“It is very, very difficult to pin down where he stands on a lot of these policies,” said Sullivan, who participated in an hour-long foreign policy discussion with former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, at the Asia Society in Manhattan.

“He’ll say on the one hand, the Chinese are eating our lunch, and on the other hand, we have all the leverage in the world to make the Chinese do exactly what we want,” Sullivan said. “On the one hand, we should sit down with the Russians. … on the other hand, if I need to, I’ll just shoot down Russian fighter jets. He says on the one hand, the United States can do whatever it wants, wherever it wants, for whatever purpose it wants. On the other hand, we’re doing too much and we can’t do all that.”