Jake Sullivan Navigates a World of Chaos
Shortly after Israel launched its sweeping military operation in Gaza in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, sat down for an hour-long private meeting at the White House with a group of Muslim and Arab-American leaders. They implored the administration to do more to protect Palestinian civilians in the Gaza, as well as the West Bank, where settler violence was escalating.
Sullivan told them the administration supported getting humanitarian aid into Gaza, but was standing behind Israel’s right to defend itself. The meeting did little to assuage the concerns of those present, several of those who attended recounted. “I just didn’t feel like there was a dent made," said James Zogby, a pollster and the president of Arab American Institute in Washington, who attended the meeting.
In wars spanning Afghanistan, Ukraine and now Gaza, Sullivan is the man in the middle, trying to negotiate between allies and enemies, and sometimes among warring U.S. government agencies. Supporters credit him with putting together a Western coalition to respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, preventing a potential second front in the Israel conflict, and ramping up export controls on semiconductors and other cutting-edge technology as part of a blueprint for slowing China’s competitive advantage.
“Every day, I toggle between guns and butter," Sullivan told The Wall Street Journal, describing the guns as the wars in the Middle East and Europe, and the butter as the work with allies to enhance and protect the American economy. Sullivan’s first year in the job was marred by the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, a decision over which he disagreed with the president, people with
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