official’s phone. They were going into the major American telecommunications companies, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, and picking any phone they wanted to listen to.”

Sullivan says a critical question is whether US telecoms companies remain “highly vulnerable” to hacking from China. “I would say right now, today, they are,” he warns.

I suddenly realise I have been attacking the plain naan that Sullivan ordered and not my garlic naan. But we are focused more on the conversation than our curries, so I hope he has not noticed. 

I want to return to the critical issue of Taiwan. Was there ever a time when he worried that Washington and Beijing were heading towards some kind of military conflict?

“Beijing began to develop a perception that the direction of American policy on Taiwan was inexorably toward the end of the status quo,” he recalls. “If Beijing became convinced there’s only one way to stop Taiwan independence, and it’s grab Taiwan or bomb Taiwan, they would do it,” he warns.

As a result, it was critical to send a “very clear message of deterrence” while making clear at the same time that Washington was not trying to upend the status quo.

The question is, can the current administration display sufficient staying power that Putin sees we’re going to hang in there and the costs are going to continue to mount?

“The US and China have kept this delicate balance for decades,” he says. “We just need to practise a disciplined approach that sustains that out into the future. If we do . . . we can sustain it. I do not believe war is inevitable.”

Elsewhere in Asia, Biden made a big bet on India by deepening technology and security co-operation. As Sullivan touts their achievements — starting with how Biden elevated the Quad grouping of the US, India, Japan and Australia — our waitress removes his plate. “You haven’t done very much damage,” I quip. “I’m a light eater,” he says. 

The goal of closer ties with India, I suggest, was not helped by the assassination of a Sikh separatist in Vancouver and a thwarted assassination plot in New York, both suspected of having links to Indian intelligence. Under pressure from the US, New Delhi launched an investigation that remains open after more than a year. Sullivan says it is important to get answers. “I hope the Trump administration will keep pressing.”

I ask how he evaluates the situation in Ukraine. “The question is, can the current administration display sufficient staying power that Putin sees we’re going to hang in there and the costs are going to continue to mount?” he says. “In which case, I do believe there’s a deal to be done.”

Just before our lunch, Trump had threatened to hit Russia with more tariffs and sanctions if there was no agreement to end the war, which Sullivan says was a “good” move. 

Biden came under criticism for not providing certain weapons systems, including F-16 fighter jets, as quickly as requested by Kyiv. Sullivan pushes back. Biden approved F-16 transfers in May 2023, but the Ukrainian air force has only 18 jets because, Sullivan explains, it has only 16 pilots trained to fly the sophisticated fighters.  

After he orders mint tea and I ask for a coffee, Sullivan presses home his point. “The conventional wisdom that we did too little too late, and if only we had given this weapons system at this time rather than that time something would be dramatically different in the war, is not borne out by any serious review of the evidence,” he says.

We move on to Iran. Sullivan thinks the regime in Tehran is weaker than at any time since the Iran-Iraq war, which ended in 1988. How does he expect Trump to handle the issue? “I predict a robust debate in this administration between an audacious diplomatic play and an audacious military play,” he responds, prompting me to ask whether he thinks Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be tempted to launch a military strike.

“Without personalising it to Netanyahu, I would say the senior leadership of Israel, both political and military as well as intelligence, will be sorely tempted to take advantage of this moment.”

I ask about Gaza and whether he believes the Biden administration had the right balance amid criticism that it did not put enough pressure on Netanyahu to stop the killing of civilians.

“There was immense human suffering in Gaza, and so for me to sit here and say, ‘No, no, it all went great,’ would display a total lack of human empathy. On the other hand, the idea of cutting weapons off from Israel when they were taking incoming from several fronts all at once . . . I’m not sure how I could have justified that. So, it’s hard.

“It’s probably the single biggest thing in the four years where only some level of perspective gained over time will allow me to fully judge what I thought we did right and what I thought we didn’t do right.”

We have been talking for well over two hours. Putting policy questions aside, I want to learn more about the man before our time is up.

After four intense years with less than two weeks of vacation, Sullivan’s immediate plans do not involve work. He is flying to Utah to go skiing with friends the next day and is planning a guys’ hiking trip to the Grand Canyon and Horseshoe Bend in Arizona. 

He is also looking forward to reading books after having almost no time in the White House beyond a little “escapist” reading. He played soccer in high school and raves about The Club by Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson, about the Premier League. His interest in English football stems from his time at Oxford university, when he started following Chelsea. 

So, what is next, I ask? His response is refreshingly honest in a city where people are constantly posturing. “This is a heavy answer,” he starts. “Maggie and I have been over the course of these four years . . . trying to start a family and had some great difficulties,” he continues, referring to a traumatic miscarriage his wife suffered. “My full-time job is to figure out how we could do that,” Sullivan tells me. “Maybe adoption.” 

They have a house in New Hampshire, which they believe would be a good state in which to raise kids. Sullivan is contemplating taking a position teaching at a university in Boston, which would only be a 45-minute commute.

The restaurant has almost emptied. As he is about to leave, he says half-jokingly about our lunch interview that he will read it with “great anxiety”.

I realise I didn’t notice if he finished his wine. “I believe I did,” he says to my relief. Earlier, I had told him that — as an Irish citizen — I would get in trouble with Ireland’s ambassador to Washington, Geraldine Byrne Nason, if I failed to convince the proud Irish-American to have a drink.

“I’m out of work now, so I’m entitled to a glass,” Sullivan quips before heading out into the bitter cold.

Demetri Sevastopulo is the FT’s US-China correspondent

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