You know, what are the constraints and the tradeoffs and the institutional realities that decision makers confront in foreign policy crises or just regular decisions that are less visible to those of us outside of government?

Sure.

So First of all, it's such a pleasure to be here on Power Politics at Tufts University.

I think the biggest institutional constraint – and this is informal.

It's not written into the Constitution or outlined in our set of laws – is that the knowledge of what's possible is very very tightly held that's tightly held at the defense department it's tightly held at cia and it's even tightly held at the state department and that is the core mission of these organizations for the military to fight the war like what military options are possible cia what covertly can be done and then state department how the foreign countries, how the other countries in the region will react, what their impression of them is, will they support such and such a course of action? These organizations don't share them very easily with the White House, with political appointees, with civilian decision makers.

So the most important task in facing a crisis is to get right inside that decision and discussion loop and the analysis group, whatever it is, the joint staff, the combatant command in the Middle East, within the discussions with foreign countries and their heads of state to gather the most relevant tactical knowledge that'll actually help and give real options to the decision makers.

That's by far, that's my number one.

on, on us alliances, as well as, you know, the disengagement of the United States, uh, from, from Europe, the so-called NATO, uh, NATO, uh, 3.0, which is what bridge Colby, the undersecretary for policy calls it.

What jumped out at you?

Well, I think it is interesting that we have now gone to the second major diplomatic beat of the peace deal.

The first was pressure on the Israelis such that if Hamas gives up their hostages and the corpses of the dead hostages, that Israel would not immediately restart the war.

So there had to be a little bit of pressure on the Israelis to create that bridge of trust for that to happen.

The second beat was that once the hostages are turned over and the war is stopped, Hamas ultimately would disarm.

And now you're having discussions about the creation, the dilution of Hamas's authority in the Gaza Strip and some space created to allow the emergence of some kind of other Palestinian authority, which I think is what the Vice President was just talking about.

It is the vice president at this really critical time in the ceasefire.

You know, what got, as you reported, the first deal over the finish line was the president personally weighing in from the top with these different leaders, with Bibi, with Cutter.