WASHINGTON–U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Monday joined Kailey Leinz, Co-Host of “Bloomberg: Balance of Power,” for a fireside chat to kick off the Atlantic Council’s #ACFrontPage speaker series. Ahead of the 2024 U.S. elections, Murphy discussed the international challenges facing the country today and explored how the next president—as well as the next Congress—might navigate the demanding geopolitical landscape of tomorrow.

Murphy emphasized the contrast between Harris' forward-thinking approach to national security and Trump’s record of corruption and close relationships with autocrats: “There couldn't be a bigger gulf between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris when it comes to how they are going to protect us in this world. [Kamala Harris] is going to continue to push an agenda that seeks space for people to be able to contest dictators and autocrats around the world. To the extent that there's anything new that comes from a Harris administration—and there will be new priorities—she is, as a younger chief executive, going to care about the real future threats 50 years out, 60 years out to the United States. So, you will likely see a Harris administration paying attention to how we work with our allies, and perhaps our adversaries, to regulate AI. Climate change will be a priority. She'll pay attention to these massive youth poverty bulges that threaten global instability in places like Africa. Donald Trump is, and will be, a daily threat to U.S. national security, first and foremost because his foreign policy will be deeply corrupt. Since he left office, his family has become more deeply entangled in the global financial system; deeper relationships financially, the Trump family personally, with autocrats, with countries that have deep and important interests with the United States. Trump will do what he tried to do in his first term, this time actually shattering alliances. I don't think we can trust that NATO will still be around at the end of a Trump presidency. He will form alliances with autocrats and dictators who model the kind of illiberal democracy that he seeks to bring to the United States. He's a climate denier. He will do nothing to carry on the Biden administration's work of trying to make sure America walks the walk and talks the talk on climate change. And once again, America will be a laughingstock of the global community.”

Murphy criticized Republicans’ lack of commitment to defending democracy abroad, warning their failure to confront Putin’s aggression could have dire global consequences: “The Republican Party has no interest in defending democracy abroad. They live in this naive world of neo-appeasement, in which they hope that Putin will just stop at Ukraine, like some leaders in the United States hoped that Hitler would stop in Eastern Europe. The reality is Putin very well may not stop. It will also signal to President Xi that he has a permission slip to go into Taiwan and perhaps other countries in which he has territorial ambitions. The lid could come off overnight—the post-World War II global economic and political order—if we lose Ukraine. And it is just very scary to me that Republicans don't see that.”

On prospects for a peaceful resolution to the war in Gaza, Murphy said: “I want a ceasefire deal. I wish it were able to happen yesterday, but my worry is that both the Netanyahu government and Hamas may not see it in their political interest to deliver that by election day. There's been some writing about Netanyahu's opinions about the U.S. election. And obviously this is speculative, but it is not hard to believe that Netanyahu is rooting for Trump to win. It is not hard to believe that Netanyahu may not want to deliver any kind of diplomatic victory to the Biden administration in the weeks leading up to the election. I hope that is not the case. I hope that Netanyahu's decisions are rooted only in what's right for Israel and regional security, but I don't think you have to be deeply cynical to believe that he may be making decisions, in part, to affect U.S. political dynamics.”

On tackling the economic threat posed by China, Murphy said: “We have woken up far too late to the mistake we made under Democratic and Republican administrations, Democratic and Republican Congresses, for decades, to believe that integrating China into the world economic order would best protect American workers, would best protect American national security interests, and would best advance the cause of democracy and human rights inside China. It did none of those things. It hurt American workers, it compromised American national security interests, and it just allowed for the Chinese regime to get all of the benefits of economic integration while continuing to squash domestic dissent. Now, I don't think we are going to decouple ourselves completely with China. That would be unrealistic and probably a bad decision from a national security perspective. We do want to have some economic dependence on each other. But when it comes to strategic industries, yes, we have to build a capability, either in the United States or between the United States and our democratic allies, to be able to make sure that we can produce critical minerals, critical medicines, critical high technology products in the United States or in countries that we have firm, rock solid, permanent alliances with.”

Murphy argued the U.S. needs to be more nimble in its approach to foreign policy: “The US foreign policy toolkit is arranged in a way that is pretty mismatched to the challenges that we are presented with. That'll be another big challenge for the next administration, the fact that we've spent 20 times as much money on conventional military investments. Yes, Ukraine has shown us that conventional military invasions are still a threat to the United States and our interests. But most of the most serious threats to the United States over the next 25 years—whether it be climate change, corruption, misinformation, those big poverty bulges that are going to threaten stability in places like Sub Saharan Africa—those challenges can't be met with aircraft carriers or tanks or planes. You need smart power. You need economic development, nimble international development banks, anti-misinformation capacity. You need more robust humanitarian aid programs. So the second challenge, I think, that the next President is going to have to face is a spending allocation between the State Department, USAID and the Department of Defense that's probably pretty badly mismatched for the set of challenges we'll face over the next quarter century.”

Murphy laid out the two key foreign policy mistakes of the 21st century–blind faith in neoliberalism and the belief that American military power can solve every global political problem—that need to be corrected: “There are two big mistakes of American foreign policy in the first 25 years of this century, mistakes that have to be corrected for in the second 25 years. The first we've already talked a little bit about. It's this blind faith in global neoliberal economics, the idea that unfettered, integrated global markets, including cheater nations like China, would accrue to the benefit of the U.S. economy. That didn't work. And U.S. workers are skeptical of deep economic integration with the world, because they saw all their jobs leave for Mexico and China and India. So yes, they want a kind of economic nationalism the next 25 years. They want to rebuild those industries that we lost, and if you don't show them that we care first about American workers, not first about the profits of multinational globally integrated companies, then they're not going to have much patience for an American foreign policy that is ultimately based upon trade dynamics that allow jobs to go overseas. The second big mistake of the first 25 years is this continued belief that American military power utilized overseas could address complicated political realities in far off lands that we don't understand very well. And so I think the next administration, to gain back America's faith in the national security establishment of this country, is going to have to see restraint as a strategy.”

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