Debate: Should the U.S. Seek to Contain China?

so to speak while everyone uh signs on we're getting a ton of people pretty rapidly which is a great sign so hold tight we'll start in a in about 15 20 seconds just to let the room fill up a little bit more excellent glad to see those numbers going up wonderful okay i think i think it's time to start good afternoon and welcome to this much anticipated debate between two esteemed professors and quincy institute non-resident fellows david kang and john mearsheimer on the question should the u.s seek to contain china my name is kelly blejos and i am a senior advisor at the quincy institute which is a transparent think tank dedicated to foreign policy restraint and an end to the cold war thinking that has embroiled the united states in an increasing number of military conflicts for 70 years particularly the last three decades after the fall of the soviet union the mission of restraint realism and restraint has bonded many foreign policy thinkers and strategists particularly on the right side of the political aisle since 9 11 and the dawn of the global war on terror but what i've personally noticed most keenly over the last year is that the issue of china has split realism and restraint that this community nearly in half as our panelist john mearsheimer has said presently um as i remember at an american conservative conference back in 2017 there are foreign policy challenges that call for restraint and others that call for realism decoupled from restraint china he said at the time is an issue that demands realism and not necessarily restraint i'm sure many of you out there have heard him say something similar over the years mere shimer who is affiliated with quincy because of his work on restraint is no hawk or primusist but his realism has brought him to conclusions on the china issue that diverse diverged from this institution but we found it so important to air these differences because they are fundamental and because u.s policy towards china seems to be evolving every day and really could go either way we hope to make our own case clear and persuasive david kang will be representing that position today maybe some minds will be changed today in the audience perhaps in either direction we just hope to illuminate at the very least an issue that if not pursued with common sense and critical thinking in washington could lead the united states into another war so for my part i am excited to engage dispassionately as moderator and let the ideas flow artemoni who is on this call is the research director for the institute for peace and diplomacy which has graciously uh co-sponsored this event i am going to turn it over to arda for a brief introduction before i introduce our debaters formally and then we can get on with the program so arta would you like to say hello thank you kelly again um as kelly just mentioned uh my name is arthur malini and i'm the director of research at the institute for peace and diplomacy we are a north american think tank dedicated to advancing prudent realism and military restraints in north atlantic foreign policy we lipd have been concerned with u.s china relations and especially it's more competitive footing for some time so much so in fact that we devoted ourselves to producing a sort of a genealogy of the contest and its catalysts considering the perceptional and psychological dimensions of of the conflict of the competition of threat perceptions and we recently concluded a five-month running series on the current landscape of sinai-american relations which convened an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners from ir theorists and security scholars to political theorists and historians in a series of panels and discussions which are available for viewing on ipd's youtube and rumble channels these efforts resulted in a white paper published last month called on the brink averting a new cold war between washington and beijing our report identified uh securitization threat inflation and absolutist conceptions of exceptionalism as real dangers to both the us and china as well as the regional stability in asia it is no exaggeration perhaps to call center-american relations the most pivotal relationship dynamic of the 21st century the conversation today or the debate today is as timely as they come to help us make sense of the domestic and international drivers of the competition as well as to discuss what kind of a contest it is its scope and future trends to contain no or not to contain i guess that's the essential question on everyone's mind and with that i turn it over to kelly to introduce our wonderful panelists thank you arda and thanks again for your co-sponsorship uh so i will get to the introductions and then we can get to the good stuff we have on the side of containment john mearsheimer john mirsheimer is a non-resident fellow of the quincy institute and the r wendell harrison distinguished service professor of political science at the university of chicago where he has taught since 1982. among his six books the tragedy of great power politics won the joseph lepgold book prize and the israel lobby and u.s foreign policy with stephen walt made the new york times bestseller list and has been translated into 24 languages his latest book the great delusion liberal ideals and international realities which he won the 2019 best book of the year award from the valdai discussion conference conference in moscow he has written numerous articles and op-eds that have appeared in international security london review of books form affairs financial times new york times and in 2003 he was elected to the american academy of arts and sciences on the no containment side we have david kang david kang is a non-resident fellow at the quincy institute and maria crutcher professor of international relations at the university of southern california with appointments in the department of political science and international relations east asian languages and cultures and in the marshall school of business kang is also director of the usc korean studies institute and vice chair of the political science and international relations department kang's latest book is state formation through emulation the east asian model co-author with xinhua huang he has authored five other scholarly scholarly books and has published articles in journals such as international organization international studies quarterly journal conflict resolution and international security he has also written opinion pieces in the new york times a financial times the washington post los angeles times and he repairs regularly in media such as cnn pbc and bbc and mpr so welcome both of you thank you so much for joining us today i am just thrilled that we are convening this discussion um so why don't we start with john on the issue at hand should the u.s seek to contain china thank you kelly uh let me just say thank you for the kind introduction and thank you to you and arda for sponsoring this debate and also let me say it's a pleasure to be debating my old friend david kang we go way back the argument i'm going to make is that the united states should contain china as and in fact is already containing china let me start by saying that there are three areas of the world outside of the united states that are of great strategic importance to us these are three areas where it's worth expending blood and iron one is europe two is east asia and three is the persian gulf the first two europe and asia matter greatly because there's a great deal of wealth there and that's where the other great powers in the system are and of course the persian gulf matters greatly because of oil it is in our interest to make sure that there is no hegemon in any of those three areas and it's especially important to make sure that there's no great power that is in a is a hegemon in either europe or asia now the question is why is this the case first of all if you're a hegemon in a region you're free to roam all over the planet and you're free to roam into the western hemisphere most americans never think about this but why is it that the united states has military forces all over the planet it's because we are a regional hegemon we have no security threats in the western hemisphere and we're therefore free to roam we don't want other countries to be to free to roam into our hemisphere the second reason you don't want a regional hegemon is a regional hegemon can threaten your ability to project power around the globe and protect vital interests especially economic interests so for those two reasons the united states has long been committed to preventing regional hegemons now if you look at those three areas that i described the persian gulf europe and asia there's only one potential hegemon in any of those three regions at this point in time and that potential hegemon of course is china china is growing into a remarkably powerful country it's already a pure competitor of the united states and when you take into account this country now has four times as many people as the united states if you begin to think about china with a per capita gnp that's one third of the united states or one half of the united states it is a country that is not only more populous but has greater wealth it will be a more powerful country and it will be well positioned to become a regional hegemon and as i said to you earlier the united states does not want china to become a regional hegemon now why would china want to become a regional hegemon it's very simple it's the best way to survive in the international system how many americans go to bed at night worrying about canada or mexico or guatemala or even brazil attacking the united states the answer is none there are no threats in the western hemisphere you want to live in a region of the world where there are no threats so in effect what china wants to do is become a regional hegemon because that's the best way to survive in effect what china wants to do is imitate the united states in effect what china is doing is imitating the united states because most americans are incapable of looking in the mirror and seeing what america is really all about they don't recognize that china is imitating the united states but it is imitating the united states because being a regional hegemon is the best way to survive in international politics furthermore in the chinese case they've made it clear that they're not a status quo power you can put my realism aside they've said we own the south china sea and we want to dominate it we plan to take taiwan back we own the east china sea and we especially plan to take back the diao or the senkaku islands this is an expansionist power of the first order and as i've made it clear the united states does not tolerate other regional hegemons we want a world in which we are the only regional hegemon on the planet i gave you the reasons for that now let me just say a little bit about the historical record there were four potential regional hegemons in the 20th century imperial germany imperial japan nazi germany and the soviet union the united states played a a key role in putting all four of those countries on the scrap heap of history the united states has made it very clear over time that it doesn't tolerate peer competitors and if you look at what's happening in the real world today the united states it's got its gun sights on china we're in china's face and this is not going to change if anything we're going to ramp up the intensity of the competition and of course they're going to ramp up the intensity of the competition not only because they consider taiwan's sacred territory and they want to take it back but because they understand like we understand that there's no substitute for regional hegemony if you're interested in maximizing your prospects of survival so we are in a really intense security competition which in my opinion is only going to get worse over time and we of course have no choice but to compete with china we have no choice but to contain china thank you thank you john david thanks thank you so much and first of all thank you for inviting me um i'm delighted to be here it's uh uh it's an it would be much better in person because it'd be much more vivid but but thanks anyway and john it is good to see you um so let me take let me take a couple minutes and give you my perspective and i'm gonna make one observation and then make one point and my observation is that i come to this whole debate as an area specialist as somebody who knows the region inside now and to me east asia today is more stable and more peaceful than it's been at any time in the last 50 years if we go back to 1971 50 years ago the vietnam war is at its height the philippines is about to declare martial law under marcos cambodia and laos are involved in a civil war indonesia's uh just gotten done with a confrontation with malaysia an undeclared war china is caught in the midst of a cultural revolution where thousands of people are dying absolute chaos south korea has a brutal authoritarian government north korea setting terrorist groups down to try and assassinate the south korean leader the last war in east asia was 1978 vietnam invaded cambodia and then in 1979 vietnam and china had a short sharp border war since that time there's been no major conflict in east asia and the region is richer and more integrated today than it was back then so as a baseline for any discussion of stability or instability today we need to start there the region is getting more stable not less the region is getting more integrated not less there are residual disputes over uninhabited islands and maritime um claims in the south china seas none of those claims also include uh the absence of a right for the country to exist china doesn't threaten the survival of the philippines or vietnam or korea so these countries aren't responding to china as if it did defense spending is down as a proportion of gdp during the cold war all countries any in the region averaged well over three percent three and a half percent of their economy to the defense by now that number is below two percent the countries are not reacting to china militarily because that's not the way that they are going to survive the future of east asia is about diplomacy multilateralism and economics so the observation is that in many ways the uh region is more stable today than it was 50 years ago and i always find it sort of interesting how much the the dc the blob is talking about uh increasing instability because we need some some baseline now my point is this a u.s policy of containment measurably harms the united states itself and we are making things worse for ourselves not better let me explain what i mean the u.s solution or future relationship with china is going to be also diplomatic and commercial it's not going to be military as john talked right there's a lot of worry about this everything about regional hegemon nobody really thinks china has an intention to invade and conquer the united states so hundreds of billions of dollars on military defense to try and deter china from doing that is a waste of money nobody thinks that's gonna happen china's not a primary threat to american survival it's not even a secondary threat to the survival of korea or or vietnam or something like that it is a tertiary threat it is an issue of how we're going to solve residual maritime claims it is a diplomatic issue about things like cyber it's commercial and in many ways american foreign policy particularly american foreign economic policy is measurably harming american workers the region is stitching itself together there are a number of regional uh economic initiatives from the rsep the regional comprehensive economic uh uh plan whatever it is tpp trans-pacific partnership which the united states pulled out of and the asian states are continuing to move forward with china has announced its intentions to try and join this the tpp the cptpp that happened faster than any of us thought was possible because china's economy continues to mature its legal systems continue to mature and it shows its intentions that it's going to be able to join these uh high quality trade trade policies america's scoring an own goal by not participating and the biden administration is continuing the trump policies of restricting trade i'm for expanding market access i'm for expanding markets and the united states not participating in this doesn't necessarily stop china from integrating even more into the region it stops us from integrating more into the region so in 10 years from now i predict john and i will have another debate about about whether to contain china but in 10 years from now the region will be even more integrated and more rich and a u.s containment policy puts us on the outside of that because there is no containment policy there is no containment coalition in the region these countries are not going to join the u.s in that type of a plan so we are hurting ourselves if we decide that we're going to have a military-first u.s china policy the future of u.s china relations is going to be diplomatic and commercial and i would hope that the united states would pursue that thank you david and before i turn it over to arda for the first question uh i just wanted to remind our viewers and listeners uh that if you have a question for the q a you can put it in the little box at the bottom of your screen and we're already getting a bunch in some very smart questions and i'm going to apologize ahead of time if i don't get to your question it's not because it wasn't a good one it's just that we have less than an hour so we're going to try to sprinkle them throughout um maybe and or maybe double some of them up so um ardo why don't you go in for the for the first question uh thank you david and john for for your uh sort of great um introductions and setting up of the issues i think one of the major areas where both of your points sort of comes to a head is taiwan so how do you assess the strategic role of taiwan within this sort of containment debate do you think the u.s will should commit itself to guaranteeing the security of taiwanese state in sorts of you know have taiwan to be sort of lying in the sand um or and how would that how would such a decision impact chinese strategic posture and threat perception questions for both of you so you can go you want me to go first david go ahead uh okay it's very important to understand that when it comes to containing china uh i think they're two different uh views from mine one is david's view that you don't contain at all it's not necessary the alternative view is to do containment light and that is not to defend taiwan not to defend the south china sea but nevertheless to try to contain china okay i just want to be clear that my view is that we should contain china to include defending taiwan the south china sea and the east china sea and the reason that we should and we will defend taiwan is that it is terribly important for two strategic reasons one is if we abandoned taiwan and we allowed the chinese to conquer taiwan this would have disastrous consequences for our alliances in east asia to include japan south korea australia uh and the philippines and we're not going to let that happen we're going to need all the allies that we can get to deal with china and creating a cohesive alliance structure in east asia is very difficult because of the geography all of our allies are spread out all over the place so we will defend taiwan for that reason the second reason we will defend taiwan is that for purposes of keeping the chinese navy and the chinese air force bottled up inside the first island chain which is a very smart thing to do if you're pursuing a containment policy it is important for us to make sure that taiwan remains on on our side of the ledger and that it doesn't go to their side of the ledger so i believe that we will defend taiwan and that it makes eminently good strategic sense david this is a great this is a great question because it does get to the heart of how we view what's going on in the region and i'll tell you right now man the solution to taiwan is not military it is a diplomatic and economic solution and that's what china has been doing and that's what taiwan has been doing i find it just baffling the kind of debate that's going on in dc about whether we should commit to the military defense of taiwan when in 2000 taiwan spent 2.7 percent of its economy to defense and in 2020 it spends 1.9 percent of its economy to defense the taiwanese clearly do not see a military solution to this issue it is an economic and a diplomatic solution and let me two points about that number one if we take the two remaining uh countries who fear for their survival it's taiwan and north korea of those two intractable disputes the north korea dispute has not moved at all since 1945. we are in the same place except north korea has nuclear weapons the taiwan issue is far more um uh stabilized in many ways there's direct flights back and forth there's a lot of economic relationships back and forth people are going back and forth there is a much more stable equilibrium in china taiwan relations than there are in north-south relations and again we need some comparison to be able to look at that and the and that stability has come not because they're shelling each other which they were 50 years ago it's because both countries are interacting economically and socially so i think in many ways i find it very surprising that we are now going to start ginning up some kind of a defense of taiwan when it's fairly clear that neither side of china china or taiwan views that as the real solution and especially when the chinese have made very clear that this is an integral part of what they view as a chinese nation so my second point is this i predict right now there's no other country in the region that's getting involved in a defense of taiwan australia might they sort of mumbling about it but every other country the singaporean defense minister just pointed out last month to the united states stay away from taiwan these countries view it as an internal chinese matter about what is china they don't view it as any kind of indication for what will happen to them the same way that the korean peninsula no one thinks that if korea south korea ever absorbs north korea that's an indicator of rising korean ambitions to invade somebody else that is an internal debate about what is korea and what is the legitimate country and government of korea and the taiwan debate is the same thing and so i don't see almost any other country getting involved so in many ways i don't think that we should uh be defending taiwan absolutely can i just push back on david and get him to respond to me when people talk about taiwan today almost everybody i know they consider it to be a remarkably dangerous situation and many people don't want to defend taiwan because they think it's so dangerous it's so at odds with your perspective on this uh case and the argument goes like this china considers taiwan to be sacred territory and it considers it to be territory that was taken away originally by the japanese in 1895 who are responsible in good part for the century of national humiliation and it's the united states that now is making sure that taiwan does not go back to china and the united states was also responsible for the century of national humiliation in the chinese story so you have this piece of real estate that the chinese are deeply committed to reacquiring and we are basically saying whether the japanese and the australians help us or not let's leave that aside it's quite clear that the united states is moving to help taiwan militarily and to keep taiwan out of china's hands and given that china considers this sacred territory this is a very dangerous situation don't you think so yeah i mean if the united states continues to do it sure i mean what has been very very clear is the chinese have said we will use force if china if taiwan declares a formal independence and what's interesting about that is it's very different from the chinese willingness to say we won't use force in the south china seas right it's very clear they are sending costly signals that they are going to use force if taiwan declares independence but given now what's interesting about this is this is very this is a very stable solution in the over the decades which is taiwan can do everything it wants to be a sort of d jura you know a de facto independent country owned government its own currency uh you know they can use traditional chinese characters as long as they don't formally declare independence and this has been proven to be quite stable and to that extent everybody knows the game that's being played so yeah if the united states decides to make it a problem yes they can but that's why i'm saying we shouldn't contain china that is exactly why i am saying that but just to push back on you again what's changed in recent years is that the chinese have much more military capability than they had 10 15 20 years ago and they're getting to the point where they may have the capability to take uh to conquer taiwan and they have made it clear that at some point they will do that if this problem is not solved diplomatically and it's really the chinese and their growing military capability that is changing the situation in east asia it's not something the united states is doing the united states would like to keep in place that wonderful world that you described that has existed over the past 30 or 40 years go ahead no go on go ahead no i i made my point i'm just saying that you should explain to me your thinking on my comment there are two there are two differences that have gone on in the last 30 years china's been able to flatten taiwan ever since they've got nuclear weapons 50 years ago right i mean they can they can they can flatten taiwan right now that's not the issue right no the issue is whether the first thing that happened is that i would say around 1995 6 whenever we had the uh you know that taiwan straits crisis with the missile launches is that what the chinese decided was where there had been actual deterrence and military threats and shelling as i said there was active shelling they decided they were going to open up the doors to uh economic interdependence and five percent of taiwanese moved back right like a million taiwanese are now living in in china and that's what's changed it was the taiwanese government that was trying to limit interactions with the the mainland because they knew that this is a very slippery slope right time in this way is on china's side the longer that it goes on the more integrated taiwan is becoming with china anyway socially and economically and so to me that was the inflection point it's not necessarily the increasing uh chinese military it's that the strategy has changed and they continually say if taiwan declares independence we will use force but the fact of the matter is over the last 20 years been far far greater interactions and that trend line is in china's direction it's not towards greater d separation it's towards greater integration john you no no response i want to let people ask questions i could i could go back and forth we can go on and on for another hour that would make my job infinitely easier um but i do have a quite one question and then we can get to the many q a coming in because there's some really good ones um my question is to john what does containment actually look like in practical terms what do you envision the u.s role would be militarily um can you explain what what's in your mind when you say uh containment is the only option here well containment is i think in this case not just military it's economic i mean there's going to be a significant economic competition in terms of high-edge or leading-edge technologies in the united states has a deep-seated interest in making sure that china does not dominate in terms of sophisticated technologies like a.i uh quantum computing uh and so forth and so on so that there there is a competition that the united states has to win at the economic level and also there's going to be a competition at the military level and there the united states is going to have to deploy significant military forces more than they have now in east asia for the purposes of protecting countries like south korea japan the philippines and australia it's important to understand that the united states has bilateral alliances with all four of those countries and it must make sure that its nuclear umbrella is over the heads of those four countries so we have an extended nuclear deterrence problem uh regarding those four countries uh in addition to those bilateral alliances and having the military capability to protect those countries uh we have to be able to protect taiwan uh we have to be able to protect our interests in the south china sea and as is clear we're beginning to form multilateral alliances on top of those bilateral alliances both the quad and alcus fit in this general category so i would imagine that moving forward we will strengthen those particular multilateral alliances we will strengthen our bilateral alliances and we'll move increasing forces into east asia and the situation will be somewhat analogous to what you saw uh in the cold war after 1949 uh when nato was formed in western europe all right just a quick follow-up are you sure we would be welcome in that regard putting all of those forces into the region because we get mixed messages from different leaders in in in east and southeast asia and how much of a u.s military-led security architecture they actually want so do we just push forward and say this is what's best for you um how do we deal with with with countries like indonesia and malaysia who have come out and said they're a little nervous about august they're a little nervous about us asking them to choose sides and i would imagine they'd be a little nervous with us pushing all those troops into the region well first of all it's quite clear given the quad and given august that there are a number of countries in the region that are willing to work with us the japanese are willing to work with us the australians are willing to work with us and the indians are willing to work with us the british of course are located in europe not in uh in asia but so there are a number of countries uh that are already willing to work with us if you talk to the japanese about the taiwanese situation japan is deeply committed to making sure that china does not conquer taiwan i actually disagree with david that we would be the only ones defending taiwan i think both the australians and the japanese will be with us should a conflict break out over taiwan so there's no question that we have allies in the region and there's no question there are countries in the region that want us to do even more the problem that we have is in southeast asia and it's no accident that you go to countries like indonesia to point out where we might have problems and i think there the united states is especially true under the trump administration but even the biden administration has not done a really good job at winning hearts and minds from an american perspective in that region but i think there are countries like vietnam and singapore that definitely will work with the united states over time there will be some countries that are basically allied with china this will be north korea i think laos and cambodia will be allied with china and if i had to guess myanmar will be allied with china and then there will be some countries that will try to sit on the sidelines and it's very important to understand kelly that five years ago when the u.s china competition was beginning to heat up almost every country in east asia did not want to take sides that makes perfect sense from their perspective i don't blame them they wanted to sit out this u.s china competition not get involved but the problem is that as the competition intensifies countries are forced to take sides you can't sit on the sidelines in most cases this is what happened with australia it's what happened with japan it's increasingly happening with the philippines and south korea as well and i believe that this will be the case with taiwan i think it's already the case with taiwan as i have a very different view than david on this can i jump in here absolutely because i think much of what john says is aspirational claiming that these countries are going to get involved and that they want to choose size when the evidence is very clear that they're telling the u.s to back down so i'm going to quote here singaporean defense minister november 4 2021. taiwan goes to the heart of political legitimacy i would advise the u.s to stay very far away from that that doesn't strike me as taking sides on the u.s suga the united states is pressuring uh japan to take a stance so for the first time a u.s japan bilateral statement when suga was here uh uh recently mentioned taiwan and mentioned we want it to be resolved peacefully that in itself the japanese prime minister saying we want taiwan to be resolved peacefully uh caused such a firestorm that when he was questioned in the diet back in japan he said that doesn't mean we're sending troops so maybe right but the evidence does not point to the fact that these are countries who are going to get involved the evidence as of this year not five years ago this year points that many countries are telling the u.s be more cautious now office i want one comment about august right i am again i have a very different view from the sort of mainstream view or john's view about the value of this for those of you who don't know august is uh australia decided not to use french submarines which were still aspirational because they weren't going to be done till 2030 and then flipped and decided to build them with the united states and uk now i have two comments about that the first one is this is like eight submarines and as i find out now i think they're not going to be ready until 2040 as i understand it like 20 years from now these subs may or may not actually come into um operation the amount of crowing about this to me is just baffling it's eight subs at a country five thousand kilometers away from china yes maybe 20 years from now in 20 years that same month that we announced that china announced its intentions to join the tpp and we ignored that for crowing about a couple submarines that may or may not ever occur what is happening in the region is china is explicitly telling us their economy is getting better they are more embracing the higher standards they are more embracing what's going on and for us to ignore that in 20 years china's gonna be more integrated more involved and i'll tell you right now china's already made a power transition man it's already bigger than every other country in the region it's already huge it's a massive centrally positioned country that every country in the region has to live with and that's what they're doing they're crafting diplomatic relations with both china and the united states but they are clearly not choosing sides other than maybe in australia if i can just come back you and david went to singapore as yeah because you're the one who said they were coming to the united states side they're clearly not you mentioned that no no no my point was the united states definitely has problems finding allies in southeast asia and that includes singapore i don't dispute about singapore i didn't go to singapore i went to northeast asia and i could put forward a huge amount of evidence that shows the japanese are significantly increasing their defense spending they're deeply worried about taiwan and they're working more closely than ever with the united states look a fundamental change has taken place in this region in recent years and that's why we're talking about algus that's why we're talking about the quad that's why we're talking about taiwan people are really nervous about a possible war in east asia this was not the case 5 10 15 20 years ago and as i said that's because of growing chinese economic might which is being translated into military might and they are the chinese spending lots of money on building up their nuclear arsenal building up their conventional capabilities building up their ability to conquer taiwan and to dominate the south china sea they're building and militarizing islands in the south china sea you can make the case i understand that we should not be worried about this and we should not contain china it doesn't matter if china becomes a regional hegemon but it seems quite clear to me that they're well on their way to moving in that direction i agree with that totally as i said they have already completed a regional power transition with no response from japan i would totally disagree on the defense spending for japan we know what japan acts like when they feel threatened that's what happened 100 years ago a massive national transformation when they were actually worried about national survival in the early 20th century what we see now defense japanese defense spending last year is 49 billion dollars u.s defense spending about 750 billion even china's is 250 billion that's up marginally from about 10 years ago it was about 46 billion dollars this is not a country that is reacting as if it needs to go on a war footing and i think we need to take that seriously arden did you have a two-finger yes um i i just wanted to it seems like both of you despite your very different views on this seem to agree that there is a certain sort of reluctance among many countries in east asia to invest heavily or be get themselves involved in this u.s china conflict now as john uh mentioned clearly uh china is on the rise it's it's adding it's econo it's it's growing both this economy and its military um meanwhile the u.s is on um you know a descent economically and is going through a decline in many ways do you think given the absence of a lot of regional willingness for um sort of the strategic forward posture the doesn't i mean doesn't that is there a material sort of constraint on the us uh and the us capability coming out of a 20-year war um across the globe aren't we do we have the capability material resources and the commitment and the willingness to invest a whole bunch of military and economic resources which we probably need to redo our infrastructure and other things onto that theater it's a good question john you wanted me to go first okay look two points one is we except for maybe japan don't have formidable allies in east asia australia the philippines south korea even japan under the best of circumstances they all have limited military capabilities and the fact is we're going to have to do most of the heavy lifting out there a lot of people talk about the claim or make the claim that we should but pass to our allies we should get our allies in east asia to do the job of containing china that's not going to happen china is a behemoth and the united states is going to be of overwhelming importance in containing china and this is what i think bothers you too so much you think after the forever wars right this is the last thing we need right is to engage china in an intense military competition but my argument is we're going to do that and we're going to do the lion's share of the work there's just no question about that now your question is do we have the resources and do we have the willingness to do that i think we certainly have the resources we remain the richest country in the world we have plenty of resources the interesting question is whether we have the willingness and i'm somebody who believes that the united states simply will not tolerate a peer competitor the deep state will not tolerate a pure competitor the chattering classes can have all these debates about whether we should defend taiwan whether we should do this or that we're going to defend taiwan and we're going to do everything we can to remain on the cutting edge in terms of leading technologies we're going to do everything we can to contain china it's what we did with imperial germany imperial japan nazi germany and the soviet union the united states is a highly militarized society after the forever wars and it's well positioned uh to move forward to contain china i oppose the forever wars but i definitely think it's in our interest to make sure uh that we don't have a rival regional hegemon can i jump in i i agree with john that i think the uh the blob certainly on left and right is very much about american primacy right i mean this is one of the one of the reasons that i try to write what i do because i think we need a wider discussion about this right we just sort of take for granted that the united states needs to be number one where i would urge us to i actually wonder this is an empirical question it's one thing if we are worried about an actual attack whether it's a terrorist attack which is ginned up for again 20 years war in um the middle east or a soviet union which is clearly plotting a you know global um empire is the united states willing to are we as an american people willing to get any war over a bunch of uninhabited rocks in the middle of an ocean i wonder i certainly hope not david can i ask you a question yes you may why don't you favor pulling all american military forces out of east asia i i think that ought to be on the table as a question right this is an exact example of the blob right you can't even put that as a question without being totally dismissed as being naive let me ask you another question do you think there is anything i'm not sure i'm not sure whether i think we should but i certainly think we ought to have that discussion but you have to have a story about why we should have military forces to begin with and i don't think we need nearly as many as we do and we don't have nearly as many as we had 50 years ago why those numbers have been coming down steadily without a reaction in east asia but why clearly don't need the kind of military that we had even 20 or 30 years ago when we had twice as many troops and twice as many ships why do we so there's been no reaction and that's the point right i say this all the time when we start arguing about particular numbers of american troops there were 80 000 troops and two infantry divisions in korea in the 70s and now there's about 24 000. it's clearly not the absolute number of troops what matters is a political relationship and the number of military troops and the number of military bases which we have planted around the globe like mushrooms um is actually never discussed but what really matters is not the number of bases it's the political types and diplomatic types of relationships we have but but you're not answering my question why do we need any forces in east asia what is the purpose of those forces why should we keep any forces i don't think we should have nearly as many as we do i absolutely don't we're trying to get troops into australia we're trying to get troops back into the philippines but you're not there in the philippines has been the country that actually in 1992 subic was the largest uh naval base in the world outside of the united states and it shut down and at the time everyone said the philippines is going to regret that decision successive philippine presidents have not revisited that at all there is no political will in the philippines to bring back a permanent u.s basing the us is the one that's pushing for the visiting forces agreement and everything else our allies are not asking us in we're pushing our way in david i think john is asking something very answering my question i think john john is asking something very we're having you're not answering my question david if i may clarify i think john is asking something very clear should we even have one troop left in korea the only reason that korea might have some troops is because i do think north korea is a real threat as i said that is a situation that has not changed the other the other countries i'm not sure okay let's um i i want to get to some of these q a questions um there are two key questions that i want to get to in the next seven minutes and one of them is from me because when i talk about this issue of containment with with with others the question always arises well what what is the united states interest in this and inevitably the conversation goes to uh whether or not this regional hegemon china has expansionist visions to go beyond that and there are many people who believe that they do have those aspirations and john i'm i'm going to an interview that you had back in 2020 um where you said if china becomes a regional hegemon it'll have no threats in asia to worry about and will be free to roll into the western hemisphere and form military alliances with countries like cuba and venezuela this is why the united states goes to great lengths to prevent china from dominating asia can we talk for a few moments about the prospects of um china being a global hegemon and is that why john you're concerned that we need to contain china two points kelly uh one is as i said in my formal remarks i believe that china is imitating the united states if you look at the united states and actually if you listen david describe all those american military bases all over the planet it's quite clear that the united states uh has been a global superpower uh since uh the end of world war ii and my argument of course is that china is going to imitate the united states and i have a theory that can back that up but i can't be absolutely sure and one can debate this issue my fallback position is that if you can't be sure whether china will become a global power but nevertheless you think there is some reasonable chance that's the case you have to operate on the assumption that it will happen and you have to prevent them from becoming a regional hegemon david yeah i mean the the question is what happens when china goes beyond its own borders right you know africa latin america etc right those are questions that come after we get out of east asia itself and one of the things i find interesting is that when we talk about rising chinese ambitions or not um every single major issue that the prc has is what i'm calling trans-dynastic almost every single issue that we care about dates from the qing dynasty of the 19th century these are not prc aims they are not increasing aims they're not expanding these are aims that every child whether it was qing dynasty the kmt under the republic of china in the 1920s 30s and then the prc cares about recovering taiwan hong kong uh the dispute the nine dash line of china and the spratly islands was first a 1935 republic of china map that the prc inherited so i don't see actually rising chinese claims i see a number of chinese disputes that have been resolved over the years the question of when it goes beyond our borders is does that pose a military threat to the united states or does it pose a diplomatic and economic threat or issue and overwhelmingly i see china's relations around the globe as being much more economic and diplomatic than military and i think we should respond to them that way to have a military jaw first view of china is missing the reality of what its relations are around the globe and we are harming ourselves by viewing it through a military lens okay quick question i i guess we have what five minutes left uh give or take um i want to go back to the beginning when uh when john was talking about uh china as a regional hegemon um why can't we live with china as a regional hegemon and john forgive me because you might have already answered this question but it's popped up in the q a uh this uh this question from eric hired the u.s did live with soviet hegemony in eastern europe why can't we live with chinese hegemony in the western pacific well we we did not live with soviet hegemony in western europe we went to enormous lengths from roughly 1947 to 1989 to contain the soviet union and make sure that they weren't a hegemon as i said in my formal remarks we did the same thing with imperial germany imperial japan and nazi germany the united states has never faced another regional hegemon and this gets to the heart and soul of your question kelly why is that the case why are we so bothered by the prospect that another country will dominate its region the way we dominate the western hemisphere as i said earlier it's because they will then have the freedom to roam we do not want china to not have to worry about competitors in its region because it's so powerful and then roam into the western hemisphere remember we have this thing called the monroe doctrine the american people do not like the idea of distant great powers moving military forces into the western hemisphere china can't do that now because it's pinned down in east asia we want to keep china pinned down in east asia we don't want it to be free to roam furthermore if it's a regional hegemon it'll become very difficult for the united states to project power around the world because they will build the blue water navy as they are now doing they will contest us on the high seas and it will make it difficult for us in certain circumstances to protect our interests especially our economic interests around the world again this is why we stood up to nazi germany it's why we stood up to the soviet union and it's why we are standing up and will continue to stand up to china we do not want another regional hegemon in the system and never have david um yeah can i make a couple counts sure and then i have a question that's specific to you that i would like you to answer within the next you know a few minutes but 30 seconds well how about i ask the question and maybe you can thread it in because i think i think this is important you know often you have written that much of the analysis on china in east asia in general has been from through a western lens and you wrote in a book review that you were asked to do uh for four years ago um that many of these uh analyses that we're reading now um completely ignore chinese interests perceptions goals identity history religion culture and philosophy or even capabilities domestic politics you know in how much are we missing how much is western thought and strategy and analysis missing by not seeing things through a distinctive chinese asian lens or an east asian lens i mean i wish we had another hour and i'm finishing up a book with shinri ma on this right which is the lessons of east asian history because they're very different right the one place that i would agree with john is that i don't think that china is a regional hegemon yet where i would disagree is in what a definition of a hegemon is because for john it's all material capabilities but i think what you notice about east asia and this is again where you go back to history is that uh historically china was massively dominant in the region not just physically but it was also a source of civilization and ideas the reason that it is not a regional hegemon yet is china today does not have any type of the attractive uh civilizational social philosophical uh ideas where other countries look to china for solutions to their own problems that doesn't exist so china is big right now but it's not yet a regional hegemon where it's a source of leadership or attractiveness so in many ways china itself is limited in its own influence in the region even though it is massively central as an economy and as a military and as just a population right um the one the one lesson i would say very briefly because i know we're almost out of time is if you do look through east asian history almost all the threats to chinese dynasties came from within only rarely were they conquered externally and right now if i had to say what i think xi jinping worries about in the morning when he gets up i'll bet he's much more worried about internal issues than he is about the external issues um but in many ways i think we are watching a china that is changing in real time and if we don't pay attention to what is going on in china itself and what it values and what it cares about i think we're going to miss a lot of the dynamics that are going in the region and for china itself if i may ask a follow-up david okay real quick because we are already over time just just one thing because i i don't know if i if you were clear but enough on that so i i think our audience would benefit from hearing your views on that um john obviously believes that we are in an intense security competition do you believe that there is any sort of competition on any plane that the us has with with china or china has with the us or is this the projection of the chatter class i think overwhelmingly there's a projection of the chattering class but there is intense competition economically technologically all those things are there but that's not about national survival and that's my point there's intense competition across the board but that's not about national survival and so we shouldn't treat it as if it were john you have any uh last word no i since you said that we were over time i was thinking i had had my fair say and david finish thank you john well i appreciate it and i appreciate um the enthusiasm from the audience as well we had uh record numbers here and lots of questions and i'm so sorry we didn't get to them um this is our last uh event of the year at the quincy institute and i'm proud to have uh been a part of this one because i just think it is it was so important and both of you john and david i just i i feel like i was really schooled today and i say that very honestly because this is such a fraught uh debate and issue and um i'm glad that you're able to have some some back and forth on it and thank you arda for enjoying the the discussion uh with your questions because they're very uh important as well so thank you everybody for joining us happy holidays and i hope we can continue this discussion at some point because i have a feeling it's going to be

Channel: Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

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Id: wafCm3fmF7s

Length: 62min 50sec (3770 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021