David Remnick: This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Only one other president was ever elected to two non-consecutive terms. The first was the ever-memorable Grover Cleveland. For the world encountering a second Trump administration, it's a kind of whiplash. A radical break from American foreign policy in 2017, and then in 2021, an attempt to restore the old rules. Now there are jokes about annexing Canada from the next president. Earlier in the program, I spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the complicated world of 2025. I'm joined now by staff writer Evan Osnos. Evan reported for years from China, and he's based now in Washington. He covered the Biden administration closely. Evan, earlier in the program, we heard an exit interview with Antony Blinken as he has one foot out the door of the State Department. Now, what you heard from Blinken there, how does it match up with your view of Biden's foreign policy?

Evan Osnos: I came through with a very distinct impression of one thing which was the limits of American influence and power over the last four years. That's either by the force of events that interfered with our ability to achieve what we wanted or, and this is a very controversial question, the limits of what we were willing to do, the limits of what Joe Biden was either capable of or thought that the politics compelled him to do in terms of using the leverage of the presidency. That's a big and quite contested issue.

David Remnick: Every time there's a new administration, the president and his circle leave the White House complaining about Benjamin Netanyahu, how difficult it is to deal with him. I, needless to say, asked that question. I got a very unique, I don't know, measured, disciplined response.

Evan Osnos: Diplomatic is the technical term.

David Remnick: What's the real story among people in the White House or the Biden administration, as we now historically call it?

Evan Osnos: There is fury, rage, contempt for Benjamin Netanyahu, really. I will say there's something else, too.

David Remnick: What is the fury, rage? What's the reason for it?

Evan Osnos: Because over and over and over, he either ignored what it was that they asked for or played them. Would say, ''Okay, we're going to open up a humanitarian channel.'' Then, of course, would go and do something offensive in three other ways.

David Remnick: Wait a minute. This goes to the question that, I believe it was Bill Clinton who first asked about Netanyahu in his frustration. Wait a minute. Who's the superpower here?

Evan Osnos: Well, David, this actually gets to, I think, something that is at the core of what has limited and what will ultimately tag Joe Biden's legacy, which is Biden fundamentally misread the role of personal politics both at home and abroad. Abroad, he said, ''Look, I've known Bibi Netanyahu longer than anybody in American government. I know this guy's deceptions. I know his moves. I'll know how to get him.'' He said, right after October 7th, ''This is the perfect moment. I've got him at a moment where he needs us,'' and so on and so on. He stayed believing, even through all of these moments of betrayal and frustration over the course of the next year plus, he stayed in the belief that he could just through sheer personal bond shape that policy, and it failed.

David Remnick: Does this apply to our relations with China in the last four years as well?

Evan Osnos: Actually, interesting. I think he's unencumbered on that relationship precisely because he doesn't have a meaningful relationship with Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping, in his way, is canny enough to know personal politics doesn't matter when you're talking about superpower relations. He sees this as a historical, civilizational kind of encounter. I think in some ways, Biden was able to navigate the China question a little bit more clearly because he didn't have any illusions that he somehow saw a psychological dimension of Xi Jinping that others could not.

David Remnick: What is the passage that we're about to make in historical terms for American foreign policy? What's going to be the main differences?

Evan Osnos: The core of it is Biden's belief that they could revive the post-Cold War, even the post-World War II set of institutions and understandings, things like the fundamental sanctity of NATO, the power to be able to push back against Russian aggression with it. Because what we're about to see is a president and an administration that is either contemptuous of or untutored in all of the kinds of institutions that defined the US Role in foreign affairs for certainly the last four years and very much the eight years before that. This was partly, in fact, a reflection of the Trump years, that Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, to some degree, Iran and North Korea came to believe that the United States was this frantic, fading power and that it would provide a natural, call it what they see it, a natural enemy in the years to come. I think that in some ways it's an irony, a bitter irony, that Biden's time will be remembered as the eclipse of so many of those post-Cold War institutions to which he devoted his decades of life in the Senate.

Really believing that those were the bulwark against a world of cruel power in which might makes right because you now have an administration that is coming in that believes quite clearly in the idea that the larger, more powerful side of any encounter deserves to be right.

David Remnick: What does Antony Blinken fear going forward, and what could he not say? I asked him, for example, does he think that Taiwan will now be swallowed up by China? He kind of danced around that.

Evan Osnos: He certainly has reason to be afraid of that. Donald Trump has signaled to the Chinese in pretty explicit ways how little he regards Taiwan's integrity and sanctity. He said at one point last summer that Taiwan is something like 9,500 miles away from us and it's right next to China. They pay tremendous amount of attention to comments like that in Beijing. Compare that to Biden, who said four times that he would put U.S. troops on the ground if China invaded.

Now, the administration would walk it back every time and say they never changed policy, but it created, at least it maintained a level of ambiguity. There is a pretty worrisome assemblage of evidence that Trump is putting forward that he really doesn't care much about protecting Taiwan.

David Remnick: Why wouldn't Xi Jinping seize the moment in the next four years and do what he's long wanted to do and take Taiwan? What's the risk?

Evan Osnos: If he does not, I think that the risks are partly domestic. He's dealing with a huge number of problems at home, like the fact that he doesn't have enough jobs for young people, the fact that he has young people who feel demoralized, and you've got wealthy people who are sending their money overseas. All of that's to say, sure, he might imagine he could take a flyer and say, ''Well, maybe I can rally people around the flag, pull them out of their depression a bit by some sort of big foreign adventure.'' That is a risk. He is many things, but he's not--

David Remnick: [crosstalk] How could the risk fail if the United States is uninterested under Donald Trump in defending Taiwan?

Evan Osnos: I give you one data point, which is Ukraine. Vladimir Putin thought he would be in Kyiv in 72 hours. Xi Jinping does not even have the luxury of imagining that he could undertake a brisk and convenient amphibious assault on Taiwan. It's a very hard thing to do.

David Remnick: Why is it hard? You look at the map, and you think, ''My God, that must be easy.''

Evan Osnos: Look, I don't want to pretend to be a naval officer, but the smart people on this will tell you it's a very hard thing to do to amass the number of troops to bring them across the Taiwan Straits at the right time of year. There is also the question of how much Taiwan would resist. There's also the question of how ready the Chinese military is. One thing to watch for, David, if you're curious about when it might be that Xi Jinping thinks he's ready to attack Taiwan is will he stop sacking senior generals in his military? He has continued to do that. Part of that is because he evidently does not have confidence in the military that they oversee or in his ability to control it.

There are a lot of things that Xi Jinping is that are similar to Vladimir Putin, but one difference is in terms of risk tolerance. Xi Jinping has not tended to take great risks when he doesn't have to. I think for the moment, and this could change anytime, but for the moment, attacking Taiwan might be a bigger risk than he needs to take now.

David Remnick: He went to Paines, Blinken did, to paint a picture of the incoming Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who will almost certainly be, win confirmation in the Senate. He went to great lengths to paint him as a normal, serious foreign policy thinker. What is Donald Trump thinking when he nominates Marco Rubio? What was behind that? Obviously, it's somebody who he's expressed contempt for many, many times over time, but joined the club.

Evan Osnos: Look, Trump has humiliated little Marco, as he called him at various points. One thing he gets out of Rubio, though, is very useful, which is he's obedient, but he's also knowledgeable. This is a thing. I wrote a profile of Marco Rubio in the New Yorker some years ago. I talked to him enough about foreign affairs to do some basic, we'll call it knowledge checking. Unlike Pete Hegseth, who in his confirmation hearings the other day was asked to name countries in ASEAN and could not. That was his Sarah Palin moment, where it was, I love all the countries in ASEAN. He had no idea what he's talking about. Marco Rubio, I don't agree with him on a whole lot, but he knows the--

David Remnick: He can name three countries in NATO.

Evan Osnos: I remember asking Rubio once, what are you reading? He said, ''I'm rereading William Manchester's biography of Churchill.'' Now, I took--

David Remnick: [crosstalk]Everything about that sentence rings of BS.

Evan Osnos: I said it at the time, I said, that's strikes me as a nobody read. I don't even think Manchester reread it. It was a thousand pages. At least he knew what Manchester was, and he knew he could have picked Churchill out of a lineup. There's a lot to worry about.

David Remnick: Such are the qualifications of modernity. Evan Osnos, thanks so much.

Evan Osnos: My pleasure, David.

David Remnick: Evan Osnos is a staff writer and you can read him @newyorker.com where you can also subscribe to the New Yorker. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for listening today, and please join us next time.

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