The Buckley Beacon’s exclusive interview with Jim Scuitto (YC ‘92), chief national security correspondent and anchor at CNN and senior fellow at the Jackson School of Global Affairs.
Jack Olson
Associate Editor of Interviews & Opinion, The Buckley Beacon
An international order long spearheaded by the United States is under threat. And as Russia wages the largest land war in Europe since World War II, China’s technological rise drives a new great power competition, and tensions boil in the Middle East over Israel’s offensive in Gaza, a new (and old) destabilizer has entered the room: President Donald J. Trump.
The Buckley Beacon recently sat down with Jim Sciutto (YC ‘92), chief national security analyst and anchor at CNN, as well as senior fellow at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. Sciutto is famously the author of The Madman Theory: Trump Takes On The World (2020) and, most recently, New York Times bestseller The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War (2024). From 2011 to 2013, he served as Chief of Staff under U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke in Beijing, and has been on the frontlines of the great power struggles in Ukraine, Gaza, and Taiwan. Scuitto also graduated cum laude from Yale College in 1992 with a degree in Chinese history.
On January 27, Colombia made international headlines by refusing to accept two inbound U.S. flights carrying roughly 200 recently deported migrants, after which President Trump took to Truth Social, his alternative social media platform, to threaten tariffs. After a heated exchange with Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a looming trade war was averted when Petro agreed to accept the migrants in return for detente on the tariffs.
“[Trump] has made it clear that he will use sanctions — or at least the threat of them — to pressure both allies and adversaries,” Scuitto told The Beacon. Scuitto also speculated that Trump’s handling of Colombia may provide hints as to his strategy for President Vladimir Putin of Russia, as well as a potential land grab in Greenland.
“Looking at Russia, for instance,” Scuitto said, “he and his administration have raised the possibility of increasing sanctions to pressure Russia into ending the war in Ukraine. But you also see him use similar threats against allies — Canada and Denmark, for example. And he seems, based on reports about his conversations with Danish officials, quite serious about wanting to take over Greenland.”
Sciutto clarified that the U.S.’s use of sanctions is, of course, not a new phenomenon, which is supported by an October 2024 report by the Center for a New American Security that compared Biden’s foreign policy with that of Trump’s first term, and found that Biden imposed over 150 more sanctions against designated American adversaries than his predecessor.
The CNAS report notwithstanding, Scuitto pointed out that Trump often departs from convention with his threatening treatment of allies and enemies alike.
“What is different about Trump is that he seems equally comfortable using [threats] with allies as with adversaries. That’s the piece that is causing the most surprise and deep concern from those countries.” Sciutto acknowledged that Trump “did do some of this in the first administration, including against Canada,” but elucidated that “it seems quite clear in this term he is going to do so more aggressively and more broadly.”
Sciutto also emphasized the potential consequences of interrupting longstanding trade deals with allies. “I spoke to the Canadian Foreign Minister on the air within the last couple of weeks, and she said quite publicly that if you put sanctions on us and tariffs on us, we reserve the right to do the same.” On February 1, Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods coming into the U.S., effective February 4. Within hours, Canada made good on the threats, ordering retaliatory 25 percent tariffs of its own on American goods. Two days later, Trump announced a one month pause on the tariffs on both Mexico and Canada.
Another point of contention in the near future, Scuitto said, might include NATO, an international alliance Trump has long scorned publicly for its alleged financial overdependence on the United States.
“We should note that there is large bipartisan support for [NATO],” Sciutto remarked, referring to the legislation passed after Trump’s first term which prevents a president from withdrawing from NATO unilaterally. “The thing is though, [Trump] could effectively withdraw from NATO if not officially, or undermine the commitment. An alliance and a defense commitment is only as good as a nation’s willingness to abide by it and your adversary’s belief in it. Do they find it credible?”
Trump has cited the failure of many European allies to meet the 2 percent threshold for GDP military spending agreed upon in NATO’s 2014 Defence Investment Pledge, or DIP.
“If they’re not going to pay,” Trump remarked during the 2024 presidential campaign, “we’re not going to protect.” Such comments have increased anxiety among eastern NATO allies like Estonia and Poland, foreshadowing a potential withholding of military aid by Trump in the event of a Russian invasion.
Sciutto, who has covered the war in Ukraine, also expressed concern surrounding Trump’s reelection promise of brokering peace in the country. Sciutto noted that Trump’s public positions on the conflict have varied, as he has offered scattered criticisms of both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent months.
“One thing we know for sure,” Scuitto emphasized, “if [Trump] decides to end U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, Ukraine will become weaker and may not be able to survive that war.” A diminished morale in Ukraine, Scuitto furthered, also increases the chances of a diplomatic land arrangement.
“Folks are becoming more open to an agreement that might cede territory. […] So you see the beginnings of how the concessions might play out, but the biggest question is what kind of security guarantee will Ukraine get?” When asked about the status of the war in Ukraine, Sciutto cited recent reporting of slow but steady Russian progress.
Similarly, Sciutto expressed uncertainty on the future of the U.S.-Taiwan diplomatic relationship. Trump has not publicly committed to offering military assistance to Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, a commitment Biden made originally in 2022. Sciutto confirmed that a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” therefore, has again become the de facto U.S. policy, furthering that Trump’s new tough-on-China cabinet does not necessarily speak directly to Trump’s intentions.
“We’ve seen this throughout his time in office,” Scuitto said, “that he’s the ultimate decider. You could have a lot of folks around you who want to take you one way and he could go another way.”
Sciutto then alluded to a private conversation between former national security advisor John Bolton and President Trump in the Oval Office during his first term, first reported in Scuitto’s 2024 bestseller, The Return of Great Powers. In the exchange, Trump compared Taiwan to the tip of a Sharpie pen while gesturing to the resolute desk as China, which Scuitto speculates was intended “to make the point that Taiwan is so small that it has no significance, and therefore we should not be involved.”
Sciutto also pointed out that both the private sector and U.S. government view artificial intelligence as an area of strategic competition, likening it to the space race of the 1960s between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. “If the U.S. loses the AI race, it will be at a supreme disadvantage to China. And might lose the next war.”
In an effort to slow Chinese technological innovation, both the Trump and Biden Administrations pursued a strategy of de-risking, manifesting as a series of export controls on sensitive U.S. technology like advanced microchips and AI models. Beyond strategic competition, Sciutto says there is another crucial risk to de-risking: It reduces trade.
“When I was working for the U.S. ambassador in China, from 2011 to 2013, [Gary Locke] would often mention in his speeches how the U.S. and China had had an order of magnitude more trade than the U.S. and the Soviet Union had. That connection created shared interests which would reduce the chance of conflict.” While Sciutto acknowledged that American companies should not be expected to tolerate intellectual property theft by China, he expressed worry that disentanglement of the two countries’ economies may dangerously increase the economic costs of geopolitical conflict.
Beyond offering a detailed rundown of American foreign policy, Scuitto also offered reflections on the past year’s nationwide demonstrations on college campuses over Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
“Kids on campus protest wars, and they have for a long time,” Scuitto said. “When I was at Yale, they protested the Gulf War […] there was a anti-apartheid, not quite camp, but there was a protest site that was there pretty much all four years.” He went on to denounce the attacks on Jewish students on campuses like Yale’s, but also criticized media coverage which, he claimed, “painted [protesters] with one brush.”
Scuitto also expressed doubts about a strong effect of the protests on U.S. policy toward Israel, stating that “Israeli leaders have maintained relationships with both parties deliberately.”