My guest is Us Democratic party insiderjake sullivan. A key adviser to senior democrats, including Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary Of State as well as on The Campaign Trail Last year. President trump has attracted a lot of criticism at home and abroad over his rhetoric and style of leadership. But is he not proving more effective in important Foreign Policy issues like the fight against extremists than the previoUs Democratic administration . Jake sullivan, welcome to hardtalk. Thanks for having me. As a key adviser to Hillary Clinton, can you be objective about the Trump Presidency . Probably not entirely objective. I would have to put my bias on the table, that i spent two years trying to stop him from getting into the oval office. But i think a lot of things that we predicted during the campaign about his lack of fitness for office have borne out over the past six months. Ive tried to take a step back and be as fair minded as possible in assessing what hes done. But the zeitgeist was always with him, wasnt it . He was much more in tune with what the voters priorities are. You know, i would actually argue that he had a certain emotional appeal, but when it came to voter priorities, to the issues they cared about, they lined up much more with Hillary Clinton and her approach to the issues. So, it was really a battle between a guy who had the number of the media and could very effectively carry out a political campaign, and the person who actually had the ideas and the substance. And in the end, it was the showman who won. Lets just look at one key preoccupation at the moment, the attacks by militants, jihadists, extremists, be it in the uk, be it in afghanistan, be it in baghdad, where we saw that awful Ice Cream Parlour Attack and so on. Hes really much more assertive on terror than President Obama ever was. Well, hes much more assertive on twitter than obama ever was, and hes certainly speaking much more loudly, but is he carrying a bigger stick, truly a bigger stick . I would say that the fight against isis in iraq and syria is an extension, a building upon, of the obama policy, not a fundamental transformation. Has he added more firepower to the region . He has, but its been on a slope established by President Obama. So i dont think weve actually seen a sea change in his approach to the fight against Terrorist Groups in the middle east or afghanistan, but rather much more of a continuation. You mention afghanistan. He dropped the mother of all bbombs, as its known, in april, on a site in nangarhar. Its the largest non nuclear, the most powerful Non Nuclear Weapon available. That would sound as though hes being much more assertive than obama on militant targets. The dropping of a single bomb on a tunnel complex in rural afghanistan, i dont think is a good indication of the whole policy he is pursuing. Its true that he did that. Would obama have done it, do you think . Well, obama never took the moab, as its called, the mother of all bombs, off the table. If an opportunity had presented itself, a target that made sense to use that bomb, a bomb that obama had in his arsenal during his time, he would have used it. The target presented itself for President Trump, and so he used it, but i dont see that as a departure from american doctrine. What about, obama seemed pretty desperate to get out of afghanistan. Five years ago there were 100,000 american troops in afghanistan. Now its below 10,000. And we have seen a rise in Security Incidents in afghanistan, far more than since 2007, in the last year and a quarter or so. Its very true that President Obama drew down from a height of 100,000 to under 10,000, but before he left office, he fixed a number. He said, actually im not going to drive down any further. We are going to keep several thousand american troops there, not to take and hold territory, but to train, advise and assist the Afghan National security forces. Now President Trump is talking about adding a few thousand more. Exactly. But to carry out precisely the same mission. So even he recognises that simply inserting huge numbers of american troops back into theatre in afghanistan is not a winning strategy. In that way, i think his Campaign Rhetoric and what hes realised about the realities of these fights, theres a big gap between them. If you want to argue that donald trump is different from barack obama in Foreign Policy, youre going to get no debate from me. I obviously believe theyre very different. The point im making is when it comes to the fight against isis and extremist groups, what donald trump is doing is carrying forward ba rack 0bamas strategy. Its hard to see meaningful departures from that strategy. When it comes to iran, on the key issue that President Obama pursued on iran during his time the Iran Nuclear DealPresident Trump said during the campaign repeatedly that he would tear it up on day one. He has not done so. Why is that . That should please you. It does please me. And the question is why, why hasnt he torn it up . Its because even many of our partners in the region recognise, as does our military, as does the Israeli Security establishment, that this deal actually improves security in the region. And so im glad to see continuity on that issue and them carrying it forward. However, i do worry that some of the steps that President Trump is taking in the region could make a conflict with iran more likely, and we could easily see him make a decision that would put american lives at risk. And i think that would be negative for us National Security interests. Ok, lets look at that potential, then. Syria, bashar al assad, the president there, very much an ally of iran. But he has been applauded, President Trump, for his intervention in syria in april following those harrowing pictures of the Chemical Attack on innocent syrian civilians hundreds dead. Wasnt that a good thing that he did . I think it was a good thing. It was a good thing that President Trump decided to respond to the Chemical Weapons attack by the assad regime by striking the airbase from which that Chemical Weapons attack had been launched. That was a good thing. The bad thing is that it wasnt tied to any broader strategy in syria whatsoever. So if you pressed President Trump today on what his solution is to the Syrian Civil War, which is the reservoir from which much of the extremism in the region is flowing, he wouldnt be able to tell you. I think after six months thats a big problem. He has done some things, though. He targeted, launched the Cruise Missiles on the Syrian Government attacks. Hes also imposing sanctions on individuals at the scientific support centre, which was involved in the production of Chemical Weapons. Supplying arms to the ethnic kurds, fighters in syria, who are syrian, despite criticisms from turkey and so on. So, he is seen as being quite strong on syria. Its interesting on the kurdish point because that too was a decision President Obama left for him. It was something President Obama was strongly considering doing, but wanted to give President Trump the opportunity to decide on it. President trump made the decision that they were going to arm the syrian kurds. That has defied isis. A worthy and important cause to roust isis from raqqa, their capital, to deny them territory from which they can plot attacks against the west. But thats not about solving the underlying Syrian Civil War for which the Administration Still has no real answer. 0n the Cruise Missiles launched following the Chemical Attack, general michael hayden, former cia director, seen as somebody who is very balanced trumps public reaction to the atrocity of the Chemical Attack was genuine and admirable, and his response was decisive and appropriate. Trump himself said, what i should did should have been done by the Obama Administration a long time ago. And nobody is contrasting it with obama saying in 2012, my red line, if there is a Chemical Attack i would do something. A Chemical Attack happens in 2013 and obama does nothing. Well, 0bama didnt do nothing, lets be clear. Well, he didnt do as much as what trump has done in just a few months. What obama did was Strike A Deal that actually removed 95 or more of Chemical Weapons from syria, weapons that could easily have fallen into the hands of isis to be used against europeans, or hezbollah to be used against israelis. So 0bama didnt do nothing. Not to mention the people themselves, the civilians, syrians. Of course. The fact is, at the end of the day, the Syrian Regime broke that deal, kept some stock of Chemical Weapons, and the right thing for the United States to do once they broke the deal was to strike, which donald trump did, and which i stood up and said, that was the right thing. Well done. Trump is sort of depicted as this president who makes these intemperate comments and acts in an irrational way, but actually, it seems that you are agreeing that he does take advice from professionals, from people in the know. I think he took advice on that narrow decision of the syria strike, which has not been followed by any serious syria strategy. And when you look at other decisions hes taken, he has completely ignored the advice of every professional around him. His decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement is just one important example of where his economic advisers, his National Security advisers, his diplomatic advisers, all told him, this isjust dumb, and he went ahead and did it anyway. I think he did it for knee jerk political reasons. Its not that detrimental, some people say, because as you know, action on Climate Change is at both federal, state and local level, and as we know, mayor bloomberg, the former mayor of new york, said that we can do a lot of stuff at business level, local level, state level and so on, to meet our targets. Look, the United States is a big, diverse and resilient country, so we will move forward. So its a bit of political theatre, really, what trump was engaged in on the Climate Change . I think its folly to say that what happens coming out of washington on Climate Change doesnt matter at all. Of course it does. There wouldnt be a paris deal if it werent for president ial leadership. If it werent for President Obama going out and getting the chinese on board, the indians on board, and rallying the europeans. Thats how we got here in the first place. And there wont be The Next Step Up the ladder of ambition without american leadership. And what President Trump has done is abandon the field. Now, to the extent we can, at the city and state level, working with our partners and the private sector, we will do what we can, but it really matters that president ial leadership is lacking on this issue. Nikki haley, though, the Us Ambassador to the united nations, after this suggests that trump will be responsible on Climate Change. She said, just because the us got out of a club, doesnt mean we arent going to care about the environment. Well, everything about their Domestic Energy policy so far is a rebuttal to that statement. Not only did they withdraw from paris, but they rescinded president 0bamas executive actions that would clean up our energy fleet, that would move towards more renewable energy, that would improve Fuel Efficiency Standards in cars. Trump rode all of that back. Im waiting to see what the meat is behind what nikki haley is saying, because so far we havent seen it. He hasnt withdrawn from the 1992 Un Convention framework on Climate Change, so we will have to see, as you say. But, you said during the campaign trail, donald trump is temperamentally unfit and unqualified to be the nations commander in chief. But hes been complimented by key military figures. To give you another example, us admiraljames stavridis, former nato commander, says President Trump shows above all he is willing and able to take advice from the first class National Security team he has assembled. So, i think all of us hoped in the early days that when he picked real luminaries, excellent professionals like general mattis as his secretary of defence and general mcmaster as his National Security adviser, that this would somehow help him make better decisions. But the problem is, that You Cannot Normalise a president who is fundamentally not normal. And we have seen repeatedly. Im sure he would object to being described as not normal, but anyway. He may object to it, but you can see in the way he makes decisions, the way that he lashes out, the way that he attacks people, and the way that he tries to essentially belittle and divide, that this is not a normal circumstance. Its really incumbent on all of us to call it out as such. Dont you have to judge him by the actions that take place . And, as you just said, we were talking about Foreign Policy, thats a continuation of barack obama, and thats a continuation of barack 0bamas and the democrats policy and so on. So actually, the actions dont quite match the intemperate rhetoric. They do in many important respects. The continuation i was describing was specifically on the issue of isis, but when you take a step back and you look at President Trumps broader Foreign Policy, you can take the Paris Agreement as one we have already talked about. You can take what he went and did in europe, where he stood before the 9 11 memorial, which was the one time in the history of the alliance that article 5 the collective Defence Mechanism of nato was invoked by our allies on our behalf, and basically harangued and castigated them, and then refused to affirm americas commitment. You can talk about what happened at the g7. Can i just say to you on that, what did the defence secretary james mattis say just a few days after that . But the point is. But what did he say . James mattis said, what a crummy world if we all retreat inside our borders, and, once weve exhausted all possible alternatives, the americans will do the right thing . So who is speaking for the administration . The president of the United States or the secretary of defence . I think we have to listen to what is. He said nato is obsolete and then he rescinded that. You cantjudge what happens in the Trump Administration by what President Trump himself necessarily says. You have to look at it more in a holistic fashion. When the president of the United States actually shows up in europe, steps into nato headquarters in brussels and conspicuously declines to affirm americas article 5 commitment, at least one person is watching that closely and thats Vladimir Putin. And those words have real consequences. Nothing james mattis says five days later can unring that bell. At this point, trump has sent a very clear message to our allies and our adversaries that our commitment to our nato allies is in doubt. That is dangerous, because if it could lead to more instability in europe, and if it could lead to possible conflict there, its ultimately going to be the United States at the end of the day who is going to have to come in and help sort it out. You are implying he didnt want to make that express commitment im not saying anything about his motives, although i do t