Julianne Smith works in Brussels, Belgium, and she recently had some visitors like it out from California. Some Hollywood screenwriters who came out to get some ideas by watching her do her job at NATO.

And in an all honesty, you struggle to tell that story because who wants to hear about a four hour negotiation where you saved the day and got everybody to sign up to do something really innovative to counter what Russia's trying to throw at us right now in Europe.

Smith is the U.S. ambassador to NATO, aka the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. I wanted to talk to her because right now, between Russia's war with Ukraine and Israel's war with Hamas, it feels like we're seeing the limits of diplomacy that the carousel of long debates, sanctions, proclamations, symbolic votes. Well, they don't seem to be doing much for people on the ground.

It's just people think of it, think of diplomacy when there's a headline: diplomacy to Fix Gaza. Right. This is the challenge. They see troops deploying. They see an aircraft carrier. It's enormously difficult to convey what a diplomat does and the tools you use and whether or not it's effective, in part because when you are effective, nobody knows about it.

So today, one of the country's top diplomats, U.S. ambassador to NATO, about what she thinks of the state of U.S. diplomacy in its dealings with Russia, Israel, China, whether Trump change NATO for the better, and what it looks like when diplomacy works and when it doesn't. I'm Audie Cornish, and this is The Assignment.

North Korean leader Kim Jong UN rolled out the red carpet for Putin with a grand slam.

The morning we met for our interview, the news broke that Russia and North Korea were celebrating a NATO style deal, complete with parades and flag waving children.

After the pomp and circumstance, it was down to business. The two signed a partnership pact that replaces several previous agreements. Putin says the deal includes a mutual defense provision, and.

The pact apparently contains a clause like NATO's article five. The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, said it would provide mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties in the pact.

I can't say that I had this down on my list, to be launched this, day in history. But I will say that the NATO allies have been watching very closely the evolving relationship between the DPRK and Russia. We've obviously been concerned by the fact that the DPRK has been providing munitions to Russia for its war in Ukraine. We've watched closely also other countries, the PRC, its provision of dual use components, and we can get to that later.

Yes. I'm going to translate though.

Yes.

What you're saying is you've been watching China and North Korea get closer to Russia as it needs more weapons for its war in Ukraine. Did I translate that?

You translated it perfectly.

I might do more translation, unless you want to bring it down a notch.

Okay, I will bring it down a notch.

Ambassador Smith has always been a bit of a policy wonk. So this is how she talks most of the time. As a kid, she did a summer on a farm with a family in France. As a college student, she was in Paris in 1989, when the Peaceful Revolution led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, a dramatic moment in diplomacy that contributed to the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe and signaled the end of the Cold War.

This just ended the newsroom. Associated press is reporting that East Germany has thrown all of its borders open to its citizens.

She called home and told her parents she would be dropping her plans to study French full time, and would move to Germany.

I saw the footage, you know, we were just glued to the television, watching people cross borders, talking, hugging with each other, chipping pieces of the wall. I mean, it did feel transformative in that moment, no question. And the people of France felt that, I mean, being in Europe when it was happening helped me, I think, appreciate how transformative it actually was, but it had a major impact on me. And of course, at that point I really thought I was going to be a journalist. I thought I was going to be the person reporting on things like that, reporting on policy. And, I eventually decided I wanted to help shape policy and be at the table. And it was kind of from there over the next couple of years that I started to kind of have a deeper sense of what I wanted to do as a profession. But where were you when the wall fell?

Oh my God. I mean, I was very little. It's extremely little. But like everyone, you know, you're just watching it on TV and you're like, something is happening.

Happening, right? Yeah.

And I think the reason why I'm asking you this is because that something was happening not through violent means. No, you were watching something that somehow had been delivered to the world through diplomacy. But I don't think people really know what diplomacy means. There's just a do you know what I'm saying? Like, there's a big sense of, like, talking.

Yes. And cocktail parties.

Yeah. And talking feels like it doesn't work. Right. As people look at the the state of the world today. So when did you first encounter something and maybe that was it that that introduced you to that concept of diplomacy?

Well, I, I don't know if I had diplomacy per se in mind. I had policy, I wanted to be at the table where my government was shaping and making decisions on national security.

But I hear you talk focusing on the decisions. Yeah. So being in the room where it happens and talking and hashing it out. Is that the diplomacy?

That's the diplomacy that is diplomacy, that's policymaking. There are different words for it. Diplomacy for right now, for me, means sitting at a table with 31 other countries and trying to reach consensus. Everything we do in the NATO alliance has to be agreed by 32 allies. You can imagine how hard that is.

'Well it's own hand-to-hand combat. It is like it is personality driven in a strange way.

Completely personalities are everything, and they can make or break the relationship in the room. If you do not fundamentally understand the other person's point of view, you cannot communicate with them. You can't reach agreement. You can't reach a compromise. If they shut down and walk away and storm out of the room. It's very hard to broker some sort of agreement, but the art of diplomacy is about sitting and listening and understanding and reaching compromise and avoiding a situation where it boils over into some sort of conflict.

Meaning when the other departments have to pick up the slack.

Exactly.

When the Pentagon and the Defense Departments get involved.

Right, or it's a trade dispute or it has a different feel to it, it doesn't have to be military, but you can escalate up a ladder through different government agencies. But I totally agree with you. I think a lot of people don't understand what the art of diplomacy is, why it matters why we have a State Department.

But we use the word diplomatic. Yeah. When when we're indicating that someone is speaking in a way that's so careful, they don't admit to the things that go wrong.

Well, look, there is an art form to the art of diplomacy. And, there's a certain protocol. There are certain traditions. There are ways in which you handle yourself when you're sitting, for example, at the table with all of the allies, whether you're doing that inside NATO or doing it at the United Nations. You do not come in and attack another country. And in the middle of the session, I mean, there is a way to conduct yourself in these negotiations. You have to be diplomatic. There is a need for that in order to come in day after day after day. And there are days where you're not going to agree and days where you are. But I think if you came in and blew up every engagement that you had, your ability to shape the environment and shape policy diminishes. It doesn't mean you have to sit on your hands and just say niceties. But there is an art to this. Negotiating with the other side, whether it's an adversary or whether it's a group of allies, does take skill, and it comes with experience, and it comes with leadership, and it comes with the direction that you get from the people that you're working for.

Who taught you how to do that? Who taught you that art? Who? Who did you really sit next to and think, oh, that's how you say this, and I'm bringing it up. Because when I was a young journalist, I sat at the pitch table and for many, many months, not a single one of my pitches would go through. I would just idea after idea and people couldn't, like, hear them, you know, or a man would say something similar.

Well, that's a whole. Yeah, yeah. You can spend hours on that.

'Exactly. And I would think, oh, like, I need to learn the language of this. There's an art to the way that I must--.

Indeed.

So who did? When did you have that moment where you were like, I need to figure out how to talk in this room?

'Well, there's so many people I could mention, but let me talk about Michèle Flournoy, who served as the undersecretary of defense for policy, essentially the number three job at the Pentagon. When I was there in the first term of the Obama administration, I was 20 layers down below her in an office that handled Europe and NATO. But watching her, how she managed the interagency and that is how do you interact with the white House in the State Department, particularly in cases where you disagree--

Which is quite literally, who do you call? Who do you know can get you in a room when you need to get into a room?

But how do you say it? How do you say it? How do you make your case? How do you find common ground with somebody who sits in a different agency and has different guidance and a different perspective? But it wasn't just how she managed the interagency, it was how she managed our relationship with Afghanistan at the time, how she managed other relationships, Iraq, how she was working with the allies, how she was pushing the allies. So whether it is friend or foe, whether it is someone in your own administration, she had a remarkable knack for walking into the room and almost like a chameleon, changing her approach and understanding where you find common ground, where you push and watching her adapt. I mean, it really fundamentally for me comes down to emotional intelligence. Succeeding in these jobs isn't just about IQ, but you also want to have EQ. The emotional intelligence to read a room and know is today the day I walk in and tell my boss we have a problem? Is today the day I tell the allies we're not with them? Is today the day I'm really going to buck the system and really go after a particular adversary in a heated negotiation? Or am I taking a different tact and watching her navigate all of that from where I sat in the Pentagon was incredibly instructive, but I could go on and on. I worked for Tony Blinken at the White House. I worked for Jake Sullivan. They each have their own toolkit and strengths in terms of managing both the external world and internal U.S. government, and just time and time again, observing them while. Watching them succeed or fail in some cases, and learning from that was hugely instructive to me. And lastly, I worked for different principals. So I worked for Robert Gates, who was the first secretary of defense under Obama. But I also worked for Leon Panetta, a very different secretary of defense. Also under Obama, two very different individuals, different worldviews, different styles of leadership, different ways of digesting information, different preferences, and how you brief them. And for me, as a younger foreign policy official in the Obama administration, quickly adjusting to staffing Robert Gates versus staffing, Leon Panetta also was a very useful and helpful experience. I learned from both of them. I had to pivot, change the way in which I staffed both of them. An incredibly rich experience for me to watch two very different leaders take charge at the Pentagon and manage a whole set of complex issues. So for me, those were the formative years. That was my first turn in government, was serving in the Pentagon from '09 to '12, and I just felt like each and every day I walked into the Pentagon, it was another life lesson for me on how to succeed in government.

I don't know what your personality was like if you're a reserved person, etc., but what did you find was useful about your personality and what did you find less useful about your personality?

A couple of things. So, I consider myself to be a pretty clear communicator and have, the ability to absorb large amounts of information. But I also feel like I'm someone who likes to get things done. I like to move quickly. And what you have to understand in government, number one rule.

Nothing moves quickly?

Nothing moves quickly. It's not overnight. And there's a hierarchy. And there is a way in which information flows up and down. There's a paper trail at every turn.

Are you impatient?

I get impatient, yes, I think that's absolutely right. And so, coming in from the think tank world, which is kind of free to be you and me, and everybody has the best idea. And you write and write and speak on whatever you are.

Where you're just like, if only they would do this, this and that. Done. Period. White paper.

Like I have a brilliant idea. Yeah. And then moving to government where, you know, again, you're 20 layers deep and the brilliant paper that you think you've written may never see the light of day. And it'll be cleared by 45 people on a very formal clearance checklist. And it is a it's a completely different experience. And so I love both. I love having my own voice and being on the outside. I love contributing to the government's policies and shaping ideas. Both have pluses and minuses, but I think I've tried hard to learn the difference between being in government and being out of government, and in control of your own voice and understanding that in government you're part of a bigger chorus of voices and that you are representing the president. And it's a very, two very different sets of challenges.

What do you wish you knew that you know now?

Oh, gosh. I think I as a younger person. So I, I started my career outside of government in think tanks. And so I started with this very idealistic, view of what was possible and what wasn't. So I was always shooting the moon, I think, and a lot of what I was producing, and I think what I didn't appreciate at the time was that you need government service to make the work you're doing on the outside be relevant and achievable. Like you can't realize some of the ideas you have on the outside. If you've never been in to see how the sausage is actually made. And so I think if I had to do it all over again, I think I would have tried to get into government earlier. I was quite content and I think the work I was doing on the outside would have been stronger had I served in government earlier. I guess that would be my answer.

I'm talking with NATO Ambassador Julianne Smith. Coming up, Trumps influence on NATO. We'll have more in a minute. This is The Assignment. I'm talking with the U.S. ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith. We've talked about the effect of personality. We've talked about sort of how government bureaucracies really work. It feels like Donald Trump was uniquely positioned to act in opposite of the things you've described. Right? There's a famous photo of him with his crossed arms with world leaders standing around him. But there are also ways that in do you think that he woke up NATO, that he forced a conversation, which is what's the point of view? How should this work? How much money should you be putting in? What should the U.S. be doing? Like, do you look back on that now and say, yeah, maybe those questions needed to have been asked.

Well, I don't really see it that way. I mean, he had a unique style in challenging the allies and threatening things that had never been put on the table. So he did talk about the fact that the U.S. would reconsider remember when we talked about article five at the top.

But in tenor and tone, it was not diplomatic the way you just described your life's work.

Right. So that's what I'm saying. But the message I just think what I want to say here, for the record, is that since the 1980s, presidents of all political stripes have been saying to our friends in Europe, you have to step up and do more. And it was in the Obama administration in 2014, when allies all committed to spend 2% of GDP on defense. And there there's an amazing story. And I will credit Obama, Trump and Biden for carrying through over the last decade. You know, when they made that pledge ten years ago, we had three countries spending 2% of GDP on defense. And as you heard the President say this week, we're now at 23 allies. And I think all three presidents, in their own way, pushed allies to step up and do more. But let's be clear, there's another actor in this, and that's President Putin certainly captured everyone's attention first and foremost in 2014 when he went into Crimea. And then obviously in 2022, when he went to Ukraine again.

So the return of Russia as a threat. You think is also what boost these countries into spending more?

No doubt, no doubt. Multiple things came into play there.

'I want to talk about American diplomacy and the Israel-hamas War. I know, but.

You know, that's not what I work on at NATO.

No, no, but I it's at the State Department, and I think it's might be in your portfolio if you end up in the position that you're seeking. I'm putting you on the spot. We should say you're nominated to be third in line at the State Department, but it's relevant in that people see the U.S. as having extraordinary leverage over Israel in so many ways, but that they're unable to exert influence or really utilize that leverage. What do you see?

Oh, I, I that's an easier question to answer. I mean, a couple of things on that. So first, I think there is this cartoon version of what the U.S. can do and what kind of leverage it has. It's funny. Let me just step over to the NATO angle one more time. I sometimes have allies in NATO come over and say, well, just tell country X to do Y, you can do that. And I can say, we can try, but we don't have a magic lever. We don't. We're not able to get every country to line up on every issue. This is a democratic alliance. Everybody has a voice and a veto. So let's be clear eyed about that. All that said, the leadership that the U.S. Is providing on Ukraine, but the leadership that the US has provided on Israel, Gaza, I think, is indispensable. Who else is in the region right now? Who else has taken as many trips as Secretary Blinken?

But that's why people are asking, right? They're saying, like you could send the weapons with more conditions, you could push harder for a cease fire using your leverage economically. There's a lot of you could you could you could.

Right.

And and people are starting to question why the U.S. isn't.

But look, we have a ceasefire on the table. We don't have full commitment. It appears that remains to be seen. But we have been working day in and day out on moving towards this ceasefire. And that is a credit to the leadership that the United States has been able to provide. And I really don't see another country right now providing that kind of leadership and serving in that role. So we can argue about some of the imperfections and maybe even get frustrated about how much influence the U.S. can exert in any given moment. But the reality is that the U.S. is driving this right now, and that is demonstrated by the fact that Secretary Blinken has essentially been living in the region since October 7th. He's been back and forth too many times to count, but also many other senior members of the administration. And I think if and when we get to the moment where the cease fire takes root, that will be a credit to the United States and diplomacy, not military force, but a credit to the process of negotiation and diplomacy.

Which, as you learned and as the rest of us are learning, we can be impatient with.

Absolutely. People get enormously impatient, and they don't always appreciate that these processes take time and effort, and it doesn't always go as planned, depending on what the conflict or the crisis is. But we are constantly adjusting, and it remains a top priority for the administration. There's just no doubt in my mind that we're going to keep at it.

You've worked for multiple administrations, as you've mentioned. And I think back to the Donald Trump years where people talked about the idea of America first. What is the Biden Doctrine?

Well, I might be a little bit biased on this front.

No, I want you to be because I don't know, right, I don't

I think what I heard from the president when he was campaigning was a clear commitment to enhance and revitalize a whole latticework of alliances and partnerships around the world. This is one of America's greatest strengths. China and Russia do not have the same lattice work that we do. They don't exert the same influence. They don't have the same set of relationships that we do across every region.

So is it "Cooperation is back, baby?"

'Basically it is. Let's revitalize these partnerships that pay dividends and serve U.S. interests. And that's what I've tried to do at NATO. But that's what other colleagues of mine have done with the quad in the Indo-Pacific. What we've done in multiple regions around the world, investing in these partnerships. You know, it used to be that America looked at the world in two halves, you know, our Atlantic allies and our Pacific allies. And now we have a world in which, you know, next month, when we have this NATO summit for Indo-Pacific countries are coming to the summit. There's no geographic boundaries anymore. We've broken down the silos between America's Atlantic allies and the Pacific allies, and are looking at an array of threats and challenges that now don't have any geographic boundaries. Things like disinformation, like cyber, like economic coercion. So for me, because I'm living it every day, I think it is the president's commitment to invest in these relationships. And if you look at something like the China strategy that was rolled out a few years ago, you know, there's that word in it, align, align, align the United States with partners and allies around the world to take on challenges from the PRC. That's what drives my work at NATO. I think it's what drives the work of many members of the administration, building out that lattice work and fortifying it so that we can deter and prevent and respond to a variety of things that Russia and PRC and North Korea and Iran are throwing at us.

Do you think that you're going to have your fall of the Berlin Wall moment in your capacity now, right as like a grown up diplomat?

I feel like I have had, a pretty remarkable run over the last two years. That's not a reflection on me. That's a reflection on the fact that we've had the first major land war in Europe since World War II. I had no idea that was going to unfold the way it did. I never thought I would have the chance to serve at NATO, coping with a proper land war in Europe that has felt. First and foremost, I mean, it's a tragedy on so many levels.

And involving Russia. It's a bit back to the future.

It feels a little back to the future. But it also feels in the wake of that great tragedy, transformative for the Alliance, because you'll remember, in the early 2000, NATO was an alliance that was, you know, looking out in the world. NATO was talking about expeditionary operations in far away places. Now, what is NATO talking about? NATO's talking about its original mandate, which is deterrence and defense. That's why we created NATO 75 years ago. And so the way I describe it frequently is like almost a coming home for the alliance to the fundamentals. We are now focused like a laser on questions of deterrence and defense in ways we just haven't been for many, many years because of the threat of terrorism and many other areas, that we've been focused on and challenges. So it has been quite a moment when I think about the Berlin Wall, it doesn't have quite the same feel, obviously, but, it does feel like we will look back, at the years of 22, 23, 24 for the NATO alliance as a major turning point for the alliance.

What would baby Julianne, though want? Right? Like, I'm sure she didn't hope to be overseeing a land war.

No, no.

That was supposed to be the end.

No, no. Right. We all thought this was, you know, going to be sweetness and light, from here on out. I mean, obviously, yes. In the early 1990s, after the wall fell and after reunification, we just had a much brighter picture of what the global stage would look like. And tragically, it hasn't unfolded in ways I think many of us imagined. But certainly in those days, the NATO nerd that I was, even the early 1990s, I always was kind of rooting for the NATO alliance. And it is amazing to now be sitting in NATO HQ and to be managing this another turning point in NATO's history.

Even if it means a little more patience.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, Ambassador Smith, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.

Thank you.

And telling us some of your story as well as about some of your work. We really appreciate it.

Happy to do it. It's an honor.

That was the U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO Ambassador Julianne Smith. And that's it for this episode of The Assignment. The assignment is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Isoke Samuel. Our senior producer is Matt Martinez. Dan Dzula is our technical director, and Steve Lichteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio. We also get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Lenny Steinhart, James Andrus, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks, as always to Katie Hinman. I'm Audie Cornish. Thank you for listening.