Washington Free Beacon, 27 June 2016 – Hillary Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan took shots at the Obama administration’s foreign policy during his address at Friday’s Truman National Security Project in Washington, calling for a “more effective American strategy in the Middle East” and criticizing the country’s inability to handle cyber threats and the depletion of respect abroad for the United States.
Sullivan, a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton’s campaign after serving in her State Department from 2011 to 2013, cited Clinton’s San Diego foreign policy speech earlier this month for its repeated allusions to American exceptionalism.

Sullivan said the central components of American foreign policy needed to update the global order to “reflect current realities,” while simultaneously protecting core interest and values. Part of this included a need to “reinforce the foundation of our values.”
He also called for a “rebalance” in the Middle East, citing the threats of the Islamic State and the enforcement of the Iran nuclear deal. The proxy conflict between Iran and the region’s Sunni states is “helping to fuel the instability” there.
“From my perspective, a rebalance is needed in order to set the table for a more effective American strategy in the Middle East, and it goes like this,” he said. “We need to be raising the costs on Iran for its destabilizing behavior, and we need to be raising the confidence of our Sunni partners that the United States is going to be there, and in so doing in raising their confidence, begin to try and draw down some of their more dangerous hedging behavior.
“So raise the costs on Iran, raise the confidence of our Sunni partners, and set the table for a more effective enforcement of both the Iran nuclear deal and our capacity to fight ISIS.”