White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan asserted Sunday on CNN that America is “better off” internationally than it was four years ago, defending the administration’s disastrous withdrawal that killed 13 U.S. service members.
Under President Joe Biden’s administration, the country has faced a number of foreign policy challenges, including funding Ukraine and Israel for their ongoing wars. On “State of the Union,” host Jake Tapper questioned Sullivan on whether Biden would be leaving a “safer” America due to his leadership.
“Well, I’d start by saying our alliances are stronger than we found them four years ago. They’re stronger than they’ve been in decades. NATO is more powerful, purposeful and bigger,” Sullivan said.
“Our alliances in the Asia Pacific are at all time highs and our adversaries and competitors are weaker across the board,” Sullivan added. “Russia’s weaker. Iran’s weaker. China’s weaker. All the while we kept America out of war. So I think the American people are safer and the country is better off than we were four years ago.”
While the Ukraine-Russia war began in February 2014, Russia did not invade Ukraine until February 2022. Since the start of the invasion, the U.S. has committed an estimated $56.3 billion in “security assistance to Ukraine through both presidential drawdown authority and the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative,” according to the Department of Defense (DOD) as of September 2024.
The U.S. has also supported Israel since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack by Hamas. Since then, the United States has provided an estimated $12.5 billion in direct military aid to Israel through legislation, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Sullivan went on to state that Biden’s administration will be handing off America’s increased safety to President-elect Donald Trump, as well as “having the engines of American power humming — our economy, our technology, our defense industrial base, our supply chains.”
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However, Tapper pointed out that while America is not in a “hot war right now,” the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has led to the Taliban’s resurgence, questioning Sullivan about a report claiming he had offered to resign due to the failure.
“I can’t tell you what I talked about with him personally and privately. What I can tell you is that the United States of America is definitively better off that we are not entering our 25th year of Americans fighting and dying in Afghanistan,” Sullivan responded.
Tapper, again, pressed Sullivan, asking if he felt “personally responsible for the failures in the withdrawal.”
“I think the entire team, the entire national security team, has a responsibility for everything in our national security and that includes me as the national security advisor,” Sullivan said. “I also believe that the strategic call President Biden made looking back three years, history has judged well and will continue to judge well from the point of view that if we were still in Afghanistan today, Americans would be fighting and dying, Russia would have more leverage over us, we would be less able to respond to the major strategic challenges we face.
“Just to the point that Senator [Katie] Britt made before, we have not seen, although the investigation continues, any connection between Afghanistan and the attacker in New Orleans,” Sullivan added. “Now the FBI will continue to look for foreign connections, maybe we’ll find one, but what we’ve seen is proof of what President Biden said, which is that the terrorist threat has gotten more diffuse and more metastasized elsewhere, including homegrown extremists here in the United States who have committed terrorist attacks, not just under President Biden, but under President Trump in his first term. That is part of why we had to move our focus from a hot war in Afghanistan to a larger counterterrorism effort across the world.”
Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have continuously faced significant criticism for their roles leading up to the disastrous withdrawal in August 2021. During the time of the pull out, Biden repeatedly denied being briefed by military leaders who had warned against withdrawing, leading to conflicting messages from his administration.
During her presidential campaign, Harris was called out by multiple Gold Star families, with one father telling Fox Business that the Biden-Harris administration had “ignored” the Gold Star families over the past three years.
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