Pete Buttigieg | J Street's 2019 National Conference

[Music] welcome so Murphy you gave a major foreign policy address back in June I think you deserve credit for being one of the firsts really layout of significant foreign policy vision and in that speech you said if Prime Minister Netanyahu makes good on his promise to NX West Bank settlements he should know that a president Budaj edge would take steps to ensure that American taxpayers won't help foot the bill see that was a well received line your speech can you unpack that a little bit how would you ensure that US taxpayer dollars won't be used to fund annexation so it begins with understanding that the basis of our relationship with Israel is not just a strategic alliance that's very important to us but also an alliance that's based on shared values and we need to make sure that our cooperation our security and diplomatic and strategic cooperation with Israel happens in a framework that's compatible with those values it also has to be compatible with our US security and policy objectives and in the long run what makes the most sense for American as well as Israeli as well as Palestinian interests is peace and a two-state solution [Applause] so the problem of course with annexation is that it is incompatible with a two-state solution and I believe ultimately moving in that direction represents moving away from peace and we have a responsibility as the key Ally to Israel to make sure that we guide things in the right direction now our security support is based on strategic objectives it's based on values and we need to make sure that it does not turn into a go ahead where we would be endorsing anything like annexation that means we have a responsibility and by the way we have mechanisms to do this to ensure that US taxpayer support to Israel does not get turned into US taxpayer support for a move like annexation so short of annexation is settlement construction we've seen a spike in settlement construction in recent years PV Netanyahu is pretty unabashedly Pro settlement there are some who I think rightly feared that at a certain level of settlement construction you could no longer have a contiguous Palestinian state would you also consider conditioning US aid to Israel as leverage to stop or slow future settlement construction well I'll say this the US law framework for security cooperation and aid to any country has very specific expectations about how that will be used this is built into the arms Export Control Act this is built into Leahy law and we need to make sure that any such cooperation and funding is going to things that are compatible with US objectives and with US law and if we continue to see steps that are potentially destructive I think it is a reminder that we need to have the visibility to know whether US funds are being used in a way that's actually not compatible with US policy and US policy should not be promoting this kind of settlement construction precisely because it is incompatible or at best detrimental to what we want to see happen I think the bigger picture here too is about what this relationship means what this friendship is like in the same way that in the u.s. you can be and we are deeply patriotic and committed to our country thriving with without that in any way meaning that you have to support the current US president and his agenda by the same token you can be committed to the us-israel alliance without that entailing that you are supportive of for example any individual policy choice by a right-wing government over there that doesn't have to inhale that and again you know if you look at the bigger picture of the the vacuum of US leadership right now around the world certainly it has emboldened adversaries I mean you look at the way that that Russia throws its weight around the way that China is behaving and and it's a real concern in terms of what happens with our adversaries but I think actually the heart of the matter in terms of the u.s. abandoning our leadership role is what's going on with our most important allies with our neighbors with our allies in Europe and with allies like Israel so when I think about what could continue in terms of these settlements and certainly something like annexation I think about it the way I think of a friendship where your friend is acting in a way that you think might hurt your relationship might hurt them and might even hurt you and what you do in that situation is you put your arm around your friend and you tried to guide them toward a better place and I think that's our responsibility with respect to these policies but Mayor Pizza is real stop texting your ex it's basically the messenger got it not sure I can top that so you know obviously a lot of the focus is on our relationship but this drill in this room here today I think also there's obviously another party here which is the Palestinians and obviously the most high-profile thing that's happened in our relationship with the Palestinians was the movement of the embassy to Jerusalem beyond that though there's also been a downgrading of you know of our diplomatic relations with the Palestinian people who used to have representation through our consulate in Jerusalem there have been efforts to cut funding for the Palestinian Authority you know you like a lot of people have spoken about some of the problems with the Palestine leadership over the years but but but in addition to talking about how you would engage the government of Israel what would you do to engage the Palestinians what would you do to try to show the Palestinians that that that we want a relationship with the Palestinian people as well as the Israeli people how would you go about trying to strengthen them as a potential partner for peace well first of all we have a strategic obligation to try to be perceived as an honest broker which is very difficult in this environment we also have a moral obligation to ensure that we're doing what we can to support the peace and the well-being of all people in the Middle East Palestinian Israeli and otherwise [Applause] we shouldn't have any illusions about what's going on in terms of the leadership capacity and governing capacity whether we're talking about the West Bank or whether we're talking about what's going on in Gaza what we do know is that meeting one of those situations by withdrawing engagement and talking less and reducing lines of communication is almost never a productive strategy we want there to be greater capacity on the Palestinian side and by the way it's in everybody's interest for there to be greater capacity on the Palestinian side otherwise you don't have partners for peace and the conditions I'm especially thinking about the conditions in Gaza cannot continue without eventually an explosive outcome that is in nobody's interest and while that the misery in in Gaza has many sources and there's plenty of blame to go around we know that this doesn't get better unless there is stronger leadership capacity and diplomatic capacity on the Palestinian side now if we've learned anything in the post 9/11 wars it's that the u.s. cannot assume responsibility for the development of ideal and mature government governing capacity in other countries but what we can do is make sure that we're a beneficial partner and that includes support that includes aid that includes multinational engagement multilateral engagement and at a minimum it means talking and connecting and liaison as much as possible rather than cutting off those engagements in expecting anything but further estrangement to be the result I'm a I'm glad you brought up Gaza you know obviously you know when we were in government in the Obama administration the security challenges well-known the the threat posed by Hamas well established you know the Iron Dome system very important I think in protecting Israelis against rockets fired from Gaza at the same time I look back on regret at the intolerable humanitarian situation in Gaza really just I mean horrific conditions that people are living under as you kind of alluded to do you think there is a way for the United States through its leadership to have a humanitarian approach to Gaza that seeks to deliver assistance to the people there that seeks to potentially work with the Israeli government to loosen the the elements of the blockade there how how can we try to use u.s. leadership to make life better for the people of Gaza even at the same time that we're dealing with the very real threats that emanate from from Hamas but this is what I mean when I say that the world needs America right now but it can't be just any America so it has to be in America that's authentically living the democratic and humanitarian values that we preach and has to be one that is trusted on many sides because let's face it this is not just an Israel policy question this involves the Egyptians this involves a lot of dynamics around the Mediterranean so the short answer is yes a humanitarian approach is the appropriate one the challenge is if we really want to gain ground on the humanitarian front in a way that's compatible with the legitimate security interests of regional players then the US has to be engaging with tremendous nuance and a deep reserve a good faith and nuance and good faith are not exactly hallmarks of the current administration so I don't see how this gets any better with this White House at the helm so we're in this bizarre place where President Trump is cozying up to sort of neo-fascists like Viktor Orban and then accusing everyone in the Democratic Party of anti-semitism just by virtue of being a Democrat literally you said that how do you you know as a supporter of Israel it was a friend of Israel criticized those policies criticize people like Bibi Netanyahu have made blatantly racist statements and there you know is seemingly becoming more authoritarian himself while not falling into a trap of Trump attacking you as anti-semitic because of those criticisms right so it shouldn't be hard to be against bad policies and to be against anti-semitism that should be table stakes and I don't mean to be flip because I'm mindful that we're we've just marked the anniversary of the tree of life Massacre and the the worst violent anti-semitic violence in modern American history that is a reminder that this is not theoretical this is not just about things that happen on Twitter anti-semitism kills hate kills and it is killing right here in our country and the upsetting cynicism of this White House is that you have somebody who on one hand sees actual literal no Jews will not replace us anti-semites as very fine people and on the other hand believes that he can get people to think that he is a friend of the Jewish people by aligning not even with Israel but with a certain kind of politics within Israel and I just think that the American people and the American Jewish community are a lot smarter than that agreed yeah that's that's very well said and you know one issue obviously you know anticipating how these issues have kind of been weaponized in our politics one issue that you know in particularly experienced administration was on Iran and your if you're the next president you will inherit a very complicated situation where essentially Trump is pulled out of the jcpoa Iran has resumed some of its nuclear activity some of the diplomatic consensus around this is frayed obviously how would you approach the Iran nuclear issue in particular would you seek to return to the existing nuclear agreement that Trump had walked out of as a platform to pursue an Iran policy or would you seek to take it take a new and different approach so realistically the facts on the ground have shifted and they'll continue to shift by the time the new president takes office in 2021 that time I take office in 2021 but I think we've got to look at the Iran nuclear deal as a floor and the the problem I think in the way it was talked about politically was you saw all these malign activities by the Iranians in terms of the sponsorship of Hezbollah and other regional regionally destabilizing activities and folks are saying I'll see the deals no good because they're doing all this well of course that's not what the deal was for the deal was to restrict nuclear activity and it worked it worked [Applause] so by the same token the the policy priority I would take would be to ensure that we contain and restrict a nuclear activity of course we care about all of the other problems emanating from the Iranian regime I just don't think that we need to solve everything in order to solve anything and if you have to pick one thing to prioritize I believe the Obama administration got this right that the one thing to prioritize is to make sure they're not nuclear and one of the one of the difficult challenges of course said that the next president will will inherit in and seeking your purchase issues is essentially the the blow to us credibility from withdrawing not just some the Iran nuclear agreement but from the whole slew of agreements and by the way not just Obama agreements well well beyond that not to mention just the shifting currents of international politics the kind of authoritarian trend that's been building so as you have to re-engage on January 21st 2021 and address an issue like Iran specifically where you need to build international consensus you need to work with our European allies and Russia and China how do you restore the currency of American leadership what would be the approach for an incoming Luigi administration to rebuild our credibility with allies and partners that we need on certain issues in order to get something done like restoring their own nuclear agreement and building on it so job number one in terms of global affairs for the next president is going to have to be restoring us credibility and it would be hard to overstate how costly the loss of credibility has been when I was deployed I could feel in ways I can't even fully explain the the power of the flag on my shoulder and sensed that just as much as my body armor and any military equipment part of what was keeping me safe was that that flag stood for a country known to keep its word and our allies knew it and our enemies knew it and that losing that is unbelievably costly any place in the world where we are counting on alliances in order to protect American troops and American interests the moment that that has really stuck with me even before this horrific betrayal of our Kurdish allies it was the president's appearance at the General Assembly and his speech by trumpian standards was actually not memorable which is good [Applause] grading on a curve here but what was memorable and and what hurt was seeing the faces of the world leaders watching the president speak that not as a Democrat but there's an American it hurt to see the leaders of the world who usually look at the American president for leadership looking at our country's leader with a mixture of I think pity and contempt I never again want to see an American leader looked on that way by the leaders of the world so how do we do something about it well beyond just saying do no harm obviously there are a whole bunch of things that we need to reverse or not do I think we need to look for areas where American values American interests and the aspirations of people around the world are all linked because this has always been America's strategic edge the fact that many people either publicly or privately anywhere around the world sympathize with what we stand for and I'm thinking about the desire for democracy the desire for religious freedom providing at least moral support for for example the people of Hong Kong who have not heard a peep out of this White House of support I'm thinking about some of our biggest problems as a global community anytime there's a problem that the US can't solve alone and that the world can't solve without us that's an opportunity for leadership which also means it's an opportunity to earn credibility I'm thinking about climate imagine if global climate diplomacy were a thing [Applause] if global climate diplomacy were something that mattered deeply in geopolitics it would not only be a sign of hope for this global security crisis but also an example of how we might be back on the front foot with China and so the biggest thing I think needed to really answer the core of your question to build up us credibility is for the world to see the u.s. meaningfully advancing things that the world needs and putting our resources and our whole toolkit of diplomatic economic and security resources behind those values and behind getting something done then we can recover some of the Trust's that has been blown up by this administration so yesterday the president announced with some fanfare the death of the head of Isis mr. Baghdadi and I think we all can celebrate his demise and celebrate the work of our special operators and our intelligence agencies and our partners around the world to help facilitate that operation but also you know I say this with considerable humility as someone who worked in the Obama administration and for a president who sent a hundred thousand troops to Afghanistan for a period of time and we're still there 19 years later and it doesn't seem like the situation is measurably improved in fact there's now pockets of Isis in Afghanistan and been and I sat in countless counterterrorism meetings where we heard about the latest al Qaeda number three who had been taken off the battlefield and yet you know the the cancer metastasized and al Qaeda becomes Isis and these organizations exist so you know what are we missing as a u.s. government as a counterterrorism operation that has led us to a point where there are more Sunni extremists living today than there were on 9/11 you know I remember I was in Afghanistan in the summer 2014 when a lot of this emergence of Isis was happening and sitting in the chow hall watching it on television with people who had served multiple tours in Iraq and now we're in Afghanistan and are watching the backsliding and the metastasizing of terrorism there even while we were trying to make sure that that something good would happen in Afghanistan I think does first of all teach humility as you say but the other thing that we should remember and in a perverse way that this whole recent experience in Syria reflects is that so often the way forward is through the right targeted light footprint presence of special operations plus intelligence plus allies on the ground so to me the most extraordinary thing that we learned in this this whole episode is what that tiny handful of US special operators was preventing exactly the kind of thing that prevents us from having to get into a large ground war and mobilization a handful of Special Operations troops with the right kind of intelligence capacity and relationships on the ground exactly the kind of thing that is likely the way forward in Afghanistan instead of having thousands and thousands of troops is what we had holding the line in that part of Syria and when you remove it we see the Pandora's box that has been opened the answer is not to disappear from the rest of the world the answer is to make sure that our presence in the rest of the world is the minimum level consistent with u.s. security that it is in the context of partnerships and that it is always checked against American values too [Applause] one one last question I think that is very relevant here at J Street there's some extraordinary students here from across the country and you know you've talked about a generational change in our politics on the issues that J Street cares about in particular the us-israel relationship being pro-israel and pro-peace I think for young younger people sometimes there there's a cynicism right because they've heard the same messages about the USS relationship and now they see Trump and Netanyahu using those messages very cynically you know if you don't support everything it now does as Tommy said you know you're any somatic or you know US politicians saying well we're for a Palestinian state and not really doing anything to advance that what you do to combat as a part of generational change cynicism that could have rode really the foundation of the USS relationship but younger people in this country that their whole experience of this relationship is watching Trump and Netanyahu you know how do you point it to something different and more hopeful more optimistic in a situation that can seem very futile at certain points so my hope very much comes from the capacity of young people to change categories and change rules I'm thinking about how for example a new bipartisan push has emerged around the subject of criminal justice reform just to take one example of how a new generation across its political spectrum sees different possibilities than what used to be in certain party silos and I think about this here because we run the very real and disturbing risk of the relationship with Israel becoming a partisan issue that is bad news for everybody we cannot allow this to be a partisan issue and young people have an exquisite relationship with truth and a way of detecting all of these layers of nonsense that have been piled on by the current president and in this context and can cut through to see the humanity that is at stake here and defy anyone telling them that you have to adopt this political view according to your identity and instead can really search into what the values that come with these identities that we carry actually mean whether it's a political identity a religious identity or American identity and I place a great deal of hope in the readiness of young people to challenge a lot of what we have been told and to refuse to accept what we were being sold by this White House and that mobilization I think is what will change the answer and no pressure but just to be really clear mathematically it is within the lifetime of anybody in college today that the situation in Israel for Israelis and Palestinians will either reach some kind of harmony or catastrophe you will live to see one of these two things happen the good news is you will also get to be in charge while those things are happening and let's make sure it's a good outcome mayor Pete thank you so much mayor Pete for being here please give it up [Music]

Channel: J Street

Views: 9,383

Rating: 4.2588558 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: _pkr4WsATaQ

Length: 28min 5sec (1685 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Marcazgen]

This is an absolute MUST WATCH. President Buttigieg is America at its best. His words at the end to young people were not just for the US, they were for the world, and they were both daunting and inspiring. He well deserved both of the standing ovations.

[u/Lea3199]

Sometimes I wonder how any human being can always be this mature, concise and nuanced on any issue you throw at them.

secretive whisper he's an android

[u/afunnywold]

Since we always point out when a crowd is less enthusiastic, I want to point out how awesome it is that this crowd was extra enthusiastic for Pete, and very generous with the applause.

[u/beesandcheese]

That was fantastic!! Can’t wait for Pete to be president.

[u/brrrlu]

Tommy and Ben?!?! What an excellent surprise!

Edit: That was fantastic!

[u/Amanahatpa23]

This is what real leadership looks like.

[u/shyredmd]

Sanders, Bennet, Klobuchar, Castro and Pete were the only ones to speak today. Beto, Biden, Warren, Williamson and Yang sent in brief video messages. Here’s the link if you want to hear the other candidates

J Street

[u/pasak1987]

Jesus, after having to listen to Trump...I needed this.

[u/cbb123cbb123]

This interview was SO GOOD. Pete doesn't get asked enough about foreign policy, and he is so clearly eloquent and well informed on the subject, so this was a really pleasing deep dive, not just into the Israel issue but other worldwide problems. As a frequent Pete speech watcher, it was refreshing to hear him talk about something different and novel. Plus, Tommy and Ben!