Dr. Brett Rosenberg is a foreign policy and national security expert, most recently serving in the Biden administration as the inaugural Deputy Special Coordinator for the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. Rosenberg has also held roles on the National Security Council and in the U.S. State Department. She began her career as a legislative aide to then-Senator Kamala Harris. Currently, she is a fall resident fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics, where she leads a weekly study group titled “Getting It Right at Home and Abroad.” The HPR sat down with Dr. Rosenberg to discuss her thoughts on the U.S.’s current international standing, her experience working with Vice President Harris, and the future of diplomacy in foreign policy.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Harvard Political Review: Compared to previous administrations, something unique to the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy is its belief that U.S. domestic and foreign policy are inextricably tied together. As a writer of that policy, were there any precedents or historical events you considered as inspiration?
Brett Rosenberg: I think that the Cold War is a great example where [the U.S.] put a lot of money into domestic investments that were designed both to strengthen us at home [and] on the world stage. Think about President Eisenhower and the creation, not just of the interstate highway system, but also the National Defense Education Act. It completely reshaped the way we do higher education, expanded access, and was also a boon when we thought about competing abroad.
When [the administration] was writing this strategy, we were thinking through how to express this connection well. A lot of people don’t think about foreign policy and domestic policy as inextricably intertwined. They think about them as two completely different domains. I have worked as a domestic policy and economic policy adviser, and I have worked as technically a foreign policy adviser. The best thing about working on the National Security Council was thinking about how we bring these things together, and it’s really hard to get it right. But I think it’s key for keeping Americans not only safe, but prosperous and hopefully at peace in the world.
HPR: Members of the Republican Party have undermined the value of the NATO alliance recently, whether it’s Trump encouraging Russia to invade NATO countries that don’t meet their defense budgets or Congress failing to pass aid for Ukraine. Do you think that the Trump administration, and Republicans as a whole, have permanently undermined the strength of NATO and U.S. alliances?
BR: I think these institutions are made by humans, and humans can remake them. That being said, humans can also break them. I do not think NATO is fundamentally weakened in any way. President Biden cares very deeply about it, as I’m sure you’ve seen, and NATO members are paying their dues more than they were under President Trump. It’s also larger than ever before. So I don’t think that institution is fundamentally weakened. I do get extremely concerned when we think about the ways in which our partners see the U.S. seesawing back and forth between commitment not just to alliances like NATO, but to international institutions as a whole like the United Nations, and to agreements like the Paris Agreement. That seesawing back and forth is incredibly dangerous because it means that people in the world don’t know whether to trust that the U.S. will be there for the long term.
I think that, more than any one move by Trump, is a thing that is incredibly damaging. It means that even if Kamala Harris takes over — and, you know, I’m really pulling for that; I think she will really invest in these institutions and partnerships — but I think, in the back of our partners’ minds, people will say, “Okay, what comes next?” That’s a long-term challenge for both the Democratic and Republican parties and just for the U.S. on a global stage to say, “How do we reestablish some sort of level of trust in the consistency of the United States knowing that we have a contested political system?” It’s incredibly challenging.
HPR: As polarization in the U.S. continues to worsen, what are the main challenges that the historically non-partisan intelligence and national security communities face?
BR: I think polarization is affecting every aspect of U.S. political life at the moment. I think, for a long time, the foreign policy community thought that it was insulated from politics. There was a famous phrase that said “politics stops at the water’s edge.” I don’t think that’s ever been true, but it’s clearly deeply untrue today if you think about the fights over Ukraine, over how we deal with China, over climate — because I do think we should be treating it as a foreign policy issue, as well as a domestic policy issue. The Trump administration really politicized the intelligence community, which is supposed to be a nonpartisan, unbiased, fact-based source of intelligence, and that is damaging for so many reasons. Again, it undermines levels of trust in the information that they bring forward.
Now I will say that the intelligence community is also made up of humans. They are not an unimpeachable source of truth. No one is. They’re career civil servants who are doing their utmost best to bring us what they know, and that is incredibly valuable. To politicize that is very dangerous, I think it’s part of Donald Trump’s pursuit of a post-truth version of society. To me, the politicization of the intel community is just a symptom of that.
HPR: In light of recent international events that have shown diplomacy isn’t always 100% effective, what would you say to people who are somewhat doubtful of the advantages of diplomacy?
BR: Diplomacy should always be our tool of first resort. We are always better and safer when we are talking. Diplomacy doesn’t always succeed. The U.S. approach has been diplomacy backed by force, by military means. Traditionally, U.S. foreign policy has overvalued the military tool. My approach to my own foreign policy career was shaped as a child of 9/11 who then saw the excesses of the U.S. response to the war in Iraq. That was a place where we turned to the military as a tool of first resort.
Diplomacy should always be that tool, but we also need to think really expansively. I think sometimes we think about two options: traditional diplomacy, and the military. We also have economic tools, development tools, we have lots of different ways of non-military foreign policy that we should be thinking through and expanding. These tools are not uncomplicated themselves either. The U.S. has an overreliance, for example, on sanctions, that can sometimes be incredibly destructive to the populations we’re trying to help. So we definitely don’t always get it right in any domain. I think that’s the headline of U.S. foreign policy. We can always be doing better. But I think one of those key tenets of doing better is strengthening our nonmilitary toolkit alongside the military.
HPR: The Biden administration launched the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is known for its large investments and risky loans to developing nations. As PGII’s first deputy special coordinator, how did you provide strong climate funding while offering loans that countries can afford to repay?
BR: When we’re thinking about how we do infrastructure development in low- and middle-income countries, I think people often think just about roads and bridges. Countries definitely need roads and bridges, but they also need clean energy infrastructure, and digital connectivity if they want to connect to the modern economy. They need health infrastructure, both in terms of health care facilities but also in terms of access to vaccines and cold chain storage. They need infrastructure that actually supports the enlargement of workforces. That includes women in the workforce. That gets people to be part of the economy. So you’re taking a pretty wide approach to what infrastructure is, similar to what the Biden administration did at home.
The U.S. has a tendency to say to low- and middle-income countries, “Don’t buy that from China, don’t take their 5G network, don’t take this bridge, don’t do it.” To which these countries will say, “Okay, but we need this stuff, what’s your offer?” It’s an untenable position for the U.S. to be in because these countries do need energy, digital connectivity, and telecom networks. If China is the only offer, then they’re gonna take it.
What we were trying to do is say, “Actually, the U.S. does have a lot to offer, and what we have to offer will come with high standards.” It’s high standards in terms of the quality of the infrastructure that we will deliver, but it’s also high standards in terms of, you know, these companies will employ local labor. These companies will ensure that they’re meeting human rights requirements, and environmental requirements. What we’re trying to do is say, like, we can actually give you a better offer.
Doing that work is hard, because the U.S. government is actually usually not the one themselves who are going to be out there building the vaccine manufacturing facility. We’re actually gonna be partnering with private sector companies who can do this work better, faster. Part of what my job was, and what the Partnership for Global Infrastructure was, was to bring the many tools in the U.S. government that are doing this work. That means working with the private sector, but it also means working with multilateral development institutions, and with G7, G20 partners, and anyone else who will agree to doing this high-standard infrastructure and investment work with us.
HPR: As someone who worked for Vice President Kamala Harris during her time in the Senate, how would you describe her approach to international affairs and U.S. alliances?
BR: One thing I’m really excited about, with Vice President Harris’s candidacy, is that she is someone who has paid a lot of attention to Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, which have been places that the U.S. has undervalued systematically for decades. She’s gone to Southeast Asia as well. These are the places that will define the future, that are going to be already being incredibly hard hit by the climate crisis, that are dealing with debt and fiscal crises, and that also represent an incredible opportunity for partnership in working together on solving global problems.
In terms of foreign policy in general, I’m really excited to see more emphasis being put on places that the U.S. has had more of a condescending relationship to. She’s seeing this more as there’s a reason this is called a partnership. Partnership isn’t just a partnership of G7 countries. It’s a collaborative partnership working with countries who will be, you know, having the infrastructure built in them because, obviously, if we don’t work with those countries, we’re gonna build the wrong infrastructure.
HPR: How would you describe how Vice President Harris evolved on key national security issues such as the border?
BR: I think the border is a really interesting one for her. The Republican party and Donald Trump have tried to characterize her as a border czar during the Biden administration, which, of course, she wasn’t. She was working on the root causes of migration, which is Latin America policy. In doing that, she helped bring a ton of private sector investment into Northern Triangle countries. But beyond that, she established real diplomatic relationships, and her team was really crucial to ensuring a democratic transition in Guatemala, which is pretty cool and not talked about much.
Trump has thrived on politicizing the border. He’s done it since he descended the golden escalator all those years ago. He’s talking about “rapists” and “insane asylum people.” The xenophobia is bananas. I think what’s interesting is Vice President Harris is actually putting forward a pretty pragmatic approach, which is that our border needs to be orderly in order to have a just and safe border and just and safe migration. Migration is going to be sort of a fact of humanity going forward. If we just think about population growth in different locations around the world compounded with the climate crisis, people will be on the move.
The U.S. is strengthened by immigration economically, democratically. She just wants it to be orderly and fair. She’s been a DACA supporter for a long time, like a real ally to Dreamers. It was a big emphasis of her work in the Senate and the cruelty of the suspension of that program was something she took incredibly personally.
HPR: When a lot of politics has usually been dominated by people who are older, what advice do you have for people who are younger and are trying to go into these fields?
BR: Young people’s voices really need to be heard in foreign policy. Some people will often quip that the foreign policy field suffers from being “Yale, pale, and male,” and I would argue also stale. I think that’s very true; it tends to be an elitist, undiverse field, and that produces bad policy as a result. So we really need more young people, more people of color, more people not born in the United States to be part of U.S. foreign policy. So I would encourage people to recognize that they really have something to say.
My study group is actually gonna be about the intersections of domestic and foreign policy. So issues like climate change, like tech and AI, like trade, like migration, haven’t been topics which the foreign policy elites have focused on for a long time. But it’s a place where actually lots of young people have really important knowledge and opinions.
In terms of advice, remain curious and open to pretty much everything. I did not have a grand plan of where I would go after college. I tried every moment to say, “Where will I learn the most?” and ”Where will people be who will support me in learning the most?” I’ve been very, very lucky in finding people who will support me in always learning.
That seems like a non sequitur maybe to what I just said before, but I think a lot of people take themselves out of the foreign policy field because they think, “I don’t know anything about something happening halfway around the world.” What I want to say is you actually do. Even if you don’t know a particular issue, remain curious and learn about it because it has an incredible bearing on our lives here at home. Our domestic and our foreign policy are inextricably intertwined. If you care deeply about domestic issues, I would suggest you actually also probably care very deeply about how these things manifest on the world stage.
I would love to chat with anybody who’s interested in this, and I would love to welcome them into the foreign policy community because we need you. We need new voices. The world is more challenging than ever before, and there are more opportunities than ever before. We need young people, and we need new voices to help us think through how to handle them.
