- The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shined a spotlight on the battle between authoritarianism and democracy.

It's one of a number of tests for President Joe Biden and his foreign policy agenda.

We take a closer look at repairing the NATO Alliance and rebuilding global cooperation with a former diplomat in the US Department of State on "Newsmakers".

(upbeat music) US foreign policy faces a number of global challenges.

For an insider's perspective on past and current events, and a look to the future is Elizabeth Shackelford, a career diplomat with the US Department of State until resigning in 2017.

Shackelford has served as a foreign service officer in Somalia, Kenya, South Sudan, Poland and Washington DC.

Currently senior fellow with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

She's also the author of the book, "The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age."

Elizabeth Shackelford, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

- You're in town visiting the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan.

You'll be talking about foreign policy and diplomacy.

What in particular right now with world events unfolding, are you monitoring?

What do you recommend our viewers to keep an eye on?

- Well, I think it's really interesting and telling to watch what the Biden administration's approach continues to be.

Because I think throughout the Ukraine crisis, the Ukraine war, we've really been seeing good examples of Biden's kind of foreign policy approach unfold.

Exactly as he's said over the past year that he would want it to.

So I think it's probably been the best example and the one that stuck most to what he really wanted to prioritize.

One is rebuilding our relationships with our allies and addressing global problems with global solutions.

And I think that that's been first and foremost the pathway that he and his administration have taken.

And they've done a ton behind the scenes with diplomatic efforts, starting really all the way back in the fall, as they talked with all of our European allies about what was to come.

They built that really big sanctions approach that was unrolled right after the invasion.

And so I think that's been kind of like the number one thing.

And to see if we're able to continue keeping track with our allies and keeping everyone having a unified front.

The second part that I think has really been telling about what President Biden wanted his foreign policy to really demonstrate, is resorting to use of force only as a tool of last resort.

I think that we've really been seeing this along this process.

There's certainly been moments where there's been pressure from inside Congress, from the public to do more.

And the Biden administration has responded with, we're using those non-military tools, at least not direct military force.

And that's been a real hallmark of his approach.

And I'd say finally, how does his foreign policy for the middle class approach fold into all of this?

That was kind of the tagline for his foreign policy when he first came in.

And really how has that played out?

Well, like all other great plans, it's kind of...

The delivery has unraveled a bit with all the crises they've faced, but I think that he has maintained the sense of foreign policy has to be responsive to American needs.

And I think that that's one of the reasons that he's really prioritized making sure that he's able to reduce the impact of things like sanctions on American consumers.

That I think is the hardest needle for him to thread right now.

But you have seen him repeatedly talk to the American people about it.

So, I'd say continue watching where those three priorities go for him in the coming weeks and months.

- And you know how this works.

That's why we have you here for the insider's perspective.

How much is for public consumption?

Because there are those who would argue that we are messaging the Kremlin with here are the things we won't do.

We won't cross this line.

Is there more going on behind the scenes?

How much truth is there in that, and how much of it is the diplomacy and some of the gamesmanship that goes on?

- Well, diplomacy goes to a lot of different audiences, right?

And there is certainly a level of that that's directed at a domestic audience.

And I feel as though that constant repetition of we're only going to use force if this becomes a battle with NATO, has been for two different audiences.

I mean, one has been an attempt to keep from escalating into a war with NATO directly.

And so you have that messaging, which I know there are different political actors who oppose that direct messaging, because they feel as though it kind of limits our opportunities.

But I think that that's been intentional to try and make sure that there's a line that Putin won't cross.

But I also believe it's been very much directed at the American public.

And you've seen, I mean, since the State of the Union and well before that, President Biden makes a point to communicate what he's doing for better or for worse to the American people.

And I think he wants to reassure everyone that he's not interested in getting us back involved in another war post Afghanistan.

Now, the caveat to that is, I'm not entirely sure that the American people don't want another war.

That might sound shocking, but you've seen a lot of pushes.

In weeks, in kind of the first weeks of the invasion, why aren't we doing a no fly zone?

Why aren't we providing different types of materials to the Ukrainian government?

And I think the administration is also really focused on explaining the why.

And that's been a direct communication to the American people.

And when President Biden or Secretary Blinken goes out publicly and says, "Here's why we're not doing no fly zone, we don't want world war III."

I think they're less worried about the members of Congress who are trying to undercut what they're doing.

And they're more worried about making sure that the American people understand why we've chosen the path that we've chosen.

And I think this administration puts more effort into communicating directly with the public than the most of the administrations in recent history.

- Is it that we see ourselves in the Ukrainians, this post Soviet country that is Western leaning, that sees the West as the place to be.

It's not as though we're seeing Ukrainians lining up and walking off to Russia, they see us...

I think we see ourselves in them and this idea of democracy building.

Is that why as you mentioned, there's a portion of the population that would say, we should be defending this country, we should be doing more?

- That's certainly an element of it.

And it's absolutely probably the key reason why the American public is so much more interested in this conflict than they've been interested in other conflicts of the past.

But, so the Chicago Council on Global Affairs every year does a survey of American opinions of US foreign policy.

It's really fascinating, they've been doing this since the 1970s.

So you've got a lot of data to kind of look at over the years.

And last year's survey, which was conducted, like the questionnaire aspect of that was conducted in the summer.

So we're talking months before there started to be a Russian buildup.

And fascinating as we were kind of leading into departing Afghanistan at the time, some of the questions asked specifically, would you be willing... Do you think the US should use force and troops on the ground to defend, and enlisted a number of scenarios.

One was to defend Ukraine against Russia or against another Russian invasion.

And 50% of Americans at that time supported that.

Again, this was not when you're staring at it, so I think that now the idea of like, oh, oh, that means war right now, right?

Like for real, with a nuclear power.

I think you've got less interest in that, and we've seen some polls reflect it.

But it was really fascinating to see, not only that was just up from 2014, the same question was only 30%.

But for US troops to defend NATO allies, very, very high, it was definitely the majority.

For US troops to defend Taiwan against China, American public opinion was highly supportive of that.

So I do think it gets into...

They're the places that are close and kind of we see ourselves in them.

And then they're also just the places that represent democracy.

And whether or not that reflects exactly what we're looking at in kind of great power competition terms, I do think that there is a sentiment of the American people that really does want to defend democracy and kind of sees that as part of our role in the world.

- That's how we see the world.

If you are a European, your perspective is a little bit different.

You have served in Poland.

- [Elizabeth] Yes.

- You were warned or made aware that this very thing could happen.

So, knowing what you know from being in Poland and how people feel there, what... How are they viewing this invasion, and what comes next?

- Well, it's certainly a different perspective if you're staring at it on your border.

And right now, Poland, I mean very literally is.

And I have many friends in Poland, every one of whom has Ukrainian refugees in their house right now.

These aren't people who work in this field, these are people who work in a variety of places.

They're just normal Poles living their lives, but they're in Warsaw many of them.

And so they're around so many refugees.

So for them, it's very...

It's just visible in front of your face.

But it is something that they have feared for a very long time.

I mean, I served in Poland a decade ago before the rest of the world was really quite as aware, before we'd seen these different steps of increasing aggression by Putin.

And even back then, they were adamant that Russia posed a threat.

And at the time, I was thinking that that seems a little bit like a cold war hangover, but okay, I get it.

And now of course, it's proving absolutely true.

They have a better understanding of Russia and the history, and of Putin in particular.

So for them, it is... Is it about democracy?

Probably less so than about their own independence and their own sovereignty in the region and security.

And it is very much a real concern.

I mean, the United States, we have our geography, which makes us pretty secure.

So we're not worried about Russia invading anytime soon.

But I do believe that everyone in the Eastern flank of NATO and other countries in the region certainly see this as Ukraine is their defense against Russia.

- So, in late March, the meeting in Poland, Joe Biden is there, meets with NATO, it's a full weekend.

And then at the end of a well crafted speech, and this is where I'm asking you the great debate, which has become slip of the tongue yes or no, for God's sake this man must not stay in power.

Part of negotiating tactics.

You believe it was said for a reason.

- Yeah, I don't believe it was the slip of the tongue.

I believe that there were...

I believe that there was the...

The immediate reason was simply that this is what President Biden believes, this is what many people believe right now.

Not an indication of a change in US foreign policy, no he's not indicating that the United States is going to come in and try and remove of Putin from power.

But I do think that it was a reflection of that Putin has delegitimized himself over a period of time through demonstrations of what he's done in this war.

And I don't think that it's a shocking statement to anyone, purely based on the facts of it.

I also think that it's little bit of good cop, bad cop.

It's coming at the same time that President Zelenskyy is giving out some very specific indications of what he'd be willing to negotiate.

And he's been saying for...

He'd been saying for quite some time that he's willing to negotiate directly with Putin.

So I think there's that carrot of, okay, we're willing to give up NATO, we're willing to not have certain weapons on our soil in order to provide some security guarantees.

And then you kind of got the stick of the rest of the world doesn't think that Putin is really fit to lead anymore.

So, I think that all of the hullabaloo over that small singular sentence is really both unnecessary and a real distraction from the issue here.

This administration has been pursuing all of the tools in the toolbox short of direct military action.

And I think that that sentence was just another bit of that, another bit of the strategy.

I don't think his aides thought that though.

- Okay.

(Elizabeth and Patrick laughing) But still, if it's part of a bigger picture plan, then perhaps it moves some people in a certain direction.

- I guess we'll find out.

(laughs) - Democracy on the decline, autocracies on the rise.

What... How are you looking a world?

And we'll get into the domestic issues.

But from the world stage, what are we seeing?

And we're seeing Vladamir Putin leading the charge right now.

What been happening?

- Well, for starters I'll say that it all looks a lot different now that particular battle than it did say in January or February of this year.

At a time in which you're reflecting on a rash of coups happening in different parts of the world.

You're looking at... At that time you were looking at different European countries that were having more of a tendency towards authoritarianism including Hungary and including Poland, which of course has become one of the leading defenders of the European Union and NATO and the state.

So I think that Putin's invasion of Ukraine certainly gave a bit of a kick in the other direction to the march of authoritarianism that we've seen around the world.

Which is a good thing.

I mean, I think part of why he decided to do it though, was because he was really buoyed by the progress that authoritarians have been making around the world.

And by the fact that other powers and democratic powers around the world have kind of been turning a blind eye.

And yet part of that has been really driven by economic issues, issues such as just really letting the markets drive what we're doing, instead of making economic decisions that were influenced at all by these other issues, by values or types of governance.

So what I think will be really interesting to see in the coming months and really years, is I feel like we're moving into a very different time of foreign affairs.

And the question now is, will this battle, this very clear physical battle between democracy and authoritarianism lead to any change in policies by states such as the United States?

Will it change our relationship with countries that are non-democratic that have been longstanding allies of ours or partners of ours around the world?

Are we going to start seeing more value and building up, kind of shoring up the democracies that we're partners with because they create more stable situations in the long run?

So, I think this is gonna be a turning point, and I guess it's really gonna depend on how this conflict, how it resolves and who has the upper hand.

But right now it doesn't really look like it's Russia.

- Yeah, the timing is interesting.

The 2021 democracy index indicates, democratization experienced its biggest decline since 2020 with the percentage of people living in a democracy falling to below 50%.

At the same time authoritarian regimes gained ground.

Again, making sense of this, what has happened to democracy over the years?

- And it's been going down for about 15 years, like that very indicator.

So it's not like this just happened, it's been kind of slow and slow and slow and then fast.

I mean, I feel as though the last couple of years really, we've seen that pattern and that trend really accelerate.

And a big part of it is that it's been happening without really any cost to the leaders who have been pursuing it.

That's why I think there's going to be a bit of a reconfiguration.

And whether or not this is only a matter of kind of democracy promotion or working where our military assistance goes.

Because right now a lot of US military assistance goes to places that are not particularly democratic, like Saudi Arabia, for example.

And will there be a change in that nature?

I do think it also does not bode well for the relationships between strong democracies like the United States and some of the authoritarian countries that we've been partnering with, that let's say when President Biden has tried to make some phone calls to those partners that we have supported for decades, those phone calls aren't getting returned.

And we saw this with the request to kind of improve, increase oil production with the calls to Saudi Arabia.

So, you're getting a bit of hardball being played.

But the question is, will... And I don't know which direction it's gonna go.

Will the United States and our European allies and partners start compromising more with these kind of authoritarian regimes that we've been working with?

Or is there going to be a tipping point where we realize that we can't really count on them, and maybe we try and find ways to really shore things up with governments that support our views and our approach to the world?

And I'm not sure which one's really going to win out, but it is hard to make a big global fight for democracy that's funded by Saudi Arabian oil.

- Where are the weak spots within a democracy, at least what we've been seeing the last decade or so?

What is it about democracies that there's some chinks in the armor?

- I mean, it's a structural problem really.

And it's not something that you can get over.

If you are required to have your government elected by the people, so you have to deliver something to the people.

And it has to be as is necessary, on a relatively short timeline.

One of the problems just built into the system, is that you have to have your sites on a fairly short time line.

And a lot of foreign policy issues, big foreign policy issues that you have to address.

Like let's say, getting off of fossil fuels if they make you indebted as they do for Germany to a country like Russia.

How do you address those in the short term without really frustrating your constituents who are gonna have to pay that cost?

So, I mean, it's a fundamental challenge.

And it's one of the reasons that we see our foreign policy look at fairly short term timelines.

You can't have a... You can't have a high cost to your voters right before a midterm election, let's say.

- We'll go back in time a little, but not so far back.

2017, you resigned.

Did you hand Rex Tillerson?

The, your-- - I wish I could have.

No, no.

Sadly it went through a system.

In fact, I didn't even have the idea to write it until I got that very formal list of like check boxes of things you have to do in order to officially bureaucratically resign.

And somewhere around like 11 or 12 was: write your resignation letter to the secretary of state.

And I was like, oh boy, this is gonna be fun.

They give you some texts to use.

I didn't use that text.

- But you wrote a book about it.

- I did, yes.

- You went beyond the boxes.

The book is "The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age".

We're talking about we're at this tipping point right now, there are some things that led up to where we are now.

You were involved in the Department of State at that time.

And what was happening and what were your frustrations, and what did you see happening then that are playing into where we are today?

- So, what's important to note about the book and the story that I tell there is that, I did resign...

I resigned under one administration, I resigned under the Trump administration.

And that was out of a belief that in my day to day work, at a certain point I asked myself this every day for months.

I was like, am I still able to do more good in my position than harm?

And every day that I could answer yes to that I stayed.

And then one day I said, I'm just not certain of that anymore.

I was serving in Somalia, so it was in a place where the stakes were very high, we were involved in a counter terrorism war there.

The administration at the time had changed a lot of the rules of engagement for drone attacks and airstrikes in Somalia.

And so it felt very dangerous, the lack of oversight, of civilian oversight that we had there.

So that was kind of the immediate issue.

But the book itself talks about a longer period of time, and really a lot of the criticisms of our foreign policy that I cite in the book come under the Obama administration.

So, equal opportunity.

I actually think that we've had foreign policy problems and challenges for decades.

And that...

But that they are all tied to similar themes, which is we have this... Basically foreign policy is largely driven by inertia and short term goals, short term security interests, instead of having kind of long term strategies for how to achieve kind of longer term security and prosperity for the American people.

- Is one of the issues that there are appointments, not necessarily professionals in the field who are leading the charge abroad?

- Yes, I mean, there are several issues that help make our foreign policy more politicized than it should be.

Again, foreign policy shifts and changes and...

They need to be generational.

I mean, they need to happen over a long period of time.

And yet our political system makes a lot of things happen on a very short timeline.

So, the sheer number of political appointments, our problem.

And there are many excellent political appointee, ambassadors and political appointees throughout the State Department.

But it's important to understand that the State Department and every agency has some political appointments.

An administration comes in, a president and his White House want to make sure that they have people that they know and trust in positions of leadership, and that's how it works.

But the State Department has five times as many political appointments as the Department of Defense, and 10 times approximately as any other agency in the federal government.

And what that means is that with every changeover in administration, not just the ambassadorships, but many, many positions down through the ranks, suddenly those people walk away and you have to replace all of them.

So you just have this massive gap in the continuity of our ability to do foreign policy well.

And you'll have somebody kind of filling the shoes.

You'll have a charge d'affaires, an acting ambassador in place.

But they don't have the authority of the president, they don't have the authority of being confirmed by the Senate.

And it can take a very long time.

We still don't have an ambassador to Ukraine.

And many of the assistant secretary positions and high level positions that are very relevant to what's going on now remain unfilled.

Issues relating to nonproliferation, issues relating to sanctions.

I mean, the top, the head of our sanctions policy is still empty.

Which that seems like it'd be fairly important right now.

But what it means is that you have an administration like the Biden administration, it has many very qualified diplomats and professionals at the helm.

But they can't be responsible for all of the foreign policy issues around the globe.

So instead of empowering all of our embassies to handle all of these different crises that are happening when the White House is entirely sucked up with Ukraine, we're struggle with just the ability to make incremental progress in other areas in the world.

- In the last few minutes here, do people understand the value of diplomacy, right?

We invest dollars in the military and we invest in people, at least in theory and money in diplomacy and diplomats around the world.

Do people understand how this works and why it's so important?

Because my understanding is always that if the United States is not somewhere and is not present, it creates a vacuum, and the bad actors will fill in that space.

- Yeah, I don't think that the American people understand how important diplomacy is.

And I hope that we do a better job of explaining how so much of the progress that the US and our Western allies have made on Ukraine has been a result of diplomacy, of these non-military tools.

But the American people don't understand it, largely because we don't tell that story.

The Pentagon has a Hollywood liaison office that works with popular culture to ensure that people know the military is out there and that it's doing good things for them.

So does the CIA.

In fact, that's one of the reasons that movies that you see where diplomats are portrayed, they are not portrayed particularly well because we are not investing in that.

Now, a lot of this comes back to old legislation preventing America from doing propaganda at home.

And even though that has been largely revised at this point, there's still this sense in the State Department that we don't have to tell our own story.

So I'm hopeful that this is one really good story that we'll be able to tell.

And that's one of the reasons that I get out there and try and talk about how important diplomacy is.

- So that's the good stuff?

(laughs) How does someone get involved in the profession in the last minute here?

How did you get involved?

- Yeah, I didn't even meet a diplomat until I was in my 20s.

And it's like a very bureaucratic problem.

You do a written test, you get past each stage, you write essays, you go through it.

There's really no way to shortcut the process of becoming a foreign service officer.

But look it up, foreign service officer tests.

We always want more diversity and more young people to get involved.

And now's a really good time to get into diplomacy.

- And what's next for you?

- Hopefully another book and just more talking to the American people about why they should care about our diplomats overseas.

- Well, truly enjoy the time.

Elizabeth Shackelford, Senior Fellow Chicago Council of Global Affairs, thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- And thank you for joining us, we'll see you again soon.

(upbeat music)