Elliott Abrams on Public Service, Moral Tradeoffs, and the China Challenge

Elliott Abrams is a veteran American diplomat and lawyer who has served in senior foreign policy roles under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump, and is now a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. From Latin America in the late Cold War to Iran and Venezuela in the 21st century, he has spent decades at the center of debates over how the United States should balance power, principle, and prudence. In this conversation for The Pathway Blog, Abrams reflects on his path into public service, how to navigate moral disagreement inside an administration, why he thinks great-power competition with China will define the coming decades, and what advice he has for students considering a career in foreign affairs.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Getting Started in Foreign Policy
BW: Mr. Abrams, thank you so much for joining me. The Pathway Blog is meant to help students understand careers in foreign affairs, law, and public service by learning from people who’ve done the work. You’ve done that across multiple presidencies and regions—from Latin America during the Cold War to the Middle East in the 21st century. To start, what first drew you into public service? Was foreign policy always the goal, or did your interests evolve?
EA: For me it was always foreign policy. Going back to college, that’s what interested me most, and I was pretty sure I wanted to do something related to Washington and international affairs.
I was lucky to meet Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson and work on his presidential campaign. After law school, I tried practicing law and found it boring. That was the moment I decided, “Okay, I need to get back to what I actually care about.” I got in touch with Senator Jackson, went down to Washington, met with him again, and joined his staff. That’s how it started.

Serving Under Different Presidents
BW: You’ve served across very different administrations. That kind of longevity requires both flexibility and conviction. How do you maintain strategic focus while navigating the ideological shifts from Reagan to Bush to Trump?
EA: The key is understanding that shifts are inevitable. Each president is different, and obviously there will be big changes when power moves between Republicans and Democrats. That’s fine—as long as you know what you believe.
You also have to remember that you’re not the president, and you’re not the secretary of state. You’re advising. You’re going to lose some battles—times when you’re convinced “A” is the right course but your principal picks “B.” That’s part of the job.
Government is a gigantic bureaucracy with lots of compromise. You accept that as the price of having any influence at all. The line I’ve tried to keep is: if a policy decision is fundamentally unconscionable and directly related to what I’m working on, that’s when you have to be prepared to leave. If it’s outside your lane—say you’re working on Iran and Venezuela and you disagree with immigration policy—that’s harder to justify as a reason to resign.

Morality, Realism, and Human Rights
BW: Diplomacy is often portrayed as a game of grand strategy, but it also carries serious moral weight. How do you personally weigh moral imperatives against strategic necessities, especially in regions like the Middle East?
EA: Every official has to decide how much weight to give human rights and democracy promotion compared to other interests—security, economics, diplomacy. A government is not an NGO; trade-offs are inevitable.
Let me give you an example. At the end of Trump’s first term, I was working on Iran. We had the “maximum pressure” campaign. The goal—at least as Trump saw it—was not regime change, but a deal that ended their nuclear program.
I remember thinking: if he wins reelection and we get to a point where sanctions are lifted in exchange for a nuclear deal, that could mean a lot more money for the regime and a kind of normalization with the Islamic Republic. I would have seen that as a serious abandonment of the Iranian people, and I don’t think I could have stayed.
More broadly, you can adopt a very “realpolitik” approach where human rights and democracy are almost irrelevant to your definition of the national interest. That’s essentially Donald Trump’s view—he made it quite clear, for example, in his Riyadh speech. I think that’s a mistake. Americans do care about values. I don’t believe they want a foreign policy that’s indifferent to the oppression of women, the execution of gay people, or stolen elections.
And beyond morality, our association with liberty is itself a strategic asset. Look at countries facing China or Russia—the fact that the United States stands for freedom helps hold alliances together.

Arguing with Kissinger (and Others)
BW: You’ve been compared to Henry Kissinger in the sense that both of you operated at the intersection of realism and moral complexity—and both faced criticism. How do you respond to those critiques? Do they play any role in your decision-making?
EA: I hope the critiques themselves don’t drive decision-making. What should matter is your own judgment about the balance of American interests.
Kissinger and I have disagreed for decades, going back to the Reagan years. We argued a lot about Latin America. His view was that figures like Chile’s military ruler, Augusto Pinochet, were valuable Cold War allies—anti-communist—and that pushing too hard for democracy risked producing something worse, as he believed had happened in Iran under the Shah or Nicaragua under Somoza. Jeanne Kirkpatrick had a version of that argument too.
My view was more conditional. If pressing for human rights and democracy is likely to produce a more repressive, anti-American regime, then don’t do it. But in Chile’s case, I didn’t think that was true. Chile had a long democratic tradition. We knew the democratic opposition leaders; they came to Washington, and I took them to see Secretary Shultz. We had a very good sense of what a post-Pinochet government would look like. So we pushed for elections.
To me, these are prudential judgments. Where I think Kissinger, Nixon, and Trump are wrong is in discounting the value of America’s reputation as a champion of liberty. That’s not just moral vanity—it’s a real source of strength.

The 21st-Century Challenge: China
BW: Looking generationally, what’s one foreign policy challenge you believe my generation will have to approach differently than previous ones?
EA: The big one is China. During the Cold War, we faced a military adversary, the Soviet Union, whose economy was weak and largely disconnected from ours. We traded almost nothing with them.
Now, in the 21st century, we face a major military and intelligence challenge from China and a level of economic interdependence that would have been hard to imagine in the 20th century. We need their supply chains and they need our markets.
That combination—deep economic ties plus strategic rivalry—is something we’re still learning how to handle. And it’s not going away. If you and your fellow students are in government in 2050, you’ll still be dealing with it.

Why Students Should Still Choose Public Service
BW: Many young people today are passionate about global affairs but skeptical of institutions or disillusioned by politics. What would you say to them?
EA: Get involved. It’s not going to get better if principled people opt out.
There are always plenty of people without strong principles who go into government for power or as a springboard to money later on. The only way to counter that is to have better people in the system—both the elected officials and the thousands of appointees every president brings in.
I was fortunate to work with a lot of talented, principled civil servants and young political appointees who really did see government as a period of service before moving on. If people like your peers walk away, nothing will improve about the nature and quality of our government.

Lessons About Luck and Public Life
BW: Is there anything you know now—about leadership, decision-making, or public service—that you wish you’d understood at the start of your career?
EA: Two things.
First, luck is critical. You don’t control who wins elections. Your team may win or lose, and that can determine your entire trajectory. If you don’t get that first or second job, you may never get the third or fourth. You should work hard, write, and prepare—but luck plays an enormous role.
Second, American politics today is in a pretty ugly cycle. The parties attack each other personally in ways they didn’t, say, 25 years ago. People entering public life should expect unfair attacks at some point. That comes with the territory in a way it doesn’t if you stay entirely in the private sector.

Reading Recommendations
BW: You’re clearly well read. If you had to recommend one book or essay to someone who wants to follow a similar path or get involved in government, what would it be?
EA: There isn’t one definitive book, especially since I’ve never worked at the state level. But for understanding the presidency and national security, Peter Rodman’s Presidential Command is excellent—it shows what presidents actually do and how they do it.
I’d also recommend Dean Acheson’s memoir, Present at the Creation, for a sense of what it’s like to help build U.S. foreign policy from inside government in its early postwar years.
BW: Mr. Abrams, thank you again for your time and candor. I know many of our readers hope to enter foreign policy, law, or diplomacy, and they’ll take a lot away from this conversation.
EA: I hope it was useful. Thank you—and good luck.