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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attends a bilateral meeting with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on August 14, 2020 in Vienna, Austria. (Thomas Kronsteiner/Getty Images)

On the latest episode of Counterbalance, former secretary of state and Hudson distinguished fellow Mike Pompeo [[link removed]] joined hosts Mike Doran and Marshall Kosloff for a candid conversation on topics ranging from faith to the future of American foreign policy.

Secretary Pompeo shared his perspectives on the many foreign policy challenges facing America today, and his hope that the new administration will build on the progress made by the Trump administration through initiatives such as the Abraham Accords. Drawing on his experiences as a U.S. Army second lieutenant in West Germany, a member of Congress, secretary of state and CIA director, he argued that American leadership is essential in creating a global environment where democratic values can flourish.

Counterbalance brings together policymakers and thought leaders for frank conversations on foreign policy, with an approach that embodies Hudson's tradition of challenging conventional wisdom. Listen to Episode 6 here [[link removed]] or read the transcript [[link removed]], and subscribe on your favorite platform so you never miss an episode.

Listen Up: Excerpts from Ep. 6 [[link removed]]

The Biden Administration’s attempts to revive the Iran nuclear deal could imperil the Abraham Accords:

"The Abraham Accords took place because bold leaders in the Middle East recognized that hatred of Israel as a foundational principle of a country’s foreign policy doesn't make sense in 2020. They came to understand that they were better off having a relationship—a diplomatic relationship, an intelligence and military relationship, an important economic relationship—with Israel.

The current administration probably believes those are good things too. They have said as much. I hope they'll continue to work to build on them. The risk is not that they will intentionally seek to undermine them, but that their dalliances with the Iranians will no longer provide the American support to the central tenets that allowed these leaders in the Gulf states to make the decision with respect to Israel.

While these were bold decisions by Arab leaders and by Prime Minister Netanyahu, it took an America who was prepared to help facilitate, make it work, and make it clear we would help defend them from the threats that the regime in Iran posed. As we back away from that, I think those leaders will be less likely to be bold in how they continue to advance this and I regret that very much."

Iran and China's growing alliance is a threat to the free world:

"[Iran and China are] two regimes that don't give a whip stitch for the rights of their own people. They aren't about to allow individuals to practice faith, all the things that we value and love in a democratic society. They have an alignment with respect to how they treat their people. They have an alignment with respect to how they think about the world in an instrumentalist way…These are both totalitarian systems. Interestingly, one that is deeply religious, the other deeply theocratic. So there's a divergence there, but then they have commercial, military and geostrategic overlap as well. Both see the United States as a central threat to who they are and their existence in power.

They have a capacity for trading things that are important to them. The Iranians have oil and access to petroleum products. The Chinese have a desperate need for that. They're dependent on the world for 75 to 80% of their petroleum resources. They're a growing country with 1.4 billion people that need access to that product and then the Chinese have money and technology and indeed high-end complex weapons systems and a cyber capability that is very, very good and compliments Iran's in a deep way."

Halting Chinese-Iranian arms sales must be a policy priority for U.S. leadership:

"My team focused very, very diligently on making sure that the Iran-China connection was severed to the maximum extent possible. We had enormous success [with] the arms embargo that was in place, which prevented the Iranians from buying and selling weapons systems. That expired in the fall of 2020. It's why I took the action to engage snapback sanctions at the United Nations.

But then to watch this administration walk in and just say, 'That's no longer U.S. policy,' essentially green-lighting Chinese and Iranian arm sales. When I say arms, we often think of tanks and missiles. That's a component of this, but we're talking about semiconductors and cyber tools and all of the elements of kinetic and non-kinetic activity. This is a really high risk proposition to allow them to engage in that trade. The fact that this administration has now green-lighted that is truly risky for the countries that are affected most by it. The Israelis and the Saudis, Emirates, the Jordanians and the Kuwaitis, but also for Europe and the United States."

Mike Pompeo on how government officials can best serve their office and the electorate:

"When you're an American government official, you have a constitutional duty. You raise your right hand. This is really straightforward for me. Maybe it's because of my time in the military. I think it's because of my belief in Jesus Christ. I think it's my central understanding of how human beings treat each other and our responsibility in the United States of America that says, 'Do your job. And your job is not to talk to the Washington Post about sensitive matters.'

Your job is not to say, 'Geez, I didn't quite get my way on this. And I'm going to go see if I can't get some advocacy group to go tell some story and print some story that applies pressure in a way that gets me the outcome that I'm looking for.' There are lots of people whose job it is to tell those stories and to advocate externally and publicly. It is not people who are on the payroll of the United States government to do that."

Pompeo on one of his early lessons in leadership:

"[As leaders we have an] obligation to listen. My first assignment as a Second Lieutenant was in Germany. I landed in Frankfurt, and rolled out to a little town called Bindlach. I grabbed my gear and my unit was in the field: Bravo Troop, 1st Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regimen. I was second lieutenant, I barely knew where I was. And I roll out there and I meet my platoon sergeant, a man named Sergeant First Class Pritri. And I walk up to Sergeant Pritri, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and he looks at me. He would have been probably early 40s. And he looks at me and he says, 'Lieutenant, you'll do well if you'd just shut up for a while.' I loved Sergeant First Class Pritri, he was a great platoon sergeant and he was dead right.

What he really meant is, listen, learn, observe; watch how people are behaving, absorb that; be who you are, know who you are, be deeply confident in who you are and who you are as a person, but make sure you're watching how others behave."

Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

Go Deeper

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How Beijing Is Testing the Biden Administration [[link removed]]

As a growing number of global businesses review their supply chains to ensure they do not support China's forced labor of the Uyghur Muslim minority, the CCP has begun retaliating with counter-boycotts, writes Tim Morrison [[link removed]] in The xxxxxx. The choice Beijing is forcing on American and Western companies and their shareholders is clear: Abandon your future market share or abandon your humanity.

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The Rare Earth Challenge: Greenland’s National Election and the US-China Tech Competition [[link removed]]

Greenland’s national election on April 6 delivered a decisive victory to the country's left-wing environmentalist party. These election results will have a significant impact on U.S. and Chinese interests, writes Liselotte Odgaard [[link removed]]. The incoming Inuit Ataqatigiit party offers the U.S. a stellar opportunity to work with Greenland and Europe to develop alternatives to China’s rare earth production, which threatens the economic growth and military superiority of the U.S. and its allies.

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A Long, Twilight Struggle [[link removed]]

The less visible components of the U.S.-China struggle—cultural, philosophical, and intellectual— will prove consequential over the long run, write Charles Horner [[link removed]] and Eric Brown [[link removed]] in American Purpose. The Chinese Communist Party finds itself engaged in an open-ended struggle on many fronts—against Xinjiang’s Muslims and Tibet’s Buddhists, against Chinese compatriots in China proper itself, against the citizens of Hong Kong and the nation on Taiwan, and against Chinese communities around the world. It spends billions for high-tech surveillance and hands-on, police-state brutality because it knows it must—if it is to continue to be what it is. But, as we are seeing, such measures debilitate the dictatorship over time rather than strengthening it.

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