Everywhere he has gone as president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard N. Haass has been requested the identical query: What retains him up at night time? He has had no scarcity of choices through the years — Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, local weather change, worldwide terrorism, meals insecurity, the worldwide pandemic.

But as he steps down after two decades working America’s most storied non-public group targeted on worldwide affairs, Mr. Haass has come to a disturbing conclusion. The most severe hazard to the safety of the world proper now? The menace that prices him sleep? The United States itself.

“It’s us,” he stated ruefully the opposite day.

That was by no means a thought this international strategist would have entertained till just lately. But in his thoughts, the unraveling of the American political system implies that for the primary time in his life the inner menace has surpassed the exterior menace. Instead of being probably the most dependable anchor in a risky world, Mr. Haass stated, the United States has turn into probably the most profound supply of instability and an unsure exemplar of democracy.

“Our domestic political situation is not only one that others don’t want to emulate,” he stated in an interview forward of his final day on the Council on Foreign Relations on Friday. “But I also think that it’s introduced a degree of unpredictability and a lack of reliability that’s really poisonous. For America’s ability to function successfully in the world, I mean, it makes it very hard for our friends to depend on us.”

The challenges at residence have prompted a person who has spent his total profession as a policymaker and pupil of world affairs to show his consideration inward. Mr. Haass just lately printed a e book known as “The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens,” outlining methods Americans may also help heal their very own society, like “Be Informed,” “Remain Civil,” “Put Country First” — all admittedly bromides and but in some way usually elusive as of late. In addition to guide work, he desires to spend a lot of the subsequent chapter of his life selling the instructing of civics.

“My own trajectory has changed,” he noticed throughout a pair of interviews summing up twenty years on the council. “This new book is not something I would have predicted writing five or 10 years ago, but I actually think it’s almost a recasting of American democracy. Now it’s become a national security concern. And that’s different.”

By dint of place in addition to temperament, Mr. Haass, 71, is a member in good standing of the institution that has fallen into disfavor within the period of Donald J. Trump, a voice of the largely bipartisan “realist” consensus that for higher or worse outlined America’s place on the earth for a lot of the three-quarters of a century since World War II. It is a clubby world, after all, one which invariably results in expenses of elitist groupthink and even conspiracy theories. For his closing look as president of the council this previous week, Mr. Haass interviewed Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken onstage and on-line, the twenty seventh secretary of state to look earlier than the council.

“It’s hard to think of anyone who’s done more to make this institution what it is,” Mr. Blinken stated, praising his host.

“I want to thank him for that,” Mr. Haass replied with a smile. “But I’m still going to ask him tough questions.”

A veteran of 4 administrations, one Democrat and three Republican, Mr. Haass has nonetheless transcended the insular world of suppose tank coverage wonks by way of common appearances on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the place in measured however unmistakable phrases he has lamented the political polarization and excesses of recent years and tried to make sense of all of it.

From the set at Rockefeller Plaza in New York, Mr. Haass would head most mornings about 20 blocks north to the council’s Upper East Side headquarters. His comparatively modest-sized fourth-floor workplace seemed precisely like what you’ll think about that the cluttered workplace of the president of the Council on Foreign Relations would seem like, filled with actually 1000’s of books, dozens of globes, stacks of paper, honorary levels from varied universities and images with members of the family, presidents and colleagues from previous administrations.

It will likely be arduous to think about the council with out him. The longest-serving president within the century-old group’s historical past, he takes satisfaction in preserving its place within the firmament whereas growing and diversifying its membership, opening an expanded Washington workplace, specializing in schooling and sustaining a bipartisan strategy, albeit not one which embraces America First Trumpism. He will likely be succeeded by Michael Froman, who was the U.S. commerce consultant below President Barack Obama.

Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, Mr. Haass studied at Oberlin College, the place he made a documentary on the coed response to the Kent State shootings. After graduating in 1973, he grew to become a Rhodes scholar. He labored for Senator Claiborne Pell, Democrat of Rhode Island, on Capitol Hill, the place he met a younger senator named Joe Biden in 1974.

Mr. Haass went on to serve within the Pentagon below President Jimmy Carter, the State Department below President Ronald Reagan and the National Security Council below President George H.W. Bush. Under President George W. Bush, he served as director of coverage planning on the State Department however ultimately left in 2003, disenchanted with the Iraq conflict, which he later known as “a poor choice poorly implemented.”

As a younger man, Mr. Haass opposed the Vietnam War and considered himself as liberal however then grew to become impressed by the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the rise of Margaret Thatcher and the Reagan-Bush imaginative and prescient of American management overseas and restrained authorities at residence. For greater than 40 years, he was a Republican, though he typically voted for Democrats. But by 2020, he renounced the party that had been captured by Mr. Trump and after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and publicly declared himself unaffiliated.

Over the previous century, America has skilled different durations of division and discord — Jim Crow, McCarthyism, Vietnam, civil rights, Watergate. The assassinations and riots and conflict of 1968 usually come to thoughts as a singularly depressing 12 months within the lifetime of the nation. But Mr. Haass sees this second as even worse. “These were not threats to the system, the fabric,” he stated. “That’s why I think this is more significant.”

Mr. Haass, who agreed to fulfill with Mr. Trump in 2015 to advise him on international affairs, simply as he would any presidential candidate, admitted that he misjudged the bombastic actual property developer.

“Where I was dead wrong is I assumed the weight of the office would moderate him or normalize him, whatever word you want to use — that he would be more respectful of traditions and inheritances,” Mr. Haass stated. “And I was wrong on that. If anything, he became more radical. He doubled down.”

The query is whether or not America has modified for the long term. “I should have a nickel,” he stated, “for every non-American, every foreign leader who said to me: I don’t know what’s the norm and what’s the exception anymore. Is the Biden administration a return to the America I took for granted and Trump will be a historical blip? Or is Biden the exception and Trump and Trumpism are the new America?”

After exploring different international locations for a lot of the previous half-century, Mr. Haass is able to discover his personal. Putting his international coverage hat apart for now, he stated he desires to increase the message from his e book and assist refocus the nation on the core values embodied within the Declaration of Independence because the 250th anniversary of the doc approaches three years from now.

For all his worries, he insists he isn’t pessimistic. “When I go around speaking about this topic, people know there’s something wrong with American democracy,” he stated. “They know it’s going on off the rails. And we may not necessarily agree on how to fix it. But there’s a real openness to the conversation.”