At the World Economic Forum this month in Davos, Switzerland, Jake Sullivan, the US national security advisor, offered the clearest articulation yet of President Biden’s worldview and made the case for why Biden’s model of governance should remain.

In a room full of global elites from business, government, and technology, at a place commonly associated with sinister conspiracy theories about global government, President Biden’s top foreign policy aide spelled out how this administration sees the world, America’s place in it, and the grave challenges ahead.

“Today,” Sullivan declared, “we’re in the early years of a new era.” There is now both competition between major powers and interdependence of all countries, he said. Though it’s a moment of disruptive change, Sullivan rejected comparisons to the 1930s, the interwar years when economies teetered and fascism made a lunge for democracy’s throat. While our current moment is pivotal, Sullivan argued, we are not doomed to repeat the past. Ours is a dangerous time, but it’s also an opportune time.

After announcing the arrival of this new age, Sullivan noted the steps the Biden administration has taken to sustain both American interests and the world order. Biden rallied the world to assist Ukraine to repel the Russian invasion; he has limited outbound exports of some advanced technologies; he has invested in American infrastructure and in fighting climate change. The administration has been saying, in effect, that the era of small government is over. To succeed in this new era, governments should invest in infrastructure, protect the environment, and include basic labor standards in trade agreements. He also said the American government must never forget the aspirations of ordinary middle-class people. There was something refreshingly Teddy Rooseveltian about the speech, though it should have been delivered in Dearborn and not in Davos.

But there was also much that went unsaid about the chaos unfolding around us. And what was not said in the speech may be as important as what was. I am referring to the consequences of Sullivan’s premises, the multiple crises unfolding today, and the possibility that America will stumble, headfirst, onto the slippery slope of further chaos and even world war.

War can’t be the new normal

I should disclose that I’ve known Jake Sullivan for years. He was my professor and paper supervisor at Yale Law School. He is probably the most important national security advisor to a US president since McGeorge Bundy, who advised John F. Kennedy. Sullivan is tasked with advising the president, managing the national security process, and uniquely for this administration, communicating the president’s views to the world.

At Davos, Sullivan essentially confirmed what I have suspected for some time: that ours is a liminal time, and that the decisions made in the next five and 10 years will define the next century.

Here is where things get murky. Though the Biden administration has tried its best to contain a flammable world, it is not clear to what extent it is succeeding. Vladimir Putin remains steadfast in Ukraine, and absent concrete proposals for peace, that situation could deteriorate further. In Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state is holding an election while the front-runner, Imran Khan, is behind bars — an imprisonment the US has supported. Israel’s war in Gaza goes on and on, as Benjamin Netanyahu tries to save his own political future even if it means draining Biden’s domestic support among young people who abhor the war. In the last weeks, after President Biden struck the Houthi rebels of Yemen in retaliation for their attacks on ships in the Red Sea, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, and Pakistan have all launched tit-for-tat strikes. Is there any larger strategic interest the United States is pursuing in the Middle East or is war meant to be accepted as the new normal? Our moment feels less like 1939 and more like 1914 — or maybe 1924, when societies were fracturing, populists were rising, and far away in Germany, a small-town, far-right Bavarian leader was put on trial in Munich for attempting to overthrow democracy.

Meanwhile, our southern border is at a breaking point. Years of inaction and indecision — whether on having a sensible drug policy or comprehensive immigration legislation — have led to a historic surge in migration. Economic squeezes in Central and South America lead hundreds of thousands to make near-impossible journeys through jungle and danger to get to America. Democrats should have made a deal on immigration years ago; Republicans should not have stoked the flames of racial resentment and could have agreed to a workable solution. If Latin American countries are thriving economically and not mired in poor governance, narco-terror, and climate disaster, that will reduce the need to flee to the United States.

Xi Jinping reigns in China, and while foreign investment in China is down, China eyes Taiwan. Some observers feel it is only a matter of time before that crisis begins. America will need to consider which actions require escalation and which require diplomacy. Kim Jong Un may not have paid much attention to Biden the last three years — North Korea claims to have conducted new nuclear tests. For all of Biden’s talk of deterrence, America’s adversaries seem undeterred.

It is not clear if he has succeeded in securing any of America’s core interests in the world. If Biden is asking the American people to commit themselves to potentially years of more war, he has a duty to say so — and to lay out where this ends. Sullivan articulated some tactics and strategy, but the ultimate vision for American foreign policy in this era was missing.

What is especially worrying is that this country has not had a serious, adult conversation about foreign policy for many years. George W. Bush was (barely) elected in 2000 on a platform that included humility in world affairs. The 9/11 attacks followed, and the necessary war in Afghanistan was accompanied by an irrational war on terror that landed America in Iraq, with no weapons of mass destruction found and new domestic surveillance apparatuses and a weakened justice system.

Exhaustion from war led to the Obama presidency, but even that was contradictory. Obama increased troop numbers in Afghanistan at the behest of the generals while he doubled down on the withdrawal from Iraq. He also helped give America’s military strategy a lighter footprint, operating less with boots on the ground and more with remote drone strikes executed from Langley, Va. The costs and consequences of American foreign policy were artfully hidden from the public. A clear purpose for these wars was never presented.

Ironically enough, the only moment when America’s foreign policy establishment stopped to reflect that they might have gotten things wrong, or that their assumptions were incorrect, was when Donald Trump was elected. He took a wrecking ball to the foreign policy elite that Obama’s deputy national security advisor had once derisively referred to as “the blob.” America’s purpose in the world was suddenly less clear. It is still not clear. Trump brought in America First unilateralism and promises at every rally to bring world peace. Biden has adopted many America First tenets while softening the edges, involving allies, and tethering it to democracy. Yet Biden’s presidency has yielded a world with wars in Ukraine and Gaza and several humanitarian catastrophes.

My fear is that the Biden administration is giving us a repeat of Lyndon Johnson — staffed with the best and brightest lawyers and policymakers, beholden to outdated assumptions, misreading the politics at home, and misunderstanding the Great Power dynamics abroad.

In the Middle East, Sullivan believes Biden’s support for Israel’s approach of making regional deals with Arab Gulf states — a continuation of Jared Kushner’s Abraham Accords — will help bring peace, leaving the Palestinian question for later. He has it backward: The most intractable problem of the Middle East, the statelessness of the Palestinians, for which there is genuine sympathy around the world, was never going to be solved by wealthy Arab Gulf states striking a deal with Israel. Had Biden devoted diplomatic energy to solving the Palestinian-Israeli issue first, normalization — and peace — might have followed. It required first-principles thinking, not trying to do what Trump did but better.

For the last few years — even before he joined the Biden administration — Sullivan has been touting the idea of “foreign policy for the middle class.” It’s a good phrase, but what does it mean exactly? How are middle class interests being served by the United States militarily checking Russia and maintaining a perpetual war posture against a declining power? Is your average Pennsylvanian or New Hampshirite truly safer because of a potential war in the Middle East? Trump is proposing America First, which will extricate the United States, he claims, from cumbersome agreements. He is tapping an old strain of isolationist unilateralism that runs deep in American society and has not yet been countered. What are American interests in this new era, and which ones are worth militarily defending — with the possibility of sending our women and men into battlefields? To what extent can we move from the domain of “great power management” to respectful great power relations in a world where the United States is on good terms with ally and adversary alike? These are among the questions left unanswered.

Viewed from a different angle, the new era that Sullivan has correctly identified begins with a world order that is burning down. China is destined to play a larger role in world affairs, and that relationship will require smarter thinking and diplomacy. Russia fights on in Ukraine and seeks Great Power status in Eastern Europe. Artificial intelligence accelerates without regulation as citizens give ever more control of our lives to private companies with no checks or balances. Climate change continues unabated. A hundred thousand Americans perish from drug overdoses every year, largely through illicit fentanyl. For so many people, this moment — and the decisions to be made — offer choices between life and death.

I agree with Sullivan that we can maintain hope, but we must also have a reason for doing so, with a horizon up ahead that young people can look toward. More of the same, in the same tired language, will not win this battle for democracy and dignity. We are in a violent transitional space where everything is up for grabs, every institution assailed. It may turn out to be a gradual slide toward global catastrophe and war or else an epic triumph: the saving of the planet and the permanent revival of liberal democracy.