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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show, on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. David Sanger is with us. He is the White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times, which, these days, includes everything from the high-stakes negotiations that are moving fast this week for the war in Ukraine, to what one of his articles calls tariffs by whim, to Trump's attempts to negotiate with Hamas and with Iran.

He also, David, is the author of books, including his most recent, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West. We'll talk about those Ukraine developments and more in this segment, including David Sanger's big picture article this week, called Power, Money, Territory: How Trump Shook the World in 50 Days. I also want to get his take on Secretary of State Marco Rubio declaring Tuesday or Monday that the downsizing of USAID is complete, USAID.

They have eliminated about 5,000 of its foreign aid programs and kept around 1,000. There's a Times story this week with the headline Tuberculosis Resurgent as Trump Funding Cut Disrupts Treatment Globally. David, always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

David Sanger: Brian, it's great to be back with you.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start here. What's going on with Ukraine? Zelensky accepted a US ceasefire proposal and they're waiting for Putin to accept or reject, is what I can see. Can you tell where that's going?

David Sanger: Well, the ball is now completely in Vladimir Putin's court. If you listened to what his aides have said over the past month or two, they didn't want a short-term agreement. They want an agreement in which there are no European peacekeepers or some kind of a rapid response group in Ukraine, in case there were violations. They want a commitment that Ukraine will never join NATO, so in other words, they want to go to all of the issues that would be part of a, allegedly, final settlement.

Of course, Ukrainians would need some kind of security assurances to make sure that the Russians don't simply use the time to go rebuild their forces and invade again, which they have every good reason to suspect is Putin's real plan here. The question is, would the Russians sign on to a 30-day ceasefire, during which time you try to negotiate out those bigger issues? Very similar process to what we've seen happen between Hamas and Israel, remember, with the staged ceasefires.

We don't know how Putin's going to respond here. My guess is, he's going to say yes and then try to backfill and slow it down, or declare that there have been Ukrainian violations or something like that. That would be my prediction, but it's very hard to call. I do have to say this, for all of our many critiques of President Trump's past 52 days now, and I-- that story you mentioned runs through the revolution, as he has torn apart a good deal of the past 80 years of institutions and structures set up to keep the peace.

You do have to say that his drive here is the first time that we've actually seen the Russians and the Ukrainians even begin to discuss a real ceasefire, so if he gets this, it's going to be a big deal.

Brian Lehrer: Trump had cut off Ukraine aid after the debacle with Zelensky in the Oval Office, but I read it's back on, after Zelensky accepted the ceasefire. What if Putin rejects it?

David Sanger: Well, as I said before, that really puts the onus on Putin. Now, President Trump has said that he would put economic sanctions and tariffs on Russia if he gets in the way of peace, presumably, if he rejects it. The fact of the matter is we have so many sanctions on Russia right now, put on during the Biden era, that there's very little left to sanction. Unless you want to go anger the Chinese, try to intercept and cut off Russian oil and gas shipments, but mostly oil. Tariffs, give me a break.

What was the last thing, Brian, that you bought from Russia? Maybe some caviar and vodka, and not even that, in the past three years, under these sanctions. There's nothing to tariff.

Brian Lehrer: One more thing on Ukraine before we move on to some other things. For all the talk of how Trump and Vance may have set Zelensky up for humiliation, there are also people supportive of Ukraine who think Zelenskyy didn't do a good job there. He could have avoided taking the bait in that public appearance in the Oval Office, like the Heads of France and England had recently done in appearances with Trump, despite what they might have really thought. Do you agree with that at all?

David Sanger: I do. Look, this is not a new issue. If you go into New Cold Wars, which you mentioned, the book that came out last year, there's a section in it in which I discuss Biden's frustrations in dealing with Zelensky, and they very much sound like Trump's, that Zelensky wasn't appreciative of what the US was doing, that Zelensky would show up with a giant shopping list.

Eventually, what they did in his meetings with Biden, because they were getting so contentious, is, they would send the US Ambassador to Kyiv over to see Zelensky, the day before he had a meeting, telecom meeting, or real meeting with President Biden, and talk to him about how you talk to an American president. Now, Trump's--

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] This is when Biden was in office?

David Sanger: Biden was in office, right, so that they could stop having these destructive, shouting matches. That's with Joe Biden. Okay. Donald Trump, you're dealing with, obviously, a vastly more volatile-- I'm going to teach you, impose sanctions, you know it all. What should Zelensky have done? I don't give out foreign policy advice, I'm a news reporter, but I could have imagined him coming in with the Ukrainian Medal of Valor or whatever the equivalent is, pinning it on Trump's lapel, and thanking him for his deep support of Ukraine over the years.

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] That's hard.

David Sanger: Basically putting him in the corner. Yes, but you see--

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] You didn't have to go that far to make stuff up.

David Sanger: Yes, right, but you see the utility here. It basically would make it very hard for Trump to criticize Ukraine in public at that moment, and then, basically sign the minerals agreement and say, "What's for lunch?"

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Does Zelensky have to go? One quick follow-up. Does Zelensky have to go to get to a real deal, or has he clawed his way back into Trump's good graces enough by accepting the ceasefire deal and doing some public apologies after the Oval Office?

David Sanger: I think he has probably groveled sufficiently, and he's fine. One of the hilarious things about this is that Zelensky's popularity was, at best, 50/50, prior to this.

Brian Lehrer: In Ukraine?

David Sanger: In Ukraine, right. We don't have elections coming up, there's martial law and so forth, but his political future was not exactly assured. Then he stood up to Trump, and it soared. Which, by the way, is what's happened in Canada. The liberals ended up doing quite well in the polls after they stood up. It's happened in many places in Europe where they've stood up to Trump as well. Donald Trump might be saving a whole political class merely by bullying them and having them stand up to him.

Brian Lehrer: David Sanger is with us. New York Times White House and national security correspondent. Listeners, we welcome your questions or comments on Ukraine, but not just Ukraine. USAID, tariffs, Trump diplomacy with Iran, Hamas, the EU, or any of it. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. To your big picture 50 Days article, what you call ripping asunder what every American president since Harry Truman has built. You suggest this could lead to a nuclear arms buildup in Europe. Why that?

David Sanger: The core problem that we have run into with Donald Trump, there are many core problems, but the core one the Europeans have run into is that they no longer have the trust that if the Russians, or others, but Russia, in particular, attacked a NATO country, the United States would come to their aid, under the Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which basically says an attack on one is an attack on all. They no longer have the trust that the American nuclear umbrella extends over Europe.

It was interesting, I happened to be in Germany, in Berlin, the day of the German election, and Friedrich Merz, who will emerge as the next chancellor of Germany, went on TV with the other party leaders after the election results were clear that Sunday night. The first words out of his mouth were, "I will make sure that we move Germany to a position where it is independent of the United States."

Now, the whole post-Cold War, post-World War II structures were made to make sure that Germany was engaged with Europe and the United States so that it didn't go off and become an instigator of what, in the previous century, were two World Wars.

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

David Sanger: Right? The whole concept was to make sure that Germany had enough of a military to create a deterrent, but not its own separate nuclear force because, thank you, we would all be more comfortable if they didn't have nuclear weapons, and they didn't want them under that structure. Merz then had to go off to France and try to begin discussions about whether France's nuclear force, which is only 200 weapons, would also cover Germany if need be, because he couldn't trust the Americans.

The quiet conversation that was going on, and I heard it plenty when I would go out and have coffee with German officials, is-- they know that, eventually, a debate is going to come up about whether they need a nuclear weapon separately. Days later, Donald Tusk, president of Poland, and previously, most senior official in the European Union, said that Poland may have to go look for its own independent nuclear deterrent, unless it is also covered.

South Korea, there was already a public movement, which President Biden tried to help quell, to get nuclear weapons. Japan is going to come to this similar conclusion, although it'll be a much tougher political debate there. Brian, I lived in Japan for six years, so their nuclear allergy is strong, but if they don't think the US would come to their aid. Taiwan, if we're not going to bail out the Ukrainians, why would Taiwan think that we would risk a war with China to bail out them?

This is the way the world is sorting out. One of the biggest risks we have is that after years, decades, in which only nine states have nuclear weapons, you could see that rush that John F Kennedy predicted in 1961 to 62.

Brian Lehrer: Well, very key to your article, it seems to me, is your line that Trump is eroding the old order without ever describing the system he envisions replacing it with. David, many other guests have said here that they know what Trump is replacing it with. A strongman-to-strongman world order that devalues democracy as opposed to pure power politics that glorifies the leaders. Is it more unclear than that to you?

David Sanger: Well, I have certainly said in the article, he has not defined or explained what it is that he is going to do. Then, if you read on in the piece, I describe the different models you heard from his aides, his critics, and so forth. You've just described one. It's very Yalta-like. Yalta, of course, was the 1945 meeting just before FDR died, with FDR, Stalin, and Churchill, and they divided up Europe. You could argue that that's what Donald Trump would like to see,

He thinks the United States is at its greatest power when it's just dealing with other superpowers and not wrapped up in all these international institutions that constrain American freedom. That's the Trump view of the world. It is also, unfortunately, the Vladimir Putin view of the world. Nothing would be happier for Putin than for Russia, a country of 146 million people, declining population, all kinds of economic troubles, to be dealt with as a superpower on par with China and the United States.

The Chinese would probably also like this system. One of the features of the post-World War II system that Truman and Eisenhower set up is that it was not ruled by power politics. It was ruled by international law, by institutions, from the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, to the IMF. Everything Donald Trump despises, everything that is considered part of the deep state, and so forth.

One of its features was that if you're a smaller country, you can rely on that rule of law and a set of rules so that you are not simply at the whim of larger powers. Donald Trump would probably like to bring us back to that. Now, there are some alternatives to this, that I discuss in the article as well. If you listen to Marco Rubio, who may or may not know what Donald Trump is thinking, he is talking about a strategy here, to peel Russia away from China.

A big theme of New Cold Wars is that the big defining feature of the world system right now, that did not exist during President Trump's first term, is that Russia and China are coming together in all sorts of ways, diplomatically, militarily. They've still obviously got some suspicions of each other, but that's a very powerful combination. It's exactly the combination Nixon and Kissinger were trying to avoid when they opened relations with China in the early 1970s. It was to keep Russia and China from coming together.

Brian Lehrer: I was thinking, as you were saying it, that this is the opposite of the Cold War, when we were supporting all kinds of dictators around the world, let's be honest, to peel them away from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Now, I think you're saying we're trying to-- at least the way Rubio describes it, we're cozying up to Putin, as evil as he is widely considered to be, to peel him away from China, because China is the bigger threat to all kinds of US interests, economic, national security.

David Sanger: That's absolutely right. China, for all that we read and worry about the Russians, there's no comparison, as a competitor to the United States, with China. It's a economic competitor, as you point out, it's a military competitor, although it's got a long way to go before it gets to US levels. It's a technological competitor now. We have AI and then a range of other territories. It is, in some ways, a cultural competitor.

TikTok is the first Chinese design piece of software that is on the phones of 170 million Americans. Can you think of, before that came out in 2017, any other Chinese software product that you're interacting with, your kids are, or somebody in the US is, and we're worried about the Chinese control? You are not seeing that come out of Russia.

Brian Lehrer: Question about Ukraine from a listener in a text message. "Didn't Ukraine give up its nuclear weapons because of a US promise to defend Ukraine?"

David Sanger: Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons after the Cold War and after the collapse of the Soviet Union in an agreement with Russia, the United States, Britain, there were a few others in there, too, including Belarus. Those three major powers were supposed to guarantee the security of Ukraine, Russia included, since they were turning back to the Russians what was essentially old Soviet nuclear weapons. Now, there are many in Ukraine who think this was a huge mistake.

I remind you that while the weapons were on Ukrainian territory, the control of the weapons was still back in Moscow. It's not as if the Ukrainians had the nuclear codes to be able to launch these. It's a little different than the way it initially sounds, but yes, the Ukrainians argue, and you basically heard that in the Oval Office confrontation, Ukrainians argue that the Russians have violated every agreement we've made with them, including that one, that they were supposed to be a guarantor of Ukrainian security, and instead, they invaded Ukraine.

Brian Lehrer: Follow up from a caller who we're going to put on the air, to your description of Germany and other European countries talking about developing independent national security systems, maybe even nuclear weapons that they haven't had in the past. Tony, in Woodhaven, you're on WNYC with David Sanger, New York Times national security and White House correspondent. Hi, Tony.

Tony: How you doing, Brian? Thanks for the call. Yes, I'm just curious, especially related to the incoming chancellor's comment about being more independent from the United States. I'd like to ask the gentleman if he thinks that's ironic, because isn't Germany and the rest of Europe more dependent on natural gas and Russian oil than ever before, and in a way, aren't they almost funding the Russian side of the conflict by being so dependent on these natural resources?

David Sanger: Great question. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Tony, thank you. Great question. David?

David Sanger: Great question. They were, but they are not now. There are parts of Europe that are still importing the Russian gas, in particular, but the agreement that the United States got Germany and other major states to agree to three years ago, as the Russians appeared to be preparing to invade, was that if they did invade, they would turn off the gas from Nord Stream 1 and never turn on the new pipeline, Nord Stream 2, which later suffered a pretty damaging explosion.

There was a widespread thought at the time that this would lead to huge energy crises in Germany over the winters and so forth. In fact, the Germans did a pretty good job of bringing in LNG, revving up other sources, and they keep going. I just spent several weeks in Germany, middle of February, and there were no energy shortages now, maybe they've gotten lucky with some not terrible winters, but they have survived without it.

Some countries, like Austria, have continued to buy Russian oil and gas. The Chinese and the Indians have become major customers of Russia and have not observed the embargo on Russia. The Russians have gotten their revenue, but largely not from Europe.

Brian Lehrer: Tony, thank you for your call. Good question. We're going to continue in a minute with David Sanger, White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times. Maybe more on Ukraine, or maybe we're done with that for now. We're definitely going to get to USAID, Marco Rubio's announcement that the dismantling of USAID is complete, they scrapped 5,000 programs and kept 1,000, and the probably related New York Times article called Tuberculosis Resurgent as Trump Funding Cut Disrupts Treatment Globally.

More from David's article, Power, Money, Territory: How Trump Shook The World in 50 Days, and more from you, 212-433-WNYC.

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Brian Lehrer, on WNYC, with David Sanger, White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times, and author of New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West.

Let me go right to another caller, because I think Frederick, in Princeton, has what might be an interesting anecdote. Frederick, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Frederick: Oh, yes. Thank you so much for taking my call. Yes. My question is that I have a very good friend, and he is having second thoughts. He voted for Donald Trump. I would never do something like that, but at any rate, we still remain friends. It's not easy when we go out to dinner, but I try to make it work, at any rate. He's having second thoughts about this.

He does not understand why, because he's come to the conclusion that he would not have voted again, if that was the case, if other people are starting to have the same sentiment about what's going on right now. He now slogans him with Slippery Donald. I'd like to know from your guest whether he thinks that some of the voters are having second thoughts.

Brian Lehrer: Frederick, just get a little more specific for me about your friend. Is it the foreign policy stuff that's mostly turning him off?

Frederick: Well, it's not only the meeting with Zelensky that sort of turned his stomach. It's also the stuff that's going down with the masses, with how the people are going to deal with no Medicaid, and eventually, Medicare, because don't think that he's not going after Medicare, he is, at some point. Can you believe anything that this guy says? Why did people believe in the beginning? We had four years to see what this man was about.

Brian Lehrer: Frederick, thank you very much for your call. David, I know you're a national security correspondent. You're not a political analyst who watches the polls, but Frederick is asking if you think many other people who voted for Trump are being turned off, maybe for some of the foreign policy reasons we've been discussing, or some of the other things he just brought up.

David Sanger: Well, when you look at the polls, and as you say, we have a lot of people in The New York Times who do politics and do it quite brilliantly, and I'm not one of them, but when you do look at the polls, what you discover is that one of the biggest drags on President Trump's popularity these days is Elon Musk, DOGE, and the wrecking ball approach to the federal government.

There are people, we interviewed them, and you've read about them in the Times and elsewhere, who voted for Donald Trump and then got laid off by Donald Trump, because they worked in the US Government, in what they thought were fairly secure jobs, they probably thought they were contributing to the US Government, and their reward for it was to get cast out. You've heard some of them say, not surprisingly, "Had I known that this was going to happen, I would not have voted for him."

My guess is you will probably see more of that. You heard President Trump himself hinted this when he was not dismissing the possibility that his tariffs would trigger an economic downturn, perhaps a recession. He's basically making the argument, "Well, you have to go through some pain in order to come out the other end." I wrote about this in The Times last night and this morning.

This big bet that he's taking, that his tariff approach will ultimately result in enough of the economic boom that it's worth the pain in the interim. I'm not sure that his supporters are going to be that patient, or at least some portion of them.

Brian Lehrer: Or that it's going to take that short. Wasn't it in that article that you pointed out that a similar thing on a smaller scale failed in his first term, the steel and aluminum tariffs, and we don't have any more steel and aluminum workers today than we did then?

David Sanger: That's right. That's right. Those were tariffs that he put in place in 2018. Some of them came off during COVID, some by Trump, others by Biden, but that's right, the net effect was about zero. The sanctions that he put on other products, the tariffs on China resulted in counter-sanctions by China or counter-tariffs on our farm goods. Whereupon the US Government, under President Trump, in the first term, had to go compensate the farmers for the revenue they were being deprived.

That cost about as much as what the tariffs on China initially were bringing in, so at the end of the day, there was no gain, or not an appreciable one, and, some economists believe, more job loss from the manufacturing companies that were now paying more for steel and so forth, and becoming non-competitive. All these things, I think, are adding up. It's one thing to hear Donald Trump at a rally, saying we're going to have the greatest boom, we've been running competently, and all that.

Another thing to go confront the reality of a tariff system that is so unpredictable that it sends the stock market into a tailspin, or a DOGE process that appears to be closing whole departments without any particular focus on what it is you want those government departments to do. Pretty astounding yesterday, when the EPA administrator came out and described the new goals of the EPA, and preserving the environment was not among them.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, it was giving people cheaper cars and electricity. That's another segment. On USAID, here's an AP headline from Tuesday. Secretary of State Rubio says, "Purge of USAID programs complete, with 83% of Agency's programs gone." That article cites some 5,200 of USAID's 6,200 programs eliminated. That leaves about 1,000 remaining. There's that 17%.

Rubio posted on X that those 5,200 eliminated programs "spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, and in some cases, even harm the core national interests of the United States." Now, we should say a judge has put some of this on hold. David, do you have a sense of what kinds of programs, generally speaking, got eliminated by Rubio, and what kind survived?

David Sanger: We have some sense. We know that a lot of food programs got eliminated. We've had reporters out, particularly in Africa, but not only in Africa, who have been able to go watch it all. It's not that the food isn't there, it's that it's locked up in warehouses, basically, going bad. And they withdrew the USAID workers who were helping get this stuff distributed. They've eliminated the payment systems. How would you have done this if you were running a business?

You would have said, "Okay, we don't want to be financing these humanitarian efforts anymore." How could we wind these down in a paced way, try to make sure the private sector can come in and do some of this so that people aren't left without foods, where they will be starving, without medicine that they may need, without the HIV suppressants, based on a program that got started by President Bush, the PEPFAR program, to make sure that, in fact, we are not leading to a resurgence of HIV. :You just do it in an orderly way.

That is not what has happened here. They sent a memo out and told people to shut everything down, pack up their bags, and come home. I know in a large part of America, this is regarded-- these people who are working there are regarded as bureaucrats who are running on their own. I've heard frustrations in the State Department sometimes, about the way USAID runs, as you would expect between bureaucracies.

I teach national security. I have for 15 years, at the graduate level. A lot of my students have gone off into USAID. They put their lives on the line frequently to make sure that food and medicine are flowing to some of the world's neediest people. I think this just gets to a core question of how the United States wants to present itself in the world, and whether or not we think that we are a generous nation.

Brian Lehrer: Here's, I think, a critical comment about USAID, from Howard, in Brooklyn. Howard, you're on WNYC, with David Sanger. Hi.

Howard: Thank you very much for taking my call. One thing I want to say about USAID. USAID is the one that leading lot of immigrants to have to leave their country, according to one of the video they sent to me. I'm going to put in my channel, and my channel's name is Two World First Greatest History, speak about a lot of amazing history. Now, USAID, when they go to some countries, let's say like Haiti, they're put together with those people on top of the government, and those people on top of the government see only themselves.

They don't see the people. However, Haiti is a rich country with a lot of natural resources, and they stop Haiti from producing their own food, also, a lot of natural sources are taken out from Haiti, and meanwhile, the people have to suffer and leave the country. However, Haiti is one of the country who not only fought for a lot of other other country, with Simón Bolívar, which help United States to be independent, so Haiti should not be treated that way.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think, Howard-- I don't know who sent you the video or what ax they have to grind, but is it your impression, your opinion, that Haiti would be better off if the US did not have a USAID presence there?

Howard: Well, if USAID goes there and talk to these people, they who represented Haiti, to be there for the people in the country, not for themselves. What they do is get themselves rich, invest the money in other countries, and leave the people hungry. Now, lot of weapons, billions of money, billions of dollars, and they gain weapons.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Well, there's weapons. I don't know that anybody's alleged that they're flowing through USAID, but Howard, thank you for your call. David, it's not the first call that we've got like this, from somebody who at least has a belief about USAID, not just from Haiti.

David Sanger: That's absolutely right. Look, USAID is hardly a perfect bureaucracy. I know a lot of people in the State Department who believe, as Secretary Rubio said, that frequently, their priorities are not aligned with those of the United States and the State Department, and that, in part, is because Congress decided, back during, I think, the Clinton administration, may have been even earlier than that, that USAID would be spun off as an independent agency.

Most countries make this part of their foreign ministry. It's now coming back within the State Department's control. They are also forced to go rely on local distribution systems, which are frequently corrupt. I'm not arguing, for a moment, that there aren't tons of issues, and if you want to go see what some of those issues are, just go look at the inspector general's report for USAID, which is full of critiques of the way USAID has conducted their business.

Brian Lehrer: That was in the old days, before Trump, when they had an inspector general. [crosstalk]

David Sanger: When they had an inspector general. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: That was so quaint.

David Sanger: That's right. What a concept. Lots of troubles with it. The question is, how do you go fix it? The Elon Musk answer to that is, you destroy it first, and then rebuild whatever piece you want, if you're rebuilding anything. Others would say, "Hey, there are lives on the line here," right? Yes, there's stuff that's got to get ripped down, but you don't want to rip it down in a way that people are dying as a result. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Let me reread that New York Times headline, one of your colleagues' stories, and we'll end on this. Tuberculosis Resurgent as Trump Funding Cut Disrupts Treatment Globally. It's not your article, but do you know anything about that?

David Sanger: I don't. I read the same piece that you did, but I think you're going to see a lot of this. The other thing about having USAID, the Center for Disease Control, NIH, and other regions out around the world, is it's our early warning system for pandemics, for other issues, it's an intelligence early warning, because even though these people are not working for the CIA, nor should they be, they are on the ground, in villages, in places that the US may not be, and reporting back on local political conditions.

One of the other cuts we're seeing in the State Department is a reduction of consulates, and so forth, they haven't done it yet, but they are getting ready to, widely around the world. Well, what do you do then? You have just created, by eliminating USAID, or reducing its scope, the consulates, and so forth, you are creating a vacuum that somebody is going to fill, and the someone who's going to fill that is going to be the Chinese. You can't both do that and then say, "Gee, we're losing influence."

Brian Lehrer: David Sanger, White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times, and author of the book New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West. David, thank you very much.

David Sanger: Great to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer, on WNYC. Much more to come.

 

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