China has 'incentives' to 'strike big and early'

thank you so much for your time really appreciate it are you surprised that australia doesn't have a national security strategy well great to be with you aaron it's really a pleasure i mean i it is a little bit uh surprising i will say that you know over the last few years i think australia has been kind of leading the way uh in terms of um you know the focusing on china but also updating its defense strategy so you know i mean i think the americans are probably not not ones to be so critical we haven't released a national security strategy under this administration either but it is important for us all to be clear what we're trying to do in a world that's much more challenging and rivalrous you helped develop in fact you're the driving force behind a national defense strategy can you explain to people who might not understand what the differences are between the two sure the defense strategy is really the strategy for our military forces i mean the national security strategy is released by the white house uh it tends to be a little bit more of a publicity document and more of a messaging document partially because the span of control if you will to you know move the entire us government is so much harder the defense strategy is in in a way is a little bit more practical it guides the military forces how they're supposed to develop what they're supposed to focus on what they're not supposed to focus on so that's what the the defense strategy is in the u.s system in dad's walk he writes about a potential scenario that he believes maybe isn't probable but possible potentially probable who knows which is absolutely terrifying you believe that's credible in terms of how china might attack absolutely well i think he's really laid it out and actually obviously he was he was onto this problem for uh some time ago if he wrote a book about it i've i've kind of come around to it over the last year or so which is you know in the past i really thought that the chinese would have a strong incentive to focus and attack as narrowly as possible around taiwan but i think they've become so strong um and that they also probably assume that the united states and even japan maybe australia are going to come into the conflict already so as as your father i think very eloquently and and persuasively lays out their incentives are to strike big and and early in a pretty surprising way that's what i'm worried about and if you look at the evidence uh for instance nikkei asia here in tokyo has reported this the chinese are conducting um uh you know tests uh against uh what are clearly american japanese ships and aircraft uh in the gobi desert mockups you know what that tells you is that's a surprise attack because if a ship is worried about being hit it's not going to be a pierside or if an airplane is worried about being hit it's going to be in the air or disperse somewhere so i think that gives real credence what your father has been arguing whether we like it or not in this country we are reliant on you guys the us for security in our region and for our defense essentially if something were to happen right now should we be worried as a country under the biden administration well look i think the byte administration has been saying a lot of the right things and i know a number of the people working on and they're trying to do the right thing but on the whole i'm very concerned honestly aaron because while the byte administration is saying the right things it's calling out china it's talking about supporting taiwan it's saying china is the pacing threat for our military you don't see the action that's necessary to back that up i mean look i'm i'm kind of a conservative i don't want to spend more on on defense if we can avoid it but you know we're dealing with the first pure superpower in our history as the united states as an international power china has an economy of the same size we're not increasing the defense budget by a material amount we're not focusing on asia we're we've basically doubled our forces in europe and they're looking like they're going to be there indefinitely we're not dramatically overhauling the force in the near term and the the really frightening thing frankly is that there's increasing evidence and views including by us intelligence officials that china may have an incentive to go in this decade and we don't look like we're prepared and again i think australia you know i would say the 2020 defense strategic update was trying to move forward on that and actually had more clarity i would say than the american uh current american american administration but now i just you know i mean i i i'm sort of we're all hat and no cattle uh as uh as the american saying goes which is the kind of the cowboy who talks big and doesn't really deliver and that's not a good situation to be in for any of us i love that you brought that up actually i really do like your sayings you wrote a piece in the wall street journal i think earlier this year arguing that ukraine could potentially be a distraction from the china and taiwan situation and you said something to the effect of the administration is saying they can walk and chew gum at the same time and you say i'm sorry is dealing with the first true superpower in our history is that walking or is that chewing gum well which one is it i would be more comfortable if they said we're going to sprint a marathon and wrestle a dragon that would i mean that sounds weird right well yeah that's the kind of level of response that we should be having walking shoe gum is kind of like ah it's easy you know no big deal i mean i don't know i look at china i look at xi jinping and i they look really serious to me and you know there's 1.4 billion people who are moving up the economic value chain led by the marxist leninist chinese communist party that doesn't fill me with comfort and it shouldn't fill you know australians or people in asia with comfort no no absolutely not and you look at the state of the world at the moment and you're saying that america is not prepared so if something were to happen immediately and of course we know that the greatest way to deter war is through strength if we don't have that ability and the us doesn't have that ability are we essentially screwed i think we're in a lot of trouble i i think it's still remediable but i'm beginning to wonder uh in the sense that look aaron i mean my view is that if china is going to pull the trigger on taiwan they're going to they know they're going to get hit back with sanctions and so forth so do you try to do more and solve more problems if you can i mean and that's where i think senator mullen's book about you know the the scale of the strikes that china might uh you know be willing to launch i think is very reasonable because if you're thinking if you're china and you're thinking i'm going to do this right and i mean bill burns the cia director said the other day at the aspen security forum he said the lesson of ukraine and i agree with him is use overwhelming force don't mess around do it right and you know as your father put it i mean this is similar to what the japanese did but it might work for the chinese because the japanese were one-tenth the american economy i mean it was kind of crazy what they did but for china it might actually work because they have the scale they have the world's largest industrial uh base in shipbuilding industry we did in 1941. so i i you know i think so i'm here in japan i'm urging them to triple their defense budget i mean i think you know and i think that if i were living on taiwan myself if i were taiwanese i would want to spend 10 percent of spending on our gdp on defense because otherwise we're going to live in in xi jinping's paradise you know i mean when i was growing up in hong kong a bit a lot of people had a second passport because they were worried rightly about what would happen after 1997. i think people in taiwan i mean they probably should have the same kind of backup at this point because it's not looking good absolutely and i think the point is made in the book as well that china would have learned lessons out of what japan did now they won't make those same mistakes again finally you say that there's still potential that we can somehow rectify the situation that we are in and when i say we i mean the west how do we do that and the amount of time required given china have clearly been preparing for something for a very long time well i think it's the kind of looking at the scenario that senator mullen laid out and that i tried to lay out in my book as well which is you know how are they going to how are they going to go about this and what are they going to try to do to achieve their purposes and we need the laser focus on what it is we need to do to kind of survive as a coalition so i call this a strategy of denial and i think australia you know in the last few years has has been uh on talking in a similar way which is focused on defeating china's ability to project power we're not going to get in there and regime change china we're not going to transform china we don't need to we just need to prevent them from being able to push out naval and air and kind of marine ground forces and seize and hold the key territory of our allies starting with taiwan as we can see from the ukraine situation if they can't seize and hold that that key territory they won't be able to subordinate our our you know parts of our our alliance network including taiwan and practical terms so that's all about missiles sea mines anti-air systems space resilience cyber architecture uh the kinds of base hardening and dispersal uh that sounds a little mundane and a readiness and i would just say i think the main point and i i i said this in uh in connection with the recent top gun movie maybe go back to the original top down movie if you remember it's a movie about training about readiness to fight the soviet union basically to be at a pitch level of readiness as if it might happen anytime and then it won't happen and that's the kind of spirit that i think we all need in australia in the united states but also in japan and taiwan it's a brilliant analogy it really is elbridge colby thank you so much for your time tonight great well thank you i appreciate it

Channel: Sky News Australia

Views: 370,741

Keywords: 6310558202112, erinmolan, fb, fblink, msn, opinion, yt

Id: bCk4ycs2VOk

Length: 9min 2sec (542 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 07 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to r/LateStageCapitalism

This subreddit is for news, discussion, memes, and links criticizing capitalism and advancing viewpoints that challenge liberal capitalist ideology.

LSC is run by communists. This subreddit is not the place to debate socialism. We allow good-faith questions and education but are not a 101 sub; please take 101-style questions elsewhere.

We have a zero-tolerance policy for bigotry. Failure to respect the rules of the subreddit may result in a ban.

---

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/SnooHamsters8763]

I have never heard anyone so casually talk about and appear thrilled at the prospect of killing people. He does it with a smile and nice suit.

[u/bidner223]

does the us actually think China would invade them?

[u/Nadie_AZ]

The Military Industrial Complex needs you ... to spend billions on them.

[u/Electronic-Ad1037]

Guys we need you to throw your economy in the shitter too we need everyone to have a fucking disaster capital dystopia fallout or your superior choices will be to obvious when we try to rebuild