2021 Lowy Lecture, Jake Sullivan

Introduction by Dr Michael Fullilove AM, Executive Director of the Lowy Institute It's now my great personal pleasure to introduce the 2021 Lowy Lecturer. We wanted a lecturer who could address the biggest issues of this memorable year including COVID China and climate change. As the National Security Adviser to US President Joe Biden, Jake Sullivan, is instrumental in shaping the President's foreign policy agenda. Jake was previously a senior policy adviser to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, and her Deputy Chief of Staff when she was Secretary of State. He was centrally involved in the Iran nuclear negotiations. And he also served as National Security Adviser to Joe Biden, when he was VP. Barack Obama describes Jake as wicked smart. Hillary Clinton is said to have told friends, he could one day be president. So you might say his references are strong. Jake has been a friend of mine since university. He's also a long standing friend of the Lowy Institute. In 2017, he spent an extended period with us as our Distinguished International Fellow. He joins us today from the offices of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. I'm delighted to invite Jake Sullivan to deliver the 2021 Lowy Lecture - Jake. 2021 Lowy Lecture - Jake Sullivan, National Security Adviser to US President Joe Biden Thank you so much, Michael, for those incredibly kind words. And it's good to see you virtually. I look forward to the day when we can meet up again in person. And I want to pay special tribute to Frank Lowy for his incredible contributions to civic life in Australia, but really, to the entire world. And the contribution the Lowy Institute has made to discourse around foreign policy and national security issues that ripple far beyond the land Down Under and very much impact the debates and discussions we're having here in the United States. I had the pleasure of meeting Frank some years ago and I have to tell you, it is a great honour to have the opportunity here to deliver this lecture in his name today. Four years ago, I actually was there in person - as Michael referenced in his introduction, at the Lowy Institute - and gave a set of remarks and I hope none of you had to be subject to that. But in the course of those remarks, I posed a few key questions to the audience. I was basking in the joy of being out of government and therefore merely in the position of being able to ask questions rather than having to answer them as a decision maker. And now that I'm back in government, those questions are still just as hard as ever. But it's my job to help President Biden come up with effective answers to them. And in the remarks that I gave at the Lowy Institute at the time, I really tried to focus on what kind of impact we would see in a world after Donald Trump and the years that followed the Trump presidency, to our alliances; to our economic influence in the world; to our values. When I re-read those remarks earlier today, I reflect on them not so much for what they imagined, but for what they did not imagine. They did not imagine the twin health and economic crises of COVID-19 that the entire world has had to grapple with over the course of the past couple of years and the way in which those twin crises would reshape events, trends, and ultimately structures in the world. So the world that Joe Biden faced when he took office in January of this year - January 20th of 2021 - was not the same world that my 2017 remarks in Sydney sufficiently envisioned. COVID-19 was rampant worldwide, with cases and hospitalizations and deaths on the rise, the economy was still reeling, supply chains had cracked. There were attendant disruptions wherever you looked: from a migration crisis in my hemisphere, in Latin America, driven by our region's health and economic challenges; to the preoccupation and strain felt by leaders everywhere to deliver vaccines for their citizens. And for the White House, and those of us who arrived on that first day, it was a period of relentless firefighting. But we could not just concern ourselves with the overflowing and quite daunting inbox. We had to think about - to use a phrase some of you may have heard before from my boss - how we would build back better. Not just here at home in the United States, but in our foreign policy and national security strategy to put the United States in a position to deal with the world we confronted and the world that was to come. And so from day one, President Biden has been focused on building a solid foundation from which to actively position the United States. Not just to face down the immediate crisis. But to confidently and effectively prevail against the full range of challenges we will face in the years and decades ahead.