President Biden's National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, appeared on CNN on Sunday for his last national TV appearance. Speaking to a friendly Jake Tapper, who never challenged him throughout the interview, Sullivan said, incredibly: "The American people are safer, and the country is better off than we were four years ago."
It was classic "All-hat-no-cattle" Sullivan who conveniently ignored that his candidate, Kamala Harris, received such a drubbing in November that the Democrats will feel it for years. Sullivan went out of his way to insist that the voters chose Trump because of inflation and that, on national security, Americans were better off under Biden.
Here is our fact-based assessment of Sullivan's record, which contradicts his revisionist attempt to portray himself as a national security superhero.
Biden Administration - Afghanistan. Sullivan's primary failure occurred in Afghanistan when America left behind over $80 billion in weapons to the Taliban—the very organization that Washington spent 20 years, trillions of dollars, and sacrificed the lives and limbs of thousands of American soldiers fighting for a lost cause.
Today, Afghanistan faces a complex and dire situation characterized by a profound humanitarian, economic, and human rights crisis under Taliban rule. Over 28 million people, or two-thirds of the population, require humanitarian assistance due to acute food insecurity, with millions facing emergency levels of hunger. Child malnutrition rates are alarmingly high, and there are reports of increased gender-based violence and child marriage due to economic desperation.
Pre-Biden Administration years. Sullivan has been wrong in every foreign policy decision he has made. In February 2013, as then-Vice President Biden's top security aide, he became the Obama administration's point man for Libya, Syria, and Myanmar. The needle has not moved towards improvement in any of the three countries.
Libya is yet to recover from NATO's actions to remove its leader, Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011. Human Rights Watch says Libya has continued to experience mass displacement, dangers caused by newly-laid landmines, and the destruction of critical infrastructure, including healthcare and schools. Foreign fighters are everywhere, pushing Libyans to flee when Europe is in no position to accept more refugees.
Syria embraced Russia as its savior, and America lost its regional influence. It is only in the last month that Damascus fell, marking a significant shift in the Syrian conflict. Sullivan had little to do with these developments, as most of the Western world was surprised by the fast pace of events. Today, America, Turkey, and Israel are attempting to influence the way forward in Damascus, and no one knows the outcome.
Myanmar underwent a coup in 2021 and continues the wholesale displacement of Rohingya Muslims and other minority groups that began in 2017.
Biden Administration—Ukraine. Sullivan will be remembered as the U.S. official who, along with Secretary Antony Blinken and former State Department official Victoria Nuland, brought America closer to nuclear conflict than at any time since JFK's Cuban Missile Crisis.
On November 10, 2021, Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan persuaded President Biden to enter into a strategic security agreement with Ukraine with an entire section devoted to countering Russian aggression that had not yet happened. When Moscow protested that the move was an existential threat to Russia and violated Russia's expectations that Ukraine should remain neutral, Sullivan doubled down, ultimately leading to the invasion in February 2022. The brave Ukrainians repelled the Russians from Kyiv's outskirts but, recognizing the folly of fighting a war with their larger neighbor, were ready to enter into a peace agreement with Russia in Istanbul. Sullivan threw cold water on the idea and urged the Ukrainian President, through former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to abandon peace talks.
In July 2022, we noted how Jake Sullivan, President Biden's National Security Adviser, had committed a $600 billion blunder by steadfastly committing America to a difficult-to-win war in Ukraine. Sullivan, always an uber-confident TV personality, declared subsequently that the United States would respond decisively to any Russian use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine and spelled out to Moscow the "catastrophic consequences" it would face.
On Sunday with Tapper, Sullivan argued that the United States is the moral leader of the Free World, protecting the liberal order that has existed since World War II. He insisted that the West is more united now than ever before, with Finland and Sweden now being members of NATO.
What Sullivan did not concede was the cost to the world to further his Utopian goals. In reality, Russia now controls all of Ukraine's southeast, a mineral-rich region that forms a land bridge connecting mainland Russia to Crimea along the Sea of Azov. The grinding war has killed or wounded hundreds of thousands, propelled a refugee crisis that has displaced more than four and a half million people, and brought us to the brink of a global humanitarian crisis, with people hungry for food, energy, and fertilizer. Thanks to the war, Europe, the hub of the world's green energy movement, is returning to coal. Ukraine continues to lose territory despite receiving over $200 billion in recent American assistance.
Sullivan's mantra has been that Russia has to be punished for interfering in the sovereign choices of another nation and invading its territory, upsetting the rules of the world order. However, most of the world's population rejects this argument.
They point out how NATO has been interfering in Russia's security by expanding the alliance to Russia's very borders. Before 1990, dating back to NATO's founding in 1949, the coalition had 16 nations. After the Cold War ended, NATO expanded steadily and, as of 2025, has 31 members. Russia saw an existential threat in NATO growing to Ukraine, a point which drew sympathy from countries like China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. Besides, these countries saw Western hypocrisy when the West helped engineer regime changes in Kyiv in 2014. As we have noted, America has been interfering in Ukraine since 2007.
Under Sullivan, America's global standing has suffered immensely. In recent weeks, Ukraine has taken the offensive against Russia by invading it with Western weapons. Russia is now dangerously close to a war with NATO.
Meanwhile, in Israel, American hostages are still being held by Hamas. The conflict has drawn widespread attention, with significant regional implications.
Sullivan's leadership has driven Russia and China closer together, repeatedly declaring a "partnership without limits." Saudi Arabia abandoned a 50-year agreement to stick with the dollar for its oil trades and is moving closer to Iran and China. North Korea signed a technology transfer agreement with Russia in return for sending Moscow weapons, mortars, and now soldiers.
No well-meaning and thoughtful future Democratic administration would ever consider bringing Sullivan back to the national defense scene. His failures are so extreme that it is fascinating that he even agreed to appear before the American people on Sunday. A more decent human being would have bowed his head in shame for the havoc he has caused and quietly ridden away into the sunset.
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