 Thank you all for hanging around for this, the last panel of the conference this year. They're not the last event, however, because we got coming up the Saudi Foreign Minister and because of that, we're going to be real tight on time and we'll be watching the clock just as assiduously as Thierry did. I was astounded in this session two sessions ago to learn from Steve Erlinger's panel astounded that there's confusion about American foreign policy. So we'll straighten that out before we're done here this afternoon. You can all go home knowing exactly what the next two years are going to be like under Mr. Biden. I must say that if you like the last six years of American foreign policy, you're going to love the next two years or at least you can appreciate it because maybe appreciate it more because the next two years will have the competent team that Mr. Biden has installed instead of the rather chaotic team that the former guy installed. Now we have a very competent panel here in New York and Washington who's going to guide us through this just to remind you about the midterm election which is the subject of this panel. Just to remind you, the Senate, when we came here on Friday, was very much inclined in Mr. Biden's favor, 51 to 49 seats. And then on Friday, one of these senators, Kristen Sinema from Arizona, decided that she didn't like being a Democrat anymore. So she's now an independent. So that gives Mr. Biden the same problem that he had in the first two years in the Senate. In the House, it's a little different. Things are inclined against Mr. Biden, but not so much. I mean, there was a lot of prediction about perhaps a landslide of the House against him. It didn't turn out to be that way, but it is against him. It's 222 Republicans in the House and 213 Democrats. And you would think with that makeup of Congress, you'd think that this could be a disaster. The next two years could be a disaster. They might be. Maybe not, though. It may not be as bad as everybody predicts, especially given Mr. Biden's deafness at negotiating and handling things. And given the fact that there's a lot of bilateral agreement on the main two issues that the US views are confronting the world today, China and Russia, Ukraine. So that's my thought. But hey, that's just me. What about the panel? Let's talk to some of the people that can help us through this. And I think I'll start with Stu Eisenstadt in Washington, who can take us into the weeds a bit and just tell us how the impact is going to be with the President and the new Congress. Stu? Thank you, Jim, and thank you for permitting me to participate. First of all, the decision by the electors in the midterm election was really quite astounding. Normally, in an off-year election, the President's party loses an average of 25 to 35 seats in the House and two to four in the Senate. In this election, the Democrats lost no seats in the Senate. In fact, they went up and lost only a net of 70 seats in the House. This is remarkable given the fact that polls showed that 70% of the public felt the country was going in the wrong direction with high inflation and with the lingering pandemic. The biggest loser in the election was clearly Donald Trump. His endorsed candidates almost universally lost. And it was a win for moderates, both in the Republican and Democratic parties. The most recent poll just taken a couple of days ago shows that the Florida Governor, to stand for now for the first time, has a quite decisive lead among Republican voters for a hypothetical 2024 election return. And one symbol of how fast Trump has fallen is the Rupert Murdoch-controlled New York coach, which in announcing Trump's decision to run for president had at the bottom of the first page four of men decide to run for president C-Page 26. Nevertheless, although the Republican holder in the House is very slim, they will control the health agenda and all the committees. This means an end for Biden's domestic legislative agenda and that he will have to govern in the next two years domestically by executive order. Many of those steps will be down in court. The Republicans have the subpoena power and they will hold hearings galore, starting with Hunter Biden, the president's son, and trying to implicate the president himself in his son's dealings with China. There will be hearings on the Afghan withdrawal and many more. Now, one thing that I think this will lead to is the president becoming a more foreign policy president. He will spend much more time than he did in the first two years on foreign policy, where he has much greater flexibility as commander in chief. And that I think is a good thing for the United States engaging the world. Now, let's look at what is likely to happen on foreign and trade policy. First, with Ukraine, the administration is seeking, as we speak, a $37 billion supplemental appropriation for Ukrainian arms that will last a full year. This is done in anticipation of the fact that when the Republicans take over, there will be a significant percentage of the new Republican majority, which holds Trump's nationalistic, America-first, neo-isolationist policy, and which is more skeptical toward aid to Ukraine. So they want to get under their belts at least one more full year of a major aid package to Ukraine. Now, having said that about the House Republicans, the Senate Republicans under Senator McConnell as the minority leader can continue to be expected to support aid to Ukraine, if anything, to be critical of the administration for not sending enough sophisticated weapons. Putin's policy is clearly to divide and weaken the West, to make it war weary, to create higher energy prices, and in Ukraine itself, a darkness and a lack of electricity to force a territorial compromise. My fear is that many of the Europeans going through this rough winter will press Zelensky for just that type of North Korea, South Korea, DMZ-type compromise. The President is not likely to follow that path and I think will follow Zelensky's lead. With respect to China, even with the midterm elections, there is bad partisan support for a hard land position against China. I think this will continue and Biden, going into a potential presidential race, is not likely to want to be seen or to be criticized by the Republicans as being, quote unquote, weak on China. In many respects, this is unfortunate because the President has kept many of the same policies toward China that Trump put into effect. In particular, there remained $200 billion of tariffs against Chinese products coming into the United States, which I believe the administration was prepared to drop before Speaker Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, but given the very heavy blowback by China, they backed away from that. That would be inflation reducing and it would be at least some bow toward China. In the recent summit between Xi and the President, they sort of put a floor under the collapsing relationship, but it has declined very substantially. China is running rings around the United States in Asia and in the Middle East. Xi has met with some 37 heads of state. His visit to Saudi Arabia was in sharp contrast to Biden in which the Saudis laid out the red carpet and gave him a much warmer relationship than was extended to Biden. They signed a strategic partnership agreement which was unthinkable only a few years ago, and while the U.S. remains the main arms supplier to the Saudis, clearly the Middle East suffers from a vacuum in American leadership. So does Asia. When Trump pulled back from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, it left a huge vacuum. The remaining 14 countries signed their own trade agreement without the United States. In 2020, they signed an additional terror-producing agreement among 15 Pacific and East Asian countries, and it left the field open for China's own comprehensive economic trade agreement for many of those same countries to join in China's initiative. So what was intended to be an instrument to increase U.S. leverage was left in the last few months this year to a sort of weakened Trans-Pacific the U.S. led, called the Indicific Economic Framework for Prosperity, and that is then brutal compared to the TPP. It involves some actions on digital standards, on supply chains, on clean energy, on dealing with anti-bravery and money laundering, but no terror-productions jump, no market access to the United States, and it is very thin competition. It is not the kind of pivot that will let the United States compete with China. The centerpiece of Biden's foreign policy was and remains rallying the democracies against autocracies. He's done that with a Democratic summit this year. There will be an African summit coming up in the next few weeks, and that is all to the good. As shown by President Macron's recent visit, the first state visit in 21 months in the president's tenure, there was a good deal of tension over the inflation reduction acts, huge subsidies, but not going to any non-American country unless they have a free trade agreement with the United States, which most European countries do not have. So that is a source of tension with Europe. At the very time, we need European cooperation with Ukraine. If I could just interrupt for just a second, Stu, I'd like to get to some of the other guests here, and we've got a very limited time frame here. But I think those points are well taken, and the whole thing, your point about the Middle East vacuum, we've just heard from a panel here two sessions ago about sort of the clamoring from some of the Middle Eastern countries about where is the United States and where is the leadership of the United States. I'd like to turn now to someone right here in Abu Dhabi, and that's Jaffa, a long-time observer of American policy, and the author of a book called The Myth of the American Decline. I wonder if that is true still, the myth of the American decline, or has it been disproven? Is the American, is American decline? No, it isn't, but that's not the case. I was going to actually follow on right here. I mean, the question was, what's going to happen next two years? And in a moment like that, I take refuge with the greatest American baseball players of all time, Yogi Berra, who said, I never make predictions, especially not about the future. And the reason we are often confused about American foreign policy is that it keeps going through cycles. Just in the 21st century, 20 years ago, we've gone to three or four. You get George W, who lives in a unipolar world, no checks and balances. So Gulliver, unbound, throws his weight around. He is then followed by the retrenchment, and this may surprise you, retrenchment by both Obama and Trump. Now, why do I say that? Both of them pulled troops from Europe. Both badmouthed the Atlantic Alliance, one calling it obsolete. The other one complained about the Europeans being free writers, which aggravated him. Three, both Obama and Trump veered toward protectionism. We just heard some of this. And fourth, both of them, both of these strange mix of characters, flirt with the bad guys in order to reduce the cost of America's global role. So Obama hopes to rope in Iran, cold shoeless Israel, and Saudi Arabia, and Trump, as you know, plays footsie with Putin and Kim Jong-un. So here's the cycle, the reassertion of American power under Bush is followed by retrenchment, softly under Obama, brutally under the demolition man, Trump. And of course, these shits don't work. Bush dreamed of democracy promotion, no more war of nation building, while that receded into dreamland. And under Obama, Iran keeps expanding from Iraq to the Mediterranean, and then working diligently on the bomb. Putin grabs Crimea and Ukraine's Southeast. So now the price question, what about Obama? And I told you, American foreign policy is confusing. Where is he on the cycle of reassertion and retraction? In honor, so the French around you will know Pierre Hasner, one of the most brilliant guys in the business, Paris, who perfected the philosophy of the either on the one hand, on the other hand. And in his honor, I will imitate him, his great style. So on the one hand, Biden immediately stops and reverses the pullout from Europe. Instead of bad-mouthing NATO like Obama and Trump, he fences. Next point, on the other hand, he picks up on Obama's Iran approach, trying desperately to revive the deal. On the one hand, Biden tries to tighten the bomb with Japan, South Korea, which Trump neglected, also tightening the alliance with Australia. On the other hand, Biden proposes Trump's most significant foreign policy achievement, the Abraham Accords. If you notice at contemporary verbiage that comes out of the administration, the word Abraham Accord doesn't appear. To China, we've heard of it, something was stew. Biden is far tougher than Obama and Trump. But on the other hand, this time, the pivot to Asia, which never took place strategically, is for real. On the other hand, Biden rules out a clear commitment to Taiwan. The keyword is ambiguity. On the one hand, Biden does cozy up to Europe. On the other, we've heard this, the Inflation Reduction Act is protectionism with another name. The gist is that non-US companies will not profit from the lavish subsidies, which will put them at a competitive disadvantage. Finally, on Ukraine, which you're most curious about, on the one hand, Ukraine, remember that, would be a goner by now if it hadn't been for the immediate American intervention with money and arms. Yeah, 50-some billion by now. And that made the Europeans, very reluctant Europeans, come along, even the French and the Germans. Why? Because once the US assumes leadership and extends protection, it's easier for smaller power to take the risk. On the other hand, last November has seen US feelers to the Kremlin when Biden suddenly threw up the term compromise. A few days ago, when Macron was in Washington, Biden said, I'll quote, I'm prepared to speak with Mr. Putin if in fact there's an interest in him deciding that he is looking for a way to end the war, unquote. So the gist of these oblique offices, as the Russians are trying to annihilate Ukrainian cities and civilians, while preparing, by the way, for a new offensive, such hints are the wrong moves at the wrong time. And I'm glad what Stu Eisenstadt just reported. The old Congress will probably put through a bill for 37 million in aid. So who's Joe Biden, given his predecessors? Is he a retractionist like Obama and Trump, an American first like Trump, who want to make America great again by cutting costs and commitment? Remember the similarity. It was Trump who engineered the pullout from Afghanistan, which Biden executed. It's another similarity between the far right and the moderate left, is that both Trump and Biden are twins when it comes to American welfare and workers. These come first. So on this level, bitter ideological enemies like Democrats and Republicans are two peas in a pod, left and right together. It will further weaken the free trade system that the United States built and maintained after the war, after World War II. Ha-ha. Almost done. So my beloved Pierre Esner, who would not be off the mark with these dialectics, one hand, other hand, American grand strategy has never followed a straight line. The cycles of reassertion and retrenchment are as American as apple pie. Entanglement starts right away in the revolution with the French alliance. Once that was over, America retracts into isolationism. It had much more interesting things to do, namely to conquer a whole continent without entangling with great powers. So that's because of these generations. Only fools would make predictions. Plus, a Western alliance as a whole that may be tiring, maybe, maybe, of the war. But the good thing about Biden, I'll conclude with that, though he has an ideal log on domestic politics, he does understand how the world has changed from unipolarity under Bush to this two-and-a-half power world today, America, Russia, China. It is a fierce competition with power, both military and economic, as hardest currencies. Biden's mentor, Obama, didn't quite fathom these arising dynamics. So last point. On balance, I think Biden has performed better than all of his three predecessors. Now, the new name of the game is a balance of power restored, the containment of the revisionist trio, China, Russia, and Iran. Not Gulliver Unbound, as I said before, but Gulliver in the service of world order. In this new epoch, we are talking about a long haul, longer than the next two years, obviously. But my best news, I'll conclude with those. Because of what I just said, we'll have lots to talk about over the next five of these conferences. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. I'm not sure that Biden would like being known as P in the pod with Donald Trump, but you don't know. Hey, that's a journalistic life. Right. I'd like to turn now and go back to the United States. Jean-Claude Ruffa, who's in fact embedded in the United States and a longtime observer of American foreign policy and domestic policy. Jean-Claude? Yes, good afternoon. Good morning for me. And delighted to be able to speak to you today and to listen to some of the panelists who expressed themselves before me. I'm sorry I couldn't be in Abu Dhabi, but I'm glad at least I can spend some time with you. Let me stop by talking about the midterm election. You've heard my democratic friends on the panel talking about the fact that it was really not what you were expecting, that effectively surge or wave or tsunami of the public and what affected. The reality is that things are not exactly the way it's been described. If you look at states like Florida, where Governor Cassantis was re-elected with a margin of 20% when he was barely elected the last election, when you look at Texas, when you look at Georgia, effectively as one of the panelists said, you said, this is not a defeat for our equipment. It's a defeat for Trump. And that's quite obvious. Even in my state of New York, the Republicans made significant progress. And we were discussing that with him a couple of days ago. So the midterm election, yes, we have a slight majority of Republicans in the House. We have a slight majority of Democrats in the Senate. Now, what's the impact on foreign policy? I'm not going to make predictions. I'm simply going to state two things which, to me, get the result of the election. Number one, and that's two, particularly the Russia-Ukraine configuration, the United States has largely benefited from this conflict. Through the United States and the foreign policy of the Biden administration, I've been to support the Zelensky administration from the very beginning with massive financial and military aid. But the US have largely benefited from it for a variety of reasons. Number one, and thanks largely to the last administration, the US are practically energy independent. And they are exporting LNP to Europe, as you know. And they are benefiting from that. So this is one aspect. The net effect of that is also to attract investors to the United States. Some European companies have already shifted several operations from Europe to the US to benefit from the subsidies and benefit from the tax incentives that the Biden administration is granting to those that are operating in the United States. And this is part of the so-called inflation reduction app, which I agree with the other panel. It's not really a reduction of inflation, but it's purely another form of protection. And that's benefiting not just the US. It's also benefiting our partners in North America, like Canada and Mexico. So this is another aspect of this benefit to the US. Also the fact that the contribution to defense that was a request of the previous administration, whether it's the Obama administration, the Trump administration, and the Biden administration, has now taken effect in Europe, where several countries have announced that they will increase their defense spending, starting with Germany. But the benefit also for the US is that they are not spending by buying or European equipment from France or forming your venture or lines. They're buying F-35 from the US. So that's another benefit from the US. NATO, which was questioned by the previous administrations, also is now threatened by the inclusion of Sweden and Finland, which would have been unthinkable if we hadn't had the configuration in Ukraine. So we are in a situation where effectively the US has quickly benefited from. This is, in a way, a part of, but this is the reality. Second aspect, second point that I would like to discuss a little bit, is the fact that there might be changes in the foreign policy, simply because there is a change of control in the House of Representatives. As you know, the House of Representatives has the power of the purse, what we call the power of the purse. They control finance. So if they want to pass legislation, if the administration wants to get more money, he has to get it from Congress. And Congress starts with the House of Representatives. Without a majority in the House of Representatives, money won't be spent, money won't be at the right. So I have to remind you that there is a tradition in the United States of Isolationism. It started many years ago, and it's still alive. One has one on the left and one on the right. It's not just one side. You have a traditional part of the Republican or the libertarian leaning part of the Republican Party, represented by somebody like Senator Rand Paul, who's, for example, has been all along, opposed to intervention in Afghanistan, but also intervention to a large extent in Ukraine. And he was one of the few in the Senate who opposed the $40 billion that was proposed in May this year. And his argument was that we shouldn't spend money that we don't have. And we should spend this money if we can get it on domestic issues instead of spending it far away from home without any direct benefit for the security of the United States and its inhabitants. And his argument was that we spend money that we don't have, and we borrow it from China. One word on this, because there is a lot of misconception about the impact of the Chinese involvement in the United States. As you know, the United States has 31 billion of debt. And 6 or 7 billion is really held by government agencies, the Social Security, the Federal Reserve System. The rest, 24 billion, more or less a trillion, sorry, is held by the public. And the part of it is held by foreign. And the percentage of foreign debt, the public debt of the United States held by foreigners is much less, for example, than in France. In France, it's well over 50% owned by foreigners. In the United States, it's barely 30%. And the Chinese represent less than 1 billion now. Contrary to what many people think, the Chinese are the largest foreign holder of the United States debt. This is the Japanese now with 1.3 trillion. So we are not that dependent from China. And this is something that has to be taken into account when we discuss the overall relationship. I'm not going to spend any time talking about China. I know people have talked about it and some of the panelists have. So my, also on the foreign policy, you remember when Biden was elected, he said that I will have a 0.40c for the middle class. I never really understood what he meant by that. But some of you may have a better explanation. Effectively, there's not been so far very many changes. Of course, there's been more emphasis on human rights. There was this meeting, first meeting, the Chinese in Alaska, which was a disaster. There was the pullback from Afghanistan. Personally, I support the pullback from Afghanistan. I simply consider it was done in a dreadful way. And there are many people who feel that it could have been handled in a much better way. That has an impact because the confidence of some of the allies in the United States has been severely weakened, by the way, the Biden administration managed to pull back from Afghanistan. And that has certainly an impact on the position of China, the Taiwan. So the Biden administration, basically they will support Taiwan and they will defend Taiwan. But there's still a question of, how is that going to be implemented if God forbid China fight in the Taiwan? I'm not going to spend more time. I think I've probably even used most of it. I just wanted to give you this sort of balance view that the US has benefited from the Ukraine-Russian war and at the same time, we are entering a period of three years that's a little bit more challenging and where we might see the impact of these divided governments that ultimately is the characteristic of the US. Thank you very much, Jean-Claude. And those are interesting comments, especially about the debt, I had no idea. And now we turn to the hall here with Renault Girard from Figaro, no stranger to these conferences. Renault, your president just spent three days in the United States, did he unlock the secrets of American foreign policy? So indeed, I'm going to express the point of view of a French-speaking European on how I see this foreign-American policy, at least on the next two years. And I'm going to express myself in French, which is an old European-diplomatic language, as well as in Europe. In the end, there are only four million Irish people who speak English, because the British are no longer members of the European Union, so I'm going to express myself in this old European language, the old diplomatic language that was spoken to the French-speaking Frederick de Prusse. So how do I say qualify this foreign-American policy? Well, I think it can be for them, for the Americans, to enlarge the fruits of the divine surprise, to enlarge the presidential gift, to enlarge the fruits of the divine surprise. You remember that during our last conference, which was in Abu Dhabi, the American influence was at the lowest in Europe. The Europeans wanted a lot for their management of Afghanistan, which I was part of in a calm manner, while the Americans had applied at the beginning of the Afghan deal, the Europeans. The Europeans remembered the Supremes crisis, and the Supremes crisis had left traces of 2008-2009, where, roughly speaking, the Europeans had paid a higher price to the Americans on the Supremes crisis, while they had strictly nothing to do in the engineering of this crisis, which was a crisis where the Americans decided to do social housing by spending money on banks. It was a rather subdued idea for a European, but it was still the idea, and certainly the European banks had the naivety to buy their products derived from the Americans, but the consequences were much stronger in Europe than they were in the United States, and the United States did not at all propose to help Europe to compensate for the damage caused by the American financial system in Europe. They repeated what the Secretary of State, Connolly, said when they had unilaterally broken the international financial order they had created in Bretton, I am talking about Nixon's decision on 15 August 1971 to abolish the dollar's convertibility. Connolly said, the dollar is our currency, it is your problem, and the Americans, on the financial crisis, said to us, Wall Street is our financial system, and it is your problem. So we had this, and finally, the Europeans remembered the calamity intervention of the American invasion in Iraq, in which, by the way, France and Germany were opposing. So the American influence was at the lowest, a diplomatic and military political influence. We even saw Germany disobeying, for the first time in America, in continuing its project of North Stream 2 gas pipeline, and Joe Biden, by the way, had finally ceded and in Geneva in June 2021, during his summit with Putin, he had given his blessing to North Stream 2. So things, last year, in October, last year, were quite bad for the American influence in Europe. And then this divine surprise emerged. The divine surprise is that Putin made the biggest, the biggest strategic error in the contemporary history of Russia, we don't know what to talk about today, but above all, what was not planned, the divine surprise, was that the Ukrainians resist so well, because finally, the Americans didn't think that the Ukrainians would resist, that's why they had publicly offered to the island, the island, as they had offered in general to kill Vietnam, the island of Zelensky in the United States. And so, divine surprise for us Americans, who for once before the resistance that we have armed, that we have formed, who resist, who are not like the South Vietnamese, who kill against the Vietnamese, who are not like the Iraqis of Maliki against Daesh, who are not like the Afghan Afghani against the Taliban. The type that we have formed, that we have armed, but who resist. What a divine surprise. And in fact, we Americans do not realize that we have underestimated the strength of the Russians and underestimated our own qualities, that is to say the quality of the training that we have given and the weapons that we have given, the belonging of the weapons, the famous Javelins that we have given to the Ukrainians and also especially the quality of our cyber offensive, that is to say that from 2014, the Russians began to attack the Americans in cyber attacks, but there will be a great American counter-offensive and this American counter-offensive in cyber will give the fact that the Americans, in fact, managed to penetrate all the important computers in Russia, including those of the general state Russia, which allows them to give, hour after hour, the plans of the Russian general state to their Ukrainian allies. So, in February, March 2022, so the Americans realize that all Europe panics, Sweden and Finland want to precipitate in NATO. Germany is doing its best to prevent us from being naive to rest on the Russian gas and change of policy at 180 degrees. In Madrid, we have the meeting of NATO and we are going to make a Europe that is completely now otanized. We obviously forget the initiatives or the French principles of European strategic autonomy or European defense. By the way, the Germans are making a plan of 100 billion investments. It is not a question of buying European weapons, it is only American weapons. And when Schultz made a speech in Prague on European defense, he did not even mention France. And he talked about a shield that he wanted to consider a kind of anti-missile shield, but without even associating, without even talking, efforts of the French and Italian people in such an anti-missile shield. So, we completely forget the strategic autonomy. So, what will be the policy now that Europe is going to solidify? What will be the policy of the Suzerain? And I will conclude on that. So, the American Suzerain will continue to sell his weapons. He will consolidate the Paris-Berlin-Varsevi-Kiev Axe, which was already in the book of Brzezinski, The Great Exchequer, when Brzezinski foretold to completely exclude the Russia from the European space. He said that it was necessary to build this Axe. He is now completely under American influence. When we come back to the Polonaise, to be the slaves of the Americans, he says, it is for our interest. And besides, the Polonaise are not so much the slaves of the Americans, because they themselves, because of the Polonaise communities in the United States, influence the foreign policy of America. So, France, in the next few years, what can it do? Will it still be the village of Asterix, which is resistant to European vassalization? I don't think France has the slightest chance of playing this role. All European leaders dream of playing de Gaulle, that is to say, to show themselves independent and to have at the end, Nixon, who has just beaten them up, as he came at the end of January 1969 in Paris. Macron has no chance to play this role, to be the Asterix European, for three reasons. First, he will never be able to convince the Europeans. Why? Because he got angry with a large part of the Europeans by giving lessons. He gave lessons, you remember, to the Polonaise, to Hungary, to the Italians, etc. And the others said, we don't accept your lessons. And besides, Macron was talking about the famous death of Lothian, so there he is really not followed by his European allies. And finally, and this is my last sentence, it will be on you, Jim, and finally, France is no longer respected by Germany because it has not respected its own obligations, especially financial ones, in the face of the euro. These public finances are in an unimaginable chaos. And so, the Germans don't learn it as a serious partner. And I think that this is something that we have forgotten, and that has to be forgotten. So, again, I ask you a question about Emmanuel Macron in the United States who wants to make a great foreign policy. But in fact, he has the intelligence to make foreign policy. He has the ideas, but he forgot that a foreign policy could not work if you did not have the order at home. Well, thank you for expanding the panel here to Macron's foreign policy, as well as Joe Biden's, and creating a couple of new words for my French vocabulary, like vassalization. In any case, I think what you're saying is a bit what John Claude was saying from New York, and that is that basically, I think it's important that we have a very clear understanding of what is happening in the United States and a bit what John Claude was saying from New York, and that is that basically the Americans have won a number of things with the war in Ukraine, even if they don't particularly like to think of it that way. I wonder if, Stu, do you think the Americans feel like they're winning in the Ukraine because the Ukrainians are winning? Yes, I think we are showing real solidarity, but I want to say this more broadly. Biden has really in two years totally changed Trump's foreign policy. He's reinvigorated the NATO alliance. He's reinvigorated the U.S.-European Union relationship. He has reengaged in a very serious way on the climate change negotiations. He has dropped the Section 232 national security sanctions against European steel and aluminum. He has begun to reengage not as much as I would like, but certainly begun to reengage with Asia through the new trade arrangement. He made a visit to Saudi Arabia, so I think we're going to see more of that, and the Ukraine situation will be a real test because the Europeans are going to want to cut a deal with Russia, and Biden will be against that unless Zelensky agrees to it. But I think the long and the short of it is that Biden has reengaged with the world, and I think in the next two years, particularly because his domestic agenda will go nowhere with the Republicans controlling one of the two houses, he will be even more of a foreign policy president and will reengage even to a greater degree with the world. And I think that's to the benefit of all the democracies. He feels very strongly about supporting democracies against autocracies, and I think that will remain a centerpiece of his foreign policy as well engagement on climate change. Okay, I think I'd like to get some questions from the hall here. We've got a number of spectators who would probably be curious to ask a few questions. Anybody have a question out there? It's dead silence. I guess we've answered all the questions on... This one. Okay, right here, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mr... Could... Right here. Right here. My micropos, Monsieur Quentin Nugy. Hey. No, it's not a question, it's just a comment because I wouldn't want foreign... I mean, non-French friends to think that Renaud Girard's position represents the position of France, of the position of other, or let alone of Europe. I think it's his position. And I certainly do not share it, and I just wouldn't want people to think that this is a position of France. I don't think it is. So not everybody has an idea. No, no. Obviously, I'm going to answer to my friend Renaud. No, obviously, it's a personal opinion. That's why we organize these conferences, that's why everyone expresses themselves on opinions. But I think that... We must take the facts as they are. The vassalization I'm talking about is a voluntary vassalization. A voluntary vassalization. A completely voluntary vassalization. It's not that the US is not going to use the coercion against England in 1956 on Sweden. The US is not going to use the insult or the threat as it did against France on Iraq saying that we are going to punish France, forget Russia and forgive Germany. No. It's a fact. This vassalization is a fact. It's assumed. It's voluntary. Is it going to be bad for France? I think that Macron will get, I think that there will be no American attack against the big French companies, whether it's Airbus, as it was in the past, Orano, Total, etc. I don't think so. I think that the extra-territoriality of the American right will remain. It's like an extremely strong instrument. But I think that on lira, for example, because you asked the question of Macron's visit to the United States, I think Macron asked for waivers. It's a derogation that the US President can give to a law. And I think that there will be an American benevolence. And I think that Biden was sincere when he said that he would agree with the waivers. And I think that if France or other European payers ask for waivers on the IRA, I think they will get them. But my question is very simple. The American situation in Europe is still 100 times more favorable to the Americans. The influence is 100 times more important today than it was last October during the last World Policy Conference. Joe, you want to say? If there's no question from the audience, I would like to ask my French colleague what are you trying to tell us? Who, first of all, who is the enemy? Is the enemy Russia or is the enemy the United States? Is the America's influence going down or is it going up? It seems like if somebody, as we've heard from Stu Eisenstein, somebody is re-engaging in Europe in a systematic way and shelling out what will be close to 100 billion dollars to Ukraine. Is that a slide? 100 billion dollars. Well, there have been 54 so far, plus another 40. Whatever. That's not quibble. It's 900. What is your complaint about the United States, exactly? Do you want to go back to 1958 and, Mr. de Gaulle, do you see any chance that another de Gaulle will unify Europe on the French or German or Franco-German, Suzerainty? What are we supposed to, concretely, what are we supposed to do in Ukraine at this point? Ok, I will answer you very clearly. First, I made a tribute to the American clairvoyance very clearly in my conference by saying that they even underestimated their success in terms of information, intelligence, which they didn't have on the direct war, and in terms of the formation of the Ukrainian forces. That's the first thing. Second, I talked about a strategic error, the most serious strategic error in the history of Russia. I think that, I said it clearly, but my conference is not on Russia. So, is it an attack that violates all international laws? The answer is yes. Are the Europeans of the East right to be afraid of success again? The answer is yes. Third, do Americans provoke this war? The answer is no, because I talked about the interview of John Ev in June 2021 where Biden made this important gift to Putin from Nord Stream 2. So I didn't think about it. The Americans sent William Burns who went to the Patrushev office in Moscow. They talked about it on the screen with Putin. William Burns spoke Russian. He openly warned the Russians not to do this nonsense. There, it's certain. Do I criticize Sweden? Do I criticize Sweden and Finland to have time? No, I would have been Sweden or Finland. I would have done exactly the same thing. What I'm saying is that there have been many European strategic autonomy that was expressed by President Macron. There have been many French-German values that resist the extraterritoriality of American law, that is to say, when the BNP finances the export of underground oil, it is condemned to 9 billion dollars, whereas Goldman Sachs is not condemned when Goldman Sachs helps the Greek government to make his public accounts to enter the euro zone. Of course, this is the state of the vassalization. Do I think that President Macron was right to go to Kiev and deliver weapons to Ukraine? The answer is yes, because we cannot accept on the European soil, certainly not on the European soil, an aggression like this one. And the authority to grant waivers on the inflation reduction act. I was in New York discussing with the French ambassador to the US who was part of the delegation of the Macron visit, and he told me that they had the session with Congress where this point was discussed, and he felt, and I'm just quoting the French ambassador, he felt that there was little interest in granting specific waivers to countries that wouldn't be part of a more broader type of agreement. So I'm a little bit suspicious on this one, which Rono is right, but I'm not quite sure whether this is something that's legally possible. Could the administration do it without Congress? That's one. Particularly, and I don't think it's going to happen during what we call the lambda session between now and beginning of January, and I think the House of Representatives with a majority of Republicans is probably less inclined to grant this type of waiver. That's the point I wanted to... Okay, Jean-Claude, I just want to get over to a colleague over here who's been ahead of his hand up for a long time. Yes, sir, what's your question? Well, my name is Im Sung-Joon, former Korean ambassador. Well, we have to remember that there is a very dangerous geostrategic flashpoint that is the Korean Peninsula. North Korean... Well, somebody talked about Kim Jong-un, and this year he fired... He launched, I mean, the biggest number of missiles, including ICBMs. Recently, he sent out a picture with his daughter, besides the Hwaseong-17 ICBM. They think that is the most advanced weapon in the world. And, well, since Biden became the president, we expected, I mean, some positive policy to reduce the tension on the Korean Peninsula. But many people in South Korea think that he doesn't pay the attention as much as he should pay. So what do you think, I mean, Biden should do to reduce the tension and prevent the recurrence of hostilities on the Korean Peninsula? Let's turn to our Washington insider here. Stu, what do you think? Is there going to be any change of U.S. policy on North Korea? I don't think so. I mean, obviously the policy that Trump proposed of meeting with Mr. Kim with no preconditions and no preparation was not successful, number one. Number two, our leverage with China, which is the main lever we have against North Korea, has evaporated because of the poor relationship with China. And it's one of the reasons I think we need to have a modicum of better relations. And so there really is very little that the administration sees that it can do with Mr. Kim. I think that it is important that President Biden in the second half of his first term go to South Korea, go to the DMZ, make it clear that he's willing to re-engage with Mr. Kim to reduce tensions, do the same with Japan as well, and try to re-engage with China on this issue. But Mr. Kim sees launching missiles as the only way to gain attention. He's got a collapsing economy. And this is his only way. So I think there's very little room for leverage about the United States, but we should certainly try again, and I think and hope that the President will do so by a major visit to South Korea. Thank you very much, Stu. And thank you, Paddle. I think we've got to now end it right here because we have the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia who has arrived. And if you're confused about American foreign policy, I just remind you about it, a foreign policy concept that's as old as Richelieu, and that is constructive ambiguity. So maybe it's just a little ambiguity on the Americans part. Thank you very much, all.